Chapter 8 #2
There were absolutely no memories of how she’d gotten like this.
The last thing she could recall was Voodoo urging her to keep fighting, that she wasn't alone, and her life was worth living, and the voices in her head shouting at her that he was lying and everyone, herself included, would be better off if she were dead.
After that, she must have passed out, and Voodoo must have realized how low her body temperature had dropped and climbed under the blankets with her to try to warm her up.
Worse than that, she could feel skin on skin and knew that he was naked under there with her.
How utterly mortifying.
“Sorry,” she mumbled, immediately lifting her head to find him watching her with kind eyes.
“For what?” he asked, his voice a low, almost lazy rumble, like he’d been asleep and only just woken up.
“For making you get naked in here with me,” she replied, although she thought that was pretty obvious.
“Wasn't going to let you die.”
“Sorry,” she muttered again.
“What for this time?” he asked, but there was a teasing lilt to his voice, and the chest she was lying on shook with a chuckle.
“I let them get to me. The voices. Telling me to end it all. Normally, I'm better at ignoring them, but these last few days they’d been so loud it was getting harder and harder to resist.”
A hand coasted up and down her spine. “You’re sick.
Sick enough that if you were anyone else, you’d be dead by now.
Laid up in the hospital at the very least. Instead, you spent hours walking on a broken leg yesterday.
Your system was just worn down to the point where you no longer had the mental reserves left to fight against them.
Trust me, Indy, I know how insidious they can be, how believable they sound, how hard they work to convince you that not only are you better off dead, but the world will be a better place without you in it. ”
“You have them too?” she asked. While Voodoo might be used to not being alone in this mess, she’d spent these last several months watching every other person brought into that facility as a test subject succumb to the drug’s effects.
“We all do.”
“How do you ignore them? Do they get better over time?” She might not know exactly how long it had been since Voodoo and his teammates had been changed, but she knew it was long enough for them to build a life.
“They get quieter over time. Always there but easier to ignore, less powerful, more annoying than anything else. At first, the only way we could all ignore them was because we had each other. We knew what our deaths would do to our teammates, and we used that as motivation when it felt like too much. But you …”
There was something like awe in his expression as he looked at her, but she was sure that couldn’t be true. Nothing about her was awe-inspiring.
“Don’t do that,” he rebuked, and again she wondered if he was capable of reading her mind.
How else could he know what direction her thoughts had just gone?
“You have an expressive face,” he explained.
“But you have to know, to truly grasp, what you’ve survived is incredible.
Something I don’t think I could have done.
Something I don’t think any one of my teammates could have either.
We survived because we were a team, but you survived because you're strong. Stronger than any one of us.”
“That’s not, I'm not, it wasn't like—”
“Not good at accepting compliments I see.” There was clear amusement in his voice, and it helped her to relax a little.
“Not used to them,” she corrected.
“Won't be the same going forward,” he said, with such utter confidence that she couldn’t even come up with a comeback of any sort. Even though her gut wanted to refute his words, argue with him that nothing ever changed, and her life going forward would be as bad as it had been in her past.
“If you say so,” she told him, shifting as she intended to sit up, figure out what the plan was for today, because she felt good enough that she could probably hike for a few hours, but as she moved, her knee brushed against something she hadn't been expecting.
Voodoo had an erection.
A huge one from the minuscule contact she’d made as she touched it, and then immediately jerked backward.
“I'd never force you, Indigo,” Voodoo said, and her surprised gaze snapped to his.
“I know that,” she assured him. Of that she was absolutely certain. He wasn't anything like the guard who had found her the day before and shoved his penis into her mouth. Besides, if Voodoo tried to do that, he’d get the same treatment the other man had.
“Do you? I don’t know what happened to you while you were there.” There was a clear question in his words, even if he didn't outright ask it, and she got why. He and his team were all men, she was a woman, and he didn't know if they’d been treated differently.
“No one there touched me like that,” she assured him, and because she didn't want things to be awkward between them, she added. “And I know this is just a physiological reaction, it doesn’t mean anything, some guys just wake up with one in the—”
A growl cut her off, and the next thing she knew, she’d been flipped onto her back, with one of Voodoo’s large hands cradling her head so she didn't bang it on the stone floor of the cave.
His large body—his large naked body—was pressed against hers, and she felt the heavy weight of his erection pressed between her legs.
For some reason, there was no fear.
No anger.
Nothing but lust.
Oh no. When had she developed a crush on the man who had saved her life?
“If you think this is for any other reason than I just had a gorgeous woman sleeping in my arms, then you're crazy.”
Indigo gasped at the sincerity in his tone.
Voodoo thought she was gorgeous?
There was no way that was true.
“Still don’t believe me, huh?” Voodoo was above her, his weight balanced on his hands, his face just inches from hers. Then he lowered it down, until there were only millimeters separating them.
The heat of his breath tickled her lips, and she found she wanted him to kiss her.
Which was crazy. After both her exes had turned out to be abusive psychopaths, she’d sworn off men. It was infinitely better to be lonely than hurt.
“This is all you, honey.” Rolling his hips, he nudged her with his hard length.
“I would never do anything about it without your express permission, but that doesn’t mean I'm not wildly attracted to you. Don’t ever doubt that.
” Closing the last of the distance between them, he feathered his lips across hers, and her system went haywire.
Emotions and sensations bombarded her, brief though the contact was, and when Voodoo suddenly straightened, not bothering to cover himself as he started looking for his clothes, it took all her energy not to call him back.
Forming an attachment to anyone was a bad idea, so why did it already feel like a foregone conclusion that she would get attached to this man?