Taming the Fire (38 page)

The moment Kira stood, Ender snagged her arm and pulled her away. Which, of course, set off the beast. Rik heard a godawful snarl emanate from deep inside her.

“Tommy, that's not necessary,” Kira snapped, but Neema cut her off with a sharp hand signal.

“Ender, make a threatening move. Make her mad.”

Before anyone could protest, he said something about crate training and Milk-Bones, and drew a pistol from inside his jacket. Rik had seen enough tranquilizer guns to recognize it, and so had the beast. Its pain and rage welled up inside her as memories of all the horrible things Itor had done to her hit her from all sides. She couldn't count the number of times she'd been shot with tranqs when her handlers couldn't put the beast back inside.

She knew this was a test, one she was going to fail miserably in about two seconds.

Failure…

She'd made so much progress since meeting Trance. The wolf hadn't felt the need to hurt or control a human in days, when before, the need had been constant. She'd actually felt peace. Happiness. For the first time since losing her entire family, she felt like she might actually belong somewhere.

If she shifted now and attacked these people, all of that would change. They might never trust her, and her own guilt would lead to withdrawal and misery.

Kira was right. She had to be strong.

She
would be
strong.

In a firm, commanding tone, she barked out an order at her inner wolf to stand down. But with Ender moving forward, Cujo raged, throwing herself at the walls of Rik's mind.

Stand. Down!

Slowly, calmly, Rik stood. Sweat beaded on her brow as the effort to hold the beast in took its toll. She trembled, skin feeling like fire ants were biting her from the inside. But she held it together. Somehow, she held it together. Even when Ender grabbed her wrist as though he was going to throw her to the ground, she managed to keep from exploding into fur and fangs.

It wasn't easy, but she didn't think anything had ever felt as good as the realization that she'd remained in control. And when Ender released her, she nearly laughed at the victory.

She'd won. Just a few days ago, nothing could have kept her from shifting into a man-eating monster, but today, she'd kept it together. She couldn't wait to tell Trance—

Closing her eyes, she blew out a long breath, her joy tempered with sadness. She couldn't tell Trance, because after what she'd done to his father, how could he talk to her, let alone forgive her?

She stared off in the direction he'd gone, still tempted to go after him. But not now. Later. Later she'd find him, and she'd make him listen. Make him understand. Because she'd lost way too much in her life, and she wasn't about to lose him too.

Ryan stood on Trance's front porch, waiting. He'd been pounding on the door for several minutes, and he was about to bust through it, because he knew damned good and well the excedo was home.

Finally, Trance opened up. The guy looked harsh, unshaven, his hair standing up, dark circles under his bloodshot eyes.

“Wow,” Ryan said, taking the excedo in from his bare feet to his worn jeans and wrinkled T-shirt. “Protesting showers?”

“Bite me.” Trance stood aside and let Ryan inside, despite his growled words.

Ryan strode to the living room, went straight to Trance's DVD player, and inserted one of his sex discs.

Trance stood in the entrance to the living room, arms crossed, leaning against the wall as if it were the only thing holding him up. “I don't remember making a movie date with you.”

“Keep your dick in your pants, Romeo.” Ryan pushed Play and stood back. “What do you know about that?”

Trance's eyes shot wide, and he yanked himself off the wall. “I know you need an ass-kicking if you came to watch porn with me—oh, fuck me,
that's you
. Turn it off! I don't need to see that.”

Ryan hit the Pause button. “Well?”

“Well, what?” Trance shuddered. “Christ. I'm going to have to gouge out my eyes now.” He stalked to the kitchen, where he yanked two bottles of beer from the fridge, popped the tops and gave one bottle to Ryan before downing half of the other. “You going to tell me why you just gave me reason to make an appointment with a mind-scrubber?”

“Funny,” Ryan muttered. “You know, or the guy who had his mind scrubbed.”

“Ah, yeah. Sorry about that. Is that why you're here?” He eyed the TV. “I hope.”

Ryan took a swig of his beer and sank down on a bar stool at the counter. “When did you find out I was inside Itor?”

“After you were pronounced missing, presumed dead, Dev let us know what happened.”

That made sense. Though his boss probably left out the little detail about how Ryan's death was Dev's fault. “Dev told me that before I left on the Itor mission, I came to see you. I don't remember why.”

Trance nodded. “I didn't know what your mission was, but you told me that for your cover, you were supposed to have an extreme BDSM fetish.”

“Why would I come to you?”

Trance cocked an eyebrow. “Because I'm the go-to guy for that stuff.”

“Oh.” That put images in Ryan's head that had him considering his own mind-scrubbing appointment. “So… I wasn't into it before I came to you?”

Trance choked on his beer. When he recovered, which seemed to take for-fucking-ever, he said, “Man, when you came to me you thought candles only had one use.”

“Bullshit.” At Trance's I'm-not-shitting-you look, Ryan frowned. Maybe he was right. He thought back to all his relationships… there had been a few, mostly casual, and yeah, pretty vanilla sex.

Something flashed in his mind—Trance, taking him to a club, showing him videos, online sites. Lots and lots of research.

“You had to go beyond normal BDSM for your role, Ryan. Your sexual fetishes were supposed to cross the line of what's safe and acceptable. Obviously, a love of torture was supposed to lure Itor.”

God, had he been able to separate his undercover persona and his real self during the time he'd been with Itor? How had he not gone crazy?

He now knew he hadn't tortured anyone to death—his job at Itor had kept him in a communications cubicle most of the time. Itor had only filled in the memory gaps with lies after they scrubbed his brain. But now he remembered how, before they took his memory and still didn't know he was undercover, they'd sent him nightmarish photos now and then, thinking he'd get all hot and bothered. Remembered how they'd send him women to play with—frightened women who hadn't given their consent.

What had he done with them? Were the women on the DVDs those women?

Trance gestured to the TV. “What are the dates on your, ah, porn?”

“Dunno. Never looked.” Ryan went over to the DVD player and fast-forwarded through a few sessions. “They're timed before Itor says I had my accident.”

“Before they wiped your mind.”

“So I did those things as part of my cover.”

“Looks like.” Trance saluted with his beer bottle. “Gotta hand it to you—you really got into your role.”

“Too well,” Ryan muttered. “But something doesn't feel right. Like maybe Itor doctored the videos. They lied to me about everything else.” Or maybe he was just hoping Itor had tampered with the evidence, because he didn't want to believe he was capable of the things he'd done.

“Why is this a big deal?”

Ryan gave Trance an are-you-kidding-me look. “How would you like it if you could remember almost everything about your past except one big hole, and that one hole is filled by stuff that feels completely alien and out of character? And what if you were afraid you'd done things… to hurt innocent women? You ever made a woman cry out in agony, Trance? Because I gotta say, my soul weighs about a million pounds right now.”

Trance exhaled slowly and nodded, looking more haunted than he had when Ryan arrived. “Yeah, I get it.”

“It's driving me nuts. I can't concentrate on anything. Can't commit to anything.” Anything or
anyone
, which was the real problem. “Not until I know who I am. And that one missing piece is so not me.”

“Have you been with a woman since they scrubbed you?”

Only Meg. “Yeah.”

“And?”

“And what?”

“Did you have the urge to tie her up? Spank her? Maybe go beyond what's pleasurable to hurt her or humiliate her?”

“Fuck, no.” Ryan had to ease his grip on the beer bottle before he shattered it in his hand. “I mean, I did, but that was before my memory came back. I thought I was supposed to be like that.”

“But since you got it back?”

“No. Nothing like that. So why—”

“Look at me.”

Startled, Ryan looked up, and instantly fell into Trance's hypnotic gaze.

“Think back, Ryan. Think back to your assignment.”

“Itor,” he murmured.

“Right. And the women. Think about the women you were with in the videos. Who were they?”

“Some of them… taken off the streets. Forced to… to…”

“Ryan. Tell me.”

Ryan swallowed hard as the memories flooded his brain. He'd thanked the Itor guys who brought the women to his little play room he'd set up for his role, and then he'd dragged the women inside. He'd tied them up. And whispered in their ears that everything would be okay. He wouldn't hurt them, but if they wanted to get out of the situation alive, they had to act like he was torturing the living hell out of them.

He didn't realize he'd been speaking out loud until Trance swore.

“Good, Ryan,” he said in a soothing voice. “You didn't hurt them. Were they all forced on you?”

Ryan's head throbbed as he searched the recesses of his memory. “No. Some I hired,” Ryan said, and whoa, that was definitely something he hadn't remembered until now. “Hired from clubs.”

Trance moved closer, still holding Ryan's gaze. “Why did you hire them? For sex?”

Ryan blinked, nearly breaking out of the haze he was in, but Trance grabbed his face and held him still.

“Why, Ryan?”

“Paid them… to act… hurt.”

“So you didn't hurt them?”

“No,” Ryan mused, relief making him light-headed. “I knew Itor was watching. I made it look like I was hurting them… like with the women they brought to me.”

Suddenly, Ryan was out of the fuzz and everything made sense. He hadn't been into that shit. He'd faked it. Thank God, he'd faked it all. And now his mental jigsaw puzzle was complete.

Trance stepped back and finished his beer. “Well?”

“I'm cured, Doc.” Cured, but still fucked up. Because in Meg he'd found something decent, something he knew he'd been looking for all his life. And he'd sent her packing. Sure, he'd weakened a couple of times and tried to IM her, but he hadn't gone as far as to visit her in billeting again. “Thanks, man. I owe you.”

Ryan took off at a dead run, heading straight for guest quarters. He darted past the front desk guard, who looked at him like he was nuts, and pounded on Meg's door. When no one answered, he sprinted to the front desk.

“Where is she?”

The guard shrugged. “Gone. Checked out with some guy days ago.”

Ryan cursed. This wasn't over. She might have left ACRO, but he knew exactly how to find her.

T
HERE WAS
a knock on his door. This time, Trance had showered and cleaned up his house, mainly because he was tired of being a zombie. Or, more to the point, he didn't need another operative showing up at his door commenting on his zombieness.

“It's like fucking Grand Central Station around here,” he muttered, swung the door open and stood stock-still when he saw Rik on the other side. “You shouldn't have come here.”

She held out a hand to block the door. If he'd wanted to, closing it wouldn't have been a problem, but he controlled himself. For now.

“I need to talk to you, Trance. You have to give me that opportunity.”

“No, I don't. I can't.” This time, he did shut the door on her, got it almost all the way closed when she kicked it open viciously, enough to dent the wood.

He hadn't expected that, stood dumbfounded as she pushed her way inside his house. She demanded that he speak to her, and her words jumbled in his mind in a sea of anger and pain.