As Cold As Ice (16 page)

Jessica eventually looked away from him.
“So, right, shower?”

Soren nodded. “I need one, too. I’ll meet
you back upstairs.”

“
Please just tell me I’m
almost on this stupid team Markus wants to put me on.”

“
You are. You’re as good as
on. This isn’t a joke. I promise you,” Soren told her.

Jessica bit her lip and looked away from
him, uncharacteristic of her. She seemed weak and helpless in front
of Charles, because she wanted to manipulate him, but Charles was
also something of an idiot.

This was real. Soren couldn’t have this. He
put his hands on Jessica’s shoulders, demanding her attention as he
shook her. “Listen to me. I promise you, Markus is just fucking
with you. He does that because he’s an asshole with too much money
to spend, but he does want to see if you’ll lead him to any safe
houses.”

“
I can’t lead him to any,”
Jessica said, shaking her head. “What am I supposed to do about the
other paranormals who are going to be let out with me? What if some
of them are spies, too? There has to be some. He wouldn’t be just
putting all of this on me alone.”

“
There are more. At least
two paranormals, and one hunter without powers who will be tracking
them. You’ll have the name of the hunter soon enough since you’re
going to be proxy to her. Kimberly Fox. I don’t know who else will
be let out to find the safe houses, though. I swear to God I
don’t.”

To his utter relief, though she didn’t look
overly happy by his news, she did appear to believe him. “Okay,”
she said.

Jessica pushed herself up onto her toes and
pressed a brief kiss to his mouth. It was over and done with before
he knew it. So fast and over in a blink that he didn’t even know
what to think.

Which was the epitome of pathetic,
considering he’d just fucked her. He’d had sex with her against the
wall in this dirty place, and he was getting worked up over one
little kiss.

Probably because he didn’t know if she would
ever kiss him like that ever again.

One little kiss…If that was the only one he
ever received from her from then on, no more for any reason, would
he be able to handle that?

Chapter Seventeen

Soren brought Jessica back upstairs. On the
way, he could hardly look at her, but that was all right because
he’d grabbed a clipboard and one of the printed files hanging on
the wall near the arena. He started to fill in some imaginary
training he’d had Jessica do while they’d been down there.

He never took off her shackles, and there
was no ice that needed cleaning up this time, so he wrote down that
he’d had her run twenty laps around the arena, before having her do
more exercises in the arena itself. That should account for her
flushed cheeks and wild hair. Even though she’d dragged it into a
tight ponytail, Soren still couldn’t help but notice how some hair
stuck out in certain places.

He wanted to grab onto her, drag her into a
dark corner, get that damned elastic band out of her hair and kiss
her again. He wanted to take her pants off, those plain cotton
panties, and put his tongue inside of her.

The second he felt a twitch in his penis, he
had to stop that train of thought. He couldn’t be thinking about
things like that. He couldn’t be getting an erection while he
walked through the halls that actually were populated by guards,
handlers, and hidden cameras.

After taking Jessica back to her room, Soren
went to his office.

A lot of the employees in the building were
expected to work ridiculous hours—the guards, the doctors, and the
caretakers and handlers. Because of this, there were small, plain
rooms where beds were kept. Employees were able to use their breaks
to sleep for a time, allowing them to keep going for the rest of
their shift. There were also shower stalls, which were especially
useful if a paranormal being tested happened to puke on someone,
which occurred a lot more than anyone realized.

Soren took advantage of the shower. It
wasn’t exactly public, but the stalls were so damned small,
allowing anyone who walked in to see his hairy legs from the knees
down and his body from the shoulders up. Even there, he couldn’t
think about her.

His cock was hard and he wanted to touch it,
to curl his fingers around his aching prick and pump his shaft
until he came again. Soren could still smell Jessica in the air,
and it was the longest amount of time he’d ever allowed himself to
be in the shower. He didn’t like going in there where people could
see him so exposed. He’d done everything in his power to prevent
that from ever happening.

Which was a funny thing, because ever since
Jessica was caught and brought in, his priorities had changed.
After that, he was more than willing to let the others, his
coworkers, see him, see the proof of what he was on his body, and
none of it would even matter.

He’d known he had to find a way of getting
her out of there long before she threatened to out him as a
paranormal. It didn’t matter to him. He’d been angry with her for
the threat, sure, but he would’ve done the exact same thing in her
position. It was hard to damn a person when thoughts like that were
going through his mind.

He’d never thought she would allow him to
touch her. After watching her with Charles, he’d been furious. He
wasn’t even sure why. Of course she would talk sweetly to anyone
who would listen to her, though; she wanted out of this place.
Other paranormals had flirted their way into the good graces of
doctors and handlers. One or two had even managed to escape that
way, which was why, if it was ever discovered that someone was
being more than a little handsy, that feelings were starting to get
involved, the employee was either fired, or moved to a different
part of the facility, maybe even a different building.

Soren walked a thin line, but he was fairly
sure Markus couldn’t fire him. The man needed him too damned
much.

If he ever found out what Soren was doing,
however—not just preparing for Jessica’s escape, but the sex and
the kissing—Soren would have a lot more to worry about than losing
his job.

At that point, he’d been lucky no one had
found anything out with how sloppy he’d been.

Soren turned off the water when his erection
died away, grabbed a towel, and stepped out of the stall to
dress.

Despite how much it had infuriated him to
see Jessica flirting with Charles, and Charles clearly eating it
up, that was probably the only reason why no one suspected him of
anything. They thought Jessica was infatuated with Charles. Or at
the very least, making an attempt to free herself from this place
by using him. Charles had been spoken to on more than one occasion
by Markus about that.

It was the handlers who were a problem. They
were often the ones who were able to get away with their sexual
perversions against the paranormals who were kept there because
they came and went so often, being moved from building to building,
constantly rotated to wherever they were needed the most. There was
no time to form any emotional attachments.

Soren had overheard more
than one handler speaking of the paranormal woman who could control
ice, and how they would like nothing more than to
‘
bend that ass over’
.

A few times, Soren had just worked the
computers to force a transfer. Another time, he had to have a talk
with a couple of them, to make sure they understood Jessica was
off-limits.

The third time, when one particular genius
who thought he was tough tried getting into Soren’s face, demanding
to know what he would do about it if he went around Soren anyway,
Soren had to teach him a lesson he wouldn’t soon forget.

Some paranormals had a hard time hiding
their powers. Soren didn’t. Not when one of his powers was intense
physical strength. That pretty much meant he could always win at a
fist fight without giving off the impression that he himself was a
paranormal.

Provided he took a few hits himself and
didn’t completely show the other man up.

When he was done with the guy, the man had a
broken nose, a fractured wrist, and an invitation to go and work
elsewhere.

Soren had purposely let his lip get busted
so the handlers, collectors, and guards who had watched the entire
thing could still see him bleed. But they also knew he would kick
the ass of everyone who dared try to stay inside of Jessica’s cell
for too long whenever they had to do their jobs.

The handlers were different from the
caretakers. The caretakers just cleaned up and served meals. They
were basically on the janitorial staff. The handlers, however, were
much different from the guards who wore white, and were not so
secretly made fun of by the paranormal community for looking like
stormtroopers.

Handlers were like the hunters and
collectors. They served a specific purpose for Head Office, and
Soren had worked very hard to keep them away from Jessica for as
long as possible.

Whenever a subject was brought in, being
particularly rowdy but not violent enough to require a guard, a
handler came in. The handlers where there to feed, bathe, and
clothe the paranormal in question.

Feedings that usually required a tube shoved
up a nostril, and being tied down and sprayed with a cold hose for
a bath.

Thankfully, Jessica had never done anything
that required some asshole handler to write down a recommendation
for treatment like that. He’d been checking frequently to make sure
of it.

The time for protecting her was almost done,
however. He needed to get back upstairs and report to Markus.

The secretary in front of his door wouldn’t
let him pass. Which was strange, and worrisome. The smile on her
mouth was normal, however, as she declared that Mr. Layton was
having a phone call with the mayor, and he wouldn’t be available
for Soren. She already had what Soren needed, and he relaxed as he
took the folder and went back to the elevator.

Only on the way down to his floor, with the
papers ready in his hands, did he feel his stomach turn.

The folder was thin, but heavy. It took him
only a minute to read what was inside. Two days. Soren had less
than that amount of time to prepare.

The elevator doors parted for him, and
without looking up, he took one step forward just as Charles walked
right into him.

Soren looked up at the man after the harsh
clicks of the shackle on his wrist registered in his ear.

The metal shackle was heavy, cold, and
strong. He stared hard at Charles, too shocked and horrified to say
anything. Inside his mind, he was screaming and flipping out on the
man, but he couldn’t make his body do any of the things he was
telling it to, not when he was sure this was being recorded.

That and the five guards dressed in white
standing behind Charles meant it was probably a bad idea for him to
let his emotions get the better of him.

Charles’ mouth thinned and he tilted his
head, as if what he’d done had somehow hurt him. “You’re done,
Soren.”

Chapter Eighteen

Jessica woke up the next day to the
pleasurable sensation of Soren’s hands sliding up and down her arm,
her hip, and her thighs. She sighed and turned onto her back,
smiling. “Hey, what are you—”

She opened her eyes. When her brain realized
it wasn’t Soren who had his hands on her, but a handler, some
random guy who’d just walked into her room, every fight-or-flight
instinct inside of her flared up and rushed her like a mob of a
thousand screaming people rolled into one body.

Jessica screamed at the
man. It wasn’t a helpless, horrified shriek either, but something
to make
him
feel
helpless and horrified, to scare him the fuck away from her because
he thought she was possessed.

By the way he jumped back and launched his
hands off her, as if she’d burst into flames like Cindy, she’d
accomplished her goal.

Jessica launched herself out of bed, wide
awake and mission-oriented. Her goal was to kill the man in front
of her, or at the very least, make him wish he was dead.

The guy held his hand out in front of her, a
nervous smile twitching at his lips. He was young, probably early
twenties or so, if the light haze of red acne on his cheeks was
anything to go by. “Easy there, sweetheart. One press of this
button and I’ll have thirty more men in here to hold you down.”

Whether to sedate her or to fuck her, she
had no idea. Where the hell was Soren?

Jessica was forced to relax her body. She
had to. The handler’s hand was pressed to something on his hip.
That was pretty much where they kept all of their emergency
pagers.

The guy was right—one press of that button,
and a signal would be sent out to every guard and handler in the
building. They would rush to her room, and there wouldn’t a whole
lot of anything she could do about it. Not with the shackle on her
wrist.

The man’s smile gained confidence, like
every school bully to ever exist, based solely on the power he held
whenever his prey was helpless.

Jessica took a good look at herself in the
shatterproof mirror off to the side of her bed. She looked like a
wild wreck. Even without her power to turn this little prick into
an ice cube, she still appeared dangerous and scary.

“
That’s it, little girl,
Nice and easy.”

Jessica’s spine straightened, and she moved
over to her dresser built into the wall. She opened it and pulled
out her Head Office-approved recruit uniform.

“
If you’re here to bring me
to the gym with the others, there’s better ways of waking me up,”
she told him.

She kept the corner of her eye fixed on the
mirror, making sure happy hands didn’t move. He didn’t. She
couldn’t quite see his face from the reflection in the mirror, but
the sound of his voice made her think he was smiling.