“Good night,” Persephone whispered into his ear.
He didn’t stir. She got off the bed. Long slim legs and big boobs wavered and shifted. When she looked in the full-length mirror, her real, true image stared back at her. Five foot two. A-cup breasts. Thick, muscled thighs and biceps. Her body was strong and fit, and never let her down, no matter if she was running from the cops, breaking and entering or letting some rando with a hard cock have his way with her. This body, she thought as she cupped her breasts and flicked her nipples erect, was no wonderland. It was the real deal.
Without a glance behind her, she got dressed. She did raid the fridge, snagging a piece of cold pizza and a soda, along with a couple bananas from the counter for later. She did not, however, take his wallet. Didn’t even sneak a couple twenties from it. He’d been a good lay but more than that, seemed like a pretty decent guy...
Clearly, she was slipping.
Pushing that thought from her head, Persephone kept her head down once she reached the street and headed for home. Light was tingeing the sky when she got back to her place. Maybe she’d be able to sleep now.
The sound of feet scuffling behind her as she stopped to pull her mail from the box didn’t make her turn. She knew who it was without looking. She said nothing as Kane Dennis moved beside her to check his own mail.
“Morning.”
She pursed her lips. “Mmm.”
He laughed, the sound of it low and rich and rippling through her in a way she hated because of how much she liked it. She pulled out a sheaf of junk mail, the only kind she ever got. Pretended it was something important, like she was a real person who paid bills or got postcards from friends. She shot a sideways glance at him.
Six feet of lean, long legs. Broad shoulders. Taut stomach. Faded jeans, form-fitting Henley under a plaid shirt, unbuttoned but rolled up to his elbows to expose his finely muscled forearms. She was such a sucker for forearms, and his completely slayed her.
“Still having a problem with the hot water,” Kane said conversationally. “Not trying to be a pain in the ass about it, but if you could take a look?”
“Now?” Persephone tucked the mail into her bag.
“It would be great if I could grab a hot shower before bed,” he told her.
She tucked the inside of her cheek against her teeth at the thought of Kane beneath a spray of hot water, sluicing over the perfect body... She shook it off. “Sure. I can come up now.”
“Great,” Kane said with a smile that tried to get its way inside her, despite her every effort not to let it. “See you in a few?”
“Yeah, sure,” Persephone said without returning the smile. “See you in a few.”
Chapter 3
There were twenty patients on the fourth floor of Wyrmwood, ten in each wing. Samantha had never been told she had to take care of them in any certain order, but she almost always started at the far end of A wing and worked her way down toward the end of B wing. Dispensing meds. Taking vitals. Her role as a nurse was very limited, which was a good thing, since she’d never had any kind of actual medical training. Her degrees had been fabricated the same as the rest of her history. Still, none of her required tasks were difficult, and she’d been trained to call on other staff if anything did get out of control. It made her wonder, more than once, what the Wyrmwood powers above truly intended her function, and that of the other nurses, to be.
Glorified babysitters, she thought as she loaded the tray with necessary pills and vials of liquids for each room and pocketed her stethoscope and thermometer. Or more likely, part of the experiment, whatever it was. The cameras everywhere, the security. The out-of-date uniforms and strict rules that controlled after-hours behavior. The deathly quiet working atmosphere, no cell phones allowed. No outside reading material. It all seemed designed to drive the staff to madness right along with the patients, that was for sure.
She paused outside A1 to look through the porthole. The patient inside, sixty-year-old Helena, liked to draw elaborate spirals but had been denied the use of a pen or pencil since she’d stabbed an orderly with the point. She’d been allowed soft chalk, though, and routinely covered the walls and floor of her room with intricate designs every day, only to wipe them all away and start over when she’d finished. She never gave Samantha any trouble and was amenable to halting her work long enough to take the drug cocktail she’d been prescribed. She didn’t make eye contact with Samantha. She answered when spoken to, but nothing beyond that.
“Do you need anything?” Samantha asked the standard question that was rarely answered by any of the fourth floor’s patients.
Helena shook her head, already reaching for the thick block of blue chalk. She turned from Samantha without another word. Outside, Samantha took one last peek into the porthole, but Helena was already back to her drawing.
In a normal job, there’d be patient histories. Records she’d have been able to pull to see why the patient had been put here in the first place. She supposed it didn’t matter much. They paid her well enough not to ask those sorts of questions; more important, they paid her enough not to worry about it. Since none of the patients were being blatantly abused and all of them seemed content enough in their captivity, Samantha did her best not to care.
Slowly, she worked her way down the A wing. Whatever fight had been inside these patients in their lives had gone dead a long time ago, Samantha thought as she double-checked the next wing’s meds and pushed the cart toward B10. She very carefully didn’t think about the man in B1. Not until she got to B5, at least, and then, then...
She smelled lavender.
Closing her eyes as she pretended to fuss with the cart and the meds, Samantha couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Jed knew it was her favorite smell. She’d mentioned it once, early on. She’d never told him that she noticed how the scent always wafted around her when she got close to his room. Saying it aloud would mean the ones who watched them would be able to hear. It would be proof that Jed was still capable of manipulating his environment. Proof of a connection between them that she didn’t dare let anyone know about.
She drew in another slow breath, though, delighting in the scent. As she stood, the meds for B5 in one hand, the door at the end of the hall opened and Dr. Ransom came through it, flanked as he always was by two guards. He nodded at her, stopping in front of Jed’s room.
“Hello, Nurse. I’m here to get Jed for a session.”
“He hasn’t had his meds yet—” The doctor was already gesturing to one of the guards to step forward and take them from her. With a frown, Samantha pulled the small paper cup from the cart but didn’t hand it over. “If you can wait a few minutes, I’ll be happy to—”
Again, the doctor cut her off with a dismissive wave. “Not necessary, thank you, Nurse.”
The scent of lavender faded, replaced by the chemical, hospital stink that burned the insides of her nose, making her cough. The pills chattered a little in the paper cup, and she forced her hands to stop shaking. “It would really only take—”
Dr. Ransom’s head swung around and, for the first time in perhaps the entirety of her working here, he looked Samantha in the face. “Is there some reason you feel it necessary to argue with me?”
“No.” With that same bright, plastic smile, Samantha handed over the pills to the guard, who took the paper cup without even blinking. “Of course not.”
“Get back to work,” Ransom told her, already dismissing her and looking through the portal.
Samantha wasn’t dumb enough to say another word. She lingered, though, at the cart, until they brought Jed out. Not in cuffs, although the men on either side of him were clearly ready to handle him if he did anything out of line. He hadn’t in the past eighteen months, but she knew he had, a long time ago. Watching Ransom’s face, she thought the doctor was sort of hoping Jed would pull something no
w, so he’d have an excuse to order Jed’s restraint.
Was this it? The end of things? Were they finally taking him away? Should she react? There’d been no word from the Crew, and nothing from Wyrmwood, either. No changes in the schedule that would indicate that anything had changed.
Jed didn’t look at her when he came out of the room. Not so much as a glance over his shoulder.
She was already planning her attack when the softly drifting scent of lavender returned. She didn’t think he even knew she was there. She’d never spoken to Jed about the real reasons she’d come to Wyrmwood, but it wasn’t impossible that he knew and understood. Not out of the realm of possibility that he would know before she could, before anyone else could, that his time here was over.
Chapter 4
Jed came back as Samantha was finishing her shift. She heard the doors open and stood up from her place at the desk to look. Ransom hadn’t come back with him. The same two guards from before were marching him to his room, a hand beneath each of his elbows to hold him up. He looked exhausted.
“Does he need something? Jed, do you need something?” She came around the desk to face them.
“Doctor said he’ll be fine, he just needs to sleep.” One of the guards gave her an assessing up-and-down look, and then a surprising grin. “I could use a little something, though.”
“Shut up, Clement,” said the other guard with a scowl. “Get this door open. Get the guy inside, okay? I want to go the hell home.”
Samantha ignored both of them and stepped closer. “Jed?”
He shook his head. “No. Just tired. I’ll sleep now. That’s all.”
He looked terrible, but so did most of the patients when they came back from a session with Ransom. Samantha hesitated, once more wondering if now was the time. She could take out the first guard, no problem, and with great satisfaction, considering how he’d leered at her. The second would be harder to topple, warned and ready, but she had no doubts that she could take care of him, too. Her fingers fairly itched to strike out at both of them, but she didn’t show any signs of it.
Vadim, the man in charge of the Crew and the one who’d brought her in on this assignment, had told her there’d be times when she felt ready to act, but that she needed to wait. She’d be told when the time was right. Until then, she was to monitor Jed. To foster a relationship with him, such as she could with limited interactions. She would have to trust the Crew, Vadim had said, and she’d have to get Jed to trust her.
Samantha had never been big on trust, either giving or receiving, but she did believe Vadim and the Crew knew what they were doing. So now, instead of going into battle mode and destroying the two dudes manhandling Jed through the door and into his room, she went back to the desk and gathered her things. She signed out, although until the next nurse showed up to cover her shift, there wasn’t much she could do.
“Hey, listen, so maybe me and you...” The first guard had come out of Jed’s room and leaned over the desk to give her a wink. “Drinks?”
“You know that’s not allowed.” Without looking at him, Samantha scanned through the security feeds on the camera, searching for any sign that her replacement was at least in the elevator.
“Hey. I’m talking to you.” He went so far as to put his hand over the top of the desk and tried to grab her shoulder.
She pulled away before he could touch her, one hand going up automatically to grip his wrist and break it, before she stopped herself. She did not smile. “I’m not interested in getting fired, Clement.”
“Yeah, that pussy isn’t worth it, anyway,” he said derisively, his mouth twisting. In the next second, he was choking, coughing, doubled over so that she had to stand and look over the edge of the desk to see what the hell was going on. The fit lasted only another few seconds, but when he stood his face was red, eyes streaming tears. He muttered a low curse and backed away from her with a scowl.
A dozen retorts leaped to her lips, but as with almost every other action she ever wanted to take while on this job, Samantha held it back. She gave Clement her patented blank smile and enjoyed the way it made him flinch. The hall door opened, letting in the nurse who’d be taking over, and Samantha pushed past him without so much as a look at his face.
The scent of lavender stayed with her the entire way home.
Chapter 5
It was a rare day when Persephone didn’t have anything going on. No repairs to make or schedule for the building. No appointments with the small but consistent stable of men who paid her to be the woman of their dreams...or sometimes, nightmares, depending. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d woken feeling semi-rested, without even a tinge of anxiety following her around.
It wouldn’t last, she thought as she headed out into the morning, taking the concrete steps at the front of the building two at a time so she could get to the bodega on the corner for a cup of coffee and a candy bar. Caffeine and chocolate in hand, she was already tearing open the plastic when she bumped head-on, literally, into a man as solid as brick. She hit him hard enough to bounce off, stumbling back.
“Watch it,” she muttered, preparing to push past him.
The guy snagged the sleeve of her sweatshirt, turning her to face him. Persephone was already working, shifting, smoothing the lines and curves of her face to look like someone else. Dark hair instead of bright red-gold. Big tits. Tight top. His eyes went right there, and even if she hadn’t masked her face he’d have barely paid attention, so taken was he by the sight of her knockers.
Men, she thought with a sneer. So predictable.
“I’m looking for someone,” he said. “You seen her?”
The picture he pulled up on his phone was blurred, but definitely her. Thank god she’d automatically put on the glamour for him. The question was, why did he have a picture of her in the first place?
“Nope. Never,” Persephone said. “What’d she do?”
She thought he might say she owed him, or someone he was working for, money. That she was part of a scam. That she’d been caught up in a kinky prostitution ring, and he was part of the sting operation.
“Nothing.” Something in his cold, dead eyes left her shivering. “Just looking for her.”
Then he backed up and kept walking, leaving her behind. She watched him go, knowing that if he turned to glance back, she would still look like someone else. Uncertain if, in the end, it would matter. If a man like that was on her trail, she might be in trouble sooner rather than later.
He was from Wyrmwood. She felt it. He wasn’t one of the soldier guys who’d raided Collins Creek; they were drones that followed orders. This guy was the advance scout, sniffing around to see if he could catch wind of her anywhere.
And if he found out where she really was, Persephone thought, then the other men would come.
Then, they would try to take her away.
Chapter 6
Jed would have liked to really put down that guard who’d been harassing Samantha all the way to the ground, his lungs blowing up, heart bursting from his chest. He’d settled instead for squeezing the asshole from the inside out, just enough to get the guy to back off from Samantha, and even that effort had nearly put Jed onto his hands and knees. There wasn’t any blood, though. Whatever damage he’d done to the guard’s brain hadn’t been bad enough for that.
Ever since he was twelve years old, Jed had discovered the joys of hurting people, especially when the rewards bore merit—video games, chocolate cake, comic books. All he had to do was let Dr. Ransom open the window blinds into the other room and show him the man or the woman in the chair, then he’d have to think really hard and later, not quite as hard and then not hard at all, to make them scream and writhe in agony.
It had taken him only another year to understand that hurting people did not make him feel good. It left him wit
h a sick stomach and an aching head, worse than finishing the puzzles or reading the word cards in the box or any of the other dozens of things they had him do. Hurting people took effort; getting them to behave like his puppet took even more. More than once it left his nose bleeding.
One terrible time, it left him blind.
His sight came back. So did the tests. So did his anger, bigger now than anything else. No more rewards for doing what they wanted. Now he suffered the punishments for refusing. Starvation. Electric shock therapy. When they realized he could no longer be controlled by any of those methods, the drugs began.
At seventeen, he killed a man, but not the one they wanted him to kill. After that, the people at Wyrmwood started to be afraid of him.
Now, at twenty-five, he should still be terrifying them, but he’d spent the last eight years doing his best to convince them that they had nothing to fear.
The testing tonight during his session with Dr. Ransom had been unexpectedly brutal. After years of proving to them he was no longer capable of doing what they wanted, years of taunting them into just disposing of him already, Jed had almost forgotten what it was like when the doctor was convinced he could get a reaction from his patient. Almost, but not quite. His body remembered, anyway, the sting and burn of electricity. The pungent horror of the chemicals they dripped into his veins to make him compliant. There’d been times over the years when it would’ve taken so little to tip him into death, but they’d pulled him back. So many times he’d have let them—but that had changed when Samantha started working there.
She was not the first person to look him in the eyes, but she was the first to at least try to connect with him as a human being. Small things, nothing that would get either of them in trouble. A gentle squeeze of his shoulder when she took his vitals. A smile. A compassionate laugh at his lame jokes.