Sterling Read online

  “Sterling,” she whispered, conflicting emotions welling in her chest at the absolute impossibility of his words ever becoming reality. They were trapped, and she was enslaved to ICE.

  His lips brushed hers. “You should know… it drives me so wild when you say my name.”

  Heat swam through her as the very core of her clenched with desire, and she pressed her hand to his chest, feeling the racing of his heartbeat. She wanted him so badly she could almost forget she needed ICE to survive.

  “We’ll stockpile ICE from the lab every day,” he said, seeming to read her mind. “And the minute we have enough, and you either have an antidote, or you believe you have what you need to make one, you tell me, and I’ll get us out of here.”

  A sliver of hope slid inside her that they could escape, that they could save the city, maybe the world, from ICE addiction. That she was really cured, that she would be free and have a chance to live life, and just maybe Sterling would be a part of that life.

  But hope was something she’d been burned by; hope was something that had lifted her up and stomped on her too many times to count. Hope was the one thing that could still terrify her, destroy her. She didn’t want hope. She didn’t want Sterling to offer her a façade. She wanted to scream at him, to tell him hope didn’t solve anything. But suddenly, his mouth closed over hers, stealing the thought, melting her into the moment. It was a claiming, passionate, hungry, devouring kiss that did exactly what she needed—it pulled her under a spell, made her forget hope, forget fear. There was just need, and a hard, hot male body pressing against hers.

  Something ignited inside her, a wild, urgent burn for this man like nothing she had ever felt. Becca clung to him, touching him, pressing her hands under his T-shirt—taut skin and rippling muscle beneath her palms—and she couldn’t get enough of him.

  “Sterling,” she whispered, arching into him until she felt the thick pulse of his arousal in the intimate V of her body.

  He growled at his name, his hand curving her backside, molding her to him. “You’re killing me woman. I said not here, not now.”

  “We don’t even know if there will be a tomorrow.” She covered his hand on her waist and urged it to her breast. “I don’t want to wait.”

  His forehead rested on hers. “I only have so much willpower.”

  “I don’t want you to have any.”

  His fingers laced into her hair, his lips brushing hers. “This isn’t how I wanted this to happen.”

  She lifted her lips and pressed them to his, being bold when she would otherwise not be, sliding her tongue into his mouth. A low moan slid from his throat, before he slanted his lips more fully over hers, before he tasted her deeply, fervently.

  “I won’t take you like this,” he whispered.

  “I won’t forgive you if you don’t,” she rebutted, feeling as if she had nothing to lose by being bold, nothing except the escape, the pleasure—the opportunity to be with this man she wanted so very much. Her hand slid down his pants, tracing the hard line of his erection.

  He covered his hand over hers, held it there a moment, kissed her. “We’ll compromise,” he whispered by her ear, nibbling the lobe.

  “What does that mean?” she asked breathlessly, a sizzling chill racing over her skin as he pressed her shirt down her shoulder and kissed the delicate skin there.

  “Actions speak louder than words. I’ll show you what it means.” He moved in the darkness, and oh God, he was on the floor, pushing her skirt along her thighs as he kissed a path up the length of one of them.

  “Sterling,” she whispered.

  He kissed the silk of her panties. “Do you like the way I compromise?”

  She swallowed hard, warmth sliding to her lower body. “Yes.”

  “Good,” he said, and eased her panties down her legs. Her fingers curled around the edge of the sink. His big, powerful hand slid back up her legs, his lips following one of them… slowly—too slowly.

  “Sterling,” she said urgently, needing his mouth in her most sensitive, intimate place.

  He laughed, low and sexy, filled with the mischief of a man enjoying his power. He licked her clit, and she arched her hips, her nipples aching as if they, too, had felt his tongue. The moments that followed were a haze of desire that stretched into blissful minutes. His fingers slid into the slick wet heat of her body, his tongue flicking her clit, delving where his fingers had been, where they were once again—mimicking lovemaking with skill that only made her burn more to feel him inside her.

  By the time his fingers were caressing her inside, him suckling her nub, she was ready to explode, ready to tumble over the edge of pleasure into absolute pleasure. “Oh… I…” She inhaled a breath and then stiffened. A rainbow of sensation ripped through her, shaking her to the point that there was nothing else, nothing but the intense explosion of sensation. His fingers and tongue stroked, licked, caressed her into a slow ease downward, that left her gasping and blushing to the point she thought he might see it in the darkness.

  When finally he stood, sliding his fingers back into her hair, he whispered, “Next time, the lights are on, so I can see every second of your pleasure.”

  New hunger rose in her, so fiercely it shocked her. “I need you, Sterling. Inside me. Now.”

  Suddenly, he stiffened, the mood in the room thick with tension, as if he didn’t like her bold words. Insecurity rippled through her a moment, before he said, “Get in the shower now.” He flipped on the light and started to undress.

  “What? I don’t—”

  He leaned in and kissed her. “Someone just came in the front door. Get in the shower and stay there until I tell you to come out.”

  His shirt came off, the sprinkle of blond hair across his broad chest, making her gulp for air. He leaned against the wall and reached for his boots. She couldn’t seem to get herself to move off the vanity and just rip her clothes off. Somehow it had been easier with the lights out and passion on.

  He picked her up and set her on the ground. “Shower. Now.”

  Right. Shower. She bent down to unlace her flat sandals, and his pants fell to the floor. Good Lord, he was commando. And he had a backside to make grown women cry.

  A knock sounded on the door. “Open up.”

  Horror ran down Becca’s spine at the sound of Tad’s voice. Sterling wrapped a towel around his waist and looked over his shoulder with a silent command in his stare. Becca unzipped her dress and let it fall to the floor, then pulled back the shower curtain and got in, bra and panties still intact, but not before she saw the heat in Sterling’s eyes. The door opened and shut, and Becca leaned against the wall, passion quickly turning to fear as she heard the male voices raise in a gruff exchange.

  The bathroom door opened, and Becca held her breath. Tad was there. She felt the menace of him as readily as she had her trusted Sterling. Time stood still as she waited for what would come next. Finally, there was movement, and the door shut. Becca let out a relieved breath, but worried for Sterling. She jumped out of the shower and grabbed a towel, wrapping herself inside it, and pressed her ear to the door.

  ***

  Sterling eyed the handgun on Tad’s belt, prepared to kill him if he stepped one foot past the entrance of the bathroom. Tad’s insistence on going inside didn’t surprise Sterling. The lights had been out, the conversation muted, and Adam had demanded confirmation Sterling wasn’t up to something.

  Finally, Tad turned back to Sterling, but Sterling didn’t relax. The time wasn’t right to kill Tad, he knew this, but he wanted it to be on a downright primal level.

  “No lights out,” Tad said. “Ever.”

  “If you think I’m giving you a kinky freak show you can forget it.”

  “Then I guess you better keep it in your pants,” he said, and reached in his pocket, removing a vial of ICE. “Get her out here. I need to dose her.”

  “Adam and I have an agreement,” Sterling said. “She’s mine. I dose her.”

  Tad stared a
t him with hard, bulldog eyes. “You’re pissing me off, Sterling Jeter. You don’t want to piss me off.”

  “I’m under Adam’s protection,” Sterling said. “So you don’t want to piss me off.”

  Tad turned away, and Sterling walked him to the door and made sure he exited. That man was going to be a problem, and he knew it. He quickly headed back to the bathroom and entered to find Becca wrapped in a towel and sitting on the edge of the tub, her hair dry.

  “What did you mean you have a deal with Adam?”

  Sterling set the ICE on the vanity and kneeled in front of her, reaching for her, but she leaned away. He lowered his voice. “I told Adam I would make sure you help him. It’s what I had to tell him.”

  Her bottom lip trembled. “And you get what in return?”

  “You,” he said. “I get you, Becca. And an assurance Tad and none of the other men touch you.” His gaze narrowed, noting her hand was trembling too. “You’re cold. I’ll get you another towel.”

  She grabbed his hand. “I’m not cold.” She hesitated. “It just started. I… I think I’m in withdrawal.”

  ***

  “Under Adam’s protection, my fucking ass,” Tad murmured, sitting behind a security panel, watching Becca exiting the living quarters, his teeth grinding together like steel on steel. Sterling was a problem that needed to go away. Sterling was close to Caleb, and therefore, Adam wanted Sterling to convert to Zodius and help him bring Caleb over as well. If Sterling continued to grow close to this woman who was now permanently dependant on the Zodius to survive that might just happen. Which meant Tad fell down the power chain, and he wasn’t going to let that occur. It was time to turn the woman against Sterling.

  Chapter 6

  The trembling had stopped five minutes after Becca had downed the dose of ICE Tad had left for her. Now, an hour later, she sat at the silver kitchen table, reading research material that had apparently been left there for her before her arrival. The room was even stocked with toiletries, makeup, and clothes that included the black jeans and T-shirt she had on. Apparently, the façade of comfort was meant to be a reward for willingly helping Adam discover his new serum—like those things made up for the locked front door that screamed prison.

  “You need to eat,” Sterling said, returning from the kitchen to sit down across from her and eyeing her half-eaten sandwich with disapproval.

  Becca blinked at him, wondering how in the world they’d ended up back in each other’s lives. He’d showered and shaven and changed into a tan army T-shirt with tan fatigues that somehow made his eyes pop a more brilliant green than usual. And for just a moment, she found herself transported back to that Texas library, sitting across from him in casual conversation, while wondering what it would be like to kiss him. Only the fantasy kiss had graduated to memories of his perfect naked body she’d glimpsed far too briefly.

  He arched a brow at her, the twinkle in his eyes saying her expression showed more than she wanted it to, and she delicately cleared her throat. “I see stress doesn’t affect your appetite,” she commented, noting his second large stack of sandwiches. “And what’s with all the orange juice?”

  He finished off half the glass. “GTECHs have a chronic vitamin C deficiency and a rapid metabolism that requires fuel. Lots of it and often.”

  He’d told her about the GTECHs’ superspeed and superstrength over his first stack of sandwiches, but not much more than she’d already known, except that ICE users supposedly had those skills on a limited basis.

  “Interesting. ICE users don’t experience rapid metabolism or a vitamin C deficiency from what I’ve read. So far, all I’ve felt is expanded lung capacity and that horrible trembling when I start to withdraw.”

  He studied her closely. “Nothing else? You’re sure?”

  “Not that I know of,” she said, and surprised herself by actually smiling. She remembered that about Sterling. The way he said things, the way he did things. He made her loosen up. “If you tick me off, I might test my superstrength on you.”

  He wiggled an eyebrow. “Might be fun.”

  Yeah, it would, but minus the superstrength, the city of Zodius, and an ICE addiction. She shook off the thought with a darkening mood and shut the file. “The material left for me is generic at best. I’ll never find what we need from this kind of data.”

  Abruptly, the door to the apartment opened.

  “Stay where you are,” Sterling ordered Becca, already on his feet to confront the two soldiers dressed in desert fatigues who had entered the quarters.

  “We’re to escort the woman to the lab.”

  “All right,” Sterling said, his gaze unwavering. “We’ll go to the lab.”

  “Not you,” one soldier corrected and jerked his head at Becca. “Just her.”

  Becca didn’t move, but her heart exploded in her chest. Without Sterling, she’d have to contend with Tad by herself, and no matter her earlier claim that she feared nothing but false hope—that man terrified her.

  “Where she goes, I go,” Sterling insisted. “That’s non-negotiable.”

  Both soldiers moved their hands to the weapons on their hip holsters. “We have orders,” one of them said. “She comes alone.”

  Becca took one look at Sterling’s face, and she knew he was going to do something crazy and get himself killed. She stood up, and her hand must have hit her glass of orange juice, because it flew off the table and shattered. “I’ll go.” She glanced at Sterling. “I’ll be fine. I need a lab to do my work.”

  “Forget it,” he said.

  Becca was in front of him now, pressing her hand on his chest. “I have to do this. I’ll be okay.”

  The two soldiers walked up behind her and pointed guns at Sterling. “She’ll be okay, but you might not,” one said.

  “I’m going,” she said softly and turned toward the door.

  Sterling pulled her back and kissed her, and then with a tormented look, let her go.

  ***

  Becca sat at a tall table in the concrete confines of the Zodius laboratory, staring at the slide under the viewer, studying what turned out to be Adam’s six-month-old’s DNA. Only six months for him translated to twelve years. He was aging at a rate of two years a month. And this boy’s DNA was supplying the drug she was ingesting twice a day.

  A folder landed on the table in front of her, and hot breath touched her neck. “Open it.”

  Tad. She knew his voice like one knew a bad dream, all too vividly. She flipped it open. There was a picture of Sterling with another man, two wolves at their feet. She flipped through several more, all similar, but obviously taken in different locations.

  Tad turned her around, his hands going to the table on either side of her, his big body too close. “That’s Adam he’s with,” he said. “He’s one of us. He wants to be Adam’s second, and he promised to fuck you into submission to get that title.”

  Becca’s stomach knotted. “You’re lying. Why would you tell me this if it’s what Adam wants?”

  “Because I’m Adam’s second,” he said. “And he means to replace me. I’m going to kill him before he has the chance. So I suggest you make it clear you’re loyal to me or I’ll see you thrown in one of the sex camps.” He shoved away from the table and headed to the back office.

  Becca had no idea what a “sex camp” was, but she was screaming in her head. Nononono! Sterling was not a Zodius. He wasn’t one of them. He wasn’t! Those pictures had to be of Sterling with Adam’s brother Caleb. Her gaze slid around the lab, looking for an escape. She needed to escape. A water glass on her table shattered. Then a slide.

  Milton Wright, the only other non-GTECH scientist out of the six present, rushed to her table and began picking up glass. A thirty-something scientist who worked for the military, he too had been kidnapped and forced to help Adam.

  “That was odd,” he said, tossing shards in the trash. “The glass just shattered. I never saw you touch it.”

  She agreed, remembering the orange juice
glass a few hours back shattering in much the same way, but too twisted in knots from Tad’s visit to give it much thought. “What’s a sex camp?”

  He glanced up from what he was doing and then walked to her side and sat down at the table adjoining hers. “Adam’s son, Dorian, is very powerful. Like freaky powerful. They want more like him, which means finding the rare woman who can bond with one of the males and convert to GTECH. It’s like a physical marriage. They have sex. They bond. They have scary offspring like Dorian.”

  Becca felt sick. “How do they know they bond? They just get pregnant or what?”

  “Some strange tattoo marking appears on the woman’s neck right after sex. I hear it hurts, like someone is carving it in their flesh. Then they do a blood exchange, and the woman converts to GTECH.”

  “Blood exchange?” she asked, aghast at such an idea.

  “They slice their palms and press them together. There is a plus side for the female. She becomes a GTECH complete with eternal youth and immunity to all human illness, among other things. Of course, she has a really nasty Zodius soldier hanging around all the time, and if he goes and gets himself killed, say by pissing off Adam—” He held up a hand. “I know that’s hard to believe, but it happens—well, then she goes bye-bye right along with him. One dies, the other dies.”

  She still couldn’t quite get her head around this. “Okay, back up because I feel like I’m living in bizarro world. Are you actually telling me they basically pass women from soldier to soldier until one of them bonds with her, and this mark shows up?”