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6

GENERAL AVIATION SECTION, RONALD REAGAN AIRPORT

U ntil The Portland International airport re-opened this had to be done on the ground.

Pity.

Still, it beat the interrogations of his past. Borodin had interrogated men in caves and dank prisons that smelled of fear and sweat and blood. An Airbus had those beat, hands down. It was warm and comfortable and they had food and excellent wine on hand.

Not for Goodkind, of course. Goodkind slipped in and out of consciousness even after Borodin had given him an injection of adrenaline. He’d passed out for the fifth time. And he hadn’t talked yet.

Borodin slapped Goodkind across the face, hard, taking pleasure in Goodkind’s appearance. In service, Goodkind would have had the arrogance of being a public servant in one of the US government’s elite services. A successful member of the most powerful government in the history of the world. There was an inbuilt status to that, the kind of pride that was both earned and conferred.

This man was defeated, no longer looking like he belonged to his country’s nomenklatura . His face was sagging from pain, stress, fatigue.

Borodin needed to keep him alive until he found Darin’s daughter, so of all the many and varied tricks he’d learned in the KGB—tricks that would make the most hardened prisoners, men who’d survived the Gulag, talk—he used only the mildest. Intimidation, sleep, food and water deprivation. And not too much of that, either, because he didn’t want Goodkind to die on him before his usefulness was over.

Once Felicity Ward—Darinova— was in their hands and Borodin had what he needed, Goodkind could be dispatched quickly with a bullet to the back of the head.

Borodin did not have the pain sickness some of the agents in the KGB had had. True, they had all been adept at extracting information. Many an Afghan insurgent had talked after gut wrenching torture sessions and though many said torture didn’t work, in Borodin’s experience it actually did. Everyone broke eventually under torture.

The torturers included.

Because whatever it was that was in them that could inflict pain for hours, for days and do it over and over again was like a loose cog in a machine that eventually broke the machine itself.

Borodin wasn’t like that. He wanted to extract the information from the FBI agent like you extract oil from the ground, then eliminate him neatly, cleanly.

Goodkind’s swollen eyes opened briefly and he gave a brief laugh. “She escaped your guy, huh? She’s really smart. Too smart for you.”

His face was messed up. At the start, Borodin had been certain that low level rough tactics would work. After all, this was a retired man, basically a bureaucrat all his life. He was flabby, as many Americans were. The good life takes its toll. Borodin had slapped him around a little, dispassionately, to shake some information loose and found to his surprise that the old man was made of steel under the flab.

“We’ll see how smart she is,” Borodin told Goodkind. “Portland is a small city. My man is good. He’ll find her. You can be sure of that.”

They’d had this discussion before. Goodkind shrugged.

Borodin crossed his legs and swung one foot. A very well shod foot. He’d had them made in Florence in a small shop just off the Ponte Vecchio. Beautiful and stylish. The West did have its uses. He would never have found a cobbler like Renzi anywhere in Russia. He extracted sharp shears from the briefcast at his feet, showed them to Goodkind.

“Theoretically speaking, if I were to cut off a few fingers, would you tell me who Darinova was meeting in Portland?”

“Sorry.” Goodkind bared his teeth again. “I’d like to think that I could resist the pain, and maybe I could, who knows? But the truth is that I have no idea who she could be meeting. I had no idea she was going to Portland. I had no idea she was even travelling. Felicity rarely travels. She mostly stays in her house. I honestly know very little about her life. So if you cut my fingers off—” he gave an apologetic smile, “it would be wasted effort.”

“Pity.” Borodin was annoyed. “Her house was singularly void of any information at all. It was also void of most objects people might consider necessary to a home. She has the basics—bed, couch, kitchen, desk. Very few clothes for such a beautiful young girl. Mainly electronics and a collection of computers and tablets. One computer appeared to be missing. If she made reservations online it was on the computer she travelled with.” Goodkind made a grimace. “What?”

Goodkind was actually smiling. “Even if you had her computer right here, trust me when I say it wouldn’t tell you anything she didn’t want you to know.”

Borodin drummed his hand on the table. Stalemate.

His cell buzzed with an incoming message. He read it and tried to keep his face impassive. But this was a potential breakthrough.

He looked up from his cell into Goodkind’s bloodied but unbroken face. “So, Mr. Goodkind. I understand you have a granddaughter you are very fond of. Kay. Dr. Kay Hudson. And I know where she lives.”

He smiled as the blood drained from Goodkind’s face. Everyone has a weak spot and Borodin had found Goodkind’s.

Three pairs of eyes were staring at her. Blue, dark brown, light brown.

It was time. She’d been keeping secrets all her life. There’d been secrets in her life since before she was born, even. She’d had to switch identities in the womb. All those secrets, all those years. They felt like boulders weighing her down. Sometimes Felicity felt like she was at the bottom of a deep well and only knew the world through the opening way up high, unreachable, untouchable.

Lately, she’d felt like she was choking, only it wasn’t physiological, it was psychological. The choking sensation came upon her more and more often, like something heavy was on her chest, pressing in. It was her isolation and loneliness, of course. She was a homebody by nature but it was turning into agoraphobia. Talking to people was becoming harder and harder, while at the same time she craved human contact, like a prisoner craves sunlight.

She had three people here who wanted to communicate with her. Well, maybe not Jacko. At times he seemed on the verge of hostile, but that was because he suspected her of endangering Lauren. It didn’t make her angry, it endeared him to her. In her world, affection, loyalty, devotion were rare things. Lauren was lucky.

None of the three showed any signs of impatience as she worked through this in her head. Felicity was really good at working through problems in her head. She liked it and she trusted herself. But this time it wasn’t just her head that was involved, it was her heart. And she had a lot less experience trusting her heart.

But you had to start somewhere and these three people quivering to help her seemed to be a good place.

Or not.

How to know?

The man after her might not have anything to do with her past and her family’s past. But if her father was involved, there was no one she could turn to. The Marshal’s office had officially given her one last identity and turned her loose. She no longer had a case officer. The only person in that world that knew of her past couldn’t help. Al Goodkind was old and not well. He’d retired to his country house in Virginia and tended roses and drank bourbon.

Maybe she had her new team right in front of her. And maybe not.

This was horrible. She was tearing herself apart. This had to stop, right now.

“Metal,” she said, turning to him, putting a hand on his powerful forearm. Warmth, strength. Electricity. His light brown eyes seemed to glow.

“Yeah.”

“Can you bring me my computer backpack?”

“Sure.” In a few seconds he was back, placing her backpack on her lap.

Felicity sat still for a moment, fingers stroking the straps. The backpack was gray but she could see where her blood had stained it. She should wash it.

Stalling. She was stalling.

With a sigh, Felicity unzipped the top, took out her specially designed laptop, then dug down deep, ripping open a hidden pocket covered with a flap that had a Velcro closure. The pocket was lined with Kevlar and didn’t show anything on airport-quality metal detectors. It would show up at the FBI and NSA and CIA metal detectors, but for flying she was safe.

She scrabbled with her fingers for a moment. Ah, there it was.

Right after her parents died, she’d kept it close in a small pouch under her clothes. Her last connection with her parents. But she didn’t wear it any more. She just always kept it with her. If she lost it, she’d lose a part of herself.

Her father had said to keep it with her, always.

The pouch was made of very soft suede. She pulled it out, placed it on the table between her two outstretched hands, palms down. All three of them looked at the pouch, at her, back to the pouch.

She blew out a breath. Point of no return. Her mother had had a saying when taking a decision. Either it will turn out really really well or really really badly.

Time to find out.

Knowing all eyes were on her, knowing those eyes were friendly, she opened the string closure and gently tipped the contents of the pouch on the table.

A large gold medallion.

She nodded at Sean, waved a finger at it. “Go ahead.”

He picked it up gently in his big hand, examined it. A pure gold medallion, measuring almost three inches across. It nearly covered the palm of her hand but looked tiny in Metal’s huge one. On one side a bearded man in profile. On the other, a goddess emerging from the clouds. Around the rim the words Inventis vitam juvat excoluisse per artes.

They improved life on earth by their art.

Felicity recognized the exact moment when Metal understood what he was looking at. His expression didn’t change, but his features tightened.

“This is a Nobel Prize medallion,” Metal said.

She nodded. “For physics. The 1989 Nobel Prize for Physics was awarded to Nikolai Darin. My father. At the time, a citizen of the Soviet Union.”

“A Nobel. He must have been really smart,” Metal said, and she nodded. Yes. Her father had been a sad man for as long as she could remember but he had been very, very smart.

“Your dad was a defector?” Jacko asked. The way he said it made her bristle a little.

“Yes.” She gave him a hard look. “He defected from the Soviet Union, a dictatorship at the time. Actually, it still is, though it’s called Russia now.”

Metal frowned slightly. “I remember—I was only a kid at the time, but didn’t he die right after? I remember thinking what a bummer to die just after receiving the Nobel.”

“No,” she said. “He defected. He had the KGB following his every footstep but he managed to contact the CIA head of station in Stockholm and they got him out. The CIA faked his death and they escaped, my father and my mother.”

Silence.

“Wow,” Lauren finally said softly.

“Are your parents still alive?” Jacko asked, eyes narrowed. “Is this about them?” Lauren jabbed him in the side with an elbow, but he just looked at her then back at Felicity. “Are you caught up in some Cold War thing?”

“I don’t know,” Felicity answered truthfully. “I’ve thought about it, but I don’t see how. The Russians at the time were satisfied that my parents died. Then they—” Her voice caught. She waited a minute to steady it. “They really did die in a car accident but twenty years later, in 2009. Whoa.” She wiped the moisture from her eyes. “Sorry.”

“You’re entitled.” Metal’s deep voice was very gentle. “That’s quite a story. I imagine after they defected they were relocated by the Marshal’s Office, given new identities.”

She nodded. “Aleksandr and Anna Valk. My parents’ English was never really good, certainly they couldn’t pass as native speakers. So they were relocated as Estonians. This was the period in which the former peoples of the Soviet Empire were starting to rebel. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania. Ukraine. There were lots of dissidents emigrating from the countries of the former Empire. My father worked as an engineer at a factory near Chicago but he disappeared for weeks at a time.”

“Being debriefed, probably,” Metal said.

“I suppose so. We never really talked about it. My…entire childhood, we never talked about big things. We never talked about the past and certainly not about the future. My mother spoke only Russian to me and I learned to read Russian before I learned to read English. I was twelve when they told me the truth. Soviet Russia was only a vague concept to me, pure history. I guess they figured I was old enough to keep secrets. There were these huge black holes in our lives. Like an astrophysicist I had to try to figure out things from the size and shape of the black holes. My parents told me very little, except for the story of their escape the night my father received the Nobel.”

“What kind of physicist was he?” Jacko asked.

“Nuclear,” she answered and a deep silence filled the room. Metal and Jacko exchanged glances.

“Well, that’s … interesting,” Metal said finally. “So we have nuclear weapons here in the mix.”

“This was a generation ago. I don’t know what bearing it could have on what’s happening now.”

“Tell me about the names,” Lauren said suddenly. “How you have so many names.”

“Actually,” Metal said, “I’d rather talk about nukes.”

“Yeah,” Jacko growled.

“We’re hard wired to respond to nuclear threats,” Metal added apologetically.

“Names first,” Lauren said, her tone so decisive the guys looked at each other and shrugged. “How you ended up having lots of names.”

“Okay. Names.” She blew out a breath. “The name on my birth certificate was Katrin. Katrin Valk. Estonian for Katherine. I think someone simply went to an encyclopedia and looked up Estonian names. My parents had no say in naming me. They were simply presented with it. My mother hated it. But then she hated more or less everything about her new life. We were in a small town about 50 miles from Chicago and the Marshal’s Office discouraged trips. So my mother, who was a biochemist and a highly cultivated woman, was forced to stay in a small town and she wasn’t allowed to work. They said it was bad enough my father insisted on having a job. My mother never called me Katrin, not once. She called me Alina, after her sister. I was in first grade when I discovered I was actually named Katrin because when the teacher did roll call I didn’t answer to Katrin. And my English was very shaky. It was—a lesson.”

God. Coming home in tears because she’d fought the teacher on the issue of her name and she’d done it in a language she didn’t speak well. And in the end she was wrong. She’d felt frustrated and ashamed and angry.

Her father listened to her telling the story, gulping with sobs, and retired to his study. Her mother was just angry and told her that she had to use Katrin in school. But never in the home.

“So,” she said with a sigh. “That was Katrin. When I was twelve something happened. I never understood exactly what and of course no one talked to me. With hindsight I realize that someone in the Marshal’s Office, or the FBI, because they followed my father’s case closely too, thought that someone had been leaking information. That there was a mole in the system. We were uprooted in the middle of the night, transferred to a small town in Iowa and given new names. So I became Emma. Emma Lukas. We became Lithuanian. My mother hated Iowa, too.”

Lauren was listening wide-eyed. “How many more to go?”

“Names?”

Lauren nodded. “My mom had a friend who had eight names, seven marriages. Are you going to break that record without the fun of marriage and divorce?”

“Nope. Just one more name.”

“Piker,” Lauren smiled and Felicity smiled back. “So we’re now at Emma Lukas.”

Felicity nodded. “Emma didn’t last long. After my parents died, the Marshal’s Office contacted me. I was an adult and no longer under their protection in any way. But this old Marshal, together with another old FBI agent, got together to give me a going away gift. A new identity, birth certificate, passport, the works. And this time I got to choose my name. First name. They’d already chosen the last name. Ward.”

“So you chose Felicity.”

She nodded. “I was ready to apply to MIT. I’d been using Felicity as my internet handle for a few years. I probably shouldn’t have chosen Felicity as my name but I love Felicity Smoak and I wanted a name that meant something to me. So they created Felicity Ward from the ground up. I had a straight A average except for a journalism class my sophomore year. I was acting out and got a C. They wiped the C out and gave me a perfect score.”

“Whoa,” Lauren said. “that’s quite a story.”

“Okay. That’s it with the names,” Metal said. “Now the nukes.”

“I can’t imagine that we’re talking any kind of nuclear threat.” Felicity was sad and tired. The sky outside the window was turning dark but there was still enough light to see the snow falling.

All of this needed to come out, but it was so wrenching. “My father was a scientist. I don’t know much about what he did back in Russia but he was a good man. I think he worked in the field of energy, nuclear reactors. But I’m not certain. He never ever talked about his work, certainly not his work in Soviet Russia. He worked in a city called Chelyabinsk.”

Metal came to attention like a dog coming to a point. “Chelyabinsk. A Naukograd. A science city. Cities that were closed off to the outside world because they worked on top secret stuff. They worked on all kinds of weapons in those cities, bioweapons, chemical weapons, nukes.”

“They also did basic research,” Felicity said stiffly. “That was what my father got the Nobel for—uncovering the structure of neutrinos in magnetic fields.”

“So why did he defect?” Jacko asked. His tone was aggressive and though Felicity couldn’t blame him, she felt worn out. Yes, her father had defected, had betrayed his country. But the country had been a dictatorship and in any case, the country he betrayed was no more, hadn’t been a country for a generation.

These were battles that had been fought before she was born. The Cold War, hostility between the United States and the Soviet Union, had cost her family dearly. Her father had uprooted himself and her mother from what her mother said had been a comfortable existence in search of some ideal he never found. Her mother had spent the rest of her life embittered at the move, unable to settle in the United States, living through a daughter she steeped in Russian culture and literature as compensation.

Felicity had been a battleground from the moment she’d been born. A child of divided loyalties, of a decision whose effects were felt a generation later, still painful, like a sword to the heart. The only answer was—had always been—to lie low, curve in on herself like a small animal in a forest of predators.

She was so freaking tired . Tired of the drama of her parent’s defection, tired of switching identities every few years, tired of dark secrets she couldn’t understand and now never would swirling around her head. Those dark secrets had affected every second of her childhood and now were spilling over into her adult life, like a curse she couldn’t shake. She’d spend the rest of her life in its shadow, keeping secrets that weren’t hers.

Her eyes closed under the weight of them.

Metal rapped his knuckles on the table, hard, and she started.

“Okay,” he said standing up. “I’m the medic here and my patient has had enough. She’s been cut, she’s bled, she’s had stitches. We’ll go over this when she’s rested, and we’ll consult with Bud. Bud’s our Portland PD guy. Good guy, really smart.” This to her.

“No,” she said. “I’m fine.” But she didn’t sound convincing, even to her own ears.

Jacko was up, cupping Lauren’s elbow. Lauren walked around the table, bent to hug her. “I brought you some clothes in the carryon, and some other stuff. You should have everything you need. It’s going to be okay,” she whispered. “Metal and Jacko are good at this stuff. So’s the company they work for. And Bud Morrison will definitely help. You’ve got some amazing people on your side. You’re safe.”

Everyone kept saying that. Felicity didn’t want to rain on anyone’s parade but she couldn’t see how anyone could say she was safe. Except for right this instant, of course. She was safe right now .

She’d seen her attacker and though he’d been young and fit, he wasn’t anything like Metal, who all but had don’t mess with me tattooed on his forehead and whose muscles had muscles. As a former SEAL, he’d know weaponry and martial arts and stuff. God knows she’d played Call of Duty enough. If he’d been the one who wanted to kidnap her no way would she have escaped. It just wouldn’t have been possible.

Right now, right this minute, even weak as she was, with Metal in the room and Jacko, too, she was as safe as safe could be. It would take an earthquake to hurt her and she had no doubt that Metal would throw himself over her to protect her.

So maybe that should be enough. She was safe. For now. Maybe that’s all it ever would be. Safe. For now.

“Thanks.” Felicity hugged Laurel back, savoring her soft warmth. Absorbing through her skin the affection Laurel felt for her. They’d only just met in meatspace but she was as sure as she could be that they were friends. Like Beast Boy and Cyborg.

Laurel held her by the shoulders, a frown on her pretty face. “You look really tired, honey. We shouldn’t have kept you up talking for so long.”

“Well.” Felicity shrugged. “Considering we were talking about how to find the guy who attacked me and how stop him, I think it was a conversation worth having. And I’m fine. A little tired, as you say, but fine. I got really good medical care.” The corner of Metal’s mouth lifted.

Lauren’s frown deepened. “Listen. I’m really sorry but—” She glanced at Jacko. “I have an out of town appointment tomorrow morning I can’t put off. This media mogul who is building a brand new house…mansion… palace actually. He wants me to take sketches of the house in various stages of construction and then I’ll make a series of watercolors. I had a sketching session scheduled for tomorrow morning. The place is on the south slope of Mount Hood. It’s near Timberline Lodge and Jacko and I made reservations to spend the night. I can cancel if you want?—”

“Oh God no!” The words escaped her mouth without even thinking them. Lauren had been on the run for two years. She’d nearly been killed a couple of weeks ago and Jacko had been shot. They needed—they deserved—a little getaway. “I couldn’t bear the thought of you cancelling your stay. Metal is taking very good care of me and besides, I think I’m going to sleep for, like, two solid days.”

“After she’s rested, she’s going to have to look at a lot of footage and nobody else can do it for her.” Metal’s deep voice chimed in. “Airport, hotel. If she finds the guy in the footage it’ll go to facial recognition databases. That’s all stuff she has to do and the computer systems have to do. Come over when you get back from Timberline.” He glanced at her, his gaze like a sudden wash of heat, then focused again on Lauren. “She’ll feel better by the time you guys get back. Promise.”

Lauren nodded. “Yeah, okay.” She rubbed her cheek against Felicity’s. “You’ll be fine here,” she whispered.

Felicity squeezed her hand. She would. She felt utterly safe with Metal. Though she felt something else too, something so new and scary she wasn’t sure she welcomed it.

Patting Lauren’s hand, she smiled up at her. “I’ll be fine. I told you. Right now I feel like sleeping for a week.”

Metal’s voice was hard. “Felicity is going to sleep and eat and do nothing else for the foreseeable future. Except check footage when we get it.”

“Sounds like a plan,” she sighed. Some switch somewhere had flipped and she was exhausted. The restorative effects of sleep and good food had worn off. She had to fight to keep from laying her head down on the table and falling asleep again.

“Okay.” Jacko clapped his hands and stood, taking Lauren’s elbow in what looked like an affectionate but unbreakable grip. He looked down at her and Felicity could so easily see what he was feeling. He probably imagined himself a tough guy who didn’t show emotions but she had grown up with Russians who had a thousand emotions a day. He wasn’t hard to read at all. He liked her but he loved Lauren. So to the extent that Lauren cared for her, he was okay with everything. But he was not okay with anything violent touching Lauren.

Man, Felicity was down with that. She didn’t want anything to touch Lauren either. Lauren had had enough violence for ten lifetimes.

Metal and Jacko had had violence in their lives, too, but every line of their bodies showed that they were perfectly equipped to deal with it.

“Take care,” Lauren said. Jacko held her coat up for her and she and Jacko left.

It was late afternoon and the weather was scary bad. The sky was already dark, swollen with bruised-looking clouds. When Lauren opened the door to leave, Felicity saw huge icy snowflakes blown diagonally and a gust of cold air blew in. There were several inches of snow on the ground.

That was fine. Snow was in her DNA. God knew how many Darin ancestors had lived through seven-month winters. Snowstorms didn’t scare her. When the weather reports indicated snow and cold coming to Vermont, she just planned to spend even more days in the house than normal.

Thinking about it now, though, she realized that she never acknowledged the sadness that had laced through her at the thought of spending days and days on her own without hearing a human voice that didn’t come through a screen.

Now? Now she had Metal, who was going to look after her. She could be weak and it wouldn’t matter.

“To bed with you.” It was as if he was reading her mind. “Lauren brought you some stuff from her house. A winter coat and yoga pants and sweaters and socks and underwear and stuff. You’re a little taller than she is but you both have more or less the same build. So you’ll have some stuff to put on when you wake up.”

He looked her up and down thoroughly. Usually Felicity didn’t like scrutiny. For as long as she could remember, her family had avoided any kind of attention. But this didn’t feel like scrutiny, it felt like…appreciation. Male appreciation.

And it felt delicious.

She shivered and that gleam in his eye was instantly replaced by concern. “You’re cold. I’ll turn the heat up. In the meantime let’s get you back to bed with some hot tea.”

Without even questioning it, Metal bent and picked her up, as if she had lost the use of her legs. Maybe she had. Between feeling weak because she’d been stabbed and feeling weak every time Metal got close, she didn’t trust herself to walk back into the bedroom.

There was no thought involved, she simply reached up and wound her arms around his neck as he picked her up and carried her through the living room to the bedroom. Time slowed to a crawl.

She was aware of every single thing, with a shocking intensity. Mostly, she lived inside her own head. She could finish a meal and not realize what she’d just eaten, at any given moment she wouldn’t remember how she was dressed, she could spend entire days without noticing the time going by.

Now everything was hyper intense, each object glowing, a heaviness to the air, every second imprinted in her brain.

Just as when he carried her into the kitchen, Felicity was aware of the play of Metal’s muscles against her arms and her side as he walked easily into the bedroom. Everything was saturated with color, deeper and richer. With her nose so close to his neck, she could smell him. Nothing overt like a cologne, more like soap and man and something delicious that was probably sex. She nearly sighed at the thought.

Though she was weak and wounded, though she’d only just met him, Felicity recognized—more from reading novels than actual personal experience—that she was wildly attracted to this man. It didn’t have any known rational reason behind it, it just was. He wasn’t in any way good looking. His features were rough, his nose was crooked, his skin was weatherbeaten, making him look a little older than he probably was.

Her hormones didn’t care.

Because the entire outsize package was pure sex. He hadn’t even really done anything, either, other than a few looks that could be interpreted as male interest.

She knew she wasn’t ugly and she’d had more than her share of male interest. It was rarely reciprocated. Mainly she dated nerds and had gone to bed with a few in entirely unmemorable encounters lasting, on average, about five minutes, start to end. As a matter of fact, overt male stares made her uncomfortable and was one of the reasons she mainly just stayed home.

But, wow. This time she was interested. Her entire body had turned into an erogenous zone so that yes, her womb and her breasts felt warm and heavy—right out of the romance novel playbook—but she also tingled in the most unlikely places. The insides of her arms, for example. Where they touched Metal’s shoulder muscles. Boy, were they turned on. The backs of her knees held in the crook of his elbows, they were sitting up and taking notice too.

Her nose twitched with the desire to rub against the skin of his neck and just inhale.

Being sliced open had messed with her. Her attacker had somehow sliced her heart open too because feelings and sensations she’d never had before were pouring in.

This was crazy, to feel so intensely for a man she didn’t know, and knew nothing about except for the fact that he was the friend of her friend’s friend. And was brave. And amazingly sexy.

Crazy.

They reached the bedroom and Metal put her down on her feet, keeping one big arm around her. The only light inside the bedroom was a dim lamp on the Shaker dresser. Metal was visible more in outline than anything else, tall, broadshouldered, his face in shadow.

Oh god, in letting her slide down she’d brushed against the slabs of his chest and abs and…a definite bulge. He was paying no attention to his own body as he pulled down the covers and eased her under them, pulling the covers back up over her.

He ran the back of a long finger down her face. “I’m going to make you some tea and after that I want you to rest.”

Felicity nodded, unsure how to respond.

She had no experience being looked after. Zero. Her mother had been an interesting and intellectually gifted woman with no motherly instincts at all. Felicity couldn’t remember the last time someone had looked after her, fussed over her. The last time someone has said you should rest. There were no responses in her toolkit other than staying very still. Feeling his finger against her skin, watching him watching her.

Ice suddenly beat against the window pane and she gave a little start. She usually disappeared when working at the computer, and she wasn’t used to being so focused on someone else that she forgot the outside world

Metal’s face didn’t give her any clue as to what he was thinking. Was she this chore he’d been landed with? Here, take care of Lauren’s friend because you know medicine and can change dressings and besides, where else can she go?

Did he mind having her invade his space, take up his time?

God. Did he have a girlfriend he was going to have to explain things to? Hey honey, listen. Sorry, there’s this girl in my bed. No, it’s not what you think. She landed on Lauren’s doorstep wounded with someone after her. Well, what could I do? You tell me.

All those thoughts were buzzing around in her head like angry bees. Metal leaned down and kissed her cheek and all the buzzing stilled and a lazy warmth spread through her, completely void of thought.

It was pure instinct. If she’ d thought it through she would never have done it, never. She didn’t overthink it the way she did everytyhing. She didn’t think at all.

His cheek was warm, with a tiny bite of bristliness that was exciting. With his face in darkness, backlit by the lamp, she could see faint blond stubble on his cheeks as he came closer to her. She just closed her eyes and moved instinctively.

Her hand lifted, curled around his strong neck as she felt his warm lips against her cheek. She sighed and her fingers tightened.

Metal had planted a hand on either side of her so she was caged in by him, but she didn’t feel trapped. Oh no. When Metal pulled back, narrow eyed, frowning, she tightened her fingers again. Come to me . She might as well have spoken the words out loud.

Because though his face tightened and he wasn’t smiling, something else was going on. The skin above his cheekbones was flushed, his nostrils widened as if he had to take in more air than usual. The skin around his eyes crinkled.

She’d led what most people would consider a reclusive life but even she could recognize male arousal. She was looking right at it. She’d read about it in books of course but this was the real deal and didn’t need labelling. And this wasn’t nerdy arousal, either, where the guy’s voice rose an octave and his hands shook.

No, this was a man’s man and he wanted her.

“Felicity?” His voice was guttural, rough. Not tender. She responded to his voice and his look with a flood of heat running through her body.

She turned her head just as he turned his and oh. Oh . One of his hands lifted from the mattress and cupped the back of her head. His mouth settled on hers, warm, chin slightly bristly, electric. Just as she got used to the feeling of his mouth on hers, he opened his mouth and slanted his head and kissed her deeply. Her hands shot to his wrist to hold on as he explored her mouth. Every time his tongue met hers heat shot through her and her womb contracted. She gasped in his mouth and he lifted his head.

He wasn’t smiling. His face was tight with tension as he stared at her, light brown eyes glowing with heat and light.

Felicity’s heart was pounding so hard she was sure he could see it if he lowered his gaze. Instead his golden eyes held hers. “You okay?”

Was she okay? It was really hard to tell. Her stitches hurt a little. Her breasts felt supersensitive, a little bomb had gone off between her legs. Her lips felt swollen. All in all…

“Hm. Yeah.”

And then he smiled and oh god, he shouldn’t do that. Not when her emotions were all over the place, it wasn’t fair. Because though the smile didn’t make him handsome it sure made him sexy in a me Tarzan you Jane sort of way.

His hand followed her head down to the pillow and then he touched the tip of a finger to the tip of her nose. “Tea,” he announced.

What? Oh yeah. She nodded. “Tea. Definitely.”