Deadly Game (GhostWalkers, #5)(20)

His brilliant gaze drifted slowly, almost possessively over her face. “You don’t want to be talking to me that way; you’re turning me on.”

Her heart accelerated and her breasts tingled with anticipation. His chest was so close. A breath away from her aching nipples. It was perverted to feel like this, to be a man’s captive, to have him slam his elbow into her head and still have her body react like a cat’s in heat. In that moment she hated herself, hated the way she despised Brett and the other men. She understood now, understood how desire could take over every sense and push aside discipline and training, until all one could think about was assuaging a chemical need.

Did he know? Was he feeding the addiction deliberately with his nearness? If so, he was playing a very deadly game. She forced her body to relax and looked up at him, frowning, hoping she looked intimidating. “Black widows eat their lovers.”

He released her wrists and drew a finger down her cheek, the pad of his finger sliding over her lips, lingering as if he belonged there. When she looked at him, when he touched her, she felt the anger slide away before she could catch and hold on to it. He did something to her, made her feel whole and at peace. Maybe it was a psychic talent peculiar to him. Could Whitney do that to a person? Could he make it so that she trembled with need and yet felt whole inside just by touching this one man?

“I don’t think I’d mind all that much if you ate me,” he returned, his voice almost a purr.

Once more she felt the electric current running between them, sparking along her skin and heating her blood into a thick, molten stream. A shiver of need went down her spine. She could only stare at him, feeling vulnerable and feminine instead of like the soldier she knew herself to be. She’d never felt like this, so female she couldn’t relate in any other way to him then seeing him wholly as a man. She didn’t dare speak, afraid he would realize she was trembling from his touch, not from fear or anger.

He caught her chin in his hand and tipped her head to one side to examine her temple. “You’re going to have a bruise. I’d let the doc look at it, but I think we can manage without him. Do you need more pain medication?” His fingers moved over her throbbing temple, taking some of the sting away.

“No.” It was a blatant lie, but she looked him right in the eye, because she couldn’t handle this man when she was on drugs. She needed her wits about her if she was going to survive.

“We’re going to move you, Mari, and it’s going to hurt.”

“I’ve been hurt before.”

A flash of something crossed his expressionless face, a quick glimpse of an emotion she knew was important, but she didn’t get a good enough look to identify it. But he wasn’t made of stone—that was for certain. “Are you ready?”

Mari noticed that it was the doctor, not Jack, who took up the position at the foot of the gurney. Jack looked grim and held a gun in his hand. There was no question in her mind that he intended to use it on her if she made one wrong move toward his brother. A part of her admired that; another part filed the information away for future use. She was a solider and it was her duty to escape. She no longer had loyalty to her job, but she did to her unit, and she was determined that Whitney wouldn’t catch her in a trap, no matter how addicting the bait—because this had to be another Whitney sadistic setup.

Mari nodded and touched her tongue to her dry lips. She’d rather be tortured than feel this way, confused and helpless and so feminine she ached with need. She understood torture and duty and discipline. There was no way to understand the heat in her body or the blood pounding in her veins. Her awareness of Ken was incredible, as if her every sense—every cell in her body—were tuned to him.

She tried to steel herself as they lifted her, but nothing could prepare her for the pain ripping through her, driving out everything else, robbing her of breath and thought and for one moment clearing her head so she could be who she was—strong and stoic and in control. She was the one the other women looked up to, the rebel refusing to give in to Whitney’s latest demands. She was the one encouraging the idea of escape—if that was all that was left to them—and she was the one who promised that if they all helped her get a chance to see the senator, she’d convince him to free them.

The other women believed in her and she had let them down by being captured. It was possible Whitney had already killed one of them, but he’d been away from the compound, and as long as no one told him she was gone, they would all be safe. The men would be frantically looking for her—not wanting Whitney’s wrath to fall on one of them. His punishments were sometimes lethal.

Now that she knew what it was like to be so absorbed in another human being, to need to feel his touch, hear his voice, while he seemed to be indifferent to her other than as a prisoner, she wanted to take back everything she’d said and done the past couple of years regarding the men helping Whitney with his breeding program.

The men were prisoners as much as the women, they just didn’t realize it—but Whitney’s experiment couldn’t continue. She knew it with a certainty. It wasn’t natural and it was fundamentally wrong to take away choice. Even if she fell in love—and she wasn’t certain that was possible with the way she felt about men—she would never get over wanting Ken. It gave her understanding and compassion that she’d never had before for the men unnaturally paired with the women. How could any of them find happiness?