High Voltage (Fever #10)(97)

“You always save everyone else,” Kat said quietly. “Let us save what we can of you this time.”

I couldn’t deal with this shit.

I shoved to my feet and stormed from the room.



* * *



π

I paced Ryodan’s suite, practically gouging tufts of polished, glazed concrete from the floor with each step.

They wanted me to do nothing. Sit idly by, while they went to battle against Balor. I had no idea how to live that way. And I saw little point. My future was inevitable. The only difference between me turning now or turning later was that I’d get to spend more time with the people I loved. But what if me sitting back and not fighting ended up costing the lives of those very people I wanted to spend that time with? I’d never be able to live with that!

    I felt like I was being torn in half. Part of me wanted desperately to hang on as long as I could and stay here with my friends, but there was another part of me that…“Oh, hell, Dani, admit it,” I muttered aloud. Part of me hungered for the power that was growing in me. There was so much good I could do with it. Turning into a Hunter wouldn’t have been my first choice for the way my life would go. In fact, it wouldn’t have even been on my list of choices. But if it had to happen, well, at least I didn’t end up turning into any of the many other, weaker, disgusting things I’d killed. Hunters were lethal, their power astronomical. And I was pretty sure they were immortal.

I could watch over my friends forever. Protect them eternally. Kill Fae, kill anything that messed with them.

Then he was there, in the room with me, entering silently, stopping behind me. I shivered from raw aching awareness of him as a powerful, brilliant, basely sexual-in-all-the-right-ways man that had moved forever beyond my reach.

“Love is the one thing you’ve never understood,” he said quietly, “because you didn’t have it. You don’t need to save the world to make us love you, Dani. We already do.”

I exploded into tears, crying ugly.

How did he always know my secrets? That was exactly what I kept boxed in one of my highest security vaults.

The “Mega’s” greatest insecurity: I have to be Mega; I have to be a superhero to be loved.

Hands fisting, he took two steps forward then jerked to a stop. We both knew he couldn’t touch me. “Christ, it fucking slays me when you cry,” he said roughly.

    I growled through tears, “I’ll get it under control, just give me a minute.”

“You always do,” he said flatly. I looked at him, startled by the undercurrents in his voice. Enormous respect, enormous sorrow. Gargantuan frustration at not being able to touch me.

I forced myself to breathe deep and even. I’d figured out long ago that freedom wasn’t just another word for nothing left to lose.

Fearless was.

I’d had nothing to lose. No mom. No home. No friends. No life. It’s easy to be fearless in those circumstances.

Now I had everything to lose, and a destructive, raging part of me wanted to go ahead and lose it right away, get it over with because limbo unravels me. Once you lose everything, you can take action: You either die or cope. But before, while you’re watching it all go to hell, there’s no action you can take. You’re helpless, caught in a killing undertow. My mom was my entire world and, trapped in a cage, I was forced to watch her slip away bit by bit, unable to do anything to prevent it. I might have stolen food for us. With my super skills, I could have stolen money, we’d have been rich. I could have taken care of us.

But I’d had to sit there, watching, while everything fell apart.

“Close your eyes,” Ryodan said softly.

I didn’t argue, just let my lids flutter closed, then he was there, standing next to me. I could see him, us, as clearly as if it was actually happening. I shivered with emotion, with desire. I could smell the scent of his skin, feel the omnipresent erotic current of his body as his powerful arms slipped around me.

I dropped my head to his chest and melted into him like a second skin, savoring his strength, his heat, his big, hard body. This man was the one thing in my universe that made me feel safe.

    He rubbed his jaw against my hair, his hands spanning my back, and as he began to work at my tight muscles, my tears stopped, my body stilled, my breathing deepened. Even an illusion of him could take me down to ground zero. I wondered how he’d survived his childhood and come out so bloody strong.

Careful, he said in my mind. We’re linked right now. You might see things you’d rather not.

“You know my pain. Show me yours. I want to know.”

It wasn’t pretty.

“As if my life has been.”

Exhaling gustily, he dropped his forehead to mine in our illusory embrace, raised his hands to my temples.

We’d been standing in his office at Chester’s, years ago, when he’d shown me that, like me, he’d been caged as a child, horribly abused, kept in a pit in the ground that was dark and damp and cold.

Suddenly, I was there. Trapped. The smell of damp soil and my own waste. Never let out.

Unless he hurt me so bad he had to take me out for his “doctors” to heal me so he could do it again. It was the only time I saw the sun. I lived for the times he almost killed me. I began to pray for them. I wanted to see sunshine that badly. To feel it on my battered skin, to soak it into my broken bones, to walk “up there” with the others. Sunshine became synonymous with life.