HeatedMatch (16 page)

Adam stood looking down at her and held out a hand to pull
her to standing.

She considered remaining on the bed but his steady gaze
called out to something deep inside her. He needed her close. She could feel
it. She grabbed his proffered hand, stood facing him and waited in silence for
his story.

“Um, I’m not sure where to start, since both your questions
are kind of related.”

“Start at the beginning. Leave nothing out.”

He tilted his head toward her, until his curls fell over his
forehead, and gave her a meaningful look that clearly said
shut up and let
me talk
. “I’ll talk, but I’d really rather do it from the car on the way to
my brother’s.”

Loren sighed. Clearly he wasn’t saying anything until he got
what he wanted. Fine. She could bend. Sometimes. She turned to find her
flip-flops.

Chapter Eight

Adam’s hands shook on the steering wheel while his stomach
rolled with each turn of the car, but he pressed forward. Loren deserved the
truth and it was going to come out eventually. He’d rather her hear it from
him.

“Your mom was genetically matched to your dad?” Loren asked.

Adam nodded.

“Then, why did you grow up off campus?”

Adam threw her a sidelong glance, surprised she remembered
that little offhanded detail he’d told her days ago.

“I do listen to you. On occasion,” she said with a smile.

Adam sucked in all the joy he could at her smile. It may be
the last they shared once he told her the rest. “My mom escaped from the campus
when I was three.”

“Escaped? That’s an odd way of putting it. Why did she run?”

Adam stared straight ahead at the traffic as he answered
with a child’s memories and coloring of the past. “They had a disagreement.
Something they couldn’t resolve. I remember her putting me in the back of the
car and telling me to wave bye-bye.” He risked another glance to see how she
accepted that news. She waited for him to continue.

“She took us to downtown DC to the best place she could
afford and the last place Dad would look. I stuck out like a sore thumb,
because I was faster, stronger, brighter and well…whiter than everyone else.
After a few years I forgot about my dad and my life in Beltsville. My mom never
talked about him. And he never came to see us.”

The hard edge to his tone revealed he’d never quite forgiven
his father that error. Memories of Thanksgivings sharing a dinner pack of KFC
and Christmases with gift-wrapped library books instead of bicycles still
gnawed at him. He didn’t care for himself, but he’d hated seeing his mother
hide her shame at not being able to afford better things.

“Did he know where you were?” Loren asked, arrow to the
bull’s-eye, as usual.

“Well no, I don’t think my mom ever contacted him again,”
Adam admitted. “We hid in plain sight less than ten miles from him. But still,
consider the resources at his disposal. I find it hard to believe he never even
looked.”

“Are you sure? Have you ever asked him?”

He threw her a look that said in no uncertain terms he was
done with that line of questioning. He held little hope that Loren would stop
asking, researcher that she was. Hell, she’d made it a career to dig for the
truth. He continued talking. And found himself in new territory, telling her
things he’d thought to keep secret his whole life. And like steam rising from a
boiling pot, once it was out, could never be contained and put back.

“When I was fourteen, I started having dreams about my past.
I saw myself running around the Beltsville campus as a toddler. In my dream,
I’d be picked up and hugged by the same man every night.”

“Your dad,” she said in a whisper barely loud enough to
float over the traffic roar.

“Yeah. My dad. Finally when I was fifteen, I got curious
enough to ask my mom about him. At first she refused to talk about him, but
finally she caved and gave me…well she gave me the tragic whole story and his
address.” He didn’t mention the box of letters Mom had given him. The letters
that had cemented his views of love and matching within the confines of the
Program.

“You went to find your dad,” Loren said.

“Not immediately. I knew it would upset my mom, and for some
reason she’d made me promise to never mention my brother, Rowan, to my dad if I
ever went looking for him.”

“Why?”

“Hang on, I’m getting there. The thing you have to understand
is that I was different then. I wasn’t the model soldier you see now. I was one
step away from juvie jail. My brother and I were kind of the de facto heads of
our little gang. Street fighting, skipping school. Small stuff like that, you
know.”

“Uh-huh.” She nodded, but he could tell his teen years were
a world away from her little idyllic life in the ’burbs.

“I had no intention of looking for my dad. I liked my life.
I was close to graduation, and had big plans of opening a PI firm with Rowan.”

She smiled at his confession. “What happened?”

“Life.” Adam shrugged. “One night we took a fight too far.
Some jerk-off from a few streets over picked a fight with Rowan. I’ve always
been a bit…protective of him. When the other guy pulled a knife, I jumped into
the fight, and things went south from there.” He pressed his foot firmly on the
gas pedal as if driving faster could make the story come out faster. “I beat
that kid to within an inch of his life.”

He remembered the shouts and
thwacks
of fists and his
own fists punching over and over into the other boy’s ribs. Punching even after
the other boy’s arms had slackened, offering no resistance. He fell silent
waiting for Loren’s condemnation. God knows he’d heaped enough of it onto
himself.

When silence came from her side of the car, he chanced a
glance over. She still sat waiting for him to finish. So he did.

“I didn’t even wait for the police. I hopped on the Metro
and then walked the rest of the way to the Beltsville address my mom had given
me. I kept stopping at 7-11s and gas stations to ask for directions. I was
terrified my face would be on the TV monitors with the cops looking for me. But
I made it to the compound where Shep and my dad put me in a dorm room, no
questions asked.”

“And you’ve been there ever since,” Loren said.

Adam shrugged. “More or less.” She’d tied it off with a nice
red ribbon, missing his induction into his cohort and his frequent, secret
off-campus jaunts to visit his brother and mom that continued until she’d died
when he was eighteen.

If only his introduction to the Program had been like
Loren’s idyllic imaginings. He’d been such a little know-it-all punk those
first few weeks of campus living. Sure, the abilities that had allowed him to
coast through his former life would suffice here. He couldn’t have been more
wrong. Every other kid in the gymnasium was equally fast, equally strong and
driven with a hunger to lead. Without Shep, Keel and his father’s extra
training, he would have failed. They’d spent hours in the gym sparring and
coaching him while the rest of his cohort slept.

Quiet fell in the car as they drove farther downtown.
Single-family homes with yards made way for row homes, liquor stores and
check-cashing places. Graffiti decorated store windows and steam from a Metro grate
billowed up out of the ground, adding misery to an already steamy summer day.

“Are we getting close?” Loren asked.

Adam nodded.

“You still haven’t told me why you think you’re damaged
goods,” she said.

“You’ll see soon enough.”

She frowned but said nothing.

Adam gritted his teeth and turned off New Hampshire Avenue
to a smaller side street. He started to scout the neighborhood for a parking
spot. He spotted one at the next corner and sped off to grab it. He slid the
car gear into park, but remained seated, air-conditioning running, enjoying the
false feeling that he and Loren were a real couple going for a drive. His body
still hadn’t calmed from their earlier kiss and it was getting harder to quell
his desire.

This
was what he’d been fighting. That right next to
him was a woman destined to be his genetic and romantic soul mate. He had
instantly wanted her beyond rational boundaries and should fight to have her,
to be with her. The Program had learned beyond a shadow of a doubt that there
was a science to falling in love. Something for which eHarmony or Match.com
would toss their chairman of the board into lava if they could get their hands
on the formula.

And yet it didn’t always work. How could he know if he’d be
one of the lucky ones like Shep and live in harmony with his match, or a victim
of the system like his mother? Far better not to take the risk, but it was damn
hard with temptation a few inches over in the passenger seat, especially after
unburdening his soul on the drive over. It felt as if he could tell her
anything and there was only a paper-thin barrier between his brain and his
mouth to keep him from spilling everything he was starting to feel for her.

The connection he felt to her and the clear memory of their
earlier kiss hardened his body in a flash. Without warning, his hands
disconnected from his brain, and in one swift move, he unclipped his seatbelt
and launched his torso over the center console, nearly knocking the gear shift
into drive with his force.

Loren faced him, an expectant look in her eyes. He met her
nose to nose, her opportunity to deny him, a hairsbreadth of time. Then he was
on her. Lips to lips, hands on shoulders tightening.

Her soft moan was the healing balm of acceptance and welcome
he’d been waiting for all his life. Nothing had ever tasted better than her
sweet, warm mouth.

His.

His match.

He plundered, taking and demanding she meet him equally. She
did not disappoint.

He licked and nibbled on her full lips, reveling in her
tongue rubbing his with urgency. Time was of the essence. They’d wasted days
circling around each other when they could have been doing this. Kissing,
licking, petting. Adam dragged her t-shirt up and slipped his hand under. Skin
softer than a thousand yards of silk heated his palm. He inched slowly toward
the Holy Land until Loren took the initiative and twisted so her breast landed
right where he wanted it. Her distended nipple dragged a searing line of fire
across his life line.

His world narrowed to this car, this woman. The sweet smell
that was uniquely Loren filled his nostrils, mixed with something else,
arousal. He eyed the backseat of the car, rejected it, then leaned across her
to press her seat into a full recline. With some difficulty he maneuvered
himself fully over the gear shift and onto her. He stopped to gently bite the
tip of her nose when she laughed at his contortions.

Then he was on her, lips to ankles and everything in
between. Humor fled, replaced with her earnest eyes gazing deep into his. When
she tugged on his head to pull him back down for a kiss, he conceded easily.
Their kiss heated up even more than he’d thought possible. He was helpless not
to thrust his arousal into her belly. He groaned as the friction abraded his
shaft, but it was not nearly enough.

She shifted around, trying to spread her legs to accommodate
his hips between hers, but the narrow, molded car seats left no room for that
kind of love play. He turned on his side, taking Loren with him, still facing
each other.

“Ow. Damn it.” He scowled as bits and pieces of the car
stabbed him in his lower back. He attempted to make them more comfortable, but
this time Loren cringed as her leg wedged under the glove box. He kept kissing
her, but now found himself competing with her giggles.

“Adam, stop.” More laughter.

“Why? I can move the seat farther back. I can make this
work,” he promised her with the urgency of a high school senior on prom night.

Loren shook her head as more soft giggles escaped her
swollen lips. Then she untangled an arm to point up at the window.

He followed her finger and looked up to see the grinning
face of his brother peering down on them. He groaned, banged his forehead onto
Loren’s shoulder and wished for a transporter that could take him and Loren
anywhere but here. Somewhere with a large bed.

Suddenly, Loren’s passenger door opened with a
crack
.
Rowan leaned in to help extricate them from the car. Easier said than done. It
took a near-dislocated shoulder to untangle Loren from him and the car. Adam
got out with slightly more grace to stand next to her. She was greeting Rowan
and trying not to stare at the place where his right arm was supposed to be.

Loren hid her shock with a wide smile, but between Adam’s
revelations and heated kisses on top of Rowan’s surprise appearance, she was
grateful to be upright and not a pool of jelly on the steaming summer sidewalk.
The brothers greeted each other with that half handshake, half hug combined
with back pounding that masculine men loved. Like a true, full-armed hug was
something shameful. Or maybe in this case it was logistically difficult, given
Rowan’s missing limb.

She wondered how he’d lost it. Had he been born without it,
or had there been an accident later in life? Life could be tough on these
streets, and based on what Adam had told her, losing an arm from a fight seemed
entirely more plausible than Rowan being born without one. Especially since he
was a son of two people matched for their ability to produce a more perfect
human.

Her mind reeled and whirled at the possibilities. Perhaps,
Rowan
had
been born without the arm, and that was the source of
contention between Adam’s parents. It seemed unlikely. Had his father really
flipped out over one tiny missing limb? Although not that tiny, given the size
of Rowan’s physique. He and Adam could easily be mistaken for twins, except
Rowan stood two inches taller than Adam’s six feet even, and lacked twenty odd
inches of sinew, bone and fingers.

But as she trailed behind the brothers who strolled toward
Rowan’s row home, she had a sick feeling that Rowan was the link to the mystery
of Adam’s extreme opposition to the Program’s matching system. He’d said he was
damaged goods. Did he think that because his brother was missing a limb? She’d
have to do a little digging back at the Program compound to see if they truly
looked at one tiny missing limb as such a handicap. She shook her head then
hurried after the two men who’d walked ahead, talking in low, hushed whispers.
When they reached the steps of a narrow, gray house with crumbling concrete
steps and black iron bars over the windows, Rowan turned and smiled at her.

“Welcome.
Mi casa es su casa
and all
that.” He swung the door open with a flourish and gestured she should
enter. Adam followed close on her back. She picked her way over Red Bull cans
and empty Corona bottles toward a sagging, ancient couch, which once had bright
flowers on the upholstery, but now looked like splotches of questionable
origin.