Turn to Darkness (Offspring 5.6) (6 page)

Damn, there he went, being too good for someone like her. “I don’t care what you do. You can go out with a different girl every night. You can screw your brains out, make her gasp and call out your name in that breathless way.” Everything she’d heard that twisted her insides when she walked past his door and did
not
pause to listen.

He leaned down in her face. “Well, thank you very much for giving me permission.” Then he laughed, that full-out deep laugh of his. “I know what you’re doing.”

“What?”

All humor fled, and he remained only a couple of inches in front of her. “Shea, you’re not going to shut those feelings out, or run away or turn away from them.” She started to do just that, but he used that damned finger to turn her face back to him. “That’s what you do. And I
should
let you kid yourself that you have permanently killed the part of you that craves touch.”

He drew his finger down the front of her throat to the hollow at her collarbone. “I should, because I can already feel what Tuck was talking about, that I possess you.” Fire lit his eyes, fierce and protective, setting off her heartbeat. “But I’m not giving up on you. As much as it pains you, that part of you still lives. It lives for me.” He drew his finger down a few more inches. “For my touch. I see it in your eyes, felt it in the way you came up to me a few minutes ago.”

“That was a weak moment. Nothing more.”

He took her hand, the one he was still holding, and placed it against his chest. “No, that was a moment of strength. And you know what? I miss you, too. So let’s stop missing each other. I told you, we’d take it slowly.” His gaze shifted to the side. “We’re being watched,” he said in a lower voice. “I don’t trust that guy. Be careful around him.”

He released her and she nearly stumbled back. He wouldn’t want her if he knew how she’d brought the rape on, what kind of person she’d been then. She opened her mouth to tell him, but Darius yelled, “There’s a car pulling into the driveway.”

Chapter Seven

F
ROST CALLED
T
ORUS,
who answered with, “I hope you have good news to report.”

“I’m afraid not, sir. I can’t get hold of Graves. Have you heard from him recently?”

“Not since I spoke to him this morning, when
you
informed me about the girl. Which, frankly, I thought was odd.”

“Yeah, me, too. I mean, I thought Graves’s behavior was odd in general. He’d found the girl before I could even tell him her name and address. The guy with her definitely was one of us, but Graves said the girl wasn’t. Very telling that he found two of them and hadn’t reported it to you. He could have called me and we would have taken them out. But no, he’d done nothing. She had Callorian eyes.
His
eyes. I think she’s his daughter, and he had no intention of revealing her. I forced his hand by taking the phone from him and reporting her to you. He wasn’t pleased about that.”

Finally, he would gain some of the ground he’d lost all those years ago.

“Very perceptive of you, Frost. And very disappointing to hear about Graves, especially since he’s nowhere to be found.”

“We split off, and he was presumably going to take care of the girl. I suspect he warned her. He’s likely gone AWOL, too.”

“First Elgin and Bengle, and now Graves? Graves, of all people?”

Frost’s mouth tightened. Couldn’t believe his first in command was corrupt, huh? “You can count on me, sir. I will take care of these two, and I will try to interrogate the male, ensure he’s the one who killed the man. I feel certain that my, er, visits to Vegas did not result in any offspring. Once these two are dead, this ordeal will be concluded.”

There was no need to tell Torus about his progeny. He would take care of the firefighter quietly and return to their enclave victorious.

“We’re nearing a critical point in our project. We can’t have loose ends when everything comes together. Make it happen.”

Torus disconnected, and Frost set the phone on the seat. A few minutes later it rang again. Torus. “Yes, sir?”

“We were finally able to get a bead on Graves’s cell phone, courtesy of the GPS chip. Go to this address and find out what the hell is going on.”

Frost wrote it down, programmed it into his GPS, and headed off to break up the sentimental father-daughter reunion.

G
REER WATCHED THE
Lincoln Town Car pull into the driveway.

“Those are the owners.” Shea glanced at Greer. “Good thing you insisted we get the yard fixed now. And helped me. They’re back early.” She put on her professional smile, pulled off her cap and approached the car.

The older couple got out, saying how they were so excited to see the yard, they’d decided to drive home ahead of schedule. Shea introduced Greer and Darius as her crew and led her clients on a tour of her work. She knew the name of every plant and tree, giving them some tidbit of information about each.

He could see her passion about foliage, and her work, in the light in her eyes. Of course, plants didn’t demand anything of her, didn’t press her to face the truth. Still, he enjoyed watching her, the way she twirled a strand of stray hair as the couple raved about the results.

Darius’s energy bristled next to him. “You don’t own her.”

Greer snorted. “No one does.”

“I know what you’re trying to do. Bullying her to give in to your voracious horniness.”

“My . . .” Greer shook his head. “You don’t know anything.”

“I know that every time I see the two of you alone, she looks tense and you’re forcing her to face you. For a guy who has a lot of chicks hanging out in his bedroom, you sure don’t know how to seduce a woman. Probably a guy like you just crooks his finger. ‘I’m a firefighter. Wanna have sex?’ ” he said in a dumb, deep voice.

Greer knew the jerk was trying to rile him, and he wasn’t going to let him. Not with Shea’s clients in the area. “Yeah, that’s exactly how I do it. You figured me out.”

Darius actually nodded, as though Greer’s confession wasn’t a joke. “I figured. But see, Shea knows you. So it won’t work with her. And that must bug the hell out of you. You may have the chick-magnet looks and job, but crooking your finger at Shea doesn’t work. Does it?” Darius looked pleased about that.

“I’ve never crooked my finger or tried to get Shea into my bed. As I said, you know nothing.”

“She’s timid like a mouse. What she needs is a guy who can seduce her, take her in hand—”

Greer grabbed his forearm. “Don’t you dare ‘take her in hand’ or whatever aggressive behavior you have in mind. That’s the worst thing you can do.”

Darius flung him away, nodding like he knew Greer was just trying to warn him away.

“She’s no mouse,” Greer said, hating the analogy for her. “She’s stronger than you think.”

Darius chuckled. “Yeah, she does seem to be resisting your charm.” He waved his fingers. “Your magic spell.”

Greer shook his head. The guy was such an ass. “I care about Shea. A lot. Whether she ends up with me or anyone else, or no one, I only want her to be happy.” He met Darius’s gaze, which was filled with disbelief. “Why do you want her?”

Darius’s mouth opened but no words came out. Finally, he said, “Sometimes you know when someone is right. When she infiltrates every cell of your body, every crevice in your brain.” His mouth tightened as he looked in the direction Shea had gone. “When you know you’d do anything for her.”

As deadpan as Darius was when it came to expressing any kind of emotion, the heated way those words came out bothered Greer.

“That sounds more like obsession.”

Shea returned to the front of the house, her smiling clients in tow.

“Shea, we’d better get going,” Greer called out.

She nodded, shook their hands, and headed over. “I know. I get caught up in the whole thing.” She rolled her eyes, then jammed her cap back on. “But if Frost hasn’t found us yet, he probably didn’t know where Ted had gone. Which corroborates what he told me.”

“Still, I think we should go.”

“Go where?” Darius asked.

“Not back to the house,” Shea said. “They know where that is.”

Greer nodded to the sky, splashed with red. “It’s almost dark now. A motel will be anonymous, a safe place to rest and figure out what we’re going to do.”

“I’m not sharing a room with you,” Darius said to him.

“We’ll each get our own rooms.” Greer could already see Shea’s panicked expression over the scenario of everyone in one space. That could be even more volatile now that Darius was intent on winning Shea’s affections. Jealousy prickled over his skin at the thought of it, anger rippling beneath the surface. But he knew Darius didn’t stand a chance with Shea. He just hoped the bonehead didn’t do something to upset her.

F
ROST FOUND
G
RAVES’S
car, but the doors were locked. Peering inside, he gleaned nothing because of the dark tint. The man himself was nowhere to be found. He’d obviously come here to find and probably warn Cheyenne. What sweet irony that Graves had also broken the rules. It was only fair that he pay the price the other three had.

He spotted the same truck he’d seen outside of Cheyenne’s house parked at a home down the road. Ah hah, just as he suspected. As he approached, he heard a car engine start. Then another, and finally a third. A Jeep pulled out of the driveway, then the white truck, and finally a third vehicle, the black coupe that was at the house this morning.

He’d hit the mother lode. All three of them, together. Though what he needed was to attack each one alone. First the guys. Then the girl would be easy.

He jumped into his vehicle and followed. They traveled through town, stopping at a Wal-Mart for several minutes. Not a good place to try to take them out. He had to play it cool, be patient. After another twenty minutes of driving, they all pulled into the parking lot of a small motel. He passed it by in case they had noticed him.

His progeny watched the vehicle go past. It figured, the kid got his smarts. He took after his mother in looks but inherited his own stature. Graves had obviously suffered a weakness about eliminating his offspring. Frost had no such doubts.

They checked in, carrying their bags of recent purchases, and went to their respective rooms. So they weren’t going back to the house.

Frost sat in his car in a parking lot adjacent to the motel. He knew he could not screw this up now that he was on the cusp of being Torus’s hero. A short time later they each emerged and went together to a barbecue restaurant down the road. He went in, too, sitting at the bar and keeping an eye on them.

They looked tense, his offspring sitting on the same side of the table as the girl, the scowling one in the wheelchair across from her. Frost ate a burger and had a beer, wishing he could get closer so he could hear them. He’d have to be sitting at their table to hear their conversation, since they leaned close and talked in low tones. Couldn’t discuss how to get rid of the big bad guy from the other dimension where others could hear, after all.

He followed them back to the motel a couple of hours later, where they bid each other good-night. Patience was paying off. He would wait until they had time to go to sleep. Then, like smoke, he would drift in . . .

S
HEA TOSSED AND
turned on the hard bed for some time after turning off the television. As exhausted as she was, she couldn’t believe that sleep didn’t claim her easily.

That’s because you’re thinking about the man who’s trying to kill you . . . and the man who’s trying to love you.

Thankfully, it was Greer who slipped into her dreams, but dreams of kissing him didn’t exactly help. They stood in the yard, but instead of her backing away, she leaned into him, running her hands over his body. He brushed her hair back from her face, trailed his fingers down her sides. She moved his hand down her stomach, sliding over the thin material of her sleep shirt.

She murmured his name, and his mouth came down on hers, smashing her lips. His hand slid over her hips, fingers gripping her.

Greer wouldn’t touch her like that. Even in the dream it seemed wrong. Except . . . it wasn’t a dream. She
felt
fingers digging into her skin, the mouth and breath pulsing across her cheek as his tongue prodded at her lips.

Her eyes flew open and she saw the vague shape of a man’s face. She opened her mouth to scream, and his hand, cool and smooth, pressed down over it, stifling the sound.

“It’s me, Darius,” he whispered.

She shoved him back, pushing to the back of the bed. “Is that supposed to
comfort
me? What in the hell are you doing in here?”

“Shea? You all right?” Greer’s voice on the other side of the door.

Darius shook his head. “Just tell him you’re fine. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you.”

She sent a pillow flying at him. “Then why did you sneak in here?” She turned to call out to Greer before he broke the door in. “No one’s trying to kill me.” But she damn well wasn’t fine. She started to scramble off the bed toward the door.

Darius clamped onto her wrist, jerking her back. “Don’t. I just wanted to talk to you alone, and you were obviously having an, uh, interesting dream. I couldn’t resist.”

She pulled away and stomped to the door, opening it and feeling all kinds of relief at seeing Greer there. She pointed to Darius, who had morphed back to human. “He sneaked in. I can handle it, but—”

Greer shot inside, shoving Darius right off the bed to the floor. “What the hell did I tell you?” he screamed.

Shea closed the door and ran toward them, now tussling on the floor. She grabbed Greer’s waistband, because he wore no shirt, as he threw another punch at Darius, who was turning smoky. “Stop. Let
me
kick his ass.”

Greer allowed her to pull him back, but he was jabbing his finger toward Darius. “You son of a bitch. You don’t sneak into a woman’s room.”

Darius held onto his human form, though he was now stuck on the floor. “Get your finger out of my face.”

Shea turned to Greer. “What did you tell him? You knew he was going to sneak in here?”

Greer smoothed down his pants. “Of course not. He—”

“I was just getting more assertive, because that’s what you need,” Darius said, his words prickling through her. “You’re shy and insecure, so I figured I’m come in here and”—he snapped the collar of his shirt—“step things up.”

“You’re an idiot,” Greer said.

Darius laughed. “Well, you’re not making progress.” He flicked his head to the bed. “I didn’t see
you
in here with her.”

She felt Greer’s body lean forward. Her fingers, still on his waistband, tugged him back. She faced Darius. “I’m not insecure. Or shy. I was raped.” The words dropped like heavy weights. She rarely said them, but now they somehow empowered her, as Greer had said earlier. “I was raped by three men. One was the man you killed. So I don’t like the aggressive approach. You sneaking in like that, violating my privacy, was someone trying to rape me all over again.”

She resisted the urge to wrap her arms around herself. She still hadn’t let go of the back of Greer’s waistband. Gripping it, the backs of her fingers grazing his skin, gave her strength. “The last thing I’m going to find sexy is someone sneaking into my space and touching me while I sleep, you freakin’ creep. That goes for women who haven’t been raped, too.”

Darius’s face had gone pale. He looked at Greer. “You knew this?”

“Yeah, and you would have, too, when the cop came to question us, if you’d been paying attention.”

Darius’s voice softened. “That’s what you two have been talking about?”

“Some,” she said. “And I sure as hell don’t want to talk about it now. But don’t you ever grab me, touch me, or sneak in like that again. Better yet, leave. Now.”

“I can take care of the other two guys. Okay, I lost my head with the first guy, when I saw the stuff he had. The letters he’d sent. The others—”

“Go,” she said again. “Showing that you care isn’t about killing people. Or shoving yourself at them.” It was about being tender, like Greer had been. Not pushing her even though he wanted her. Mostly he wanted her to be all right.