If it were at all possible, her green eyes softened even more. “Gideon. I want to be real for you. More than anything on this earth, I want to be real for you. I’m so afraid though. What if I’m not? You’re the most wonderful man I could ever imagine meeting. If I ever stayed in one place, it would be here with you, but I’m terrified now that I could be something horrible.”
No one’s first thought would be that they were something horrible. They would think they’d been in an accident and had no memory of it. A brain injury. A significant event happened that traumatized them. They wouldn’t consider that someone had programmed them to become something harmful to others.
“Why would you believe you may be something horrible?” Herepeated her words back to her in question form, pitching his voice low. Gentle. Soothing. Used his weapon ruthlessly. Compelling an answer.
She frowned again and rubbed her left temple just the way she had before. Her body gave a little shudder.
“What’s happening right now, Rory?”
“That feeling.”
“Describe it to me.” Now he was the interrogator. Soft-spoken but very much in command. No one disobeyed when he used that particular tone. He reached out and took her hand, his thumb sliding along her palm in a gesture of soothing comfort. He turned her hand over so his fingers could brush caresses over her inner wrist and feel her pulse pounding there.
“It feels as if I’ve got another skin covering me. Like a snake. Or a lizard.” She gave another shudder. “It’s a sickening feeling.”
She was panicking, struggling to breathe. He could hear the wheeze starting, and it was very real.
“Rory.” He placed her palm on the side of his rib cage. “I want you to look at me. Only at me. Feel me breathing with you. Think only about the air moving through your lungs and my lungs. We’re safe up here. Nothing can get to you.”
“It’s in me. On me. I can feel it.”
“Breathe with me.” He made that a command, using his voice to direct her. Using the sound of his own breathing. Loud. In. Out. His eyes staring into hers. Compelling her.
She followed him, settling into the rhythm, able to pull out of her panic attack, but she definitely needed her nebulizer. Once she was steady again, he was concerned she might have to leave in order to get to her medication.
“Did you bring an actual nebulizer or just an inhaler?”
“I have a small travel nebulizer with me.”
“Use it, Red. We’ll talk about what’s worrying you after. Imeant what I said about being safe up here. If you have a second skin that needs to be shed, we’ll figure it out.”
She pulled out a small machine that resembled an inhaler but used her medicine in it. Gideon took the opportunity while she inhaled it to study her skin with his superior eyesight. Her skin was abnormally soft under the pads of his fingers, but his hands were rough, calloused.
He used the superior vision of the eagle, studying every square inch of exposed skin Rory had. She had a dusting of freckles along her forearms, but he couldn’t detect anything that might indicate she had a second skin. He reached up to brush a caress along her left temple. He traced her entire face from her forehead to her eye with the pads of his fingers. This was where she said she always seemed to feel the strange sensation.
She removed the small nebulizer and gave him her green-eyed steady gaze. “Gideon, you’re doing it again. That frown. You worry about everyone. Who takes care of you? Who looks out for you? Don’t tell me your family does, because it’s very clear to me that you’re the one watching over them.”
“Red, do I look like a man who needs others to watch over me?” It was worrisome to him that she could see that frown in his mind, and yet he couldn’t see into hers no matter how hard he looked. And he was looking.
She nodded slowly, not taking her gaze from his. “Yes, I think you do. Do you think I’m programmed to hurt someone? Tell me the truth, Gideon.”
“You’re afraid of knowing the truth, Rory. I don’t think you’re ready to find out yet. When you start to get close to knowing anything, you panic and can’t breathe. I don’t want you to associate me with anything bad. I want you to associate me with being safe.”
Gideon wanted those things to be true. He even needed them to be. He was sincere. At the same time, he was full of shit, and heknew it. He had to get to the truth of what she was and why she was there in San Francisco. She was a GhostWalker. Whitney had no doubt experimented on her just as he had so many other orphaned girls. Rory was the last woman he wanted to mislead, but he had no choice. He had to protect the others. He also had to protect her whether she knew he was helping her or not.
“The odd thing is, Gideon, I do feel safe here. I’ve never told anyone the things I’m telling you. I wouldn’t have considered it.You’rethe one who makes me feel safe. This is the first time I’ve ever felt brave enough to discuss this with anyone.”
The pads of his fingers slid over her temple lightly. Seeking. “You had a panic attack, Red.” He kept his voice gentle, the tone sliding into intimate. “I didn’t like being the cause of that.” He didn’t. It was necessary and it might happen again. Sadly, he was afraid it was inevitable.
“You have the frown again. Tell me what you’re thinking.”
There was a little demand in her tone that made him want to smile. He didn’t want to push so hard that she’d leave. What would he do then? Try to stop her? That could be a disaster. “I was trying to think of ways to best help you figure this out without putting undue pressure on you. You’re just really confronting the truth. You don’t have to do it all at once.”
Rory’s smile nearly took his breath away. She put her nebulizer back in its case and then in her skirt pocket. “I can’t believe how I lucked out. In my wildest dreams I never thought I’d meet a man as nice as you, Gideon. I had given up.”
He wasn’t a nice man. He wasn’t even wholly a man anymore. He didn’t know what he was. He had started out the evening thinking he was going to reel his woman in slow and easy. Court her. Hook her. Make sure she had every reason to believe in him. Every reason to stay in San Francisco and give the two of them a chance. Every reason to explore the chemistry flaring between them.
He was deceiving her. He might not be lying to her, but he was misleading her. One of the things Gideon was very good at was reading people. Rory was going to feel as if he had made a fool of her once she found out who and what he was. Eventually, she would have to be told. There would be no getting around it. She would find out about his ability to use his voice to compel her to answer him. She would consider that a weapon used against her. That wasn’t even the worst. He would have no choice but to betray her. Really betray her. There was Sebastian living in the compound. There was Rose. Jaimie. He had to tell the others about Rory. Once that happened... His sins were rapidly piling up. How could she forgive him? Would he forgive her if the roles were reversed? No, he would not. Silently, he cursed.
