Megan Hart - Strangers of the Night

“Oh,” she said. “Okay, then.”

Kane fucked her slowly at first, making sure to get her going. When she needed a little extra pressure on her clit, he gave it to her, just right. Persephone rarely had any trouble getting off, but tonight it was taking her longer. Because she knew him, she thought, irritated with herself now that the buzz was fading. She ought to have found a stranger.

She didn’t have much more time to think about it then because something in the way he shifted had brought her to the tipping point. They moved together, easily, steadily, and she came in a slow rush of rolling pleasure. He followed with a shudder and buried his face against the side of her neck.

When her phone rang, she was happy to shift out from underneath him so she could grab it. “Hey, girl.”

“I didn’t go home with that guy,” Leila’s drunken voice crackled through the phone, a bad connection. “I’m back at my place. You okay?”

“Yes, fine.” Persephone glanced at Kane, who’d sat up to look at her. She’d been holding on to her illusion as a matter of habit, a good one, but tightened it now to be sure he had not even a glimpse of her true self. Leila had disconnected.

“I have to go,” she said. “Sisters before misters, am I right?”

“Sure. No problem.” He yawned and fell back on the bed. “You need a cab or anything?”

“I’m good.” She paused as she gathered her clothes to look at him. “Thanks for tonight.”

He rolled onto his side to crack open an eye and grin at her. “You’re welcome.”

It was on the tip of her tongue to offer him her number, which of course would be ridiculously stupid, even if she did use the fake side line she kept for these very occasions. Instead, she dressed quickly and let herself out of the hotel room.

Chapter 9

Jed studied the wooden puzzle in front of him. It was more suitable for a five-year-old than a twenty-five-year-old, but since he’d been given puzzles identical to this one or nearly so since he had been five, he guessed they’d never seen any reason to change. A rectangular wooden base with different sized, shaped and colored holes, meant to hold the brightly colored matching pieces. Unlike a toddler puzzle, this one had more complicated shapes and smaller pieces. The goal: fit the pieces into the slots as fast as possible. He’d been using this same one for so long, the paint had worn down to bare wood in many places. It didn’t matter. At this point, the exercise was more of a self-soothing device than anything else.

He shook out the pieces, scattering them across the desk like jacks. He set the base upright and leaned back in his chair, closing his eyes. His hands went to the edges of the table, fingertips touching the worn wooden surface lightly. Through the pads of his fingertips, he could taste the harsh sting of the antibacterial cleanser they used in here every afternoon while he was in session with Dr. Ransom. It was a bad taste, yet somehow comforting. It had been the same for twenty years. Just like the puzzle. Like the lights set on timers to keep him on a regular day/night schedule that had nothing in common with the actual movement of the sun. Like everything else here, over time, the hospital had become...home.

Without opening his eyes, Jed began fitting the pieces into the slots. His fingers moved, stroking over the wooden desk, though now the harsh bite of the chemicals had been replaced by the smoother, older smell of colored paint. Blue star. Yellow circle. Red hexagon.

Faster.

Green cross. Black square. Purple triangle.

Faster.

The wooden pieces fit themselves into place with small, clattering thumps and thuds as they rolled across the desk.

When all the pieces had returned to the base, the vibration in the desk ceased and he opened his eyes. He put his fingertips on the edge of the table again and touched the puzzle with his gaze and nothing more. He’d done this forty-seven times already tonight, and would keep doing it until the lights went off when he was supposed to be sleeping—but of course he didn’t sleep. He hardly ever did, never more than an hour or two at a time, anyway.

He closed his eyes.

Faster.

Faster.

He could do this another three times, if he was quick, before it was time for Samantha to bring him his meds. He’d have to be finished before she got here. She had no idea what he was, what he could do. But out of all the people who’d worked here over the years, all the doctors, nurses and orderlies, all the guards, hundreds of people who’d taken care of him—Samantha was the only one who’d made it seem like it mattered. How she saw him. What she thought of him. She was the first person since he’d been sent here to make Jed care about anything.

A scant few seconds before he heard the click of the door lock, Jed had finished his last round of the puzzle and pushed it aside. He was already on his feet, standing behind the red line painted on the floor well away from the door. He smoothed his hair, suddenly self-conscious. He should have quit the puzzle sooner. Brushed his hair, his teeth. Changed his shirt, as if any of the four he owned were not identical.

“Hi, Jed.” Samantha’s grin urged his own. “How’s it going?”

“Good, good. You?” He always sounded such like an idiot when he spoke to her, but she never seemed to notice.

“Oh, I’m dandy.” She waited for the door to lock behind her before stepping toward him.

In the past eight years, Jed had never once moved over the red line before that solid click. In eight years, never given anyone reason to fear him. For a brief period of time when he was a teenager, they’d upped his meds to keep him from trying to escape, testing him over and over again to see if he could do with the door lock what he could do with the puzzle, but he’d always failed. It was the type of metal, they said amongst themselves. They had no idea that it wasn’t anything to do with that all, but the simple fact that Jed wanted them to stop drugging him.

Not so he could get out. That, he could’ve done at any time, despite the drugs and the special metal in the locks. His memories of what life had been before had never faded, even through the distortion of childhood. He never wanted to go back to the life he’d known before coming here. If that meant spending his life in this room, so be it. No, he’d simply hated the fuzzy way the meds made him feel. Slow and thick and stupid.

“Is it getting cold outside?” he asked her suddenly, regretting the stupid words the moment they flew out of his mouth.

Samantha frowned and gave him a sideways glance, then another at the corner of the ceiling where the hidden camera lurked. “You know I’m not allowed to talk about that, Jed.”

“Right, right. I know.” Did they really think he didn’t remember there was a world outside these walls? Sometimes, Jed thought, they must. He’d allowed them to think of him as simple for so long, he must’ve convinced them he was also stupid. “I just wondered.”

“Can you sit down, please?” She gestured, and when he had complied, as he always did, always, never disobedient, she made a show of pulling out her stethoscope but leaned over him as she placed the round part of it against his chest. “The leaves are changing. The air smells like snow.”

That whisper sent an electric jolt all through him. So did her touch on his wrist as she counted the too-many and too-fast beats of his heart. Samantha looked into his eyes, so close he could see the white specks surrounding the blackness of her pupil. She gave him a small, secret smile and waited a moment or so before she officially took his pulse. Giving him time to relax.

She knew him.

She’d never commented on the embarrassing way his body reacted to her standard routine. Not when she used gentle fingers to press his neck and throat to check his lymph nodes and his heartbeat again raced, and not when she had him lift his arms to his sides so she could pass her hands along his body and he shifted against the rise in his pants. She noticed it. She had to. There was no way to hide the heat of his skin. But she always managed to be standing at an angle to block it from the camera, and she always took her time to make it possible for him to calm down before she stepped back.