“This is the wager. I win – you’re mine.” His eyes hardened into arctic ice. “And then you will help me overthrow Game Control.”
Chapter Four
Victoria stared across at Black and felt as if the world were falling away from her. His words had sent waves of sensations rolling through her. Her head felt light, her ears buzzed, and her stomach was clenched tight. Beneath the weight of his burning green gaze, she felt at once stripped down, exposed and vulnerable, defenseless against his radiating heat. She was hot. So much fire.
And then she was stone cold, his final words sitting like lead weights in her gut.
She swallowed. When she spoke, it was in the slightest of whispers. “You want to overthrow Game Control.” It wasn’t a question. She simply wasn’t sure that she’d heard him correctly.
His response was a slow, affirmative nod.
She couldn’t believe he had just suggested what he’d suggested. All of it was inconceivable. It was too much. Maybe she was dreaming? After all, Room 72 was rather surreal.
“Clearly you need time to consider your answer, Victoria.” Black stood slowly, reaching his full height with practiced grace. She gazed up at him with his jet-black hair and black garb, his emerald eyes flashing. “And time is a commodity I just happen to possess.” He waited as the waitress approached, shyly, and set down Victoria’s ale. Black drew a card from the inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to the server.
She nodded in understanding and hurried off again. Black turned back to Victoria. “When you make your decision, you need but call me.” He gazed at her steadily. His expression darkened, the pupils in his green eyes expanding in warning. “In the meantime, sleep well.” His words were laced with hidden meaning. “And sweet dreams, love.”
With that, he bowed his head slightly and turned to leave the tavern.
* * * *
Victoria stood at the foot of her bed and gazed down at it, uncertain. Her head was spinning. She knew that sleep would run from her, slippery and shifty, and that she would have to fight to pin it down this time.
On nights like this, her bed looked like a battlefield.
She sighed. Everything was an analogy of war. It’s all I know, she thought.
She ran her hand through her hair and strode to the tall windows along one wall. With a wave of her hand over a control panel on the right, the windows silently slid open. Cool air instantly raced along her skin, raising goose bumps and weaving through her long hair.
She closed her eyes and stepped out onto the balcony, breathing deeply. The air was slightly scented like… like something she vaguely remembered. Everything was something she vaguely remembered.
Because of the Game.
Black’s words came back to her. You’ll give yourself to me for one night. And then you will help me overthrow Game Control.
What did he mean? How could he hope to overthrow Game Control? What did he have in mind?
And why her? Why now?
Victoria left the balcony and resealed the glass doors behind her. With one last defeated glance at the empty bed, she made her way to a cabinet along one wall. It slid open as she neared it. She reached in and retrieved a bottle of pills from the top shelf.
Max had given her the bottle several battles ago. He’d told her she looked tired. At the time, she was tired, though she wouldn’t give Max the reason for this exhaustion. She’d been up for several nights trying to get used to using her powers without the Game band on her wrist. She hadn’t wanted anyone to know she was doing it. She wasn’t even entirely sure why it was so important to her that she did it. She just had a feeling.
Anyway, the pills were supposed to help her sleep. Max hadn’t told her where he’d come by them, but he was a charismatic man with a lot of his own “connections,” so most likely they’d been procured from some buxom doctor or nurse in the Medical Research Unit.
That thought made her smile. He was shameless.
Victoria turned the bottle of pills in her hand and peered through the opaque glass at the small cylindrical capsules inside. There was no label on the bottle.
She looked back at her bed.
Thoughts of Victor swam in her head. His hair, his eyes, his tall, dark form. His words.
She screwed the top off of the bottle and poured one of the pills into the palm of her hand. She had never taken medicine before. Her abilities as a Light leader had made visits to the MRU and medicines, in general, unnecessary for her.
But she’d never been propositioned by the most powerful Gamer on the Field before. He’d never looked at her quite like that before. His accent had never been quite that strong.
Victor Black was an illness that she couldn’t heal.
This was the only way she was going to get any sleep tonight.
Victoria popped the pill into her mouth and swallowed it down.
* * * *
Victor opened his hand to the sound of chinking glass as the shards of fine crystal slid from his palm to the marble floor beside the legs of his leather-backed chair. A few slivers of the now ruined goblet remained embedded in the skin of his hand and he gazed at them now in wonder.
Blood, thick and red, swelled around the shards and dripped languidly in colorful abandon across the white stone tiles.
If Victoria was here, she could heal me herself, he thought absently.
But she wasn’t there. She wasn’t beside him as she should have been. She was miles away and most likely furiously plotting some means with which to defy him and his latest challenge. To turn him down.
Victor’s gaze darkened. He stood.
“You need to start drinking out of metal goblets, Black.”
Victor turned to face John Storm as the captain came through the archway that led from the rooms beyond. Storm was smiling a wry smile that told him he knew good and well what was going on inside of his team leader’s head.
He should have; he’d been Gray captain for a very long time.
“Nonsense. They don’t shatter nearly as well,” Black replied as he made his way to the adjoining restroom, opened a cabinet door, and pulled out a roll of bandages.
“You’re not going down to the MRU to get patched up,” Storm said. It wasn’t a question.
The Medical Research Unit could heal Victor on the spot. They employed people who had at one time been Light Team leaders and possessed the natural ability to mend wounds. It was a necessary boon, as Gamers were constantly injured on the battlefield.
“Not at the moment. No.”
“So I was right, then. She’s getting to you.” Storm sat down in the seat that Black had just vacated and propped his legs up on the ottoman across from him. He laced his fingers over his taut stomach and cocked his head to one side.
Victor turned an irritated glare on the man.
John Storm shrugged and smiled. He was a handsome man who bore the very rare regality of one older than the maturity age of most Gamers. Because Game Control had not noticed him and his talents until he was in his late forties, he was more aged than most of the players on the Field. However, he was locked in at this age now, and had been for hundreds of years.
He was a natural on the Field. People automatically followed his orders. No one ever doubted his abilities and no one challenged his authority. Black was lucky to have him as his captain.
Even so, the man could be a trifle annoying at times. He simply knew too much about the human condition. Chalk it up to age. Wisdom. Whatever – it was grating.
Storm chuckled low. “From the look you’re giving me right now, I’d say she’s more than gotten to you, lad.” He shook his head in wonder. “Aye. I’d say she’s well under your skin. Either that, or….” He considered his leader for a moment and narrowed his gaze. “There’s something you’re not telling me?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Storm.” Victor moved to the hook that held his black leather jacket and shrugged it on over his broad shoulders. “As usual.”
The captain was silent. ??
?Going somewhere?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Out. And then to bed.”
“Aye, but not alone, I reckon. What poor unknowing lass will be temporarily quenching your thirst for Red this time?”
Victor had no answer for that. His look said it all though, as it burned a verdant fire into his captain’s very soul. John Storm stared right back.
Until he couldn’t any more. And then he looked away.
And Victor walked out the door.
* * * *
The woman was not what he wanted that night. She was not what he wanted any night. But she would have to do. Either that, or he would go mad.
Four hundred and thirty-one years on the Field and he’d been waiting all that time. He’d waited for the right Gamer to come along, the one who would possess enough strength, enough power. When that Gamer did finally come along, it was in the form of a young girl, gangly and tall, with freckles and caramel-gold hair that literally smelled like honey.
Ten years later, it still smelled like honey.
She must bathe in it, he thought to himself as another woman gently ran her fingernails along the muscles of his back and nipped with her teeth at the taut skin on his neck. He barely felt it. He was lost in his own mind.
She must, he thought, because her skin is touched with gold. It shimmers. He closed his eyes as a woman who was not Victoria Red nibbled his ear lobe and exhaled softly beneath his touch. It glows as if flecks of the metal were embedded in her flesh.
He had watched Victoria grow and her powers grow with her. And he’d known. He’d known for ten years that she was the one. She was the only one who could give him what he wanted and grant him the reprieve his spirit so desperately desired.
She’ll never give in to you, his thoughts chided. They were unwelcome, disturbing. His jaw tensed under the weight of the voice in his head. She’s too responsible to go up against Game Control. She’ll always defy you. She’ll always run from you.
Fine! he roared back. Let her run. I can run too. I’ll hunt her down until she can run no more!
His grip tightened on the woman’s wrists, pinning them to the bed above her head. She gasped, surprised by his sudden forcefulness. And then she slowly smiled. And so did he. It was not a kind smile.
Victoria will never accept the challenge, he thought. Not without a little… persuasion.
Victor thrust deeply into the woman beneath him and she sucked in a hard breath at the sudden painful pleasure. He closed his eyes and reached out with his powers.
What he was about to do was so strictly against Game regulations, it was never spoken of. To enter another’s dreams was the ability of many dark team leaders. They used these abilities to weaken their opponents on the Field, sending nightmares to disrupt their rivals’ sleep patterns in-between battles and debilitate them with the resulting fatigue.
That was accepted as a tactic of war.
However, the use of such abilities anywhere but on the Playing Field was very strictly prohibited.
Victor knew this. He just didn’t give shit. Four hundred years was too long. Red was ready now – and he was tired of waiting.
Victor laughed as the woman beneath him moaned beneath his manipulations, and he finally sensed the sleeping mind he’d been telepathically reaching for.
Red’s heart beat slowly. She was deep in slumber.
So deep…. He frowned. Something was off; she was heavily under. Was Victoria really so tired? It troubled him for a moment. Was he wearing her down that badly?
No matter. If he was, then what he was doing right now wouldn’t harm her rest. All it would do was give her a dream.
Victoria. He spoke her name in his mind. He allowed the word to curl out around her, to wrap around her thoughts like a silken cord. And then he pulled it tight, trapping her subconscious in his sway.
He willed her to feel his touch, to feel his hand as he ran it over her skin, pinned her to her bed, and wrapped his fingers gently around her throat. He whispered in her ear, nibbled at her neck, and grazed her clitoris with his fingers as he plunged deeply into her.
He could feel her writhing now. It was working. He sensed her dream state in disarray, helpless beneath his ministrations. His cruel, low laughter followed her down as he continued to take her.
Deeper. Deeper. Faster. Harder.
He took her with all of the desperation he felt. With every ounce of the desire racing heated through his veins.
Victor’s hand cupped her breast – then expertly pinched her nipple. His mouth followed; he sucked the hardened bud into his mouth and bit down, holding her fast as he thrust deeply one last time and emptied himself into her.
The woman in his bed screamed in ecstasy.
And his mental connection to Victoria was broken.
* * * *
Victoria sat bolt upright in her bed, her breathing ragged, her body on fire. The sheets were soaked with sweat, and every nerve ending from her neck down was painfully alive.
She moaned and gasped, frantically throwing the covers off of her as she swallowed what air she could get, and jumped out of the large queen-sized bed.
“How – how dare he!” she hissed into the humming quiet of her master bedroom. She shivered violently and hugged herself, then moaned again when her nipples grazed against the silk material of her nightgown. Even it was too rough for her overly sensitized body.
“Son of a bitch,” she growled through clenched teeth. “Cheating son of a bitch!”
She yanked the nightgown over her head, balled up the damp garment in her hands, and then threw it against the opposite wall in frustration.
She shivered again. A wave of dizziness washed over her and she swayed. She reached for the mattress, steadied herself, and sat down on the edge of the bed. Goose bumps were raised along her arms and legs. Her nipples were taut and almost seemed swollen. The moisture between her legs was growing cold in the night air of her room.
She crossed her legs, pressing them desperately together.
She had come so close. The dream had brought her one heartbeat away from climax – and then ruthlessly ripped her from sleep with the disquiet cruelty she had come to expect and recognize of the Gray leader.
Victoria curled her fingers into the mattress. He had already broken so many rules. The last twenty-four hours had seen him become a virtual rogue against Game Control, and they weren’t even aware of it.
Should she go to the Game Control building and tell them?
And risk being forcefully resigned? her thoughts hissed back at her. No. I won’t be doing that any time soon, and he knows it.
That night, after she’d returned from the TGB, her transporter had malfunctioned, leaving her trapped within it for hours. It had never happened before.
Then her shower had been cold. That too had never happened before.
She knew what was happening. He was trying to wear her down. He was showing her what kind of reach he had. Apparently not even her dreams were sacred to him.
His green gaze flashed in her mind’s eye, and she felt his hands on her body, his teeth on her neck – his hardness lodged deep within her. She could not suppress the deep groan that escaped her throat as she threw herself back on the bed beneath her and closed her eyes against the blatantly painful need between her legs.
“Damn you, Victor Black,” she whispered into the night.
Was it her imagination, or did she hear laughter?
Deep and low and laced with promise.
Chapter Five
She could really only afford to stay in the training room for another fifteen or twenty minutes before she risked being noticed by maintenance. Victoria had a lot of experience plotting the schedules of the cleaning and tech crews that took care of the Team Gathering Building. She was well aware that she was cutting it close this time around.
But she had been so mad, so furious. There was nowhere else she could go to safely work off the tension that had been riding her tonight.
Spent
and finally a little calmer, Victoria bent at the waist, resting her hands on her knees. The tight, flexible material of her training garb was damp with sweat. Strands of her long golden hair clung to her rosy cheeks. The sound of her ragged breathing echoed throughout the training chamber.
The room around her was completely and utterly destroyed. Shards of glass and broken plastic pieces littered the floor. The metal legs of the punching bag stands were either bent or had melted into the marble on which they stood. The punching bags themselves were ripped open at the seams, and their foam insides had been pulled out and scattered throughout the large rectangular area.
Metal discs of varying weight had been tossed into the walls where they’d cracked the panels and then dropped to the stone floor, shattering it as well. Several of the larger ones seemed to have liquefied, the numbers on their faces running in metal rivulets to solidify in the cracked rubble beneath them. The air was filled with the microscopic remnants of destroyed materials; dust moats floated directionless beneath the fluorescent lighting.
Victoria straightened at last and took a deep, cleansing breath.
She looked around. The room was a battlefield for her emotions. It was the evidence of stark, hard desire warring with common sense, and anger warring with fear. It was what happened when responsibility battled uselessly with a growing sense of need.
Ten minutes now, she thought to herself as her golden gaze landed on the melted barbells in one corner of the training room. Ten minutes tops before someone comes in and sees all of this – and notices my arm without its band.
It was time to clean up.
Victoria closed her eyes. At once, she felt an energy inside answer the silent call. In her mind’s eye, she pictured the room as it had been before her visit. She saw the weights un-melting. She saw the panels uncracking. She imagined everything moving back through space to where it was supposed to be.
As the bizarre sounds of telekinetic mending and repair filled the room around her, Victoria smiled a satisfied smile. She was doing it.
She had to admit she felt much better. The work out had done her some good.