The Storm That Is Sterling (26 page)

He didn’t want “babies” he said, disdain in his voice. Like she did? She’d seen how her mama had been tied to the house and babies, while Daddy ran around with women like… well, her.

Sabrina wasn’t stupid like her mother. She knew the way to a man’s heart was his dick, not a houseful of screaming kids. She knew how to keep a man like Iceman—a man who was all about power and pleasure.

She rolled onto her stomach and pressed her hand to her chin, watching as Iceman poured himself his standard, after-sex Scotch. She kept the bar stocked for him—an easy enough task when you worked for a casino and lived in one too. Satisfaction—all forms. Any way he liked it. That was what she gave him. That was what he gave her in his arrogant, bossy kind of way. But that was okay. Those things made her hot. She didn’t want a pansy-ass bringing her flowers and kissing her feet.

“So what are we going to do about Tad?” she asked.

He glanced over his shoulder. “Get rid of him,” he said. “Lure him where we want him and then take him out. And while Rebecca Burns would be a prize we will continue to pursue, we aren’t waiting for her. We deal with Tad now. And as much as I’d like to hold him captive and pick his brain about Adam’s operation, I’ll shoot the bastard and throw him to the bottom of a river if necessary.”

“Good,” she said quickly. She liked a jealous man, though she liked Tad’s rough, forceful approach. His talents were quite extensive. “It was like he came out of nowhere at the restaurant.”

“Indeed, it was,” he said, downing his drink and grabbing his pants from the floor. He glanced at his watch.

She eyed his ass while he did. It was nice and tight, a fine specimen. She didn’t want him to cover it. “Don’t leave, sugar,” she said. “I’ve not had my fill of you yet.”

He zipped his dress pants. “I’m going to look at the security feed. Try and figure out how Tad surprised us. I don’t like surprises like you do.”

Sabrina pushed to her feet and pulled on a sheer pink robe. “You liked it when I hid under your desk and blew you while you talked to your secretary.”

He cut her a look. “And I warned you not to do it again.”

To feel in control. Check. She got that. But she also knew he didn’t mean it. “When can we get rid of Tad?” she asked as she walked him to the door.

He turned and leaned against the frame, crossing his arms in front of his broad chest. “What are you willing to do to get rid of him?”

An uneasy feeling fluttered in her stomach. “What did you have in mind?”

Iceman stared at her, his eyes steely cold, like ICE, and then pulled her roughly against him. “Play the same sex games you do with me,” he said. “Seduce him in a location that will leave him distracted and exposed so that I can kill him before he escapes.”

She could barely believe her ears. “You want me to let that man touch me again?”

“I want you to help me destroy him,” he said, pulling her close, rough—his voice sharp. “Do you want to please me, Sabrina?”

“I’d rather please
you
in bed, not in someone else’s,” she said. That was how this worked. The woman who drove the man of power, who “made” him in ways no one else ever could.

“But you’ll do it,” he said. It wasn’t a question.

It felt like a heavy weight was crushing her chest. “Yes.”

A slow smile lifted his lips before he crushed her mouth with a kiss that ravished her and tasted of greed. But not for her, she realized, for power. She was nothing but a token in a game. He left her a few seconds later, set her away from himself without another word, nor a look behind.

He’d asked her to let Tad touch her again. Told her, ordered her, expected her to “do” Tad to please him.

Sabrina leaned on the door and slid down its surface. Her eyes prickled—tears! No. No. No. She balled her fists, half-growling, half-shouting into the room. She was not her mother. She would not cry over a man, especially not one who was using her, because no man who cared about her would ask her to do what Iceman had.

Iceman was no better than Tad, she realized. They were both using her to get to each other, to gain power and control. That was the greed she’d tasted on Iceman’s lips.

Damn it, she wasn’t her mother. She wasn’t stupid and blind. If she was going to survive this, she had to look out for herself. She inhaled. Iceman had a plan. Well, so did she.

***

A simple bathroom of white tile and silver accessories surrounded Becca as she lounged in a tub of hot water, waiting for Sterling to return from the kitchen. Bubbles, manufactured from shampoo out of desperation and irrational shyness, covered the top of the shoulder-deep water, her legs stretched out in front of her, head against the wall.

It didn’t matter that she’d just spent hours making love to Sterling in every gymnastic position she’d thought possible, and some she wouldn’t have believed possible, until he’d proven otherwise. Bottom line, she still felt shy in the aftermath. Emotionally, more than physically, but somehow the bubbles provided a security blanket, an extra layer to protect her, while she tried to understand what she was feeling.

She’d never done the kinds of things with a man she’d done with Sterling. Sex had been stiff and uncomfortable—an awkward, hopeful attempt to find pleasure that had always come up short of expectations. Never the all-consuming physical bliss she’d shared with Sterling that had managed one minute to be darkly erotic, the next, playful and filled with laughter.

Becca sat up and pulled her knees to her chest, where emotion welled in a tight ball. She’d thought living a little was a smart move, a natural move, a way of facing death. The truth was living made you crave life. And Sterling made her realize how little she’d really lived.

All of a sudden, Becca felt an odd tingling at the back of her neck. “What the heck?” she murmured, running her hand over her neck, under the bottom of her hair where the water had dampened it.

“Something wrong?” Sterling asked, appearing in the doorway in nothing but jeans—unbuttoned and hanging low on lean hips—and holding a glass of wine.

“No,” she said, realizing the tingling sensation had gone away. “Nothing.”

He sauntered forward, lithe male, with his ever-present, casual façade that never quite hid the lethal soldier beneath the surface. Her mouth watered and not because of the wine. It was all about the man. His hair was rumpled, sexy. Thick, light blond, always a bit wild—it fit him. And his body, what a body! Every time she inspected it, she found another place she wanted to lick.

She’d never thought such a thing about another man. Well—not that she knew. What woman hadn’t had that kind of thought about her preferred Hollywood hunk—a Brad Pitt or George Clooney. But that was a safe fantasy a girl knew would never come true. This was Sterling, a man she had licked in quite a few places, but apparently, not enough places to satisfy her urges.

He sat down on the toilet seat and offered her the wine. “I bought this when I got the Chinese food. Thought it might help you relax.”

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the glass, thinking how incredibly thoughtful that was. “Aren’t you going to have some?”

“Nah,” he said. “I don’t drink. Never acquired a taste for it. Besides, GTECHs are immune to the effects anyway.”

Surprised, she sipped her wine and studied him over the rim of her glass. Dry, but a bit sweet. Perfect. A treat—just like the bath. “Surely a Texas boy like yourself—in the army to boot—has a beer here or there?”

“I slug one down for appearance’s sake when I need to,” he said. “But that’s about it.” He motioned with his chin. “How’s the bath?”

Something flickered in her mind, a shadowy image—an emotional response to drinking that was his, not hers. “Why don’t you drink?” she asked, ignoring his question, fragments of his emotions, a piece of a memory, splintering in her head. Unidentifiable, but for one question that came to her. “Who close to you was an alcoholic?”

His expression darkened. “Exactly how much did you get out of my head while you were in there? Because so far I got Chinese food preferences on you. That’s not much.”

She was pretty sure he’d managed a few of her fantasies as well and put them to good use while they were making love, but she wasn’t about to say that. Instead, she indicated her glass. “And apparently my preference for certain wines.”

“A far cry from the huge bombshells you keep pulling out of my head.” A hint of tightness in his words. Tension etched his jaw line, a raw discomfort in him she’d never seen before.

“I only had a feeling,” she said gently. “Nothing more. I didn’t see this part of your past.” She softened her voice. “I promise. And I didn’t mean to be nosy. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She hesitated. “If you want to, though, now or later, you can.”

He ran a hand through his hair then let out a harsh breath. “Oh well, hell. It was my grandmother, but you know, she did rehab, and she died ten years sober. I don’t know how, out of all my memories, you picked one this ancient.”

“It must be a building block of your life,” she said. “Something that defines you and stays with you, consciously or unconsciously, always.”

One of those splinters of memory glinting in her mind. “Wait. You don’t think she got sober because you went away, do you? That you made her an alcoholic?”

“That was part of the deal when I joined the military,” he said. “They cleaned up my grandmother, and I enlisted. So yeah, she got sober because I went away. Losing your kid and raising your kid’s kid isn’t easy. She did the best she could. I made sure I did my best by her. I went away and gave her a chance at a real life.”

“What do you mean that was part of the deal when you joined?”

He kicked back against the toilet seat, one foot on his knee. “I was in knee-deep shit at the time. Hacked a top-secret government computer program for cash. Told myself it was to get money for her rehab, but it was really about, you know, proving I wasn’t a loser.” He grimaced. “Which, ironically, made me a loser because I got busted, and by the way, that’s why I stood you up that day we met at the library. They showed up at my house, and that was that. I was gone. I don’t even know how the army intervened. My dad was a Special Ops guy—covert on the highest level. I still don’t know what he did, but whatever it was, it apparently made them want me too.”

“Or maybe it was your ability to hack that program,” she said. “How’d you learn to do that?”

“Self-taught. I have a mind for it. And you’re right. The army wanted that skill, and they’ve put it to use many times over the years.”

“What did your grandmother say about you enlisting?”

“She was in a drunken stupor,” he said. “I told them to clean her up and tell her I was dead. Never saw her again after that day. Not until she was in a casket.” He ran his hand over the back of his neck. “Which was harder than I thought it was going to be.”

Becca knew why—knew it to her core. “Because she was all you had left.” Facing death, she had been feeling very alone, but in life, she had always felt loved. There had always been lots of unconditional love. Sterling didn’t have that in his life.

“Yeah,” he said softly, his gaze settling on the floor a minute. “Hadn’t seen her in years, but knowing she was gone, it rattled me. But it was the right decision going into the army. It was where I belonged. Now I belong with the Renegades, trying to make the army and this country what it once was. Safe and free. The best place on earth.” He tilted his head, studying her. “I’ve told you my deep, dark secret. Your turn to talk.”

She sipped her wine. “What do you want to know?”

“When did you plan to tell your mother about your cancer?”

Sideswiped by that question, her chest tightened. Why she hadn’t seen that one coming, she didn’t know. The answer weighed as heavy on her tongue as her worry about her mother. But he’d been honest with her; he’d opened up about a part of his life she was certain he didn’t talk about. He was right. It was her turn.

“Never,” she said, and laughed without humor.

His brow arched. “And now?”

She set the wine on the side of the tub. “What do I tell her now? I have no idea.”

“You mean you have an excuse to avoid that conversation, and you’re taking it.”

She hugged her knees tighter and rested her chin on top of them. “Now who’s digging around in whose head?”

“I don’t have to dig around in your head to know that,” he said. “I can see it in your eyes. You should call her.”

“And say what?” she asked. “Hey Mom, I was dying of cancer, but good news, now that I’m drinking alien DNA, I might live to become an evil monster like the source of that DNA. Thought I might say hi before that happened.”

“You’re not—”

She raised a dripping wet hand stop sign fashion. “Instead of you telling me what I want to hear—Becca, you’re not going to die, or Becca, you’re not going to turn into a monster—why don’t you stop teasing me with the prospect of food. Let me get out of here, and let’s heat up that Chinese food.”

He pushed off the seat and squatted down in front of her. “Becca,” he said roughly. “Turn around, and let me see your neck.”

She sucked in a breath, knowing what he was looking for—the Lifebond mark that could save her life. A mixture of hope and dread filled her. She wanted life, but she didn’t want pity or obligation from him.