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  Bane’s gaze hardened under her scrutiny. “Listen, babe, you’re not experienced enough to understand this yet, but not everything you want is going to be good for you.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “I see that.”

  He flinched and his lips pinched into a hard line, but then he let out a little huff of laughter. Though Bane recovered quickly enough, Josie knew she’d hurt him. She wondered why that didn’t make her feel better.

  From the open cabin, Adam’s head jerked in their direction. His lips twisted into a wry smile and he broke from the knot of men and strode toward them.

  Bane shifted his body in front of her. Despite the handcuffs locked behind his back, he planted his feet on the fiberglass floor and leaned forward as if readying for an attack. She didn’t want to forgive him, resented the surge of emotion coursing through her. But there was no denying Josie felt grateful for his protection.

  “Ana?” Adam called over his shoulder. “We may need to sedate him.”

  A female voice carried from inside the cabin. “Not yet.” A small female with short, dark hair and grayish skin walked toward them flanked by a wide-set male. The unknown man ventured closer to them, and Bane leaned to the ball of one foot, and then the other, as if he wasn’t sure who posed the greatest danger.

  “The infamous Bane Connor.” The female spoke in a high-pitched trill.

  Josie watched Bane shift his attention from the bulky man to her. “Should I know you?”

  The female spoke from behind her guard. “No, but we know you. You’re programmed to kill humans. Lifers, you call them, correct?” The huge male stalked a wide arch around the benches at the rear of the boat.

  Josie watched Bane shrug in his bonds. “Yeah, so? I bet Synaviv has built a hundred like me since I left.” His eyes darted between the team surveying him.

  The female smiled. “You know perfectly well the Department of Health’s 2057 Human Remains Re-animation Guidelines prohibited building steins that can kill humans.”

  Josie yelped as the bodyguard’s fist swung at Bane, a pistol in his hand adding weight to the backhanded punch. Bane’s jaw crunched to the side and his body stumbled chest-first to the ground.

  The woman pulled a syringe from her pocket. “It was not necessary to hurt him, 402. I would like you to undergo a scan when you return.” She marched past and laid a hand between Bane’s shoulders. Then she injected Bane in the forearm and he collapsed to the floor of the boat.

  Josie’s mind raced, but she stared straight ahead. Ana called to the others and lifted Bane onto a stretcher. Adam’s grip swept under her shoulders and lifted her to her feet.

  “I’m so sorry you had to see that, my love. But it’s important for you to know that the mean man won’t be coming back.” Adam shot a meaningful glance at Bane’s supine and bound body. Then he dragged Josie with him into the cabin, past the steering wheel and white upholstered chairs, and down a set of metal stairs into the interior of the boat.

  At the base of the stairs a narrow hall led toward the bow and sliding doors lined both sides. Adam led her by the wrist to one door and slid the locking mechanism to the side. He pushed her into the close space and Josie landed on top of a bed. Her gaze swung wildly, taking in the drawers along one side of the room, a door leading off to a tiny bathroom.

  Adam wore clothes similar to what he’d worn at his house, except now he had a gun in a holster at his hip. He unfastened the top button of his shirt. “I have missed you so much, my love.”

  Panic rode up Josie’s spine and she shuffled to the back of the bed, but a knock sounded on the door.

  “Adam. We need your help.” The voice belonged to the woman from before, and to Josie’s surprise Adam snapped to attention.

  “I’ll be right there, Ana.” He buttoned his shirt up again and spared a single glance in Josie’s direction. “I’ll be back as soon as I can, my love.” In the doorway, he turned to observe her. “And we will finish what we’ve started.”

  He slid the door closed and Josie heard the lock click shut on the other side. She pressed her lips tight to contain her scream and pounded her hand into the mattress. Josie tore open the drawer by the bedside then the cabinets of the room, searching for a key, a weapon, anything. All she found was a pad of paper and a pen. Given she didn’t know how to write, Josie discarded them on the nightstand and closed her eyes, searching every corner of her knowledge for a solution.

  Something rough, like a cat’s tongue, stroked up against her consciousness. It felt firm and warm, and smelled like sweat and man. Bane! She sat up on the bed and closed her eyes, and then breathed slow and deep through her nose. In her mind’s eye, Josie chased his signature until she found her way into Bane’s thoughts.

  Unconscious bodies decorated the hotel’s hallway. Numbers rolled inside his mind—time ’til the next security shift, the angles of cameras inside the suite. Bane felt the thoughts of each team member like a living thing inside his head. Numbers 13 and 47 lifted the door off its hinges. 70 and 53 rushed inside.

  In the blink of an eye his team’s rifles were trained on the target. The man’s bed was lined with black silk. A female they hadn’t expected to find lay nestled beside him. The two scuffled back toward the headboard. Bane requested instructions from the base’s mainframe and received the reply to eliminate them both.

  He fired.

  Bane turned from the bed and led the team down the corridors to the freight elevator. Each member of his team turned to face him, paralyzed. His mind fought to regain awareness and determine the next command before he carried it out.

  In a nanosecond of clarity, he saw what he would do and Bane’s muscles screamed. One set of neurons fired frantically to keep his hand still, while another set pounded the order to move. He jerked his hand, his biceps tearing, trying to toss the gun away.

  Sweat sprung from his pores. He watched the gun rise in his grip and point at 53. Bane’s finger squeezed the trigger, the shot rang out loud as an explosion, and his team member fell. The next three kills happened in a blur.

  Bane fell to his hands and knees and crawled to the farthest corner from the bodies. The elevator started its descent to the basement. His hand shook as he pulled the army knife from his pocket. He recalled other times like this, different places, different times of day, always ending the same, with bodies and blood.

  He flicked on a lighter in his other hand and held the flame under the knife until it reddened. When he lifted his shirt, Bane was unsurprised to find a line of scars climbing one side of his torso and halfway up the other, though he couldn't remember exactly when he’d gotten them.

  He positioned the broad side of the knife above the highest scar and pressed it into his skin. In the blinding-white pain, his vision cleared. He saw every lifeless face staring up at him through dead eyes. They flicked like an old movie in slow motion. Another scalding press of metal on skin and the images poured through him again, cleansing in their horror.

  Bane’s brow drew low and he knew he had to do it one more time. He watched the metal heat this time with a whisper of confusion. It was as if he’d forgotten something, which seemed ridiculous because his whole life was a series of half-remembered sins.

  The searing of his flesh brought a new memory, this one so fresh it tore his chest in two. Josie’s smiling face crumpling before him in disbelief, falling onto the dining room table across from her maker.

  Chapter Nine

  Bane’s thoughts shifted with a start. Josie. He’d felt the touch of her mind on his. From under the haze of drugs that kept his body immobile, Bane struggled to follow the whisper of her presence through the maze of his neurons. Her image flashed at him from time to time, weaving as she retreated.

  Eventually, he found her in a bubble. Under the surface, ferns burst in giddy explosions and moss-coated dying trees. Bane tried to permeate the space, only to find it hard like rubber, a perfect sphere of protection.

  “Josie,” he whispered. The wall between them pulsed, and Ban
e pressed inward with his mind. But the membrane held firm.

  A voice spoke directly into his auditory cortex. “You scared me.”

  He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how.

  “Did you do all those things?” Her voice was soft and ethereal.

  Bane wished he could give her another answer. “Yes.” He waited for her response. When she didn’t give one right away, Bane pulled back his energy.

  “Did you want to?”

  He felt a caress, as if Josie stoked his face. A wave of sadness threatened to swallow him, so that he nearly sobbed out the word, “No.”

  A hand emerged from Josie’s bubble and grasped his shirt, pulling him inside.

  Bane’s mind crossed the threshold into Josie’s sanctuary. Within it, she stood naked, on a mossy forest clearing wedged between enormous trees. Green exploded all around him, but his eyes drank her in. Her hair was longer in this mental re-creation. It covered her breasts and one of her eyes. She looked at him shyly from behind its curtain.

  “I’m so sorry.” She walked toward him and laid a hand on his chest. Her touch felt almost real, and echoed with the reverberations of her perception. Josie’s vision filled part of his sight, so that he perceived how she saw him. Her gaze lingered at the bags under his eyes and the crease in his forehead. She panned down to the scars at his neck and his chest, and then traveled, one by one over the burns at his sides.

  Her fingers travelled the same path as her attention. Josie’s deep-brown eyes burned into his, and then she lowered her lips to kiss the first mark.

  Bane shriveled with shame. He lifted her head and pushed her back.

  Anger etched creases in her forehead. “But, you didn’t mean to…”

  He turned his projection away from hers but didn’t leave their bubble. “It doesn’t matter. If anything, that makes it worse!”

  Josie’s hand gripped his shoulder, tugged him around harder than she could have in the flesh. He expected her to argue with him, to tell him he wasn’t responsible or some shit like Frank always did. Instead, she looked at his foot, and then lifted her own small one and stomped down hard on his arch.

  Astral plane or not, it hurt like a bitch. Bane shut the thought off as fast as it arrived, shielding Josie from his foul mouth.

  “I can hear your thoughts, Bane. So stop it!”

  He retreated to the concave wall of Josie’s sphere. She advanced on him, her hair shorter now and whipping around her face. He hadn’t noticed until this moment the strength in her thighs, or the way the flesh at her shoulders ducked under her collarbone when she flexed her arms.

  “Josie,” he said in a tone he imagined would calm her down.

  “You are going to get over—” Her eyes scanned in the lower right side of her field of vision and Bane felt the inside of his brain scoured. “Your issues.” He blinked at the fierce look on her face. “And you’re going to move—” She shoved his shoulders back. “The fuck—” She advanced another step, and he thought she would sock him in the jaw. “On!”

  Her hand wrapped around the back of his neck and Josie planted a kiss on his mouth, not so much a kiss as a hot and hard sucking at his lips. She bit his bottom lip and tugged it ’til he opened his mouth. Her tongue snaked inside, so vicious and hungry he groaned and grabbed her naked rear end.

  She cupped his chin. The fingers of her free hand drifted lower, into the curls of his chest and then along the center indentation of his abdomen.

  Her searching mouth moved to his chest and her hand closed over his erection. It felt so real his dick swelled—bigger perhaps than it would in real life. Bane’s eyes crinkled in amusement. It was partly her dream too, after all.

  She’d lowered her head to his cock.

  “Careful, Jo…” His mind flashed on an image of semen lashing Josie’s face, and Bane hurried to erase the idea.

  Her face appeared directly before him. Her eyes widened, and a smile curled the bow of her lips. “Oh, this is really wonderful.”

  Josie followed the intriguing picture up through the pathways in Bane’s mind. Buildings, cars, cities she’d never seen, bombarded her consciousness.

  Reading, writing, math she knew on some level she would never actually need. Josie’s muscles danced under her skin, learning to load and shoot a gun, to work something called a stereo, to fuck in a range of positions, places and ways she’d never considered.

  And she wanted to try every one.

  “Josie—”

  She looked past the waves of pictures flashing in her mind, and to Bane’s handsome face. She lay on top of him now, though she wasn’t sure if it was his brain or hers that took them to this position. His deep-blue eyes darkened with sadness, and she knew he felt bad for exposing her to all this.

  “Listen, I don’t think of you that way.”

  Her legs spread to straddle his waist and she felt the blunt tip of his cock poke at her back. She grinned and reached behind her to grip his sex in her hand. “Yes you do.”

  Bane’s body arched, thrusting into her fist. The movement raised her astride him, sent a wave of heat to her center. She roved Bane’s mind for the word for that part of her and found several colorful ones.

  Josie bent to whisper in his ear. “I know you want to get me on my hands and knees and spread my pussy open with your thumbs and watch your cock sink inside me.”

  “Oh fuck.” Bane flipped her over and landed with a whoosh on top of her body. He kissed her with a bruising heat and reached between her legs. Josie smelled her scent in his nostrils and felt the damp softness of her folds in his hand, but the pressure on her body was not enough. It was a fantasy, a delicious, incredible arousing fantasy, but she didn’t just want to dream about doing these things. “I need you.”

  He growled in her ear, “I know, babe. But I can’t wake up.”

  Josie cradled his face between her hands. She knew the rough feel of his skin from memory. “Yes.” She bid the fantasy goodbye. “You can. And you will.”

  Josie’s eyes slid open. She looked around the room and then out the small porthole. Can you see what I’m seeing? She spoke to Bane in her mind.

  Yes.

  Islands passed out the window. Ahead she saw one dotted with houses.

  Bane answered the question forming in her mind. That’s Orcas. They must be heading to the mainland.

  Her gaze fell to the door and Josie pulled down on the handle, but nothing happened.

  He locked it from outside. Bane didn’t continue right away, but Josie could almost see his face screwed up in thought. You’ll have to get out after Adam opens it. Can you still fight his voice commands?

  She blushed and considered not answering, but Josie knew Bane would learn the truth either way. He can’t put me under now, not really. I just did what he said at first because…well, I was scared.

  And mad at me? Bane sounded a mixture of amused and frustrated. Adam didn’t do the best job networking you in the first place, but probably the reason you’re not under their control is that I still hold the reins in your mind.

  Josie’s lip quirked into a secret smile as she caught a glimpse of what the word “reins” conjured in her lover’s head before he stamped out the thought.

  I didn’t mean to think that, Jo. Bane growled the apology, but Josie had lit upon an idea.

  “You do, don’t you?” she asked aloud.

  Josie… He grumbled an admonition. I’m not going to put you under again.

  “Oh yes you will, husband.” A sense of power welled up inside her, as if she were a weapon about to go off. “You certainly will.”

  * * * * *

  Adam stole down the hallway. His senses tingled with the psychic scent of his creation. In a day they would join Synaviv’s ranks and be part of a larger family circle, but for a few more hours they existed as two sides of the same coin, creator and creation.

  He glimpsed the security feeds to make sure the animal who’d stolen her was still sedated. The male stein lay supine on his gu
rney in a bolted room. On another screen, Josie rested on her bed. He looked forward to rousing her.

  Tugging the door open, Adam thought he saw Josie stir. It must have been a trick of the light because when he approached her body, she lay still as death. He took a seat at the edge of her bed. Her eyelids fluttered. She must be happy to see him.

  Chapter Ten

  Bane, please! she shouted at his mind. I might not be able to fight him otherwise!

  Adam’s touch traveled to her mouth, where he stroked her lips with a bony finger. Then he slithered his hand down to her breast, which he groped through her shirt.

  It’s not a matter of mind control. He’s stronger than me.

  Bane didn’t answer her, just retreated further from her consciousness. Josie’s mind stalked after him, hardly aware that Adam’s head had dropped to her chest, where he laved her nipple through the fabric of her shirt.

  You want this weighing on your conscience?

  Bane’s thoughts erupted over hers. You think I want this to happen to you? I wanna fucking tear him limb from limb!

  She refused to cow to Bane’s aggression, instead met his blast with a hard one of her own. Adam’s hand stabbed under her shirt, then down into the loose waistband in her pants, but Josie only felt Bane, his presence a hard wall in her mind. Then do it!

  In her mind’s eye, Josie saw Bane’s face, his fierce sky-blue eyes bore into her. Neurons fired as a message relayed to her auditory cortex. When this is over, you’ll come in my arms, Josie. But right now, I want you to—

  Josie’s knee stabbed into Adam’s groin. Her maker’s strangled cry filled her ears and her hand reached to the gun lodged in his back pocket and tossed it away. Bane moved her hand to snatch the pen off the side table and Josie questioned Bane’s order for a fraction of a second, before she plunged the writing implement deep into Adam’s eye socket and past that, into his brain.