In a desperate effort to run from the nightmares in my mind, I tilted my hips, encouraging him, as I bit his lower lip a fraction harder than playful.
Zed groaned, and his fingers slid inside me with startling ease. Really, though, I shouldn't have been so surprised. Zed had been getting my panties wet a long damn time before I’d even admitted I was crushing on him.
"Holy fuck," he breathed against my kisses. "Dare..." He pumped his hand, fucking me with his thick fingers as I quivered and squirmed, my arms banded around his neck.
I kept kissing him, trying with all my strength to keep myself here, in the moment. With Zed and no one else. But the sound of something breaking downstairs made me flinch a hundred times harder than I ever would have normally, and Zed froze.
Then he peeled my hands away from his neck and gripped my face between his palms, forcing me to meet his eyes.
I swallowed back the frustration and fear, knowing and hating the fact that he could see it all. He could see how not okay I was... how fucked up I still was. And how deeply intertwined he was with those awful memories and emotions.
After a long, tense moment, he kissed me ever so gently on the lips, then stepped away.
"I'll go see what Lucas broke," he said in a rough, pained voice. Then he left the room without another glance, and I slid down the wall until my butt hit the carpet.
I'd fucked up. Again. This time I might have even pushed things too damn far to recover from, and I had no one to blame but myself. So I only allowed myself a hot second to wallow in self-pity before pulling my shield back around myself.
When I pushed back to my feet and went in search of clothes, I wore my Hades identity like a forcefield. Nothing and no one could penetrate it. Not unless I let them. So the solution seemed simple: just don't.
I dressed quickly, making a snap decision to skip showering right now. The small, vulnerable part of my mind that was still sobbing over hurting Zed was desperate to keep the phantom touch of his hands on my skin a little while longer.
Before heading downstairs, I grabbed my phone and checked the messages there. Most were work related, but the one that I'd been waiting for all day had finally arrived.
GC: Successful first day.
That was it. Three words from a burner phone that shifted a thousand tons of worry and stress off my shoulders.
I replied truthfully, not allowing myself a moment to second-guess my message until after I’d sent it.
Hades: I miss you, Saint.
The second it delivered, a wash of panic swept through me, and I tried to unsend. But he'd already seen it. Crap.
The bubble popped up to show him typing. Then disappeared. No message came through, the bubble didn't reappear, and I groaned out loud. Why'd I have to go all needy like that? Fucking hell, he'd barely been gone a day, and I was acting like a clingy, codependent weakling.
Irritated at myself, I tossed my phone back onto the bed and headed downstairs. I was burning with curiosity to know what the actual DNA results were, and more than that, I was anxious to see Zed and assess how badly I'd fucked up.
I found Zed and Lucas in the kitchen, where Lucas sat cross-legged on the kitchen counter while Zed swept up broken glass from the floor.
"What happened?" I asked in a carefully neutral voice, tensing my entire body to keep from flinching when Zed raised his eyes to mine. His expression was tightly guarded, giving away nothing, and that almost hurt worse than if he'd shown me anger or disappointment.
Lucas looked up at me from the papers in his hand, but there was no panic or concern on his face. "Oh, nothing. I was distracted reading this and dropped the wine glasses I’d pulled out for us."
I frowned, looking at the pile of glass Zed was tipping into the trash. That answer seemed almost too normal. Anticlimactic. Then again, Lucas didn't strike me as the kind of guy who broke shit when he couldn't deal with his big emotions, so it actually made a lot of sense. He was way too well adjusted for that macho shit, and he’d already gotten it out of his system by punching Zed.
Speaking of which, Zed's left eye was coming up red and puffy, and the stubborn fool hadn't iced it at all.
Marching over to the freezer, I pulled it open and retrieved an icepack. "So, what are the real results?" I asked Lucas. Zed had just put the dustpan and brush away, so I handed him the icepack and gave a stern nod toward his bruised face. "Ice it. Idiot."
Zed's lips twitched with a tiny smile. "Yes, sir."
I grabbed the cordless vacuum from the butler’s pantry and gave the kitchen floor a quick once over because I sure as fuck didn't want any shards of glass in my bare feet.
"So, good news," Lucas announced when I was done. "Or, I dunno. Good, I guess? None of the samples, including Chase's, were a familial match to mine."
My brows rose, and I nudged Zed out of the way so I could retrieve some fresh wine glasses. "That's a relief," I commented, then gave Zed a curious look.
He just shrugged back at me. "I never said it was you. You assumed, and you know what they say about assuming." He'd only moved a couple of inches out of my way, so his arm was close enough to brush mine as I poured us all a glass of chilled riesling.
"I hate you," I muttered, not even remotely meaning it. He knew it, too, smirking as he took the glass I offered, his fingers deliberately brushing mine.
Instantly I released a bit of the breath I was holding. That small touch was the reassurance I needed that he wasn't pissed off at me or disgusted. He was just giving me space and time.
"Lies," he whispered, bringing the glass to his lips and shooting me a wink.
"Whatever," Lucas growled, glaring daggers at Zed. "Still not funny. But Zed also wasn't lying. The lab tech found a familial match in one of their other databases but had a hard time uncovering who the match was for."
I handed Lucas his glass of wine, then leaned my ass against the counter beside Zed to sip my own. "Why would they not know who the match was for?"
Lucas grimaced. "Because it was assigned a number, not a name."
My brows shot up. "They matched it to a military database." I was genuinely surprised at their initiative. "When did our lab techs get access to those servers?" This question was directed at Zed, who glanced at me from the side of his eye as he sipped his wine.
"Dallas," he said by way of explanation. "He's been getting increasingly more badass with his hacker skills. He stopped by the labs a couple of weeks ago to format their computers and loaded a little backdoor into some classified servers for situations just like this."
"Useful guy," I murmured, mentally patting myself on the back for extracting him out of the Wraiths a year and a half earlier.
Zed grimaced as he flipped his ice pack over, pressing the colder side to his eye. "I spoke to him on my way back here. He's going to work on decoding the system to get a name for the number. Said it shouldn't take more than a day or two."
"That answers the question of whether my mom was lying, I guess," Lucas said with a hard sigh. "Why would she do that? If she had other kids... where were they my whole life? And why lie about it?"
Zed and I exchanged a knowing look. "The Guild," I replied. "Didn't she say something about your uncle hurting her babies?"