Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 (22 page)

At least he wasn’t laughing anymore. Maybe she could convince him to let her go, or even better, convince him to help her. With his money and power…if Commander stood ready to fight the IWOG, nobody would laugh at him.

“IWOG officers show up unannounced at the courthouse all the time, scaring the crap out of Emmet. They march around as if they own the place. They glare at everyone like we’re something nasty they’re afraid to step in.”

Commander frowned as he considered her across the bed. “I can’t even think of a reason for them to
go
there.”

She found his bewildered tone insulting. “Whether you think I can fight them off or not, I think they’re coming, and I will do everything in my power to stop them.” She hated most of the folks of Pine Glenn for the nasty way they treated her, but she still didn’t want IWOG scum taking over her home world, worthless as Taiga might seem to an outsider.

His gaze touched and probed, feather light, as if he could determine her truthfulness. When he leaned close, sniffing her, she pulled away. Commander’s dark brows lowered farther.

“Have you been stealing my goods and turning them over to Emmet so he can buy weapons? Is he the one who convinced you the IWOG invasion is imminent?”

“Sonofabitch.” He’d nailed it dead on. He knew everything because of her big stupid mouth, and now he would use the information like a blade twisted in her belly. “I knew you wouldn’t help.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. Her breasts still felt the touch of his hands, the press of his lips. Much lower, he’d assuaged her painful ache with his skilled strokes. She’d almost screamed when he’d finally done what she hadn’t dared to do—release her tension. But by subduing her body, he’d left her vulnerable, then he’d picked her brain clean.

“You’re just pumping me for information to satisfy your curiosity.”

“I’m trying to help.” He lifted his hands as if to touch her but settled them in his lap. “You’ve got to trust me.”

She didn’t dare look at him. Like a hypnotizing snake, his eyes would lure her farther into the seduction trap. She knew her mission to save Taiga didn’t mean anything to him.

“Trust you? I broke my foot, not my brain.” She pointed to her cast-bound foot. “I trusted you so much, I ended up with that.” Incredulous, she finally met his gaze. “Give me one good reason why I should trust you.”

“Because I’m probably the only hope you have.”

“Hope for what?” She propped her leg on the pillows. “To be jerked around some more? Thank you, but no. I get enough of that from my own people.”

“That report I had—”

“Was a pack of lies.” She cut him off. “And I’m not going to believe you now any more than I did then.” She sat up in a pathetic bid to get close to a defensive posture. Ten pounds of plaster more than hampered her movements.

“I think you will.” He cleared his throat. “The report was mostly blank.”

Her mouth dropped open. “So you
admit
you were jerking me around.” Vindicated, she sat up with a triumphant air. “I knew it!” Her gaze bored into his. “I should have dumped that hot coffee right in your lap.”

“You don’t need any help getting my lap hot.” He flashed her a suggestive wink. Before she could blast him with a nasty retort, he lifted his hand. “I’m trying to be honest with you, okay? Yes, I lied about the report. I had a mostly blank piece of paper that pushed your hot button, so I used it. I’m sorry.” He had the grace to look ashamed. “I knew you wouldn’t tell me anything willingly, so I thought—”

“You’d jerk me around.” She balled her hands into fists, then winced when she dug her nails into her wounded palms.

“I made a mistake.” His tone sharpened. “I’m trying to tell you that and apologize, but you’re making this impossible. Just shut up for once and listen to me.” He lowered his voice and leaned closer. “Let me lay things out.”

She nodded, willing to listen, cast-bound as she was to her own bed. Every time she tried to get away from him, he just pinned her down. Cringing internally, she realized how much she
liked
being pressed down by him.

“I’m a very rich man. I can pay for information well beyond the limit that prohibits most. I have operatives throughout the whole of the Void. IWOG, WAG, Fringe—I’m everywhere.”

“You and your stupid money deal again.” Disappointment filled her, and she turned away.

“I’m not bragging.” With one gentle touch of his finger to her chin, he compelled her to meet his gaze. “Even with all my resources, I couldn’t track anything on your birth parents.”

She frowned and fiddled with her pillows. He seemed genuinely baffled by his inability to procure the answers he wanted. “So? You hit the same wall I did. Big deal.”

“You’re not grasping this. You hit a wall because your resources are limited by time and money, correct?”

She nodded reluctantly.

“I don’t have that problem. My time is one thing, but I can buy time. I can buy people to make their time mine, and I spent a fortune, but nobody had any information on your real parents.”

“You’ve only been looking for what, two weeks?”

“Thirteen days. I found out the morning after you arrived it was a sore spot with you. I’ve been looking ever since.”

She wondered why he cared. Maybe he just wanted to know so he could use the information against her.

He nodded as if he followed her thoughts. “Yes, I wanted to use the information about your parents to get more information from you, but I wouldn’t have lied about what I found. Thirteen days. Hundreds of man-hours. Nada. Zip. Nothing.” He shook his head. “I’m not exaggerating when I say I’ve done more in thirteen days than you’ve done in thirteen years, but the end result is the same. Cipher.”

“So nobody knows.” Another piece of her heart shattered. If he couldn’t find something with all his resources, what chance did she have of unraveling the truth?

“No. That means someone knows. Someone who doesn’t want anyone else to know.” His mouth was a grim slash.

“You make it sound like I’m some horrible secret.”

“Maybe you are.”

His comment hurt, and tears threatened, but she forced them back by gritting her teeth.

He touched her shoulder. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

She shoved his hand off. “Yes, you did.”

“What I meant was your parents expended a tremendous amount of time and money in an effort to keep themselves hidden. There has to be a reason.” He stroked the back of her hand. “I promise to find out everything I can.”

The sincerity in his voice and his eyes compelled her to lean closer to him. When he cupped her chin and kissed her, she melted into him with a sigh.

He groaned when he pulled away. “There’s something else that I think you should know.”

“What?” She was almost afraid of the answer.

“Remember that test list, the one the villagers used to pin your nickname on you?”

“It’s a joke.” The defense sprang automatically to her lips.

“One sick joke to play on a seven-year-old girl.” He looked like he took the nickname personally, but she had no idea why.

“It wasn’t played on me. Some proud parent posted the list at the tavern to brag about his son. My part came after by mistake.” She told the tale by rote, as if truth, even though she’d heard other renditions.

She hated her nickname and remembered the first day Jennifer Newsome said it. She remembered running home in tears after the entire class chanted the name when she walked in for the fifth day of grammar school. The nickname stuck. Even she couldn’t help but refer to herself as Remarkably Average Mary.

School became a nightmare, a living horror where she ignored everyone, teachers included. She purposely did poorly on tests, because she refused to participate in anything connected to school. Forbidden books became her salvation. Emmet became the only person she could trust.

“In the end, the joke is on them.”

She braced herself for the punch line.

“You are anything
but
average.”

His words floored her. He’d said the same thing on their picnic, but this time, she believed he felt that way. The thudding of her heart filled her ears. Maybe she could trust Commander. Every bit of her wanted to.

With a pained expression on his face, he winced when he said, “Emmet is the one who posted that list in the local tavern.”

“He did not!” She leapt from the bed in a tangle of silk bedclothes. To think she’d drawn close to trusting him! Forgetting about her cast, she took two steps before plaster crippled her proud stalk. Her arms shot out and windmilled as she lost her balance, hit the edge of the bed, then slid off to the wool-carpeted floor. Landing hard on her fanny, she spewed vulgarities at the top of her lungs.

He rushed over and attempted to pick her up. The smell of his citrus and pine annoyed her, and she pushed him away.

“Stay away from me, you liar. I’ve heard them say that. I don’t believe it. Emmet loves me. He would never hurt me like that.” Commander tried to make her doubt the one person who’d raised her and loved her through it all. Emmet, the only person she trusted in the whole of the Void.

“Mary, look, I don’t know why Emmet has done the things he’s done, but they add up to a man who’s hiding something.” Commander crouched beside her, keeping his hands to himself. “A man who seems to want to protect you yet torment you in the same measure. How the IWOG fits into all this, I haven’t a clue, but I’ll do my best to find out.”

Against her snarling protests, Commander picked her up and placed her carefully back in bed.

“Just get out, Co-man-dur. Take your unlimited resources and go use them to screw yourself.”

He looked down at her as she arranged herself in the thoroughly despised bed. He attempted to help her prop the pillows below her cast, but she slapped his hands away.

“There’s one thing I haven’t tried.”

“What’s that?” She was certain she didn’t want to know.

“I could have your DNA profiled and run it through databases to see if we find anything.”

“Who keeps DNA profiles?”

“IWOG. At birth, consumers are registered, profiled and placed in a database with the time, date and place of birth.”

Mary took a moment to imagine the possibilities. “But there has to be billions of profiles.”

“Trillions.”

“One of my parents would have had to have been an IWOG consumer. What are the odds?”

“Pretty good, I’d say. Doc Murphy found evidence of genetic tampering in your DNA.”

The news that she might be part IWOG shocked her. How could she have come from the very people she despised with all her heart? The enormity of the information was too much to take in, so she turned her mind to practical matters. Profiling would cost him a fortune. He didn’t seem to care one whit about that. Such a search would also take a long—enlightenment hit.

“Oh, I get it. You tell me you’re looking and I stick around waiting for the results.”

His jaw dropped. “You are the most suspicious person I have ever met. I am trying to help you.”

“Yeah-huh. And what will we do while we wait?” She paused for effect. “No, no. Let me guess.” Her gaze wandered to his groin, where a still rather prominent bulge pressed against his leather pants. “I knew you wouldn’t let me go. I’m just a stupid game to you. Well, you got a handful of goodies
and
the information you wanted, so what’s next? Oh, yeah, right.” She flopped back on the bed, her limbs splayed out. “Go ahead.”

“Go ahead and what?”

“Fuck me. That’s the last part of the game, isn’t it?”

He winced as if she’d struck him.

“What’s wrong? Don’t you want me if I make it easy for you? Do you like to feel like you’ve worked for it, earned it?” She lifted her head and glared at him. “How about I scream and try to get away, just like you’ve heard?”

After a long pause, his face split into a teeth-baring grimace. Fury etched lines into his face and his whole body tightened, as if he would pounce. She feared she’d finally pushed him over the edge.

“You are playing with fire.” His voice had a low, seductive menace. “Keep it up, and you’ll get burned.”

“Yeah-huh? Then torch me to cinders.” She was proud of how steady her voice sounded when her heart pounded loud enough to deafen her. “Do whatever you have to do, then leave me alone.”

“Indeed. How easy for you to leave everything up to me. Then you can sit back, boo-hoo and say I forced you. Variation on a theme, isn’t it? The devil made you do it.” His golden-brown eyes twinkled. “Truth of the matter is, you want me inside you so badly, you burn with need. Problem is, you don’t want to take any responsibility for getting me there.”

What kind of signals was she sending off? He read her like a freaking map, but she would never admit the truth. “That’s absurd.”

“No. That’s cowardice.” He glared down into her face. “I never would have guessed in a thousand years, but you’re a coward. Is this your standard MO for all your lovers?”

God only knew what he’d heard about her sexual escapades. From the way he spoke, she figured he’d heard about the football team. Probably heard she initiated and loved every second of the locker-room high jinks, even though she begged the boys to stop.

“Yeah-huh, this is what I do to every guy. I get them to do all the work and I just sit back and cry.” Let the f’idiot think what he wanted. His opinion didn’t matter when she knew the truth.

“Believe me, if I took you up on your offer, the only crying you’d be doing is with ecstasy.” Commander tucked in his shirt and buttoned up his pants.

“My, my, aren’t you impressed with yourself?” She sneered. “I can’t believe me, you and your flaming arrogance can all fit in the same room.”

“My, my, aren’t you forgetting what just happened here?” His intense gaze went from his hand, to her hips, to her face.

“That?” She shrugged as if she had a hand up her skirt several times a day. “I can do that to myself, thank you very much.” Had she, she never would have had such a cataclysmic reaction to him. As if they sparred in the dojo, he changed tactics with alarming speed.

“Do you know what you do to me?” He grabbed her hand and held her palm against his throbbing erection. “That’s what you do to me. You make me so hard I hurt.” Despite her resistance, he forced her to stroke along the length of him. Groaning, leaning back slightly with his eyes closed to half-mast, he took her hand up and down several times. “Your touch only makes me harder.” His eyes snapped open. “What I need is a soft, wet, welcoming place. You have exactly what I need.” He took a deep breath and groaned again. “I can smell the paradise between your thighs.”