Chapter 16

Sixteen

JANE

Iscrewed up. Hopefully, no one saw me. My mask dropped, which edged my plan forward slightly too soon. Confession lies on my lips like a bee sting, plump and pulsating with pain. Either path could lead to certain death, but I’m not ready to die. Cal said if I play my cards right… Somehow, someway, we need to be alone.

No cameras or phones. No tanks, or armor, or spies. Just us.

“That’s it. It’s over.”

“Wha-what?” My eyes refocus on the task at hand. Cal is pointing to the computer screen.

“The video is over. You can close it. I thought it was funny.” He straightens up from showing me a cute ventriloquist routine, but I hadn’t been paying attention. Before he can back away from me, I snag his hand.

“It was! Will you show it to me again?” My voice is sing-songy. It’s so fake and I hear it. But I can’t stop it.

“No. I gotta get to work in the back. Need to make my rounds for the day since I closed early yesterday.” Almost reaching the black curtain, his eyes monitor me with indifference.

“Hope you’re not too tired. I had a great time last night, by the way.” And I had. The problem was, after he ate my pussy like no one else ever had, the rest of the trip home was quiet. And it was the loudest silence. Like the car the night he took me back from the funhouse. It felt deadly. He was distant, which was both what I wanted and not what I wanted. This ambivalence is tormenting me. Any decision I make could get me killed. “Maybe we can do something again soon?”

His eyebrows close in tighter to each other. “Yeah. Soon, maybe.” Cal turns his back on me and walks away.

Oh, fuck. I screwed up.

Waiting until the end of the workday is fraying my nerves. It doesn’t help that it’s a slow day and every time the door chime rings, my body wants to leave the constraints of my skin in a panic. If I pick the wrong choice, I could end up worse than dead. Anyone could be out to get me at any moment.

On my break, I decide to speak with Echoes, but when her door swings open, a red-faced Alpha peers at me with daggers in her eyes while curling the top of her injected upper lip into a sneer.

“You are not allowed back here,” she snarls.

Backing up a step, I say, “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know. Sometimes Echoes lets me. Sorry, I’ll just—” Before I can turn around, she stops me.

“You’re Jane, right?”

Pretending I have no clue who she is, I feign innocence. “Yes.”

“I’m Amanda. I work for Cal, too… I understand he’s taken you out on a few, um, dates.” She snorts a little laugh through her long, straight nose while saying the word with a dart of venom.

“Um…yeah.” I wish I could leave, but now I’m held in place, unable to move. Interacting with her is only putting myself in more danger. If she figures out who I am, I’m more dead than I already am. Tortured, maimed, then killed? That’s probably what will happen.

“You know he can’t be with you, right? He’s Calum Von Dovish. You’re…” She stands and walks over to me, her fit body looming over mine, standing about three inches taller. Her hands wrap around her leather-covered hips. I’ve always been good at grappling, but I know she’s quite the escape artist. I can’t expose my skills here. Not now. Tossing her dark brown ponytail over her shoulder, she glares at me with her icy blue eyes. “Who are you?”

I try to ascertain which particular word she put the emphasis on in her question as I steady my breathing. If she were a bull, steam would emerge from her nostrils, fury flaring some color into her cheeks. Letting my lips broaden into a wide, flirty smile, I tell her, “I’m his whore.”

Flipping around, my hair flares out, probably into her face. I walk back toward the front of the store as Echoes’s gasp rings out before the door slams shut behind me.

Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. My planned schedule needs to move up pronto. I can’t wait anymore. If there’s any hope for extraction, I need to convince Dash.

Snatching my purse, I lock up the store, trying to not appear in a hurry. Slowly driving toward my apartment, I park in the lot, lock up my car, and wander upstairs just like every day. Just like every day, Zero. Pressing my back against my front door, I listen. Checks complete, I change into a black hoodie and exit down the fire escape through my bedroom, leaving the window unlocked and slightly ajar for my return.

In two hours, I’ve walked to the edge of Gnarled Pine Park, snagging a burner phone from a convenience store on the way. It’s dark now and I find a pine with low branches that will provide me good cover. Clutching the trunk around the base, I shimmy up the tree and I lie down on the wooden seat to wait.

Crunching leaves wake me. They’re mixed with wet, squishy sounds left by the incoming spring rains, but the sound is enough to make my heart race as my eyes snap open. Dash isn’t aware of my exact location, standing just beneath my tree, looking to his left and right. Probably smells me or something strange like that.

When I drop from my hidden position just behind his back, he whips around, pulling out his knife, pressing the sharpened edge into my throat. I laugh while twisting his wrist to stop him from plunging the blade into my neck, his grip loosening until I am able to rip the weapon from his grasp.

“Zero,” comes out with a sneer of recognition.

Patting his bulky upper arm, I smile. “Up your game, Dash-boy.”

“I need you to up yours. Why are you calling again so soon? If you’re laughing, that can’t mean you need extraction.” With a clench of his jaw, his arms cross as inspects my face in the dim light of the moon. Lowering his voice, he gives me a smoldering gaze from his golden eyes. “Are-are you getting needy again?”

His statement is a bit of a shock, but the feeling passes quickly. It used to hurt. To feel like he was mine, but never really. Are any of us ever actually with someone else if we can’t be real? Nothing true survives. All we had was lies, but at the time, it was all I knew, and he seemed safe.

Now I know safety doesn’t exist.

“No. Not for you.” He has the audacity to look both relieved and offended at the same time. “I fucked up. I think I fucked up big time.”

Tilting his head to the right, the wave of his hair that flows to that side swings in the breeze. “How bad?”

“I don’t think Cal’s into me anymore.”

Dash’s eyes dart to the ground, searching for some unknown answer. He swallows as if he doesn’t want to know, but asks anyway. “Did you sleep with him too soon? Nerds like him probably don’t⁠—”

“No! Please. I understand what I’m doing, I just…” How can I put it? “I think Dot needs to pull me out. We should abort mission.”

Dash’s jaw clenches harder this time. “Is there someone else? How can he not be into you? The damsel in distress shit, the red hair, the lavender. You stink, by the way.”

“No, there’s no one else. I think he just lost interest. You know how guys do. We should reassess how to go about this.”

His large hand holds his chin as he stares me down with ferocity. “Zero, you understand that if you abort mission, there’s no more use for you. I care about you like, like a little sister, and I don’t want to see you go.” Stepping into me, his palms grip my shoulders as he leans down to whisper in my ear. “They will fucking kill you. You understand that, right?”

Nodding, I say, “I thought we could just change the mission. There must be an easier way to get the information. I’ve already been on several training trips for him. Look, I’m even going to bring him back some mushrooms like a good prodigy when I go home. I can get the information, but I just don’t want to—” Biting my lower lip, I fear I’ve revealed too much.

“Don’t want to what? To complete your mission? Seduce Cal and get the information we need? Zero…since we found you, you were trained to be his. If he doesn’t want you, that’s on you. What good is a spy if she doesn’t follow orders?” Pausing, he grips the back of my hair, forcing my face to look at his as he growls, “Zero, they will force me to end you. Do you understand that?”

His eyes appear glassy, as if he’s panicking at the thought, full lips so close to mine, he huffs warm breaths inside my mouth. Maybe he does care about me. Or maybe he’s just an impressive liar. “I’ll follow orders.”

“Do whatever the fuck it takes to get Cal back.” Releasing my hair, he steps away, and I pull the hood of my sweatshirt back over my head. “Maybe do that thing with your…you know.”

Shaking my head, I don’t get his meaning.

He sighs as if it’s a chore to respond. “Clutch his dick with your tight twat like you do.”

A gasp leaves my mouth. “That was involuntary, Dash.”

His thick lips lift into a conceited smirk. “’Cause my dick was so good.”

“Please,” I say, rolling my eyes. But he was right, and I fucking hated it. “You’re a sick fuck to call me your little sister and then bring that up.”

“I said ‘like a little sister.’ ‘Like.’”

Cringing, I reply, “Still…”

Dash is all about the mission. I understand. Our lives are not like other people’s. We can’t form authentic bonds or relationships. It’s about need in the moment when you have one. At one time, we needed each other, and he no longer has a need. For me anyway.

I’m an object to be used, always have been. A toy. Plastic and unreal. It’s how I’ve survived for so long. There were once thoughts and feelings I could claim to be my own. What was once manipulations became identity. Then personal identity stopped having any meaning. It was trained right out of me. Survival may not hold any value soon unless I can accomplish my goal.

There is one thing that I dared to make mine, a solitary thing, a blip of a memory I hold on to when I start to forget why I’m still on this planet. Something they couldn’t take away from me, couldn’t get to. I don’t even think of it now, not in the presence of Dash. Never allowing myself to fully remember the scene, I usually only get the flash of the faded thought before I let it pass, but it’s enough to keep me going. Enough to make me pursue a sick, perverted hope of something different from the mold I’ve been poured into.

Even becoming my own person is terrifying. I can’t even dare to ask myself who she is or what she really wants. If I spend too much time on that, I’ll fail my assignment.

Nothing true survives.

Without a word, we part ways by turning on our heels and walking in opposite directions. As I wander through the woods, I allow my thoughts to work out exactly how I can force the next steps of my plan. Tugging out my handkerchief, I gather a few mushrooms spotted under a warm log. I place the wrapped goods in my pocket and start on the miles left to get home.

Before exiting the land through the back, however, a snap of a twig stabs my ears. My body freezes from instinct. Light steps let me know the figure is small and coming straight for me at a fast pace. There’s a choice: sprint away or turn and fight.

I choose the latter.

Spinning, I use my leg as leverage to trip the lithe figure aiming to tackle me, but she dives over it at the last second, landing in a roll on the moss-covered ground. Without giving her a chance to recover, I jump on guard, but she quickly pushes me off with a twist of her hips. I know this tactic. This is Alpha.

Fuck, fuck, fuck.

If she saw me with Dash, my life is over. If she didn’t, there’s a chance I can play innocent if I run away, scared. Jane would be scared. She doesn’t know how to fight.

So that’s what I do. Alpha may be tough shit when it comes to scaling cityscapes, but I’m faster on foot in the open space, especially in the woods. My woods, my home. She is on my heels for the first five hundred yards but can’t keep up when I weave through several trees, hopping over downed logs and even adding a screamed “Help!” here and there. As if I’m terrified. At the forest’s edge, she gives up, and when I believe she’s out of reach, I shimmy up into a tree to wait for her to leave.

Fortunately, I don’t have long to wait as I contemplate what her end goal was. Did she follow me? Has she already informed Cal of my tryst with Dash? He didn’t even have his mask on tonight. We were sloppy.

My mind races with possible excuses I could make: caught by Donovan’s men, an old flame I hadn’t seen in a long time, running into a friend from school out for a stroll in the middle of a deserted spooky night…

By any means necessary, I have to get to Cal before she does. First thing in the morning, I need to make a big move. Like…move forward with my plan. Tell him a truth. If only we could be alone.

By the time I make it back up the fire escape and slide through my window noiselessly, I want a hot shower to clean off the grime of my conscience. If I still have one. If I ever did.

After letting the hot water pelt lashes onto my skin, standing under the heated pressure for at least twenty minutes, I get out and go through my nightly routine among the steam. Padding into my bedroom, I slide open my underwear drawer and gasp, my hand slapping across my open mouth. My dildo is still there, but all my panties are gone. Every single one. Vanished.

The window. He must have used the window.

Does this mean I still have him?

Hmm… But he left my dildo. What does that mean? Is he okay with me using it? Is it an invitation? Does he like to watch me using it?

When I pick it up, my eyes catch on a white crust as if I forgot to clean it from the last time, but that’s not possible. I always clean my toys. Taking a whiff, I don’t recognize the bitter scent encasing it.

My stomach churns, a knot forming as my throat fills with a hard lump…

Did he—Did he cover my dildo with his cum?