Wicked Attraction (The Protector) Read online

  Nina is at the table.

  Ewan pushes a plate toward her. “Eat. Can’t have my girl getting too hungry. Because I’ve spent plenty of time making sure your stomach is fed, but I haven’t done much to make sure anything else is satisfied . . .”

  Nina is in the living room, looking at the books. She plucks a volume off the shelf, turning with a grin. Wuthering Heights.

  “I haven’t read any of them,” Ewan says. “Well, except maybe that Dr. Seuss up there on the shelf.”

  “I’ll read it to you.” Nina flips through the pages.

  The words run together.

  The book weighs a ton, too heavy in her hand.

  She is on the couch, her tablet in hand. Wuthering Heights, the book she’s been reading, on the screen. A favorite. She loves the story of the ill-fated lovers who can’t get themselves together enough to make their love work.

  She looks up at Ewan sitting at his desk. “When . . . when did you put your desk in the living room?”

  Nina is in bed. The early morning light streaming through the windows tells her it is later than she’d expected. From downstairs drifts the delicious smell of coffee, the real stuff, not synth. Ewan will be making her breakfast. She is naked. They’d made love.

  She loves him.

  He loves her.

  They are in love and happy and forever and love and happy and happy and happy . . .

  “I want to make things up to you,” Ewan says. “I’m making pancakes. I’m not sure I can. I’ve had a craving for them since we got home. I don’t know how. But I want to. They’re what my mother always made for me when I was a kid and stayed home sick from school. Middle of the night, it didn’t matter. She’d make me these pancakes, and no matter how bad I felt, I’d feel better. More than anything else. I hope you can believe me.”

  “Of course I believe you. Why wouldn’t I believe you?” Nina puts her fingertips to her temple, where a steady, aching pulse throbs and becomes a sharp, spiking pain. She blinks away a reddish haze. She is suddenly unsteady on her feet. Ready to fall.

  “This isn’t normal, Nina. So help me, then,” Ewan says. “Help all of us.”

  “What do you want from me? What do you need me to do?” Nina gasps as a fresh stab of pain slices at her from the inside out. She doubles over at the table, her hands flat on it but nails scratching at the varnish, digging in deep enough to bend them back. More pain.

  “Tell me where it is,” Ewan says.

  She falls back in her chair with a cry of agony. “What? Tell you where what is?”

  “The tech, Nina. You have to tell me where the tech is.”

  She will do anything to give him what he wants and needs from her; she will give herself up to anything to rid herself of this pain. She will lie, if she has to.

  So that’s what she does.

  “Will you tell me where it is?” Ewan says. “Just tell me where the fucking tech is, Nina, let me in. Let me the fuck in!”

  Nina says yes.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  “You’re excremental at following orders.” Al spat to one side and swiped at the dust clinging to her lips. “Ugh. Spiderwebs. So gross. If I eat a spider, I am charging you extra.”

  Ewan, breath tight in his throat, shook his head. Jordie had told Al that Nina was being held in this place, in the basement. His team had confirmed it as the last location where Nina’s personal comm had registered. This was where she’d been supposedly meeting her sister.

  “She has to be in there. She has to.”

  “I’m sorry.” Allegra’s gaze went soft. “I know how much you were hoping to find her.”

  “Not just hoping. This is where the kid said she’s supposed to be.” Ewan pounded a fist into his palm and sagged against the basement’s cracked brick wall. He let his forehead rest against the dust and cobwebs, his eyes closed. He cursed low, under his breath, but it didn’t make him feel any better.

  Beside him, Al sneezed. Once, then twice, and a third time. The white arc from her flashlight swung wildly, highlighting the dust motes dancing in the basement’s darkness. “I should have let you beat on him as much as you wanted. I think he thought he was telling you the truth, if that makes you feel better. I know it doesn’t.”

  Ewan turned. “It doesn’t, no. Damn it. I thought . . . damn it.”

  He sagged for a moment. His team had led him to Jordie. Jordie had sent them here. After this, where would they go? They had no more leads.

  “Let’s get out of here. Wait.” Al grabbed at his sleeve when he meant to move. “I’ll go first. It’s what you’re paying me for.”

  Ewan followed her through the basement’s narrow lower doorway, then up the stairs to the door at the top. Nobody waited for them in the kitchen. A battered kitchen table had been pushed onto its side. There were no chairs.

  A clear space in the built-up dirt on the floor stopped him from following Al through the back door and out into the yard. “Wait.”

  She turned, pale eyebrows arching. “Huh?”

  “There.” He pointed at the scrape marks on the floor. “Someone was here recently.”

  “Look, I know you want to think it could be her, but . . .” Al shrugged but studied the spot he was pointing at. “We searched every house, Ewan. None of them had anything close to a clue that she might have been here.”

  “We have to keep looking.”

  “Shiny fine, I mean, I’m here to help. Do you want to look around the rest of the house?”

  “He said the basement? You’re sure?” Ewan asked.

  Allegra’s mouth twisted as she shifted to cock one hip. “Yeah. But that doesn’t mean much. It’s obvious nobody else is here. We can look, though. Maybe we’ll find something that will help. You said this was the address where she told you she was meeting her sister. Why do you think they’d bring her back here when it’s so easily traceable?”

  “I don’t know.” Ewan shook his head, studying the marks on the floor. “Maybe they didn’t have any other place to take her.”

  “I’m guessing this isn’t really her sister’s house.”

  “No. I mean, I’ve never met her sister and I’ve never been here before. But none of the houses on this street are occupied. This kitchen looks like it might have been staged the way the hospital room in the warehouse was. I think Nina was here. They’d have tied her to a chair, maybe. Right?” He gestured and dragged the toe of his boot along the bare spots of the floor. “She’d have fought them.”

  “They couldn’t keep her tied to a chair for very long. Not unless she was totally unconscious. And you know they couldn’t keep her knocked out for more than a few minutes before her system would start clearing that right out.”

  He knew it. He closed his eyes to think. “They had her here. She fought. She fell over . . . they dragged her? She fought them. She would have fought them.”

  “Yeah, for sure.”

  “Can you see any blood?” He couldn’t, but Al should be able to discern even the faintest splatters using her enhanced vision.

  “A drop or two. Looks old. Could be anything, really.” She swept a hand around the kitchen. “Might not even be human, who knows, someone could’ve cut up a chicken in here once. Look, Donahue, we really need to get out of here in case someone comes back for you. She’s not here.”

  Ewan didn’t move. He listened. Beyond what his ears could sense, he listened with . . . everything he had.

  “Please,” he said, not to Al but to the Onegod or whatever deity in the universe might be able to hear him.

  He didn’t hear the sound of his name as much as he felt it. He felt her. Nina. “Upstairs.”

  Al went first again, a few steps ahead of him, kicking open each closed door and checking inside before she let him look. He wasn’t going to leave this house until he’d looked in every nook, every cranny. He was going to find her, his love.

  “They’re empty,” Al said when they reached the end of the hall.

  “She’s here,” he ins
isted.

  The room next to the bathroom had once belonged to a child. Pale blue walls. Ratty fabric balloons clung to the ceiling in one corner, and the shredded curtains featured cartoon characters. The room had the same kind of closet all the others did, but the doors on this one had been removed to leave an open nook strung with more cobwebs and dust. Inside, the shelves had been taken down.

  Ewan went inside it. Pressed the wall with his fingers. Found the seam of what had been a painted door without a handle. He shoved it harder until it gave way.

  Al gave a warning shout from behind him, but he ignored it and pushed through the makeshift door into the tiny space beyond. It reeked of sweat and desperation. The only light came from behind him, and the ceiling was so low he immediately hit his head hard enough to shoot painstars through his vision. It didn’t matter.

  She was there.

  Ewan pushed forward along a floor laid with some kind of soft, lumpy material that tried but failed to trip him. Nina lay on her side, hands bound behind her. The dark fall of her hair spread out all around her, tangled and knotted. One side of it had been shaved away, leaving her scalp beneath studded with scabs.

  He gathered her into his arms. “Baby. Wake up. I’m here. I found you.”

  Nina gave a low groan and stirred, shifting in his embrace as her eyelids fluttered. She cried out in pain when she sat up. She didn’t struggle away from him or fight. Her eyes opened, wide and dark . . . and blank.

  “Where am I?”

  “You’re safe now. I got you.”

  Now she recoiled, pushing with her feet across the floor until she landed with her back against a wall padded with the same material as the floor. She bared her teeth. When he reached for her, she kicked at him.

  “Who are you?”

  “Nina . . . baby, it’s me. Ewan.”

  She shook her head. “I don’t know you.”

  From behind him, he heard Al mutter a curse. Everything inside him went cold. He reached for Nina again, but stopped himself from touching her when it became clear she would fight him off, and that she would pull no punches. She would fight him, and she could kill him, if she wanted.

  The worst had happened.

  Nina had been reset.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  “There, there, dolly, don’t you worry about a thing. You rest up.” The gray-haired woman in the flowered dress looked like a grandmother.

  She was not Nina’s grandmother, who’d been short and lean, with a head of black hair she wore in a braid down her back to the tops of her thighs. This woman had a kind face, though. She patted Nina’s arm.

  “You sleep, my dear.”

  Nina blinked, her eyes focusing on the window. The gray sky outside. The rain coursing down the glass reminded her of something, but she couldn’t think what.

  “Where . . . am I?”

  “Oh, don’t you worry about that. You’re here, now. You’re safe.” The elderly woman patted her arm again and bustled around the bed, tucking the blankets tighter. She reached behind Nina’s head to plump the pillows. “You’re going to be all right, don’t you worry about that. You’re going to be just fine.”

  “What happened to me?”

  The kind-faced granny paused. Her mouth pursed. She didn’t meet Nina’s gaze. “You were in a bit of an accident, dolly. You don’t remember?”

  “No.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No, nothing . . . I . . .” Nina put a hand to her head and winced at the pain there. She concentrated, trying to remember, but so much was fuzzy and dark that she stopped before she could send another stab of agony through her head. “Where was I? What was I doing?”

  Before she could get an answer, a rap on the door frame turned both women toward it. The man in the doorway had dark hair and pale eyes. He wore a thick knitted sweater and a pair of jeans. Heavy black leather boots.

  Wet, Nina noticed. He’d been outside in the rain. Water droplets glittered on his sweater.

  “How are you doing?” the man asked, his voice kind. Concerned. Disconcertingly familiar.

  Nina pulled the blankets a little higher beneath her chin. “I’m . . . fine.”

  “She doesn’t remember, Mr. Donahue.”

  The man, Mr. Donahue, nodded as though this news did not surprise him. “It will come back to you. For now, Nina, please rest. Take care of yourself. You have everything here you need.”

  He gave her such a curious look that Nina couldn’t help but wonder why he was so worried about her. “I’m sorry, but, who are you?”

  “Mr. Donahue’s your boss, dear. He owns this house. You’re in his employ, same as me.” The older woman nodded and gave him a twisting smile. “You really don’t recall?”

  Nina shook her head with another wince at how it sent a stab of pain through her. She wanted to remember. “No.”

  Mr. Donahue didn’t come any farther into the room, but stayed where he was. “Greta, let’s give Nina some time to rest, all right?”

  With a nod, Greta left the room, Mr. Donahue stepping aside so she could pass.

  “If you need anything, ring.” He pointed to a small bell on the side table. “For now, get your rest. It will all come back to you. I promise.”

  He closed the door behind him as Nina settled back into the bed’s welcoming softness. It would all come back to her, she thought. He’d promised.

  How could he promise her such a thing? How could he possibly know? She needed to find out what had happened to her, but for now she was so tired she couldn’t keep her eyes open. She closed them, letting herself sink into dreams.

  She would remember tomorrow, Nina told herself.

  Tomorrow.

  About the Author

  Author photograph © Whitney Hart Photography

  Megan Hart writes books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of the other words are okay. She can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but she and soda have achieved an amicable uncoupling. She can’t stand the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves her cold. She writes a little bit of everything from horror to romance, though she’s best known for writing erotic fiction that sometimes makes you cry.

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  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  About the Author

  Copyright Page

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  WICKED ATTRACTION. Copyright © 2018 by Megan Hart. All rights reserved. For information, address
St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Cover design by Crystal Ben

  Cover photographs: man © Ostill/Shutterstock.com; umbrella © Masson/Shutterstock.com; city © Fuyu Liu/Shutterstock.com

  ISBN 978-1-250-11971-1 (ebook)

  First Edition: February 2018

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