Burn (6 page)

Zeth’s so deep inside me that it feels as if we’re one carnal creature, moving in unison, working together to reach the same finish line. That finish line is fast approaching on the horizon, too. I can feel it building, cycling around my body, growing and pulsing…until…until…

“Shit. Shit! Oh my g…
fucki’mgonnacome,Zeth!”

He promised me it would feel good. It feels better than good. Forget fireworks. This feels like a nuclear fucking bomb is going off inside my head. I try to bite the scream back, but I can’t keep it in check. Since my vocal chords are being depressed, it doesn’t really matter anyway; I barely make a sound.

“Holy hell, girl. Yeah, that’s right. Keep going, keep going. Come for me, Sloane. Come hard.”

I know from the hardening I feel inside me and the strain in his voice that he’s holding himself back, but that doesn’t last long. I make sure of it. I reach down between our bodies and find what I’m looking for. I take hold of his balls and I squeeze gently, working them carefully in my hand, grabbing his ass with my free hand, trying to pull him into me even deeper. I’m a hollow shell after that orgasm, weak and spent, but I manage to open my eyes enough to watch him get his. It’s a beautiful thing to witness. With bared teeth, he slams himself inside me and roars as he releases.

He holds himself up for all of a second and then collapses on top of me, breathing hard. His hands both move to his sides, away from my throat, and I take my first full lungful of oxygen in what must be at least three minutes.

And then something amazing happens.

We fall asleep.

It’s dark when I wake up. Really dark. Like middle of the night dark. I know it’s bad that I’ve slept so long even before I remember why. Where I am. Who I’m with, the amazing sex, any of it. I prop myself up on my elbow, taking a giant breath of air, trying to slow my racing heart. I’m late for something. I’m late for work. I’m really fucking late.

“Oh my god, what time is it?” Nightshifts turn you around something fierce; it’s pretty common for me to wake up once the sun’s gone down, not knowing if I’m coming or going. But then I realize I’m speaking to someone. Someone in the bed with me. That part is definitely out of the ordinary.

Zeth Mayfair is laid on his back with one arm thrown up over his face. The other arm is folded across his body, fingers splayed against his stomach, and the bed sheets are twisted around the lower half of his body in a tight knot. With all of our energetic exercise before, the fitted sheet has disappeared somewhere and I’ve been sleeping naked and coverless on bare mattress.

“Oh.” It’s all I’ve got right now. The digital clock on the side table reads 6:42pm in stark red letters. What time did Zeth come in here looking for me? I can’t remember, but we must have been sleeping for hours. I sit up, careful not to make any noise, and tip toe my way to the en suite. It’s only when I stand that I feel the slick, stickiness between my legs and a rush of alarm floods me. No condom. We didn’t use a condom. Again. Since our slip back at my place and the subsequent humiliation of a morning-after pill, I’ve been taking the contraceptive pill, so there’s no risk of me getting pregnant. But still…I’m a doctor for crying out loud, and Zeth Mayfair is a man whore extraordinaire. I should know better than this. I’ve seen first hand the nasty shit that can happen to your lady parts if you’re reckless with them. I like my lady parts. I don’t want them all funked up with chlamydia, or worse.

Zeth and I need to have a chat about that. In the meantime, I take a hot shower and get dressed. I don’t really have time to do much but towel dry my hair and apply a small amount of makeup—I’m supposed to meet with Julio’s girls at seven thirty for a pampering session, and I can’t afford to be late. Despite how distracting being here with Zeth is, I haven’t forgotten who else is here: my sister. Alexis is here, in the same compound, and I am damned if I’m not going to finally find her tonight. We won’t be able to get her out until tomorrow night; Zeth announced earlier that with everyone distracted by the party, it will be the perfect opportunity to slip out without being seen. Plans aside, I’m so nervous I feel sick. I haven’t seen Lexi in over two years. I’ve changed a lot since then, and I’m guessing she has, too.

Zeth’s still asleep when I leave the bathroom. He’s in exactly the same position I left him in; the man sleeps like the dead. I sneak to his side of the bed, and then I lay my hand flat on his chest, snickering to myself, knowing how cold my hands are.

The reaction is instant. And violent.

“Motherfucker!” He’s lying in the bed one minute, and the next I’m pinned against the wall by my throat and Zeth’s clenched fist is sailing toward me. I turn my head just in time to narrowly avoid being smashed in the face, but he’s already pulling back for another try.

“Zeth! Zeth,
stop
!” I scream the last word. Scream it as loud as I can with my windpipe being crushed for real this time.

“Sloane?” Zeth’s hand loosens right away, dropping hold of me so that I slide down the wall into a boneless heap at his feet. “Oh fuck. Fuck. I’m…” He rushes to the door and switches the light on. “I’m sorry. Are you okay?”

I eye him uncertainly, rubbing my hand over my bruised oesophagus. “Uh, yeah. I’m great. Just wondering why you tried to kill me, though, I guess. After making a point of telling me you would never hurt a poor little defenseless girl?”

“I fell asleep. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Sleeping makes you homicidal?”

He makes a dismissive sound at the back of his throat. “Waking up in strange surroundings with someone lurking in the dark makes me homicidal.”

I raise an eyebrow at this. Pippa would be having a field day right now, but I’m not stupid enough to even ask what his deal is. This is perhaps the one thing I suspect Zeth Mayfair isn’t going to tell me. I suspect that because of the completely shut down, void expression on his face. He stands there, tensed and completely naked, staring at me, clearly waiting for me to ask. I don’t, though. He holds out his hand, offering to help me up.

“I’ll find somewhere else to sleep tonight. That way you won’t have to worry about me attacking you at three am.”

I accept his hand, grateful that my heart’s finally returned to its correct location in my chest cavity and has vacated my throat, where it leapt when Zeth charged me. I don’t like the thought of having to sleep in the room all night on my own. He’s right, though. I don’t like the sound of being strangled to death in the early hours of the morning, either. “I could just coldcock you with that gun.”

Zeth gives me an amused glance, sitting back down on the bed. He rubs his eyes—such a normal thing to do for such an abnormal human being.

“Ha. Yeah, the gun. We should probably talk about that. You feel like telling me why you chose that instead of something a little more…
fun
?”

I didn’t think he’d ask, to be honest, but I don’t have a problem with telling him why. I sit down on the bed beside him, letting myself lay back into the rumpled sheets. They smell deliciously of him. “Well, you were right before. Since we started this whole thing, you’ve done nothing but push me to free myself. To realize I was holding myself back. You took that from me. I was trying to do the same thing. Except you’re not physically restrained like I am, Zeth. You’re on emotional lockdown. When you’re around me, you do everything and anything you can to not feel anything whatsoever. So
I
took that that from
you.
I made you feel something.”

He’s staring at me, eyes narrowed into slits. “What, you think because you scared the living shit out of me that I’m suddenly fixed and I’m gonna fall
in love
with you now or something?”

That earns him a laugh. He’s really has no idea. “No. Oh,
no
, Zeth. You don’t have to worry on that front.”

“And how’s that?”

“You see me as a game. An experiment. Something to toy with until you get the desired result, at which point I’m assuming I’ll no longer be of use to you and you’ll find something else more interesting to play with.”

He twists to look over his shoulder at me. The muscles in his back contort beautifully as he shifts his weight. “There are plenty of girls out there more broken than you, Sloane Romera. I have no interest in experimenting on you.”

“Oh really? Then what the hell are you doing with me?”

“Is this
‘where do you see our relationship heading’
conversation?”

“God, no! Relationship? We’re aren’t in a relationship. We don’t know a thing about each other, Zeth. You’re the guy who shows up on my doorstep and screws me senseless whenever he feels like it. And I’m the girl stupid enough to let you do it.” I choke on the words, hating them, but knowing they’re true. Zeth’s face is stone cold, frozen in a blank, detached expression. He moves smoothly, standing from the bed and pulling on his clothes. When he looks up at me, the conflict I see warring in his eyes takes me by surprise.

“I know plenty about you, Sloane. I know all I need to know. If you know nothing about me, then that’s on you and no one else. You should realize by now that if you wanna know something, all you ever need to do is ask. And you’re not the girl stupid enough to let me do anything. You’re the girl stupid enough to not see what’s standing right in front of her.”

He snatches up his shoes and he doesn’t even take the time to sit down and put them on. He just takes them and storms out, closing the door softly behind him as he goes. I think it would have been better if he’d slammed the door. It would mean he wasn’t working as hard to control his overwhelming anger.

I’m paralyzed, sitting in the bed, trying to make heads or tails of his comments. Trying to make heads or tails of why he just suddenly got so…what, hurt? He
was.
He was actually hurt. Oh boy. And did…did he just pretty much say he thinks we are in a relationship? That he
wants
to be in a relationship? That makes no sense whatsoever. None. The man won’t even let me kiss him for fuck’s sake. How in hell am I supposed to process this?

I slump back into the bed, feeling very sore in my body from our earlier activities. But also sore in my heart, too. Because he’s right. I
am
the girl too stupid enough to see what’s standing right in front of her. Right now I feel too stupid to understand any of it. Zeth is emotionally stunted—there’s no doubting that—but it turns out I am, too. How is it that a man like him, a man made to be a weapon of mass destruction and little else, has seen more in us than I have?

The sky looks like a photo I saw once in the National Geographic. Without the pollution of all the city lights, the stars are an uncountable mess of sublime light, pin wheeling across the night with blatant disregard for how unsafe it all suddenly seems. I stand still for a moment, my breath fogging on the desert night air, and for a second it’s as though I can feel the earth spinning beneath my feet. Like I’m a tiny speck of sand balanced precariously on the tautly stretched surface of a massive drum, and I could go flying off into space at any given moment. I feel small and unprotected against the sheer vastness of that sky, and yet it’s so ethereal and beautiful. I haven’t spent any time out in the desert at all, not since I was a child, camping with my parents and too young to appreciate the beauty of it¸ only seeing the inconvenience of being without friends and television, but right now I’d love to stand and breathe it in some more. But I can’t.

“Come on. Move it.”

I’m shoved non-too gently in the base of my spine with the butt of Teo’s gun. I’m glad it’s him taking me across to the girls’ building in the compound and not Andeas. My first meeting with Andreas wasn’t exactly very civil, and he came away near beaten within an inch of his life technically because of me, so I’m doubting that he’ll be harboring any favorable tendencies toward me. I have no idea how long he’s going to be out of commission, recovering wherever it is he’s recovering, but I’m hoping it’ll at least be until tomorrow night. If all goes in our favor, we’ll be in an entirely different state by the time Andreas Medina can walk again. Zeth, Alexis and I—long gone. God, Alexis. My heart hiccups beneath my ribcage when I think about seeing her again. It’s about to happen and I don’t feel prepared. She’s going to freak out when she sees me. I hope she can keep it together long enough to rein in her surprise and not blow my cover. A lot’s riding on this first meeting. If the guards or maybe even the other girls notice there’s something going on, or the fact that I look an awful lot like my sister, then who knows what they’ll do.