Origin

Chapter 20

Katy

The near-scalding, steady stream of water had washed away the grime and whatever else was stuck to my skin. I turned a few times and finally stopped, pressing shaky hands to my face. I’d already used the tiny bottle of shampoo—twice—and I needed to get out of there, but being in the stall with rust stains near the drain and uneven pressure was so different from the bathrooms in the compound that I didn’t want to leave. It was like being in a bubble, safe from reality.

Water coursed over my body, cascading off the jagged scars along my back, pooling around my feet. Lowering my hands, I looked down. The water wasn’t draining fast, causing it to gather in the bottom of the tub. The water had a pink tint to it.

I swallowed hard and turned off the faucets. Stepping out of the tub and into the steam-filled bathroom, I grabbed a towel and wrapped it around me, securing it at the top. I did my best to get the excess water out of my hair, going about it methodically. Wrap. Squeeze. Wrap. Squeeze. When that was done, I realized I had no other reason to hide in the bathroom.

And that was what I was doing. Hiding. I didn’t know why, except it felt like my insides were bruised and frayed, too exposed. We were out—we were free for now. That alone was reason to celebrate, but we were far from in the clear. There was the unknown fate of Archer, where we would go from here, and an entire life I’d left behind in Petersburg—my mom, my school, my books…

I needed to leave the bathroom before Daemon thought I passed out or something.

Clutching the top of the towel, I went into the room. Daemon was at the window, his back straight like a sentry. He turned at the waist, his gaze moving from the top of my head to my feet. The light was on beside the bed, and it was dim, but when he looked at me like that, it felt like a spotlight had been turned on me. My toes curled into the carpet.

“Feel better?” he asked, not moving from the window.

I nodded. “Much better. There may be some hot water left.”

One side of his lips curved up. “Know what date it is?” I shook my head, and he gestured at the desk. “There’s one of the day calendars on it, the kind where you tear off the pages each day. If it’s up to date, it’s August eighteenth.”

“My God,” I whispered, deeply unsettled. “I’ve been gone…we’ve been gone for practically four months.”

He said nothing.

“I knew it had been awhile, but time was so strange there. I just didn’t think it was that long. Four months…”

“Feels like forever ago, huh?”

“Yes, it does.” I inched closer to the bed. “Four months. Mom probably thinks I’m dead.”

He turned back to the window, his shoulders tensed. Several moments passed before he spoke. “I got you some clean clothes. They’re in the bag. I think you’ll appreciate the shirt.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s no biggie, Kitten.”

I bit down on my lip. “Daemon…?” He turned to me, his eyes unnaturally bright. Two beautiful green eyes. “Thank you for everything. I wouldn’t be out of there if it—”

He was suddenly in front of me, clasping my cheeks. I sucked in a startled breath as he lowered his forehead to mine. “You do not need to thank me for any of this. You would’ve never been in this situation if it weren’t for me. And you don’t need to thank me for something I wanted and needed to do.”

“This wasn’t your fault,” I told him, meaning it. “You know that, right?”

He pressed a kiss to my forehead. “I’m going to clean up. There’s food in the bag, too, if you’re hungry. If not, you should try to get some rest.”

“Daemon—”

“I know, Kitten. I know.” He dropped his hands and gave me that cocky smile of his. “If anyone shows up while I’m in the shower, even Archer, you don’t let him in, okay?”

“I doubt a door would stop him.”

“That’s what the gun is for. I don’t think he’s going to screw us, but I’d rather be safe than sorry.”

He had a good point, but as I watched him grab a pair of sweats and then disappear into the fogged-over bathroom, I loathed the idea of picking up that gun again. I would if I had to. I just hoped I’d never have to again, which was silly because, more than likely, the violence of my recent everyday life was nowhere near over.

Picking up the bag, I brought it over to the bed. I sat down and started rummaging through it as the water kicked on in the bathroom. I looked up, my gaze falling to the closed door. A warm flush crept over my cheeks. Daemon was in the shower. Completely naked. I was in a towel. We were alone, for the first time in four months, in a shady motel room.

My stomach dipped.

The flush heated up, and I groaned in exasperation.

What was I doing even thinking about that kind of stuff right now? Over the course of the last couple of months, I’d heard Daemon in the shower a million times over. This wasn’t a romantic getaway at the Ritz, unless running for your lives counted as foreplay.

Shaking my head, I refocused on the bag. Inside I found a wide selection of sugary goodness, which caused me to blink back tears because I knew he’d bought that for me. God, he was considerate when I didn’t even know he was trying, when it mattered.

I pulled out the bottles of soda and got up, placing them with the chips and sugar on the desk. The tote bag brought a smile to my face. The shirt made the smile stretch in a way that felt unfamiliar, like it would crack my skin.

I glanced at the alien doll. “DB…”

Going back to the bed, I found flip-flops in the bag. Perfect. I never wanted to see those bloody shoes again. I reached the bottom of the bag, and my fingers brushed over a square box. I pulled out the last item.

Heat swept my face, and my eyes popped out. “Oh…oh, wow.”

The water shut off, and a second later Daemon came out with the sweats hanging low on his hips, and his skin was dewy, glistening. My eyes were fixated on his stomach and the drops of water running over the dips, disappearing under the band of the sweats. I was still only in a towel.

And I was holding a box of condoms in my hand.

My face was red as a ladybug.

One dark eyebrow went up.

My gaze fell to the box and then went back to him. “Confident, aren’t you?”

“I’d like to call it being prepared for any occasion.” He sauntered over to the bed in a way only Daemon could without looking like a complete douche. “Although, I am disappointed they don’t have little alien faces on them like everything else.”

I choked on my next breath. “What kind of motel sells condoms?”

“My favorite kind of motel?” He took the box from my boneless fingers. “You’ve spent this entire time looking at this instead of eating something, haven’t you?”

A laugh burst from me—a real, normal laugh.

Daemon’s eyes widened, and the hue flared. The box fell from his fingers, landing with a soft thud against the carpet. “Do that again,” he said, his voice gruff.

The sound sent a shiver down my spine. “Do what?”

“Laugh.” He bent over me, the tips of his fingers grazing my cheeks. “I want to hear you laugh again.”

I wanted to laugh again for him, but all the humor had dried up under the raw intensity of his stare. Emotion swelled inside me like a balloon tethered by a fine string. I opened my mouth, but I didn’t know what to say. Muscles tensed throughout my body. My belly felt like a nest of butterflies was about to take flight. I raised a hand, placing it on his cheek. The slight stubble tickled my palm and caused my heart to jump. I slid my hand over the curve of his jaw and then down the cords of his neck to his shoulder. He jerked under my touch, and his chest rose sharply.

“Kat.” He breathed my name; he took it into himself, said it like it was some kind of prayer.

I couldn’t look away, and for a moment I was frozen, then I stretched up, placing my mouth against his. The slight touch sent a shock through my system. I moved my lips, familiarizing myself with the feel of him. Strange, but it was like we were kissing for the first time. My pulse was pounding, and my thoughts were in a heady, dizzy swirl.

He slipped a hand through my hair, his fingers curling along the back of my skull. The kiss deepened until his taste was everywhere, and there was nothing but us—only us. The rest of the world fell away. None of our problems vanished, but they were put on hold as my mouth opened for him. We kissed like we were famished for each other, and we were. Those kisses intoxicated me, and his fingers moved over my jaw and down my throat, delicately tracing a path. But my hands were greedy and rushed as they slipped over his chest, and I followed the lines of his hard stomach. The way my touch affected him was marveling to me. He made a throaty sound, and I melted.

He eased me back, positioning his body over mine and supporting his weight on one arm, but only our mouths touched in the sweetest torture. We’d been intimate before, twice, but right now it felt like the first time. Excited nervousness hummed through me while my blood heated up.

Daemon lifted his head. Between the narrowed slits of his eyes, his pupils were like polished diamonds following the movement of his hand. My insides tightened as his fingers moved dangerously close to the edge of the towel. Each slow pass along the fabric had my pulse pounding. My gaze traced over his broad cheekbones and then got hung up on the perfection of his lips.

His hand stilled around the knot I had made in the towel, his eyes flicking up to mine. “We don’t have to,” he said.

“I know.”

“I really didn’t buy the condoms thinking that we’d do this tonight.”

I slipped into a grin. “So…you weren’t overly confident?”

“I’m always overly confident.” He swooped down, kissing me softly. “But I don’t know if this is too much right now. I don’t want—”

I silenced him by slipping my hands to the band of his pants, hooking my fingers under it. “You’re perfect. I want this—with you. It’s not too much.”

A breath shuddered through him. “God, I was hoping you’d say that. Does that make me a terrible person?”

A little laugh came out. “No. It just makes you a dude.”

“Oh? Is that it?” He captured my mouth again, then pulled back with a slight nip. “Just makes me a dude?”

“Yes.” I gasped. My back arched as he moved his hand down my front and then back up to the knot. “Okay. You’re more than just a dude.”

He chuckled deep in his throat. “Thought so.”

His breath was warm against my swollen lips, scorching hot as it trailed down my neck. He pressed a kiss to where my pulse pounded in my throat. I closed my eyes, happily swept away in the rush of sensations. I needed this—we needed this. A moment of normalcy, of just him and me, together like we were supposed to be.

He kissed me as his fingers worked the knot loose, distracting me as he parted the towel. Goose bumps followed the cool air rushing over my body. He murmured something in that lyrical language of his, a language I wished I could understand because his words sounded beautiful.

As he lifted up, his gaze chased away the tiny bumps, searing me from the inside out. The edges of his body blurred into a faint whitish light. “You’re beautiful.”

I thought about my back.

“Every part,” he said, as if he read my mind.

Maybe he had, because when I tugged him closer by the band of his pants, he obliged, fitting his body to mine. Bare chest to bare chest. I tangled my hands in his hair as I wrapped a leg around his hips.

He took a sharp breath. “You drive me insane.”

“Feeling’s mutual,” I rasped out, tilting my hips up against his.

The muscles in his arms bulged as he made a sound deep in his throat. The set to his jaw was hard, the lines of his mouth tense as he slipped a hand between us. Those clever fingers went from soothing to breath-stealing in a second, and I felt the coiling deep—

A bright yellow light suddenly flooded the room, shattering the moment.

Daemon was off me so quickly, he stirred the hair around my temples as he shot toward the window and peeled back a small section of the curtain. I scrambled up, smacking the mattress until I found the towel, covering myself as I darted off the bed, grabbing the pistol.

Terror climbed up my throat. Had they found us already? I twisted to where he stood, as I still clutched the towel around me. My hand shook so badly the pistol rattled.

Daemon let out a long breath. “It’s just headlights—some ass with his high beams on pulling out of the parking lot.” Letting the curtain fall back into place, he turned. “That’s all.”

My hand tightened around the gun. “Headlights?”

His gaze dropped to what I held. “Yeah, that’s all, Annie Oakley.”

The gun felt glued to my hand. My heart was still pumping fast with residual terror, and that horror was slow to drain from my veins. It hit me then, in startling clarity, that this was what our lives had been reduced to. Flying into defense and panic mode every time headlights came through a window or someone knocked on our door or a stranger approached us.

This was it.

My first reaction to headlights would be to grab a gun, to get ready to shoot—to shoot to kill if necessary.

“Kat…?”

I shook my head. A fire crawled through my stomach, up my throat. Tears burned my eyes. So many thoughts raced through my mind. Pressure clamped down on my chest, tightening around my lungs with icy fingers. A shudder rolled down my spine. Four months of tears I didn’t let fall built inside me.

Daemon was in front of me in an instant, gently and carefully peeling my fingers away from the gun. He placed it on the bedside table. “Hey,” he said, cupping my cheeks with both his hands. “Hey, it’s okay. Everything is okay. No one is here but us. We’re okay.”

I knew that, but it was more than headlights in the night. It was everything—an accumulation of four months of no control over any aspect of my life or my body. Everything piled up on me—the tangy fear that never eased, the dread I had woken up with every day, the exams, and the stress tests. The pain of the scalpel and the horror of watching the mutated humans die. It all cut through me. The harrowing escape where I shot people—real, live people who had families and lives of their own—and I knew I’d killed at least one of them. His blood had been splattered all across my face.

And then there was Blake…

“Talk to me,” Daemon pleaded. His emerald eyes were full of concern. “Come on, Kitten, tell me what’s going on.”

Turning my head, I closed my eyes. I wanted to be strong. I’d told myself over and over again that I had to be strong, but I couldn’t get past everything.

“Hey,” he said softly. “Look at me.”

I kept my eyes squeezed shut, knowing that if I looked at him, the balloon that had been so full and tethered so delicately would burst. I was wrecked inside, and I didn’t want him to see that.

But then he turned my face to his and dropped a kiss on the lids of my closed eyes and said, “It’s okay. Whatever you’re feeling right now is okay. I got you, Kat. I’m here for you, only you. It’s okay.”

That balloon burst, and I lost it.

…

Daemon

My heart cracked as the first tear rolled down her cheek and broke with a hoarse sob, making its way out of her lips.

I pulled her against me, wrapping my arms around her as she shook with the force of her grief, her pain. I didn’t know what to do. She wasn’t talking. There was no room around the tears for that.

“It’s okay,” I kept telling her. “Let it out. Just let it out.” And I felt stupid for saying that. The words were so lacking.

Her tears streamed down my chest; each one cut like a knife. Helpless, I picked her up and brought her to the bed. I gathered her close, yanking up the blanket that seemed too coarse for her skin and wrapping it around her.

She burrowed into me, her fingers clutching the strands of hair at the nape of my neck. The tears…they kept coming, and my heart was shattering at the raw sound of each of her breaths. Never in my life had I felt more useless. I wanted to fix this, to make her better, but I didn’t know how.

She had been so strong through all of this, and if I had thought for one instant that she hadn’t been deeply affected, then I was an idiot. I had known. I’d just hoped—no, I’d prayed—that the scars and wounds would just be physical. Because I could fix them—I could heal them. I couldn’t fix what bled and festered underneath, but I would try. I would do anything to take this pain away from her.

I don’t know how much time passed before she settled down, until the tears seemed to dry up and her ragged breathing evened out, and she’d exhausted herself into sleep. Minutes? Hours? I didn’t know.

I got her under the covers, and I stretched out beside her, tucking her warm body close. She didn’t stir once through the whole thing. With her cheek against my chest, I kept running my hands through her hair, hoping that the motion could reach her in her sleep and would soothe some of her troubles. I knew she liked it when I played with her hair. It seemed like such an insignificant thing, but it was all I had at that moment.

At some point, I drifted off to sleep. I hadn’t wanted to, but the last six or so hours had taken their toll. I had to have slept for a couple of hours, because when I opened my eyes, daylight streamed in through the gap in the curtains, but it only felt like minutes.

And Kat wasn’t beside me.

I blinked quickly, rising up on my elbows. She was sitting on the edge of the bed, dressed in the shirt and pants I’d found last night. Her hair fell down the middle of her back; the waves shifted as she turned toward me, bringing a leg up on the bed.

“I didn’t wake you, did I?”

“No.” I cleared my throat, glancing around the room, slightly disoriented. “How long have you been awake?”

She shrugged. “Not too long. It’s a little past ten in the morning.”

“Wow. That late?” I rubbed my brow with the heel of my hand as I sat up.

She looked away, studying the strap on her flip-flops. Her cheeks were red. “Sorry about last night. I didn’t mean to cry all over you.”

“Hey.” I scooted over, sliding an arm around her waist, and tugged her closer. “I needed the second shower. It was better than the first.”

She laughed hoarsely. “That was a huge mood killer, right?”

“Nothing kills my mood when it comes to you, Kitten.” I brushed her hair back, tucking it behind her ear. “How are you feeling now?”

“Better,” she said, lifting her gaze. Her eyes were red and swollen. “I think…I think I needed to do that.”

“Want to talk about it?”

She wetted her lips nervously as she fidgeted with the ends of her hair. I was happy to see the opal bracelet still on her slim wrist. “I… A lot happened.”

I held my breath, not daring to move, because I knew it took a lot for her to get the words out sometimes. She internalized a ton of crap, kept it in. Finally, she gave a wobbly little smile.

“I was so scared,” she whispered, and my chest spasmed. “When I saw the headlights? I thought it was them, and I just freaked out, you know? I’ve been in that place for four months. I know that’s nothing compared to Dawson and Beth, but…I don’t know how they did it.”

I exhaled slowly. I didn’t know how they did it, either, how Dawson and Beth weren’t more messed up than they already were. I kept my mouth shut as I ran my hand up her back and then down, up again.

Her gaze focused on the bathroom door, and she was quiet for what felt like forever. Then, very slowly, the words tumbled out of her. The onyx sprays. The thorough exams. The stress tests with the hybrids and how she’d refused to participate, and what that had meant for her until they had paired her up with Blake. How he’d goaded her into fighting him and tapping into the Source. The guilt that she carried for his death was evident in her voice. She told me everything, and through it all, I had to check myself about a million times. Rage like I’d never known coated my insides.

“I’m sorry,” she said, shaking her head. “I’m rambling. It’s just that…I needed to get it out.”

“Don’t apologize, Kat.” I wanted to punch a hole in the wall. Instead I slid over so I was sitting beside her, thigh to thigh. “You know what happened with Blake isn’t your fault, right?”

She twisted a section of hair around two fingers. “I killed him, Daemon.”

“But you were defending yourself.”

“No.” She let go of the hair and looked at me. Her eyes were glassy. “I wasn’t defending myself, not really. He goaded me, and I lost control.”

“Kat, you have to look at the entire situation. You were getting beat up…” Saying that out loud made me want to go back to the compound and burn it down. “You were going through a lot of stress. And Blake…whatever his reasons were for doing what he did, he repeatedly put you and so many other people in danger.”

“You think he had it coming?”

A real sadistic part of me wanted to say yes, because yeah, some days I thought that. “I don’t know, but what I do know is that he went into the room to goad you into fighting him. You did. I know you didn’t want to kill him or anyone else, but it happened. You’re not a bad person. You’re not a monster.”

Her brows pinched, and she opened her mouth.

“And no, you’re not like Blake. So don’t even go there. You could never be like him. You’re good inside, Kitten. You bring out the best in people—even me.” I nudged her with my arm, and she cracked a grin. “That alone should earn you the Nobel Peace Prize.”

She laughed softly, and then she rose onto her knees. Wrapping her arms around my shoulders, she leaned down and placed the softest kiss, the kind I’d treasure forever, against my lips.

“What was that for?” I circled my arms around her waist.

“A thank-you,” she said, resting her forehead against mine. “Most guys would’ve probably left in the middle of the night and run far away from the hysterics.”

“I’m not most guys.” I tugged her over so she was sitting in my lap. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

She dropped her hands to my shoulders. “I’m a little slow sometimes.”

I laughed, and she responded with a smile. “Good thing I don’t like you for your brains.”

Her mouth dropped open, and she smacked me on the arm. “That’s so ignorant.”

“What?” I wiggled my brows suggestively. “I’m just being honest.”

“Shut up.” She brushed her lips against mine.

I nipped at her lower lip, and a rosy flush appeared on her cheeks. “Hmm, you know how I like it when you get all mouthy with me.”

“You’re mental.”

My hands flattened against the small of her back, and I pulled her close. “I have something really corny to say. Get ready for it.”

She traced the line of my jaw. “I’m ready.”

“I’m mental for you.”

She busted into laughter. “Oh my God, that is corny.”

“Told you.” I caught her chin and brought her lips to mine. “I love the sound of your laugh. Is that too corny?”

“No.” She kissed me. “Not at all.”

“Good.” I slid my hands up her waist, the tips of my fingers stopping below her chest. “Because I’ve got—” A sensation crawled through my veins, spreading all over my body.

Kat stilled, sucking in a sharp breath. “What is it?”

I gripped her hips and deposited her on the bed beside me. Swiping the gun off the table, I handed it to her, and she took it with wide eyes. “There’s a Luxen here.”