Sterling Read online

  He saw her. She was sure of it, but then he stumbled. He was falling. Becca screamed, realizing he’d been shot again, and watched as a group of soldiers charged him, praying they were his men, that they would save him. He’d taken those bullets for her. She was supposed to die, not him—she was already dying.

  The injustice, the terror for Sterling, tore through her, and adrenaline launched her into action all over again. She fought against the bulky man holding her—teeth, nails, fists. She was fighting for her life, fighting to get back to Sterling. God, he was going to die. She just knew it. She had to get him help.

  “Fucking bitch,” the man holding her muttered and then flung her across the bed of an eighteen-wheeler that had appeared at the back of her house. She flew across the hard steel floor and hit the wall, gasping, her bones rattling with the impact. Somehow she scrambled to a sitting position just in time to see Sterling’s bleeding, broken body flung across the truck bed toward her, a trail of blood following his body. So much blood… too much blood.

  She scrambled to his side, only to realize the big man was standing over her, as if he’d traveled superspeed, jerking her head back by a large chunk of her hair.

  He produced a vial of clear liquid. “Swallow it.”

  “No!” She tried to shake her head, and he pulled her hair. “No!”

  A gun appeared in his hand, and he pointed it at Sterling’s head. “He won’t survive a bullet in the brain. You decide. Does he live or die?”

  He meant it. She saw it in his eyes. He hated Sterling. He wanted to kill him, if he hadn’t already succeeded. There was too much of Sterling’s blood on the steel floor pooling around his body for him to survive. Too many bullets were buried deep inside him, but she couldn’t—wouldn’t—give up on him.

  “I’ll take it.” She held out her hand and received a gloating smile in return. He disposed of his gun and handed the vial to her, but the grip on her hair tightened mercilessly.

  Becca sucked down the chilly liquid, coughing at a bitter cold sensation that felt more like fire than ICE in her throat, seconds before the burn in her lungs began.

  The man squatted beside her, his big body pressed to her side, his lips to her ear. “My name is Tad, and I’m the man who just cured your cancer and became your drug dealer. That makes me your new sugar daddy.” He held up another vial. “When you start shaking, and you need another hit, we’ll talk about what payment we expect in return. And just so you know, in case you get any ideas about being disloyal to us, if you miss just one dose of your new cure, you die from withdrawal. In other words, we own you.” He motioned to Sterling. “Not him. Not any of his kind.”

  His kind. Becca had no idea what that meant. He let go of her and stood up, glaring down at her with a lusty dark look that made the ICE in her veins downright arctic. When he finally turned away, he was a blur of movement before the steel doors slammed shut, sealing them inside with the same suffocating effect she imagined her own coffin would deliver. Only a small light flickered overhead.

  Her fingers balled in Sterling’s shirt, feeling his wet, thick blood on her skin. Fear and anger collided inside her, exploded from her in a fierce yell. “Who are you people?”

  The only answer was the sound of her heavy breathing. It filled the trailer, bounced off the walls and back at her. Her body tingled, her lungs expanded, and she felt air filtering through them without one hint of pain or discomfort. But she felt no hope, no joy. The cure was a drug-induced facade, and this was a nightmare.

  “Wake up,” she whispered, pressing her hands to Sterling’s body, to his face, the damn blood clinging to her hands. “Wake up! Damn it, Sterling, wake up!” She collapsed over the top of him, pressed her ear to his chest, searching desperately for a heartbeat, and sighing in relief when she found it. Slowly Becca relaxed against him, his soft rhythmic heart calming her even as the truck began to move, the last thing she remembered before blacking out.

  ***

  Sterling came awake abruptly, but he didn’t move, didn’t so much as breathe. Training and instinct kept his lashes securely closed, allowed him to absorb the hard and unforgiving concrete beneath his body. Discreetly, he inhaled, reaching with his enhanced GTECH senses to find the familiar scent he’d hoped to never experience again—Area 51, now Adam’s Zodius City.

  Stickiness clung to his shirt, but remarkably, considering the number of Green Hornets Tad had unloaded in him, his GTECH immune system had kicked into gear, and his body felt nearly healed. He translated that to mean two things—his body would have needed at least twelve hours of sleep, maybe double that to heal. And in order for that to happen, someone had removed the Green Hornets from his wounds and given him an injection of vitamin C to offset the chronic depletion, common to GTECHs, that worsened in the healing process.

  He inhaled deeper, and another softer, sweeter scent touched his lips. “Becca.” He jerked to a sitting position, back against more glass, finding himself alone in some sort of glass cage overlooking a lab, where several white coats worked.

  He dropped his head against the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, willing her to be alive—he’d find her and get the hell out of here.

  A television screen hung from the corner wall flickered to life, and Sterling brought it into focus, only to bolt to his feet at the sight of Tad kneeling over Becca’s limp body, pouring a clearly evident vial of ICE down her throat. Tad turned to the monitor and smiled, running his hands down Becca’s hair, petting her.

  “You sonofabitch!” Sterling roared, every nerve in his body on fire, every pore seething with anger. “I’m going to kill you. I’m going to kill you and enjoy it.”

  Tad came closer to the camera. “I’m sure you can imagine all the things I’m planning to do to her.” The screen went black, and the doors behind him slid open.

  Sterling whirled around, ready to launch himself on the visitor, only to find two wolves snarling at him with the promise of attack. Adam’s wolves. His command of the beasts was well known, his use of them for punishment and entertainment also well known. Defy Adam, even look at him wrong, and you’d end up in an old Roman-style coliseum beneath Area 51. With thousands of Zodius citizens watching, you’d battle the wolves until you were near death. And where there were wolves, there was… Adam.

  Dressed in desert camouflage fatigues, Adam entered the room, leaving the glass wall open behind him. Well over six foot two with a muscular frame and light brown hair, he was his brother’s evil doppelganger, as if the GTECH serum had somehow divided them between good and evil.

  “You want to kill me,” Adam said, assessing Sterling with a smile on his lips.

  “Damn straight I do,” Sterling ground out between gritted teeth.

  “You want to kill me over the woman.”

  “The reasons to kill you are many,” he replied cautiously, certain this conversation was going nowhere good fast. “Should I count them out, or would you rather hear the many ways I’ve fantasized about completing the task?”

  Laughter roared from Adam. “You have balls to stand here in my cage, in my world, and dare to threaten me. I like you, Sterling.” He leaned against the wall, the wolves settling at his feet. “More importantly, my brother likes you, and he will not want to see you dead when we finally reconcile and rule as one.”

  “He’ll die before he joins you.”

  “Sooner or later he will stop fighting what is truth. That I am in him as he is in me,” Adam said, tilting his head to study Sterling. “Did you know your little Rebecca Burns took her first dose of ICE because Tad held a gun to your head? The irony is that the ICE is curing her cancer. A few more doses, and she should be good as new.”

  Sterling went colder than ICE, his emotions shredded by conflicting reactions. The cancer was being cured, but Becca was addicted to ICE. And just like the original serum, no one else could figure out how to replicate ICE, which made Adam her only source of survival until an antidote was found.

  “Of course,” Adam added. “The
re is the risk of death during withdrawal if she discontinues the use of ICE, not to mention the risk her cancer might return. I’m sure you would agree. She shouldn’t take any chances.”

  “You’re a bastard, Adam.”

  “But I’m her bastard hero.”

  Anger coiled inside him, and Sterling lunged forward. The wolves snarled and blocked his path.

  “You want her,” Adam said. “Good. I’ll give her to you. I’ll keep Tad and all the other men away from her. That’s right. As much as my wife wants to use her for fertility testing, I won’t let her.” He paused, letting the implications fill the silence.

  Sterling’s fingers curled by his sides, his thoughts going exactly where directed. To the sex camps where the women were traded from soldier to soldier in hopes one of them would find the rare Lifebond connection that mated them and allowed the production of offspring.

  “You can save her from such a fate,” Adam offered slyly. “She’ll be yours and yours alone, and you don’t even have to give up my brother’s secrets to get her.”

  Right. And Sterling was going to become the president of the United States. Adam was manipulating him, playing a game to get what he wanted. “Get to the point, Adam.”

  “Dead ICE addicts do me no good. Nor do junkies who cannot think while anticipating their next hit. I want them lucidly addicted and under my command. Becca will perform better to aid this effort if she is functioning of her own free will. You will see to it that she does. As long as you make sure she cooperates, no one touches her but you.”

  Chapter 5

  Two hours had passed since Sterling’s meeting with Adam, when he’d been locked in the luxury officers’ quarters that he and Becca were to share. He spent the entire time pacing, and pacing some more, ready to climb out of his own skin. Over and over, his mind tortured him with images of Tad touching Becca, images of her begging for ICE, willing to do anything to get it.

  But I’m her bastard hero, Adam had said. Becca’s hero. Adam had saved Becca from cancer and given her a reason to be loyal to him at the same time. Sterling had done nothing but stand her up for a date and get her kidnapped. She wouldn’t trust him any more than he could trust her. He scrubbed a hand over his nearly two-day-old beard and glanced at the clock on the security panel that said it was exactly noon, only five minutes later than the last time he’d checked.

  “Damn it to hell,” he mumbled, eyeing the leather sofa, full kitchen, and entry to a bedroom complete with a king-sized bed that made up his new prison cell. One might think he was a welcomed guest if not for the locks on the doors. He should be wolf bait inside the coliseum, where he’d be mangled until he healed, and mangled all over, until he told the Renegade secrets. So why wasn’t he? Why… when Adam had Becca’s ICE addiction, did he think he needed Becca’s help? Unless… Adam was using Becca to get to him. He didn’t have time to contemplate the many ways Becca might be used against him, before the door burst open and Becca was shoved inside.

  Tad filled the doorway behind her. “Take care of her,” he said. “Or I’ll enjoy doing it for you.” He barked out laughter and pulled the door shut. A glow of red lights appeared on the knob as he activated the electronic locks.

  Any thought he’d had of her rushing to his side glad to see him faded when she leaned against the door, leaving several feet between them, and accused, “You’re one of them.”

  She still wore the same black dress, one side of it ripped, one section matted with blood, his blood. The dark length of her silky hair rested in disorderly waves around her pale face, where not a drop of makeup remained. And she was beautiful, absolutely freaking beautiful. There was just something about Becca that called to the man in him, even before he’d fully been one.

  “I’m not one of them, Becca,” he promised.

  She shook her head, rejecting his answer. “You were bleeding to death. They shot you at least a half dozen times.” Her voice lifted, cracked with anger, and turned to a shout. “You should be dead right now.”

  Okay, he hadn’t seen that one coming. She was pissed he was still alive? “Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but I’m not dead, nor do I intend to be anytime soon.”

  “Don’t say it like that,” she said. “Don’t say it like I did something wrong. I cried for you. I… took that damn drug for you.”

  Understanding washed over him, the reason Adam needed Sterling’s help. Either Becca was a damn good actress, or she not only wasn’t happy about being an ICE addict, but she now thought he’d been part of an elaborate scheme to make her take it.

  “I’m one of the two hundred men injected by Powell at Area 51 before Adam Rain got power hungry and took it over. That makes me a GTECH, and yes, I heal quickly, among other abilities. But I am not, nor will I ever be, one of Adam’s men.”

  She studied him a moment, her gaze sharp, but her body eased slightly, melting against the door. “So you work for the army?”

  “The Renegades,” he said. “A private Special Operations group composed of both GTECHs and civilian human members.”

  “Human,” she repeated.

  “Most GTECHs don’t consider themselves human.”

  “Do you?”

  “No.”

  She seemed to digest that a moment, accept it, before moving on. “They want me to help them with the drug,” she said. “Just like you did.”

  He didn’t miss the slight hint of accusation to the statement. “For different reasons with the same outcome,” he said, starting to realize the opportunity they had before them. The DNA source was here, where he could destroy it if she could come up with an antidote. “So people don’t die.”

  “They gave me the drug.”

  Cautiously, he moved a few inches closer to her, encouraged when she didn’t object. “It cured your cancer.”

  “It made me an addict and a slave to whatever that man wants of me. That’s not a cure.”

  “We’ll find an antidote.”

  “More than an antidote,” she replied vehemently. “I’ll make an immunization that keeps ICE from working. I’ll make sure he doesn’t turn anyone else into a slave at his mercy, if it’s the last thing I do on this earth, so help me God.”

  Sterling stiffened at the words, despite his approval. They were being taped, watched, and listened to, and her statement was the kind that would get them both killed or thrown into the sex camps.

  She was fired up, angry. “I’m going to destroy—”

  Sterling reacted before she could finish her statement, doing exactly what he knew Adam would expect him to do, but doing it for himself with his own intentions. He closed the distance between himself and Becca, pulled her into his arms, and kissed her to shut her up. No. He kissed her because he had to, because every fiber of his being needed to feel her next to him, to claim her in a way he didn’t try to analyze. His tongue parted her lips, brushing past her teeth, to delve deeper. She moaned and melted into him, sliding her arms around his neck, rising to her toes to taste him.

  “Sterling,” she whispered.

  Possessiveness flared inside him like nothing he’d ever felt before. If anyone tried to touch her—Adam, Tad, or anyone else in this damnable place, he’d kill them. She was his to protect, his to save… his.

  ***

  She had cancer. She didn’t have cancer. She was now Adam’s slave, kept alive by ICE. It was all a roller-coaster ride of emotions, and while Becca knew she should resist Sterling, knew she should be cautious about trusting him, she couldn’t make herself. He was alive when she’d been certain he was dead, and she needed to feel him, to convince herself he was real.

  To escape the nightmare of the past day, the past months of her life. And kissing him was good, so good, the escape she had desperately craved for months now, even before he showed up on her doorstep. And she did trust him… on some core level she trusted Sterling.

  It’s why she’d let him in her house, why she was able to lose herself in the mindless bliss of his lips, his tongue, the
blessed warmth of his powerful body pressed to hers. There was no cancer, no drug addiction, no monster with grand ideas of ruling the world, and no Tad. There was just this moment in time with Sterling, with his hand sliding over her waist, her hip. Becca moaned as his palm rounded her backside, and he lifted her. Still kissing him, she wrapped her legs around his waist, her arms around his neck.

  She barely remembered him walking, carrying her, nor how she found herself sitting on the bathroom sink. Bathroom sink? On some level that was an odd choice of locations, but Sterling’s lips were traveling her jaw, her neck, driving her wild.

  “Cameras and recording devices,” he whispered. She sucked in a breath, tensed at the implications, but his mouth was on hers again. His tongue stroked hers with one last long caress before his hand ran down her hair, and he stepped away, yanking back the shower curtain and turning on the water.

  The absence of his touch left her suddenly cold, the memory of ICE sliding down her throat a vivid, immediate memory. Tension curled in her chest and spread through her body, her fingers closing around the edges of the vanity beneath her. She was addicted to ICE, a drug that might have who knew what side effects on those who used it, even if they were safely weaned off of it.

  Sterling returned to stand in front of her, pressing his hands to the vanity at her side. The other went to her face, his fingers gliding over her cheek, gently drawing her eyes to his. “We’re getting out of here,” he said. “Both of us alive and well.” He tilted his head, near her ear. “They need to believe we are doing something other than talking.” He reached up and turned out the light.

  “What are you doing?” Becca asked, stiffening both from the shock of complete darkness, and the idea that his kisses had been nothing more than a cover story.

  “Letting their imaginations run wild,” he explained. “And I can hear you thinking, Becca. No, I didn’t kiss you just for a cover. I’ve wanted to kiss you since the day I met you in that library fourteen years ago. And now that I have…” His fingers trailed her lip. “I want more.” He slid his hand up her back, sensual and strong, soothing her, exciting her, adding to the heat of his words. “I want that date we never had, and I want to convince you I deserve to make love to you. But not here, not in this hellhole of place where you don’t belong.” His lips brushed hers. “So what do you say? Let’s destroy Adam, and get out of here?”