Chapter 12
Chapter
Twelve
“Going up to see her?” Steel asked as Blade crossed the foyer, heading for the stairs.
They’d finished their morning workout and training session a couple of hours ago, but he hadn't been ready to come inside yet to face Whitney and the mess of emotions she stirred up in him, so he’d run the perimeter of the property a few times.
He couldn’t avoid her forever, though.
She was there, in his home, locked in a bedroom, and she wasn't going anywhere for the foreseeable future.
While she was at the mansion, there was no way to keep his distance, so he was going to have to figure out a way to be in the same room as her and not drag her into his arms and kiss her senseless.
She was so damn beautiful, and that innocence made him delirious with a need to corrupt her, taint her, drag her down to his level.
Made him a terrible person, but he was nothing more than a monster after all.
“Don’t do that,” Steel ordered, and Blade cocked his head, wondering what his friend was talking about.
“Do what?”
“Well, do that as well. Playing dumb is ridiculous.”
“Not playing dumb. I’m not sure what you think I'm doing that I shouldn’t be doing.”
“Idiot,” Steel muttered. “Whitney. You. Don’t let what he told us ruin things between you.”
Ah, so that’s where this conversation was headed. It wasn't that Blade didn't appreciate Steel’s attempt at helping, because he did, they were a family, and ever since Rose had come there a few weeks ago, they felt like more of one than they had in the entire previous six years they’d lived there.
But Steel’s situation with Rose wasn't the same as his with Whitney.
“How many times did he call us monsters?” Blade asked, not really needing an answer, just wanting to make a point.
“More than I can remember,” Steel replied.
“Whitney was there, from the beginning, from before we were, she was a part of this. How many times do you think she’s heard us called monsters?
Hundreds? Thousands? She’s been with Dr. Gardner for twelve years, since she was just a little girl.
You really think how he views us hasn’t rubbed off on her? ”
There was no way it hadn't.
And all he’d done since she met him was prove what her former boss had said about him was true.
He’d dragged her from her bed, hung her from a tree, poured water down her nose, cut her skin, and wrapped his hands around her throat.
The truth was, he had acted like a monster, and hoping Whitney might see him as anything else was ridiculous.
“I think she’s a whole lot smarter than you give her credit for,” Steel answered.
“She’s a genius, I fully accept that.”
“Then act like it. Maybe she’s a timid little thing, but that doesn’t make her weak. She just needs to find her strength and tap into it.”
“Not arguing with you there.”
“If you weren't, you wouldn't have spent the last couple of hours hiding from her. You heard her this morning. You're the one who told Rose and Cassandra to hurry up and get up to her room because you heard her say that people only care about her when they want something from her. She needs to know that you don’t want anything from her.”
“But I do,” he whispered, more to himself than Steel.
“Not what she thinks you want,” Steel said, then turned and walked away.
How the hell did Steel know what he wanted from the sweet little genius sitting upstairs in her room, feeling all alone in the world, even as Rose and Cassandra kept her company?
Was he that obvious?
That he craved her more than he craved his next breath of air?
That she was the oxygen his soul had been needing for so long that he hadn't even realized he was missing out on anything?
Things had changed around there when Cassandra first came to stay with them.
It soon became clear to all of them that there was something between her and Dragon, regardless of whether he admitted it.
Then Steel fell for Rose, and Cassandra returned, and now Whitney was there, and she felt like … life.
The life he’d been living for the last decade was all about survival. About getting through each day in the glass cage they were trapped in, about evading capture as they remained constantly on the move, about joining Prey and proving they could do good instead of the evil they’d been created for.
There had been no time to just be.
To figure out who he was beneath enhanced skills and superhuman hearing ability. To figure out what he wanted his future to look like. But there was no way not to think about those things now as he’d watched two of the men he considered brothers fall hard and fast.
Now a confused, terrified woman sat upstairs, pretending she wasn't confused and terrified, and feeling alone and abandoned.
The look in her eyes as he killed the last of the men after her and she’d thrown herself at him, utterly in wonder that he was still there, that he hadn't left her, was front and center in his mind as he took the stairs two at a time.
Drawn to the pretty little genius by a pull he didn't even understand.
It seemed to transcend everything else, it went beyond logical thought, beyond emotion even, it just pulled him to her, and he was helpless to fight against it.
It was no wonder Whitney had abandonment issues after she’d been sold by her parents.
If he had to guess, she’d never had their love and support, they’d likely always viewed her as something that could potentially make them rich.
And it had, but at the expense of their child’s freedom. How could they pay such a steep price?
At the door to her room, he paused. He could hear them talking in there, Whitney and Rose discussing the latter’s brother, while Cassandra interjected her thoughts on what a despicable person Ridge Gardner was.
There was still a timidity to Whitney’s tone, but it had grown more confident over the last couple of hours as the girls kept her company.
When he finally pulled up his big boy boxers and opened the door, her gaze immediately flew to his, and he would have sworn there was relief in those pretty baby blues of hers. But he could be imagining it.
The truth was, he wanted her to need him.
Wanted her to want him.
Wanted her to crave him.
“Hey, Blade,” Rose said, waving him into the room. “You have perfect timing.”
“I do?” he asked
“He does?” Whitney asked at the exact same second, making Rose and Cassandra laugh.
“Of course he does, we were just going to go and start on lunch, and now we don’t have to leave you alone,” Rose explained.
“You don’t have to worry about that anyway,” he said, making up his mind and hoping the guys weren't angry he’d made this unilateral decision. “I'm not locking her in anymore. I didn't even need to last night, it was stupid, I don’t want Whitney to feel like she’s a prisoner here.”
“But I am,” Whitney tentatively said, although it came out sounding more like a question.
“No, you're not,” he contradicted firmly. “You're a part of this, as much a victim of Dr. Gardner and his plans as the rest of us. If we work together, we have a better chance of destroying him, and nobody deserves to be destroyed more than that man.”
If Whitney didn't trust them, it was because of him, of how he’d treated her when he first followed her, what he’d done to her, and how he’d hurt her.
But he also knew that even without trust, she would give them everything she could, because that was all she saw herself as, her value was dependent on the knowledge she could share.
So she’d share it, even if it cost her, and even if she still believed they’d kill her when it was all done.
“Told you it wouldn't last long,” Rose said as she climbed off the bed where she’d been sitting cross-legged.
“Come down to the kitchen when you're finished here,” Cassandra added as she too stood.
“Finished here?” Whitney asked.
“Finished with Blade,” Rose explained, and then winked, which made Whitney’s pale cheeks flame red, and he suddenly wished he’d been paying better attention to their conversations instead of trying to block them out.
The other two women left the room, and Whitney began to fidget with the hem of her sweater.
It was a pretty shade of mint green, and looked velvety soft, although not as soft as her skin.
Skin he was dying to mark up as his own.
Blade liked the idea of knowing that Whitney had zero experience, that he could be her one and only.
But then he noticed the small scab at the corner of her eye from where he’d cut her. The bruises on her neck were darker today, Dragon’s fingerprints layered on top of his own. There were more cuts on her skin where he’d dragged his knife as he was cutting her clothes off her.
And those were just the physical marks his torture had left behind. It spoke nothing of the psychological damage he’d inflicted on a woman who had already been used and abused since she was just a child.
“You should go help the others with lunch,” he said, turning abruptly.
“Blade, wait.”
He heard her jump up and cross the floor, hovering just behind him, but he didn't turn around to look at her.
Couldn’t.
Or he’d have her in that bed, naked and spread out before him, quicker than she could offer a protest.
He heard, or felt, her hand lift to reach for him. Part of him prayed she didn't touch him, the other part prayed she did. When her small hand lightly, uncertainly, touched his, he turned and found her staring up at him.
“I … I have … I need … a favor.” She licked her lip as though unsure whether she could ask him for anything, having no idea she could ask for anything at all and he’d find a way to make it happen for her.
Anything to banish the shadows that lurked in the depths of her eyes and show her what it was like to have a team, to have people who cared.
“What's the favor you need, darlin’?”
“Would you … could you … I need you to teach me how to defend myself. How to fight. How to be like you.”
January 13th