No one showed up at the back of the ship, and after six minutes and thirty-two seconds of wide-open doors, I began the process of sealing them all up again. It smelled and tasted somewhat better in the lab now, but when I punched in the lock code and the final door barreled shut with a hydraulicwhoosh, I still felt like a coffin had just slammed down its lid.
I took two steps before abruptly turning and going back to the lock. I changed the code to something I thought Jax could guess. It felt too stupid to lock myself in here and draw five bags of blood without the possibility of someone being able to get into the lab if I didn’t come out.
I went back to my grim setup and tried again, overcoming my jitters with concentration. It was a physical effort to steady my hand as well as a mental one. Like the previous time, I got my blood flowing on the second try.
A dull lump of panic thickened my throat as I leaned back in the chair, trying not to look at the plastic bag that was slowly inflating with blood. It wasn’t terrible to watch. It was actually kind of mesmerizing. But I closed my eyes and pictured open spaces instead. Quickly, that turned into picturing Shade Ganavan with his lush mouth all tangled up with mine and his big hands covering my breasts.
Daydreaming about Shade and steamy, urgent grinding and take-me-now kisses up against a dark wall helped distract me and pass the time. I kept an intermittent eye on the level of the bags as they filled up, so I’d know when to switch. By the start of the fourth bag, I felt like utter crap, and even remembering the hot, sexy slide of Shade’s tongue against my night-chilled skin didn’t help. I started breathing faster but felt lethargic. My heart pounded, trying to circulate my reduced blood.
Halfway through the fifth bag, I felt myself really going south. I pulled the needle from my arm, capped off the bag, and collapsed back. My vision darkened, and that was that.
* * *
I woke up with drool on my face and a painful crick in my neck. I wiped off my chin with a hand that shook. After a moment of blinking at the harsh overhead lighting and fighting the urge to vomit, I reached for the bottle of water I’d left on the table next to me. I was hardly able to close my hand around it, and unscrewing the top was a challenge I hadn’t anticipated, one that left me panting and almost falling straight back into another nonnegotiable nap.
Once I finally got the cap off, I drained the bottle one slow sip at a time, working through the nausea that kept roiling up. Every second that passed made me more and more desperate to get out of the sealed-up metal box, but I needed to replenish my fluids first, or I risked not even making it through the first door, let alone the rest.
The next twenty minutes turned into a personal challenge in mastering the anxiety I always felt when I was shut inside a closed space but not flying. This time was made even worse by being light-headed and weak and having an actuallockeddoor between myself and the rest of the ship.
Nevertheless, I sat there slowly rolling the now-empty bottle between my hands, listening to the cheap plastic crackle and staring rather blindly at the rows of temperature-controlled shelving units holding the enhancers.
Part of me wondered if I should blow them up. I couldn’t decide.
Eventually, I felt steady enough to get up. My head spun as though it were orbiting my body instead of attached to it, but I didn’t fall down. Deep breaths helped chase away the sparks and floaters dancing across my vision. I gripped the edge of the table for balance, still dizzy as hell. I probably should have sat back down, but getting out of the stifling room was starting to feel like a priority I couldn’t ignore. I swallowed hard, gearing up to move. The moment I was able, I gathered the blood bags and stumbled out of the lab attachment, locking it again behind me.
I somehow made it to Fiona’s domain, dragging my feet and keeping a heavy hand against the corridor wall. In a small miracle that saved me from having to explain why I was barely upright, she wasn’t in her lab. Maybe she’d finally remembered to eat something. I stuck the already sufficiently cooled blood in her refrigerator and left her a note. It was hardly legible, but I didn’t have the energy to try again.
Before I left, I took a bottle of water from Fiona’s stash but didn’t open it yet. One foot in front of the other, woozy step by woozy step, I made it to my room. Thankfully, my personal sanctuary had been intact again since Shade’s first visit to theEndeavor, when he’d fixed the hole in my bedroom wall. There was still a shit-ton of construction noise coming through the hull, but I didn’t care. I curled up next to Bonk and put my arm around him.
It felt so good to lay my head on the pillow that I snuggled into it like I used to when I was a kid and my only real worries were why my father scowled at me the way he did, used me like a blood dispenser, and fought so much with my mother. I hadn’t liked it, but I also hadn’t known anything else existed until Mareeka and Surral took me in, just like they took in all the strays of the galaxy.
I smiled. Just like Susan with her cats.
It hadn’t been all bad in the Overseer’s opulent but prison-like home. Mom had loved me and done her best to protect me, and we’d had some good times with Uncle Nate before he’d become Captain Bridgebane to both of us, even in private, just like he’d already been to everyone else.
He’d eventually closed himself off to us, hardly visiting his stepsister or her apparently mutant daughter anymore. Even an ex-hooligan from 17 could finally buy into Dad’s crap. Mom had been really sad about that.
I yawned, wishing so many things had turned out differently—and not just for myself.
Bonk started purring, and sleep hovered close to my thoughts, trying to overtake them. A few fought back.
It was going to be really hard to spar with Shade tonight, but I wouldn’t miss it for all the worlds.
Also, he wanted to show me some moves? I knew at least one of us was hoping they wouldn’t be limited to self-defense.
Chapter 16
Shade was gone by thetime I woke up, and Jax told me I was supposed to find him at his shop for our “workout,” which he of course said with narrowed eyes and a huge amount of disapproval in his voice.
I didn’t mind, and I didn’t try to argue Jax into changing his. I loved that he looked out for me. He wouldn’t get all growly and sullen if he didn’t care, and if he had been doing something that worried me, I sure as hell wouldn’t have held back. But Jax never really did anything stupid, or at least potentially stupid, like I sometimes did. The only thing that bothered me was how he spent so much time stuck in the past and never, ever planned on leaving it behind him.
As the elevator tube sucked me down to ground level, I knew I looked okay on the outside because I’d fancied myself up a bit before leaving, but I still felt like crap on the inside. My head spun with any sudden movement, and if I hadn’t wanted to see Shade so badly, I’d have thought better of this whole plan and gone straight back up the Squirrel Tree to bed.
But my heart beat harder at the thought of him, and my skin tingled with an electric attraction I wanted to explore. If I only had a few more days in Albion City with Shade, I didn’t want to waste them in my own bed. If he was game, I wanted to spend them in his.
On the way to Ganavan’s Products and Parts, I stopped and ate a steak and a mix of mostly unidentifiable greens and nuts. I didn’t feel much better after eating, though. In fact, I felt nauseous again and even worse.
I moved slowly after that, making sure I wasn’t going to be sick before showing up at Shade’s place. Digestion finally did its thing, the queasiness passed, and I trudged on, popping a breath freshener into my mouth a block away from Shade’s building and sucking on it as I walked.
