For three hours he tormented himself, until Caleb arrived and claimed the chair next to him.
“Any news?”
“None,” Sterling said, running his hand over what would soon be a full day’s beard growth. “Damion?”
“Sleeping it off,” Caleb said. “His wounds weren’t serious. He’ll be fine in a few hours. Becca’s worried. She says she’s been calling your cell, and you won’t answer.”
“I can’t talk to her right now,” he said, pushing to his feet and walking to the wall across from the seats to lean against it. “I knew it was a setup tonight, and I let Eddie go in there.”
“He’s a cop, Sterling,” Caleb said. “He’s trained to do a job and do it well. He made his own choices.”
“He can’t make the right choices when he doesn’t know what he’s dealing with,” Sterling said. “I didn’t warn him. I thought I could get Becca to safety and return to him in time. But the one thing in my mind was my need to save Becca.”
“Becca is more than someone you care about,” he said. “She’s a weapon we can’t allow to land in the wrong hands. I would have done the same thing.”
“But not for the same reasons I did,” he said. “The idea of something happening to Becca was unbearable to me. It skewed my judgment. And now Eddie is in that operating room clinging to life, a sick mother at home with no one to take care of her.”
“Eddie might still be in that closet, lying there dead, if you hadn’t acted when you did,” Caleb argued. “I would have negotiated. I would have been wrong.”
Sterling cut his gaze, staring down the narrow hallway before turning back to Caleb.
He laughed bitterly, a choked sound even to his own ears. “I wanted to be Becca’s Lifebond. I wanted to save her. I realized tonight that I’m not Michael. I can’t go into combat and worry that if I die my Lifebond dies. When I hesitate, when I stop and think rather than act, people die. She will die.” He inhaled a heavy breath. “The GTECH serum—”
“Sterling,” Caleb said, cutting him off. “We need to talk about Becca, but now isn’t the time or place.”
A doctor came through the doors wearing scrubs and a mask pulled away from his face, hanging at his neck. Sterling and Caleb rushed to meet him. So did several guys from the Vegas Police Department. There was no family.
“He’s stable but in a coma,” the doctor said. “We are in wait-and-see mode. The next twenty-four hours will be critical.” A few questions were thrown out, and visitors were rejected.
Caleb settled his hand on Sterling’s shoulder. “Go to Becca,” he said. “The rest will wait until tomorrow.”
Sterling turned to Caleb. “I’ve asked myself over and over as I sat here—how did Eddie get into that closet so quickly? I’m telling you Caleb, I was in the hallway all of sixty seconds. It wasn’t possible.”
“What are you saying?”
“I keep thinking about what Becca said about the memories Damion and I have from her abduction. She said everything wasn’t as it seemed. I thought I saw Damion when I handed over Becca.”
“Thought?” Caleb said, quirking a brow.
Sterling ran his hand over his jaw. “I don’t know, Caleb. Back in that apartment, I saw and even talked to Eddie, yet he was in the closet. He couldn’t have been in two places at once. I’ve been wondering if I was drugged back at Becca’s house. Maybe there had been something in the smoke. But this time, this time I was clean as a whistle. There’s something more going on here.”
“Maybe Eddie will give us some insights.”
“If he wakes up,” Sterling said grimly. He reached into his pocket and dug out the data stick. “Marcus gave me pictures and personal information on an ICE dealer who sounds an awful lot like Madame.” He grimaced. “This is tread-carefully territory. He likely sold us out to Tad today. I was with him. He saw Becca. Suddenly, Tad was all up my ass?”
“Or he was followed,” Caleb suggested. “He was handing over information on Adam’s dealers.”
“I don’t know,” Sterling said, skeptical. “I got a weird vibe off Marcus today. Everything about today, including him, stinks.”
Caleb took the data stick. “I’ll run down this woman and set up extra surveillance on Marcus. It’s been a hell of a night. Go see your woman, and get some rest.”
But Sterling couldn’t go to Becca. Not yet. Not until he made one gut-wrenching stop. He had to go see Eddie’s mother.
***
Despite it being 3:00 a.m., Becca was sitting on the bed with her laptop in front of her, fully dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, trying to focus on the research she and Kelly were exchanging by email. Impossible—considering she was a total mess, waiting to hear from Sterling, torn up about him not returning her calls. And going nuts over the necessity of hiding from Dorian, locked away like a prisoner.
Nevertheless, Caleb had kept her up to date, though it didn’t stop the knots in her stomach over the “why” of Sterling’s silence.
She should have told him about the Lifebond mark. And she would have in that tavern earlier in the evening had Eddie not shown up when he did.
But Michael knew about the bond; Caleb and Kelly too. Someone may have told Sterling, may have taken her chance to explain it to him her way to make him understand why she’d concealed their bond.
She was ready to say, to heck with waiting, and sneak out to the hospital, when the front door creaked open. Becca quickly set aside her computer and started for the door, eager to see Sterling, to touch him and know he was okay.
Before she made it halfway across the room, he appeared in the bedroom entrance, looking battered and exhausted. His hands rested on the door frame. Blood streaked the faded blue of his right leg, his black T-shirt matted with a dark spot she assumed to be more blood. Eddie’s blood, she thought.
“Eddie is…” His voice trailed off.
“In intensive care,” she said, rushing forward. “I know.” She wrapped her arms around him, never wanting to let go. Pressing her cheek to his heart, she reveled at the steady beat beneath her ear.
For a moment, he didn’t touch her, didn’t move as fear spiked inside her. He hadn’t taken her calls. He wasn’t touching her.
Then suddenly, he relaxed into her, his arms closing around her a moment before he buried his face in her hair. She still had the chance to tell him everything, to explain, before her silence created a barrier she wouldn’t be able to permeate.
“I went to see his mother,” he said, his voice hoarse.
She tilted her chin up, resting her hand on his chest. “How bad was it?”
“Had her nurse not sedated her, she’d probably be at the hospital as a patient, like her son.”
“You did a good thing going there tonight. When Eddie wakes up—and he will, Sterling—he’s going to appreciate what you did.”
“Almost getting him killed?” he asked, a self-condemning bite to his words.
“You saved his life,” she said, pushing to her toes and kissing him. “And don’t tell me you didn’t. Caleb already told me what happened.” She took his hand. “You need a hot shower and rest.”
He followed, his eyes heavy with an exhaustion she could tell reached beyond the physical. She turned on the water to heat and helped him undress. She would have stepped away, but he tugged her close.
“I need you, Becca. Join me.” He trailed his fingers tenderly over her face and slid through a strand of her hair. “Please.”
He needed her. Those words filled her in ways she fully intended to ensure he knew. “I need you too,” she whispered, but a hint of discomfiture slid through her at the truth behind the words. She needed him to live on a literal level. How did she make sure he knew their connection was more to her?
Becca undressed quickly, eager to remove the barriers between them, starting with their clothes. They stepped under the hot stream of water, melting into it, and each other.
“Becca,” he whispered, her name on his tongue, speaking a thousand unspoken wor
ds. Pain. Longing. Need. Blame.
She had to tell him about the mark. “Sterling—”
He kissed her, a long, drugging kiss that stole her breath and reached into her soul. A kiss that became her breath… became his. He devoured her with that kiss and the next… and the next, until he was devouring more than her mouth. He was devouring her body, touching her, licking her, nipping at her neck, her shoulder. Pressing her against the shower wall, he lifted her, one hand around her backside, the other braced on the wall beside her head.
All the turbulence she’d seen in his eyes, she felt in him now. His eyes met hers and held as he pressed inside her, filled her, stretched her.
Something wild snapped between them. Wild in a way Becca had never experienced in her life. She arched her hips and reached for more, bucked her hips as he pumped into her. Still it wasn’t enough. There was no inhibition, no thinking. There was only need. Need she was willing to beg to have fulfilled.
“Sterling, I need…”
His mouth covered hers, his tongue sucking hers, licking and tasting. “I know,” he murmured. “I need too.” He maneuvered her around, away from the wall. “Grab hold.”
Becca reached for the shower railing and tightened her legs around his hips, squeezed his cock tighter, deeper. He leaned in, licking the water from her nipples and suckling, and then pumping with his hips. Becca cried out with the pure pleasure of it, the pressure of his mouth on her nipple, darts of pleasure spreading through her. She called out his name, lost everything but him inside her, suckling her nipple and thrusting against her until she could take no more. In the same instant, she could not get enough. Becca exploded in a fierce rush of multicolored bliss, exploded with spasms that grabbed his cock and pulled him deeper. He moaned, low and guttural, and then tugged her hard against his hips.
They collapsed together, him holding her, her arms leaving the bar to wrap around his neck. “Is it me?” he asked. “Or is the water freaking freezing?”
“It’s cold,” she said, a shiver chasing a path along her spine. “Okay. It’s freaking freezing.”
He carried her out of the shower and set her down, snatching a couple towels from the cabinet. Becca began drying off, facing the mirror, when suddenly Sterling was behind her, brushing her hair aside and staring at her neck. Becca’s heart accelerated, and the towel fell to the floor as she grabbed the counter to steady her suddenly weak knees. This was not how this was supposed to happen.
“Sterling,” she whispered. Her gaze lifted to the mirror to meet his, and the minute they connected there, she knew it had been a mistake. He could see the guilt in her eyes.
“You knew,” he accused. “You knew, and you didn’t tell me.”
She heard the sense of betrayal in his voice and whirled around to face him. “I can explain.”
“Everything isn’t as it seems,” he said, repeating her words. A coincidence that wasn’t fate at all—it was planned. “What kind of game are you playing, Becca?”
Chapter 31
The truth of the matter burned straight to his soul. Anger formed, and Sterling embraced it, easier to face than the pain spiraling inside him. Becca had deceived him, let him torment himself over her death. “What’s your agenda, Becca?”
She took a step toward him, and he let her, grabbing her and pulling her hard against his body. And damn her if those soft sensual curves didn’t make his cock thick with desire. But then, if she was fucking him, why shouldn’t he fuck her?
“Are you working for Adam?” he demanded, his mouth close to hers, hungry to taste the bitterness of lies on her lips, to embrace them and try to get over her. “He found out we were Lifebonds? Or you found out. It all makes sense now. That’s why you weren’t afraid to wind-walk. Why not just do the blood exchange, Becca? Why not trick me? Or was the opportunity just not there, so you had to continue to manipulate me?”
“What?” she gasped. “Sterling, no. Why would you think that?”
“Why else would a woman who is dying not tell the man who could save her life to do it? Why? It makes no sense.”
“I had opportunity,” she whispered hoarsely. “I was bleeding in the lab. I could have tricked you. But I did everything to avoid you.”
“Don’t lie,” he said in a low growl, pressing his mouth to her ear. “We both know the blood exchange doesn’t happen that easily. Stop playing me.” He pulled back, fixed her with a steely, contemptuous look. “I don’t like it.”
“And I don’t like you very much right now,” she said, her chin tilting up defiantly, her lips quivering. “How would I know that?” Then suddenly her bravado melted into tears, the kind of tears someone dying sheds, the kind of tears, he realized, she’d never allowed herself since he’d known her.
“This isn’t like giving me one of your kidneys and you keeping the other, and statistically, you’re fine. This is forever, Sterling. How was I supposed to expect you to give me that when you barely even knew me? When you might have found out you didn’t even like me? When it would have been pity and guilt, not love.”
It was his turn to melt, into her, around her. “Becca,” he whispered, thumbing away the dampness on her cheeks. “Baby, I’m sorry.” He pressed his forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry. Tonight… Eddie… you—my inability to save either of you… it’s been eating me alive.”
“I was going to tell you,” she said. “I just needed to know…” Her breath hitched. “I needed to know—”
“That I love you and can’t live without you?”
Her hand rested on his chest. “Yes,” she whispered.
“Well, I do,” he said. “And I can’t. And I’m not sure if that’s a good or a bad thing for either one of us.”
She swallowed, her delicate throat bobbing with the action. “So… I was right to worry. You don’t want this.”
He buried his face in her neck, breathed in her flowery, feminine scent. “God yes, I want this. I just don’t know how, Becca.”
“I don’t understand. Sterling.” Her hands were in his hair, forcing him to look at her. She searched his face, trepidation in her own. “You’re confusing me.”
He forced his gaze to hers, and he knew the stark desperation that must be there. But he couldn’t make it go away. He couldn’t tear through the torment. “I take risks, Becca. I don’t stop. I don’t think. I just act. And I save lives doing it. But that has been my life I was gambling with, no one else’s.”
“You mean mine,” she said, her hand curling on his chest. “We don’t have to do this.”
“Of course we’re doing this,” he said roughly and kissed her. She tried to object, and he kissed her again. “We’re doing this.”
He scooped her up and carried her to the bed, spreading her legs as he did to settle intimately between them. Her dark hair spread on the ivory pillow. God… she was beautiful. She was his.
Resting his weight on his elbows, he declared, “We live together, and we die together. And we’ll save lives together.” He reached over and yanked open the bedside table and snatched up a pocketknife. “Starting now.”
“No!” she said, closing her hand over it. “Not now.”
“Becca, baby,” he pleaded. “Forget what I said. I was just scared.” Sterling inhaled against the impact of the admission, his gaze traveling to the ceiling as he regained composure. He leveled her in a stare and let her see the truth in his eyes. “I’ve not been scared in years. But I haven’t been this alive either. I want this, Becca. I’ll deal with the rest.”
“You have time to think about it,” she said. “We can’t do anything until after we catch Dorian.”
“What does Dorian have to do with this?”
“One of us has to survive to keep fighting.”
“Oh no,” he insisted. “Live and die together. No negotiations on this. You’ll be stronger and safer linked to me anyway.”
“And if the Lifebonding somehow changes me? If Dorian can tell I’m different, and he doesn’t see me as bait anymore? Or m
y ability is gone. Or my mind reads different somehow. We can’t risk the lives that will be lost if we don’t capture him. We can’t.”
A vice closed around Sterling’s chest because he didn’t want her to be right. But she was. Millions of lives were in jeopardy as long as ICE manufacturing existed. The free world was hanging by a string, ready to be snapped by Adam. His world crumbled around him as he realized… he might still lose Becca. He’d never felt so confused, so emotional, in his life.
He whispered her name and parted her legs, pressing deep inside her, becoming a part of her in the only way he could. Bond or no bond, she was his. She was in his soul, his heart. If she died, he’d be destroyed. He would die with her.
***
Becca woke in a warm, dark tunnel of sleep. Real sleep. The first she’d truly allowed herself in days—on her stomach and naked. A slow smile slid onto her lips as she thought of the many things she had done with Sterling. There were all kinds of reasons to be worried, concerned, and upset. But in that few seconds, she allowed herself to be something she had not been in months. Happy and in love. If she was going to die, she was going to do it as one satisfied, pleasured woman.
She pushed herself up on her hands, realizing the master of that pleasure was missing. Frowning at the muffled, but distinct sound of male voices from the living room, she quickly found a pair of soft, faded jeans and a T-shirt, passing on shoes out of urgent curiosity about what was going on. After a brief glimpse at her feet and her pale toenails, she wondered how a hot bath and bottle of red toenail polish had ever felt anything but adolescent and self-indulgent.
She opened the door as Sterling was saying, “I handed Becca to you.”
“You handed Becca to Tad,” Damion countered.
“We’ve been through this,” Michael said. “What are we proving by beating this dead horse? You both saw something different.”
“Tad wasn’t Tad,” Sterling said. “Eddie wasn’t Eddie.”