As Cold As Ice (11 page)

He had a key in his hand. It looked like a
skeleton key, only on the square tip there was a green chip with
golden connectors. It was enough to make sure no one could just
pick the locks. They also had to have the chip connected so it
would send the right signals to unlock the shackles.

“
I’m going to unlock you
now,” he said.

Jessica held out her wrists, as if there was
an actual chain binding them together. “I figured.”

She knew she was being bitchy, but she
couldn’t help herself. Since she knew there wasn’t going to be any
sex in her immediate—or even the foreseeable—future, it left her
feeling more than a little irritable.

She was eager to get out of the shackles so
she could start blasting those training dummies and the brick walls
set up in the arena.

Soren touched her wrist, his palm making
contact with the metal, spelled shackle, and her skin.

The touch made her inhale deeply through her
nose, and her spine tensed up.

Soren didn’t seem to have the same reaction,
though he noticed it. His eyes turned up to hers before he inserted
the key into the lock. “I’m not going to hurt you.”

“
I know,” Jessica
said.

One shackle popped off, and then the second.
She was free. Her power thrummed through her body, enveloping her
like an old friend hugging her tight after a long separation. She
sighed and wanted to sink into that feeling of being in control
again.

It crossed her mind that she could try and
make a break for it. She could try to overpower Soren, or even ask
for his cooperation and the two of them could just fake a fight,
but she knew better.

Soren also decided to remind her of it
anyway. “I would help you get out now, but there’s no way you would
make it out of the building. We’re too deep underground, and there
are too many guards with guns. Not all of them are tranq guns,
either.”

“
I could take you for a
hostage.”

Soren smiled at her. “I
know you’re really angry with me, but I don’t think you would want
to do that unless you’d want to see me shot. Markus considers me to
be important, but not
that
important. Besides, he’d know I was helping you.
You wouldn’t fool anyone with a hostage scheme, and neither would
I.”

Jessica hated that. She hated this entire
thing. But instead of dwelling on it, she just followed Soren to
the center of the arena, and when he pointed to a brick wall, five
feet across and six feet wide, she paid attention.

There was more than one kind of wall like
that, as well. Some had holes in them. Others were connected to
other walls. None of them were very tall, and Jessica already
figured they were to give the two fighting paranormals a chance to
hide, or to sneak up on each other. When the floor was lowered so
the people seated could look over the walls with ease, it probably
made for a much better show.

“
Freeze up anything you
can. Go nuts. They only want me to test how powerful your ice
actually is.”

The people upstairs, Markus included, had
already seen her kill a few men with her ice. They likely had all
the information they needed, and this was just another series of
tests to make sure she could keep up with that power. That she
couldn’t run out.

“
If you tell them I turned
this place into a skating rink, they let me join their Proxy
Project?”

Soren nodded. “There’s already someone lined
up to be your shadow when you get it. It’ll be the only chance you
have to get outside of these walls and make a real run for it.”

That was all Jessica needed to hear. She
summoned all the cold in her body and sucked out all the moisture
in the air surrounding her, focused it into a glowing blue ball of
freezing light in her hands, and shot it at the nearest brick
wall.

The floor beneath her trembled from the
impact. Soren lifted his brows as he watched the ice encase the
brick like a thick coating. The ice steamed, wispy tendrils that
snaked up and away from Jessica’s work, and it frosted as the
warmer air of the arena touched it.

“
Wow.”

A crack punctured the following silence, and
without touching or doing anything else to it, that crack broke
down the far side of the ice and brick, snapping along in heavy
lines until it reached the far edge. The cracked ice crumbled, and
instead of just the ice breaking away, the entire top half of the
brick wall caved. It fell forward, as if someone had pushed the
back of it, and then shattered on the floor.

Chapter Eleven

The rest of the hour passed easily enough,
and Jessica was almost able to forget how uncomfortable she was,
about how the slickness between her legs and the need for touch was
bothering her. After destroying several more brick walls, putting a
training dummy in a cube of ice that was a foot and a half thick,
and coating the entire floor in ice as well, she felt much
better.

Soren certainly seemed impressed enough as
he knelt and slid his finger over the icy floor.

“
It’s perfect. It actually
is like a skating rink, only smoother because no one skated over
it,” he said then looked up at Jessica.

There was something in his eyes. It was more
than just being impressed with her. She couldn’t describe the look
on his face, but she preened at the compliment.

When she asked Soren what they were going to
do about the mess, he told her to leave it. Neither of them would
make any attempts to clean it up, and he didn’t want her using her
powers to get rid of the ice anyway. Not that she could
completely.

“
This way, they’ll have to
at least chip away the ice before this arena can be used
again.”

Jessica grinned. She liked the idea of that.
“Won’t Markus be angry?”

Soren shrugged as they made their way to the
doors. “Yeah, but he’s rich enough that he can handle it. He’s not
going to be the one down here cleaning it all up personally, but if
it puts off more arena fights for the next couple of days, then I’d
say it was worth it. Rich men hate having to reschedule their
fun.”

The smile faded from Jessica’s mouth. “I
didn’t know he had paranormals fight down here so often.”

“
Often enough. Not always
to the death, but it’s still never good.”

They made it to the double doors, and Soren
pulled the shackles out of his wide and deep white pockets. “Hold
out your wrists.”

“
I was hoping you’d
forget.”

Soren smiled, but there was nothing happy
about it.

Jessica looked over at the arena. “Give me a
second before you do that,” she said, stepping away from him.

“
Just be quick, we need to
get back upstairs.”

Jessica nodded, looking back to the mess
she’d made. The ice crystals that spiked up from some of the brick
she’d blasted, branching off into other places like tree branches.
The spots that were untouched were obvious, but it was the fact
that her ice had been so cold it had shattered the brick that made
her happy.

And then she looked over at those nice,
comfy-looking seats Markus and the rest of his asshole friends sat
in while they watched, or ignored, the paranormals who were
fighting for their entertainment.

Stuff like that was supposed to be illegal.
Even paranormals had that many rights, but Markus didn’t care.

She launched a rocket of cold at the deep
leather seats. Then another. And another. Jessica shot her hands
forward until the ice surrounding those chairs was so thick she
couldn’t even see the leather seats beneath it.

Her chest heaved again with the force of her
attack. She shivered as the sweat that had started to glisten on
her body began to chill enough that even she was cold.

She turned back to Soren. His arms were
crossed, but she didn’t look angry. More curious. “I guess I can
make up some reason that caused you to accidentally put all of Mr.
Layton’s seats inside an ice cube.”

Jessica went back to Soren and held her
wrists out. He put the shackles back on her with no pleasure on his
face.

Jessica tried to ignore the little shiver it
brought her when he touched her skin. “Just tell him I thought I
saw him sitting there.”

Soren gave her a look, and those blue eyes
magnified the warm, shivery feeling inside her. “Yeah, right.”

*****

The next two days were spent undergoing more
tests, most of which were administered by Soren, and a couple by
Charles. Though she was still incredibly angry and frustrated by
Soren and his new policy of not taking advantage of her, she would
prefer him over Charles any day.

The way he put his hand on her shoulder and
stared into her eyes, the way he called her sweetheart, irritated
her beyond belief.

Jessica’s last name wasn’t Frost for a
reason. Despite the incredible irony that came with having a name
like that, most other women—and even some men-—thought she was
incredibly cold when it came to the way the opposite sex treated
her.

She could be walking down the sidewalk in
the city and be catcalled a hundred times over and it wouldn’t
bother her. Having an older man call her ‘sweetheart’, ‘honey’, or
‘darling’ was never a problem, either. The age thing also had
nothing to do with it. For one thing, it was only pseudo-insulting,
and for another, it only became insulting and demeaning if she let
it.

Words had power only when
people gave them power. Jessica was a big believer in that, and she
would be damned before she had anyone accuse her of being overly
sensitive. But she just fucking
hated
it when Charles touched her
hair and got a little too close.

She kept her anger to herself, however. For
one thing, it was her own fault he got it into his head that he was
allowed to do that. She was the one who hadn’t backed up when he’d
tried to kiss her.

Jessica made sure to pull back every time he
tried after that, however.

She wasn’t about to tell him his advances
weren’t wanted, either. Not when she could use them to her
advantage. Also, pointing out to him that he made her uncomfortable
only seemed like it would expose a weakness in her, show Markus she
wasn’t strong enough to go out in the world and find fugitive
paranormals, or her brother.

So Jessica continued to smile at him, bat
her lashes and look helpless and small whenever he was around,
because that was what clearly got him off, what made him want to
help her even more.

Still, one day, she was going to punch him
for this, even if she never told him what it was for.

The time awake, working with Soren, letting
him take her blood and even running around downstairs in the gym
with the guards who worked in the building, was the best. At least
then, she wasn’t alone in her cell.

It had been upgraded since Markus had
decided she would be on his team. There was a better bed, a better
shower, and a television for her to watch all the propaganda
bullshit she wanted.

Not that she had any time to do that, of
course. She was exhausted by the time Soren or Charles walked her
back to her room.

The only thing really horrible about being
alone, aside from the fact that her door was locked and she
wouldn’t be allowed out for anything, was that it let her mind
wander back to Soren, back to the way he had touched her.

Her blood heated, making her sex warm
between her legs as her nipples puckered. He hadn’t even really
touched her skin to skin, but it had still been his touch that
brought her off so damned well.

The main problem lately was that she ached
so badly for more. She wanted to touch herself, to climb under the
sheets of her new—but still not great—bed and take care of
business. Or even do it in the shower, one palm leaning against the
tiled wall while her fingers worked inside of her.

The thing that stopped her was the fact that
she was never really alone. Despite the better residence with the
peach walls and the floral prints, like in a Best Western or
something, she knew the mirror in her bathroom was still two-way.
She knew there was a tiny camera watching her in the corner. It was
bad enough that the people who were guarding her still got to see
shots of her ass and tits—she tried to avoid that, but there was no
way in Hell she’d been so lucky that they hadn’t seen anything as
she’d climbed in and out of her shower—but she wasn’t about to give
the faceless, nameless people watching a show.

She’d come close, though. In her last
shower, as she’d stared down at her feet, hot steam rising around
her body, Jessica found herself fantasizing about Soren. She
imagined his palm between her legs, slowly rubbing against her
denim-clad clit, back and forth, harder and harder.

It hadn’t made the throbbing ache any
better, and without meaning to, one of her hands came up to cup and
caress her breast. She’d tweaked her nipple before she’d realized
what she was doing and put a stop to it.

The glass in her shower doors was frosted—by
design, not because of her—so whoever was watching her hadn’t
gotten the best shot of that, but there was no way they hadn’t
recognized where her hand had gone just then.

Fuck. Why couldn’t Soren have just taken
her?

The next day, during training, it was all
she could think about, so much so that when Soren’s loud voice
broke through the haze of her mind, she nearly jumped.

“
You’ll pretty much be
going through your hunter training again. This should be a piece of
cake for you. I expect you to give these other young men and women
here a run for their money,” Soren would say as she and a group of
twenty or so other new recruits lined up to find out who was the
fastest, who could climb the rope ladders without tangling each
other up, and who could capture a paranormal the
easiest.