Page 23 of Lure

Always together, never apart, joined as one heart.

No. No…

“No!” I jerked upright, one arm outstretched. Loss dug its jagged fingers into my heart and threatened to rip it right out of my chest. The room seemed to swim in shadows around me illuminated only by the faintest of glows from around the edge of the blinds and the heavy curtains.

Reality swam around me. This wasn’t a cemetery. It was a bedroom—the one at Base. The one Bones had dumped me in that first day. I swallowed. Or I tried to, but it was hard to dry swallow the lump in my throat. I couldn’t get my breath back. Jerking my gaze around, I barely resisted a scream at the suggestion of movement to my left.

The rabbiting of my pulse added to the thunder behind my eyes. With care, Voodoo sat forward. His expression gradually grew more visible as my eyes adjusted to the dusk in the room.

“You with me?” The quiet question grounded me in the present.

“Is this real?” The question slipped out before I could stop it. I’d just been in a cemetery. The heat from the sun. The grass under my feet. The air—it had been so real. None of that was present in the room we were in, but was the room we were in real?

Or was this another nightmare?

“Need me to pinch you?” The question held not one ounce of judgment or teasing. “I can stand up and go open those blinds too—give you more light. Or we can just turn the lamp on.” At the last he motioned to the lamp on the nightstand closest to me. “Whatever you need.”

A harsh laugh exploded out of me. “Whatever I need.” Those words really didn’t mean anything anymore. Especially if I had no idea what I needed. How could I? I raised a hand to my face. The trembling, though, gave me pause. It was like my heart was going too fast and I couldn’t control the shaking,

“Whatever you need,” Voodoo repeated, the stress he put on the syllables demanded that I believe him. Closing my eyes, I tried to regulate my breathing but it wasn’t happening. The panic was right there, an acrid taste on my tongue and an untamed wildness under my skin.

“Not sure that would help, if I even knew what it was.”

“Okay,” Voodoo said, as though he accepted me at my word. “Tell me what you can then.”

What I could? That had me opening my eyes again. He hadn’t moved from where he sat. He leaned forward still, hands spread but everything else about him was still. His?—

“What happened to your face?” I didn’t think it had been that bruised when we joined up with them the day before. Had it? It had been hard to focus on any of them after seeing those vehicles explode. But I didn’t remember serious injuries.

“Therapy,” he answered easily.

“What kind of therapy gives you a black eye?”

A flicker of a grin graced his face and it stretched the cut on his bottom lip, distorting his smile.

“The passive-aggressive kind.”

“The—” I blinked.

“How is it passiveandaggressive?” He canted his head as though offering me an invitation to play.

“The aggressive part, I get,” I admitted before shoving the blankets back. I didn’t even remember getting in bed the night before. I’d been so damn tired when we got back here. Voodoo had gone to pick me up—maybe? I turned that mental image over in my head, it sounded right but maybe it wasn’t him? Had one of the other guys tried to carry me up here?

It was all a mess of tangled emotions and images. I was so damn tired. Rubbing a hand over my face, I grimaced at the bruise on my jaw. While not a huge one, it still stretched to my neck and added to my sore throat.

“Not sure where the passive comes in?” The question reminded me I’d already responded to him, partially.

“No, not really,” I admitted and then swung my legs out to stand. The t-shirt I was wearing hit me below mid-thigh. I liked big shirts. Folding my arms to chase away the sense of a chill, I headed for the bathroom. Every step seemed to identify a new bruise. Every muscle ached and I swore something felt pulled in my ass.

“I’m going to stand up, Firecracker,” Voodoo said. I paused in the doorway to the bathroom, then glanced at him over my shoulder. It meant half-twisting, cause the pull on my neck was really aggravating.

While looking at him, I flicked on the light and then studied his expression in the illumination. He waited until my gaze was on him again and I nodded before he stood. “So what is the passive part of it?”

“The other guy stands there and takes it until he figures out that if he doesn’t fight back, I am going to kick his ass. Then he can get out some aggression too.” Simple as pie his tone and manner declared, as though kicking the crap out of someone was “normal” behavior.

Honestly? Not what I expected. One hand braced on the doorframe, I considered asking him who. At least with the light on, I could see the damage he’d done to himself. A good solid half of his face was mottled and bruised. “That looks like it hurts.”

“I’ll live,” he told me with a wink. “Not going to ask me whose ass I kicked?”

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