“The strawberry soda you keep in the fridge,” he clarified. “Where do I get it?”
Atria shook her head slightly. “Oh, um… You can get it at pretty much any grocery store. You’ve been to one, right?”
“Yes,” he lied.
Information obtained, he crossed the room. When he reached the door, Atria called out, “I thought you hated sweet things!”
He pushed open the door. “Not all sweet things.”
Sloane switched vehicles one more time before he finally made it back to the Battery, a six pack of strawberry soda dangling from the tips of his claw. He released a slow breath as he reverently laid out Cecilia’s soft pink sweater. Mother of pearl buttons winked in the golden light of sunset that streamed through the large windows overlooking the cliffside.
The urge to take off his helmet was strong, but he knew it was useless. The scent he was so addicted to had faded only a few weeks after he brought it back to the barracks. And yet he continued to press his nose into it at every opportunity, some desperate animal in him whining as it searched for the essence of her.
He’d never smelled anything like her before. He’d neverfeltanything like how he did when he breathed her in. It’d rattled something loose in him. Like the first falling stones heralding an avalanche, it unlocked an uncontrollable need to be near her, to watch over her, to pin her down andbite?—
Sloane pushed himself away from the counter. There weren’t many hours left in the sedative dose he’d given her, and it was ridiculous to sit there pining after a sweater when his doe was safe in his room.
Compulsively straightening his kit, he followed the stark concrete hallway to the primary suite. A lock blinked red beside the door knob, awaiting his code. Sloane’s heart rate picked up again as he swiped the complex pattern on the screen.
The door unlocked with a hydraulic hiss. Throat tightening with anticipation, he stepped inside the bedroom.
Immediately, his gaze landed on the bed. Theemptybed.
Senses screaming to high alert in the span of a heartbeat, he twisted to the side just in time to catch the full force of a metal lamp to the plasma-damaged side of his helmet. The blow shattered one side of his visor and, with a single breath of her scent, what was left of his control.
CHAPTER
SEVEN
Cecilia froze,the remnants of the bent lamp clutched in her sweaty fingers.
She knew she should move. Just standing there, arms raised, and gawking at the monster she struck was the stupidest possible thing she could do. Every true crime show host screamed in the back of her mind, urging her to take her opportunity and sprint out the door.
Except she was still seeing double, so she couldn’t quite make out exactly where the door was, and he hadn’t actuallymoved.
Cecilia blinked rapidly in an attempt to clear her head. It wasn’t easy. She’d only just managed to stand without tipping over when she heard his footsteps outside the door. Her balance was off, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure that she wasn’t stuck in a nightmare, and if she tried too hard to recall how she got to the concrete room, all that came to her was spraying blood and dismembered bodies.
It took a lot of work to sort out what was real and what was the drugs.
When she squinted at him, she found that her first impression was correct. He really was just standing there, blocking the doorway with his enormous body, his helmetedhead turned away from her. He didn’t even look like he was breathing.
Knees wobbling, she forced words out of lips that still didn’t feel quite like they belonged to her face. “Did… I kill you?”
The room was dark without the lamp. She’d woken up to tomb-like blackness only broken up by the soft twinkle of fairy lights strung over the door. Even in her drugged state, she immediately noticed that the walls were concrete and starkly windowless. Now the twinkling lights looked downright sinister as they illuminated the jagged, broken glass of his helmet as it turned in slow motion to face her.
Cecilia had seen some scary stuff in her time at The Lush. She’d scrubbed blood from booths, seen brawls that ended with guns drawn, and, most recently, watched three grown men be torn apart by the monster standing in front of her.
Her phantom.
Nothing came close to the terror he inspired in her when he turned to fix her with a single burning eye. She couldn’t see much more than that through the cracked glass of his helmet, but she didn’t need to.
Cecilia’s fingers went numb. The lamp fell to the floor with a crash, but the monster didn’t even flinch. He stared at her with that dark, burning eye. His diamond-shaped pupil was blown so large it swallowed his iris, giving him a look of fathomless, empty blackness.
An alarm beeped faintly, but she had no idea where it came from. Cecilia stumbled backward on her bandaged feet as a primordial fear took over her body. It piloted her backward like she had any hope of escape in the windowless cell he’d put her.
The fearburned.Slowly, at first, then with a steadily building roar in the pit of her stomach.
Cecilia’s breath hitched as she pushed herself into the corner farthest away from him. Her thighs pressed together reflexivelywhen a pulse of desire echoed between them. Her vision swam when she flattened her sweaty palms against the cool concrete walls, briefly turning the monster into two.
