Chapter Five

Something was wrong. Every cell in Aurelia’s brain felt like it was lighting up, the tips of her fingers and toes all curling.

She’d been psychically linked to others before, of course, but never like this. Never to someone who needed so much from her or who clung so tightly, never in a way that cut so sharply into her very tissues. The connection rippled, the depth of it opening up parts of herself she’d never dared to expose, and yet they revealed themselves eagerly. It made every inch of her skin feel warm. Needy. Quenched by the touch of his.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

“Faster.”

She quickened her pace and reached out with her senses. There were no sounds of pursuit, no thoughts following them from the house. She looked over her shoulder to find the path behind them clear.

Jinx didn’t slow at all. His hand both gentle and firm around hers, he tugged her forward and out into the light, and she struggled to match his pace, all while still trying to figure out what was happening with their link. Scanning the frayed edges of his mind, she scoured his brain for any sign that her efforts to isolate him from his partners were failing. There were definitely loose neurons firing into oblivion, and his hand twitched where it wrapped around hers. It had been such a patched-up job, the way she’d pulled him free. She’d need to fix it soon if he was going to survive. If she was going to survive keeping him together.

It was a dangerous business, trying to separate a Three. The connections between the members ran so deep, and Jinx’s mind in particular had already suffered so much damage as the link had degraded. He wouldn’t have been able to recover if she’d just set him loose; the second she’d tried, he’d foundered, sinking to the earth with his brain giving off sparks. He’d reached out through the darkness for anything to grab onto. And she’d let him grab onto her. She’d let him inside her, more intimately than if they’d made love.

Just beyond the tree line, he pulled her off the dirt road and into the brush. An image of a transport materialized in her thoughts, and sure enough, as they pushed through the leaves, she saw the glint of metal, a stray beam of sunlight reflecting off glass. She tensed in anticipation of his letting go of her hand, but if anything he just gripped onto her more tightly. He led her around to the passenger’s side, still holding on to her as he flung the door open.

For a moment, they stood there in the shadow of the car, as if on a precipice. Shadowy images of his Three flashed through her mind. The Three he would leave behind. His uncertainty was a heavy weight in her mind as he seemed to brace himself to step off and into the unknown.

She clenched her hand into a fist at the prickly sensation of his anxiety. He wasn’t the only one taking a leap here. She was getting into this car with a stranger—one who should be an enemy. After refusing to trust anyone for so long, it was terrifying.

Something warm dulled the edges of her fear, and she looked up into his eyes. His concern blanketed her at the same time that his silent questions wrinkled its fabric.

She tilted her head up and squared her jaw. “It’ll be all right.”

God, she hoped it would.

At her assurance, he searched her eyes, then nodded. He placed his hands on her hips and lifted her, set her down inside the seat before turning as if to walk away.

He didn’t want to, though. She could feel it.

She reached out and grabbed onto his shirt, a sudden surge of panic flaring inside her at the idea of not touching him. Her mind and skin were still crying out for contact, and as he let himself be yanked back toward her, she surprised herself by clutching him close, throwing her arms around his neck.

In the next instant, their mouths crashed together, a hot culmination of everything she’d been longing for the night before and everything she needed right now. With the perfect understanding between them, she didn’t fight it. Instead, she drowned, opening to him and sucking at his bottom lip, tasting the inside of his mouth and letting his tongue play against hers.

She didn’t know if it was the link or if it was just him, but as she pressed herself against his body, her nerves caught fire, her breasts tight and the space between her legs aching. Kissing had never been like this before.

His fist slammed into the metal frame above her head. A hundred impressions flooded her mind, pleasure and a gasping need he couldn’t contain. Nothing had ever been like this for him before.

She pulled her head back and put her hands on either side of his face. For a long moment, she searched his eyes, struggling to process the depth of emotion he was pushing across their link.

“I can’t. I don’t know. I want…”

And then there were images of the broken bodies of his partners. Their names. Curse. Charm.

They were still inside. Probably regrouping.

God, how had she let herself get so distracted?

“You’re right,” she said, gasping. “I know. I know. Go.”

He didn’t, though. He leaned in and pressed his lips once more to hers, showing her a wave of gratitude too deep for her to understand. Of trust. When he pulled away, it was abrupt and left her reeling. The door slammed shut, and seconds later, the one on the other side of the transport opened. He folded his big frame into the seat, then pressed his palm to the control panel in the center of the console. The engine of the vehicle roared to life.

He strapped himself in, wrapped one hand around the steering wheel at the same time he reached over with the other and grasped the back of her neck. The contact soothed all the frayed edges inside of her.

And then they were off.

He drove like a maniac through the brush and onto the narrow dirt path. The sight of branches whipping out at them brought a wave of nausea and flashbacks from the night before. A sensation of running through trees, wet and bleeding. As the first wave of adrenaline from their escape abated, the ache in her shoulder flared. She winced, lifting the arm gingerly, and in her periphery, Jinx frowned.

“You need a doctor.”

She’d heard his voice so rarely, and always when he was throwing it around for his partners’ benefit. Hearing it here in this close space, as tense as it was, it sounded musical and intimate. She wanted to hear more.

She scanned his form, grimacing at the bruise blooming across his temple before taking in the blood and scrapes on his knuckles where they gripped the steering wheel. “So do you.”

His words were tight and clipped. “I’m fine.”

But even as he spoke, a menacing tickle of electrical noise skimmed across the surface of their connection. Things were unstable inside him, and though he was trying to keep it from her, he couldn’t contain the aftereffects of being torn from his Three the way he had.

He needed more than a doctor. He needed Isabel’s sure surgeon’s hands. He needed Stan.

Aurelia bit back the dizziness swirling through her head again at the thought of her research partner, soaked in blood and laid out beside the open door of their transport. She wished so badly that he were here. While she’d led the way with the more theoretical parts of their work, Stan had always been the better clinician, steadier with his hands and more delicate with his manipulations of the connections between neurons and electrodes. He would know what to do—how to sever Jinx from his Three. And from her.

There was a low rumble from beside her. She looked over to see Jinx staring straight ahead, jaw tense, arms locked. “Who is he?”

She cursed. It took time to settle into a connection like this, and she wasn’t guarding her thoughts closely enough. “My research partner. Stan.”

Jinx’s body tensed further. “Is he…”

A rush of heat surged through her spine and lingered in her sex as flashes of how Jinx had kissed her warmed her skin. Still, it took her a second to comprehend what he was asking—if there was someone else she owed those kisses to. If Stan was that someone to her.

“No.” She turned away and gazed out the window. “And even if he was…” She ground her teeth together and said a silent, guarded prayer inside her head. “He’s dead.”

A hush fell over them, made deeper when they drove off the dirt road and onto smooth asphalt. No longer bumping with the uneven ground, the car ceased its trembling even as it accelerated.

Jinx finally broke the uneasy quietude. “I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.”

Stan had been one of the only people she’d ever trusted, and even that had been hard-won over a period of years and years of slow advances. The only other people were Isabel and…she shuddered. Peter.

Unwilling to go anywhere near that, especially while her mind was not her own, she refocused on the road in front of them, physically and metaphorically. Watching the pavement disappear beneath them, she tried to sort out a plan.

“How long until your partners catch up with us?” she asked.

“I can’t hear them.” The way he said it, the words sounded hollow, his disconcertedness bleeding across the wires.

She reached out with as much comfort as she could, touching his arm with her fingertips and stroking the tattered edges of his mind with her thoughts. “I know you can’t. But how long do you think we have?”

His frown deepened. “Maybe an hour for them to regroup. Maybe more.” His voice faltered. “I hurt Charm. Bad.”

“The female?”

He nodded. “Curse didn’t look good either.”

The depth of his conflict bled into his thoughts and across the tendrils of their link. He’d wanted so badly to be free of them, had begged her to set him loose in those frantic, terrifying moments. But then he’d turned so violent on them.

All the while, he’d been screaming at them for hurting her. He’d done so much of it to protect her. But remorse was setting in, hard.

“They’ll be all right.”

He let out a shaky exhale before seeming to regain control. “They’ll track the transport. They don’t have another one, so it’ll take them time to catch up once they do. I’m scrambling our signal, but we’ll still need to change vehicles.”

“Agreed.”

How were they going to get another one? And once they had it, where would they go?

For a second, she considered trying to contact Isabel, but instantly discarded the idea. It was too dangerous, for everyone.

Taking care to shield her thoughts, she tried to come up with places to retreat to, but every one of them was complicated by Jinx’s presence. No one would trust her, hauling in a stray member of an active Three who she’d cut loose so clumsily. Communication with his partners had been upset, all right, but the others might still have a way to trace him. Might be able to follow him wherever they went, bringing all manner of trouble she didn’t need.

Leading their boss straight to her.

God, she still didn’t even know who Jinx worked for.

Finally, her mind settled on the safe house she and Isabel and Stan had set up outside of town. While she was hesitant to expose its location, she didn’t know what other choice she had. The laboratory setup there was rudimentary, but she’d have most of the equipment she would need to at least try to fix the frayed edges of Jinx’s mind. She could probably tap into her network drive and download the portion of their research they stored online. It wouldn’t be as good as having their original notes, but it might be enough.

Speaking to the glass of the window, she mused aloud, “I wish we could go back to my lab. If I just had all Stan’s notebooks…”

Jinx’s hand tensed where it rested against the back of her neck. “It wouldn’t help if we could.”

Uneasiness filled her. A hint of something he had yet to reveal. Something she didn’t want to believe. “What do you mean?”

But she knew. From the images filtering across the link, she knew. Images of glass neatly shattering, of file boxes being gathered up and loaded. But she was unwilling to believe.

Even though it physically pained her, she pulled away from his touch. The lack of contact crackled through her overburdened nervous system, doubling the weight of his psychic presence in her mind. He shuddered, too. She pushed past her discomfort and his, sitting up straight, her whole body angled toward his.

“What. Do. You. Mean.”

He kept his gaze on the road, his grip on the wheel steady, but his voice was choked, the thoughts edging across their link frantic.

“All your things,” he said, jaw locked. “They’re back at our barracks. We raided your offices last night.”