Part 15
“You think he bought it?”
A cool smile curved her lips. “No doubt about it,” Eve said confidently. “Hook, line, and sinker.”
Jace wasn’t convinced. Tightening his arms around her, he shifted slightly, the sheets rustling in the quiet night. “I don’t know, baby, there was something in his eyes that—”
“He bought it,” she interrupted tersely. “Besides, if he didn’t, he doesn’t have a choice. He’ll do what we want.”
Frowning in the darkness, Jace sighed. “He’s smart, Eve. Smart and powerful. He could kill us both without too much trouble, you know that.”
A hard push on his bare chest told him of her irritation as she flipped over onto her stomach. Thrusting her face into his, she bared her teeth in anger like a snarling panther.
“And whose fault is that, huh?” she accused him. “You were supposed to stay distant from him, Jace. You weren’t supposed to adopt the brat. You were supposed to keep him emotionally vulnerable while making him physically unbeatable. Then he wouldn’t have the nerve to attack us.”
Eve shoved away from him and sat up with disgust. “You knew the plan. You were supposed to make him hate the very sight of you, but feel bound to you. But no, you had to go and play Big Daddy and fuck everything up.”
Scooting up into a sitting position against the headboard, Jace cupped her face in his hands. He was surprised when she didn’t jerk away from him in disgust. In an instant, tears formed in Eve’s eyes. The calculating mind behind them only whirred faster, one step ahead of her lover and using every feminine wile in her arsenal to keep him under her thumb.
“I trusted you. I needed him to be a machine. I needed him to look at your face and feel pain and confusion. I can’t run the risk that he’ll go all soft when he sees Angel again.” A small sniffle escaped her as one tear overflowed and ran down her cheek, wetting the fingers that held her face. “I thought you loved me, Jace,” her voice broke, his name a mere whisper.
“I do love you, baby, I do,” he quickly reassured her. “But he needed somebody. He was so broken after his parents died. I wouldn’t have been able to gain his trust if I’d been the mean bastard you wanted me to be. I needed to be the father he’d just lost.”
She only looked at him despondently and pulled away, turning her back to him and drawing her legs up to her chest. Burying her face in her knees, she let sobs wrack her body. Her face averted, Eve let a smile spread across them when she could almost hear his resolve cracking behind her. The triumph swept over her small frame as his big hands spread across her back, rubbing her shoulders in an attempt to comfort her.
“I’m sorry I disappointed you, baby,” Jace whispered. “But I know Connor will come through for us. I’m just worried that something will go wrong and that—that I’ll lose you. I can’t lose you!”
“I couldn’t lose Lindsay either, but Angel killed him anyway!”
A pregnant, painful silence hung in the room after her outburst. It wasn’t difficult for her to ignore the grimace of pain on Jace’s face as Lindsay’s hallowed name once again invaded the privacy of their bedroom.
Hardened eyes met his again. “I guess you’ll just have to make sure that Connor can’t win against you, Jace.”
He stiffened immediately. “But the mystical enhancements you’ve given me aren’t working anymore, Eve, not like they used to. We’ll have to find some other way.”
Defiantly, she raised her chin and set her lips in a grim line. “You know what you have to do, Jace. The permanent treatment this time.”
“But baby—” he pleaded, raising a hand to her in supplication.
A resolute shake of her head was his only answer. “You’ll do it, Jace. If you love me, you’ll do it.”
Sighing, Jace slumped and buried his face in his hands. An eternity of seconds reigned as he resigned himself to his fate. Clear brown eyes finally raised to meet cold ones.
“Of course I will.”
Part 16
Angel and Cordelia lay together, wrapped up like two halves of the same exquisite sculpture. Cordelia’s breathing had finally returned to normal, and they both knew there was so much more to discuss. Neither of them wanted to break apart just yet, though.
“We should probably get up,” Cordelia said, but immediately snuggled further into Angel’s embrace.
“Yeah, we should,” he whispered against her head, kissing her hair.
It was silent for a few more minutes. Angel finally sighed, then briefly kissed her forehead before releasing her. He pulled away from her, standing up beside the bed.
“Okay, I guess we can go out and get you something to eat.”
Immediately, she began to salivate. She bolted out of bed, then swayed on her feet as her eyes closed in near rapture at the thought of eating. His eyes darkened again as he caught sight of her bliss-filled face, the sheet down low around her hips. “Oh, God. Food! I’ve been dying for some really good Chinese food, Angel. Let’s go to Golden Panda, okay? Like right freakin’ now!”
“Golden Panda it is,” he said, smiling at her indulgently. He made a move toward the door, but stopped when she laughed.
“Hey, nudie boy. Prob’ly better rethink the dinner outfit, there.” She gestured to his naked state.
“Oh, yeah,” he said, frowning, as if perturbed that he had to be bothered with such trivialities. His eyes lit up as he looked at her. “Wanna pick out my clothes for me?”
She grinned. “Definitely.”
A half hour later found them in Cordy’s favorite Chinese food restaurant, their Emperor’s Feast ordered, beverages in front of them. Again, Cordy admired the outfit she’d picked out for him: a soft, grey button-up that clung to him like a second skin, defining every delicious muscle in his upper half, and a pair of jeans that were worn in all the right places. She’d bought them for him at a consignment shop the year Connor was born, but she’d never ever seen him wear them. He’d frowned when she’d held up the outfit at his apartment and wiggled her eyebrows at him suggestively. It was obvious he didn’t like the departure from his usual dark slacks.
“Jeans?” he’d said, scrunching his nose up. “But they’re so. . .stiff.”
She’d raised her eyebrows at him and regarded him with a look that only Cordelia could make both condescending and loving at the same time.
“Geez, somebody saw the birth of Levi’s and copped a bad attitude. Have you felt these, Angel?” she’d asked, then shoved them into his hands. “Here. Touch them. They’re soft. Incredibly soft. And worn in all the right places. They’re the most comfortable pair of jeans on the planet.” That and they were sure to make his ass look fabulous.
She hadn’t been wrong. She’d sighed, practically drooling, as he’d pulled the jeans on and fastened them up, her eyes immediately drawn to the worn button fly, her mind traveling to the, um, impressive parts she’d seen underneath. Seen and felt. Oh, god. . . but not a good place to go at a restaurant.
One word came to mind as she saw him in those clothes: Damn! Her vampire was dead sexy.
“What are you thinking about?” Angel’s question startled her out of her thoughts and she blushed.
Her hand was cradled in his on the table top, and he smiled at her reaction, rubbing his thumb gently against her palm.
His eyes darkened slightly. “Me too, baby,” he said deeply. “I haven’t begun to show you how much I missed you.”
His words sent a rush of chills up her spine. Delicious shivers that made her anticipation grow. She mentally straightened her spine, sticking to her guns. “But we have more important things to talk about right now, Angel,” she said, a stern look on her face as she willed him to behave.
“Something more important than that?” he asked incredulously. His mind was already back in his apartment, in his bed, in her mouth and between her thighs.
“Yeah,” she said. “So hang on to those fantasies, stud. We can continue our forever an hour or so later, okay?”
He nodded reluctantly, then turned serious again. “So what is it that’s brought you back to me?” he asked, the worry in his face creeping in to bring lines between his eyebrows.
She frowned, regarding him in silence as she tried to figure out where to begin. Just then her food came, and she had enough time to think about what she’d say.
“Connor’s in trouble,” she finally revealed softly.
If he’d been human, his breath would’ve stopped for a moment. “But I get reports on him,” he argued. “He’s fine.”
“Reports from who?” she asked around a mouthful of Peking Chicken.
“Well, the investigation division, I think. I don’t know. I guess I thought. . .”
She frowned at him. “I told you that place was bad news, Angel.”
“I know,” he said, sighing. “We’ve been so busy lately, and I just knew that Connor was safe. He’s not?” he asked anxiously.
“Well, he’s all right for now, but he’s heading down a really bad road.” Putting her chopsticks down, she explained to him everything the Powers had shared with her.
His face darkened in anger against the person who would dare turn his son against him. “Connor has already been through so much,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want to drag him through it again, Cordy.”
“I know you don’t. But you don’t have a choice. He’s already been set on this path. If we don’t get him back, if we don’t restore his memory and tell him the truth, he’ll try to kill you. And according to my sources, killing you will bring all of his memories back in a rush. I don’t think he’ll be able to handle it if it happens that way.”
“They have no clue who’s behind this?” he seemed exasperated at the lack of information. “They have to know something. Anything!”
“Nothing,” she said. “David, my guardian, wouldn’t hold anything back from me. He told me everything he knew. We’ll have to figure out who it is on our own.”
Angel stared at her unseeingly, his mind swirling with anger and worry over his son’s situation. “Whoever it is, they’ll be sorry they messed with my son.”
“Damn straight,” she affirmed, then went back to her dinner. “God, this is good.” Her eyes closed in bliss. “I missed food.”
Part 17
Connor bolted upright in bed, shaking, his body soaked in sweat. Furious, he threw back his blankets and strode to the window, flinging it open and letting the night breeze cool his heated flesh. He’d had another dream.
This one was a re-run, but it was no less powerful than it had been before. This time, the familiarity of the plot had given him the ability to notice more details. Feel more of the gut-wrenching emotion that seemed to accompany each dream. But that familiarity had just served to wrench his battered soul further in two conflicting directions.
They were so damn disturbing.
As much as they bothered him, he was more convinced than ever that he should keep them to himself. He liked Jace, but lately, he’d started to get the wiggy feeling that he couldn’t really trust him. That feeling was compounded when his creepy girlfriend showed up.
Just how did Eve fit into all this?
Okay, so she claimed they were secret agents that hunted scary monsters. Yeah, whatever. Connor still wasn’t sure how much of that to believe. It didn’t seem crazy to him that the monsters existed. Somehow, he’d already known that. What did seem totally wacko was that Eve could be on the good guys’ side. He just didn’t trust her. Something inside him recoiled in her presence, an inner sense he’d always had that had never steered him wrong.
The one thing that worried him was that he’d trusted Jace so quickly. Now when Connor was having second thoughts about him, he wondered about what had drawn him to the older man in the first place. He had just been so needy at the time. So lonely for a father. He’d ached so much for his parents, and Jace had just been there. Jace had been a presence that had lent strength and stability to a young man who so desperately needed something solid in his sorrow-drenched life. Jace had pulled him out of the darkness and had given him something to live for again.
So why did he suddenly have the eerie feeling that Jace would ruin his life?
