Illicit Intuitions: Sensory Ops, Book 3 (12 page)

“Are you a real doctor, or is that a nickname?”

“Technically two questions, but yes. The diplomas on my wall are real.” Money and politics were powerful tools. Thanks to Eston White’s string pulling he’d been granted credit for his life studies. Who better than the test subject to become an expert on empathic studies?
 

H watched her, cataloguing her every move and gesture. “Did you know Channing personally?”

She lifted her chin and jutted it out a fraction. She paused for so long he was positive she’d lie. “No.”

Not the answer he’d expected. Whatever he’d picked up from her mind about Channing and the contacts hadn’t come from an association with Channing.
 

She folded her legs behind her and pulled at the hem of her shirt. It barely stretched past the curve of her hips.
 

“Do you have any family?”

That was hitting close to home, but unless she went farther on her next round, or had a magic mirror showing the past, he could be safe. And whether or not he had family wouldn’t get her closer to guessing his name or his reasons for dropping it. “People define family differently, but yes.”

“Hmm.” She rubbed her fingers along her jaw and chin.
 

“Tell me, Ava, your role in my lab… Are you really there as a regulatory auditor?” He’d almost asked about sex, but passing up the chance for real truths… He couldn’t do it.
 

“If I didn’t know better I would think you saw a conspiracy everywhere.”

Ava’s gaze scanned his body. Her tongue wetted her lips, teasing him.
 

With her penchant for blatant and raw approaches, she expected him to be easily distracted. She came close. “Answer the question, or the game’s over.”

She shifted, hunching her shoulders forward a little defensively. “Yes. I was sent in as an auditor.”

“Interesting choice of words.” An expert evasion.

“If you say so. I have one more question before guessing your name.” Her mouth widened in that flirty smile capable of setting his stomach fluttering. “Do you have a caduceus?”

Clever woman.
“As in the recognizable symbol of medicine? No. I don’t own one.” She knew. She knew his name and was using the symbols of the Greek god to taunt him.
 

Her chosen questions were carefully selected to confirm he was who she thought him to be. But why? Who was she? Why did she need confirmation of his identity? If General Scott or Janus had sent her in there would be no mystery on her part.
 

An icy chill sliced through him, reminiscent of the one he’d felt during the shooting.
 

“It’s your turn, H.”
 

“Yeah.”
 

She was going for the shock factor with him, hoping to catch him off balance. It wouldn’t work. She’d miscalculated, as had he in regards to her. It was a mistake he would not repeat.

Narrowing his left eye to obscure the shifting color to come, he lowered his first shield to feel for the truth behind her coming answer. “Are you Ava Sebastian, as you claim?”

“Yes.” Her voice wavered with her lack of conviction.
 

Hmm.
She believed her answer, even as she refuted it with disgust slightly crinkling her nose. There weren’t many reasons for her to have two identities. She’d been sent to take him out or act as a distraction while someone else came at him from another direction.

“Now.” She scooted forward and rubbed her hands together. “I get to guess your name.”

It was like a really fucked-up version of that fairy tale. He reengaged his shields for all the protection he could get and braced himself. “Go for it.”
 

“Is your name Hermes Vamekes? As in the young boy who was kidnapped with his twin sister at the age of eight?”

A sledgehammer to the solar plexus stole his air. Time halted as his mind reeled. He couldn’t have braced for that. Though looking back he should have.
 

Any
fun
in their game had ended. Knowing who he was meant she wasn’t just an auditor. Dana had kept their last name, but he’d hoped to keep her out of danger.
 

Shit.
 

Shit!

Chapter Nine

He didn’t blink or furrow a brow or flinch.
 

He didn’t smile or frown or compress his lips.
 

His chest didn’t rise or fall beneath the power of his breaths.
 

He didn’t move. He didn’t react.

Only the thump thumping of the pulse in his neck evidenced he wasn’t a statue. His lack of reaction was his confirmation to her guess.
 

“How do you know my name?”

She shrugged, hoping for nonchalance. “I don’t get involved with people, personally or professionally, without knowing who they are.”

“Bullshit. That is not an answer.” Powerful pauses punctuated each word. He still hadn’t moved.

She couldn’t tell him how she knew who he was without jeopardizing her cover. And Breck forbade her from making the admission. She had to maintain her guise until she’d eliminated every last threat and located the contacts if they were real. “Is it so hard to believe I have that information as an auditor?”

“Yes.” He lurched off the bed and, unaffected by his nudity, went after his shorts. His eyes narrowed a teeny fraction as he yanked the shorts on. “Empaths read emotions and feelings. They don’t read minds. They aren’t psychics.”

“What does that have to do with anything?”

“You’re an empath, Ava, but the gift doesn’t automatically grant you open access to my brain.”

He thought she was… She wasn’t. No. He was wrong.

“You’re saying an empath has never picked up actual thoughts and memories from someone?” She wasn’t empathic, but she’d sure as hell picked up something—thoughts or memories that weren’t hers—from him.
 

There was something about him. How else could he explain the intensity of their connection and reactions to each other?

Was he what he accused her of being? She’d just thought him really intuitive. Or she’d wanted to because it seemed simpler.

His gaze bored into her as if he could force a confession with a look. “You’re trying to circle this back on me, evading a direct answer, while formulating your next lie.”

“Lies?” It was ironic. A man with more secrets than a dirty politician was accusing her of withholding. Okay, so she was, but out of necessity in the moment. His entire life was built on evasions and lies.
 

Eh, all right. Again, so was hers. Not the point.
 

She stood and faced him. Almost toe to toe, the pulsing venom of his rage slithered through her. Lying to him smacked at her like the worst sort of betrayal, but she swallowed the impulse to reveal herself. “I have no need to formulate lies. I’m not the one trying to hide my past.”
No need to when I obliterated it.
 

“Not that it’s your business, Ms. Sebastian, but my past isn’t something worth reliving. Hell, if you must know, it wasn’t worth living when it was the present.” He leaned forward, invading her space until her skin tingled. “Do yourself a favor and forget whatever you think you know about me.”

She pressed her lips together and nodded. He didn’t want to admit it, but he trusted her a little or he wouldn’t have revealed even that small insight. She would need that trust before it was all over. Whoever had shot at them earlier would be back, and they wouldn’t miss again.
 

She eased back and softened her shoulders to appear less confrontational. “That sounds like a painful truth.”

“You know nothing of my truths.”
 

The powerfully stony man from the day before was back in control. The lover she’d throbbed for was nowhere to be found.

“I know more than you think.” Not as much as she needed to know. “I’d like to hear the rest.”

And she meant it. They were doomed for a future, but she wanted to understand Dr. H., H, Hermes.
 

“You want answers?”

“I want the truth.” She angled her head and scrunched up her brows. “I want to know you, to help you.”

“No, Ava.” He stared into her. Not into her eyes. Into her. “You don’t want the truth. And you can’t help me.”
 

His stoic voice deepened with a conviction born of whatever hardships he’d endured. Hardships even her connections hadn’t been able to uncover. “You’re wrong on both counts.”

He snorted a disdainful snort. “You think you want answers from me, but deep down in places you don’t see in yourself, places you don’t want to admit exist, you know you can’t handle them.”
 

He turned, took three steps toward the door and froze. “You think you want to know what happened to me, where I’m from and how I came to be where I am today.
You’re
wrong.”

The vacancy in his voice reeked eerily of sad acceptance and broke her heart. The image of a younger Hermes with his bare, electrode-covered scalp flitted into her mind again. Agonizing shocks of electricity jolted through her as the man in her head convulsed.
 

She sank to the edge of the bed. Stars fractured her vision in the sudden absence of light.
 

The images were the same as earlier, only more vivid than any of the abysmal atrocities she’d witnessed during her career.

He didn’t tell his captors whatever they wanted to know. He didn’t crumble. He didn’t lose himself in his seemingly permanent hell. He survived and found a way out.

Ava shook clear the foreign recollections, stood on trembling legs and moved to his side. She rested her hand on his arm. He jerked back, as if the light touch was an assault he needed to defend against.
 

“Hermes, I know you were taken and subjected to tests no one should suffer through. I know you care deeply for Dana, and would do anything to protect her. I’m not here to put either of you in danger.”

“You know nothing about what I was subjected to.”

“I’ll listen if you want to tell.”

He shook his head, but instead of shutting down he began talking. “In the name of science, General Scott, chief of Eston White, hooked me to machines that all but wiped my long-term memories.” He drew in a ragged breath that shook his shoulders. “For a long time Dana was all I could remember.”

“How much has returned?”

“Not enough. Not the important stuff like what it was like to have a family. A home. I only have fragments of those memories.”

Shattered for the man she’d just met, seeing Breck’s reasoning for holding back even while the lies festered in her gut, Ava wrapped her arms around H and held tight.
 

Silence ruled the stillness. Several thumping heartbeats later the man she was becoming more curious about pulled himself free from whatever dismal chasm he’d gone into. His glacial gaze warmed.

“Never call me Hermes.”

“But—”

“My name is Dr. H or H. Never Hermes.”

“Can I ask why, specifically, it reminds you of pain and loss?” She squeezed his arm, assuring him the best she could she was trustworthy. Was it something he remembered?
 

“I released the name when I was told of my parents’ death. The hope I’d clung to, dreams of a reunion… Without my mom the name she chose was too painful.”

“You have no other name you’ll accept?”

“No.”
 

“In other words, stick to H.”

“Yes.”

“Even in bed?”

He looked at her, long and silent, without blinking or moving beyond his breaths. When he finally spoke it was quietly. “It may not make sense to you, but I would prefer it.”

It saddened her to see how far he’d cut himself off from the name his parents had given him, but since she hadn’t lived through what he had she couldn’t really understand. Whatever had motivated Dana to keep their name, something equally strong had motivated H to let it go. “Okay.”

He stared out the window with tension bubbling around him. When he spoke, he did so quietly, with no traces of anger.

“If you’re not a threat, why are you here? Why did you show up all of a sudden asking questions about things you shouldn’t know?”

The truth clung from the tip of her tongue with the desperation of a free climber struggling to maintain his grip on a jagged cliff face in the midst of an avalanche. With the experience of practice, she pulled the rapidly slipping words to safety and met H’s questioning stare.
 

She was going to have to give one damn convincing performance if she hoped to seduce him to her viewpoint. And stick close to the truth in case he checked.

“Something inside of me is wired differently than in other people.” She creased her brows, conveying honesty and trustworthiness. She spoke the truth. “I don’t know what it is, but it’s always been there, making it difficult for me to maintain relationships with people.”