Page 37 of Silver Fire

Maia sighed. “You can come by tomorrow. Are you guys heading back to MDI?”

“I’m going wherever you are, sweetheart,” Jack told his wife.

“Let’s not start, Jack,” Maia snapped. “I’ve got things to do. I’ve lost an agent and I’ve got one in the hospital. I’m thankful to you for saving his life. But can you possibly back off a little?”

Maybe he should have just rode in the ambulance with Sophie, Derek thought. Maia speared him with narrowed clear blue-eyes.

“Don’t think for a moment I’m forgetting how reckless you both were,” Maia continued, fuming. “You went up against assault rifles with damned pistols, and you guys were outnumbered. What if Sophie hadn’t built an IED? Where would that leave you?”

“Shoe on the other foot, babe?” Jack sneered.

Fuck McCord, Derek’s eyes widened. His friend just didn’t know when to shut up. Maia glared at her husband before cocking her head, lifting both hands in a gesture of annoyed resignation. “Immature asshole,” she muttered as she backed up a couple steps before turning around and walking out the door.

“Where are you going?” Jack called out furiously.

“Anywhere you’re not!”

“Looks like you’re stuck with me,” Derek stated dryly. “You need to learn when to shut up.”

“Oh, and you’re the expert on women now?”

“No. But I’m not the one whom his wife can’t stand.”

Jack fell silent as they walked out the lab, his expression brooding. The hallways were teeming with forensic investigators trying to piece together the events—or body parts.

Derek’s phone buzzed. Maia.

“Hey sweetie.”

“I just got a call from Tim,” Maia said. “We have a lead on the perpetrators of this truck bomb.”

“That’s great, uh, and you are telling me this because?”

“So you can tell my husband not to wait for me tonight.”

Shit.

Derek sighed as he ended the call.

“What?” Jack asked impatiently.

“I hate getting caught in between,” Derek said in resignation. By this time they were out of the building and walking to their vehicle.

“They’ve got a lead on the attackers,” Derek said as he leveled his gaze on his friend. “Maia said not to wait up for her.” A scowl was settling on Jack’s face. “Guess I’m driving.”

* * *

Sophie shifted restlessly in bed.She had fallen into deep sleep after they returned from the hospital, but now she was wide awake, drenched and disturbingly aroused. She had been dreaming of Adam again. But it was one of those dreams that had her waking up conflicted. These dreams that never seemed to go away or fade with time; they were like flashcards of all the sexual interludes between her and Adam. Every time she thought he would fade into memory, these dreams recurred, almost as if her subconscious was refusing to let him go.

In her dream, she was in a bed, her hands were tied on either side and she was naked. It had been just a few days since her abduction, and she was resisting his sexual advances—screaming at him as well as kicking him. It surprised her that he had not bound her feet too. He did beat her with a switch each time she resisted, and it would leave angry welt marks all over her body. Sometimes they would bleed. When the pain became too hard to bear, Sophie would stop fighting and that was when Adam would start kissing her, tracing the redness with his tongue until he reached the mound between her thighs. She was too distraught to fight him, he kept her legs open and gave her unimaginable pleasure. She hated him for that.

But on the second week, after days of giving her mindless orgasms, he crawled back up her body and finally pushed inside her, taking her virginity. It was pain and ecstasy combined. Soon, she began looking forward to their coupling and by the third week, she had become addicted to these interludes: sex with him—both the pleasure and the pain. And somewhere along the way, she had fallen in love with him until he became her world.

The dream tonight took a bizarre turn. The scene shifted to Adam slamming inside her from behind. She was bent over a table, gripping the edge for purchase and then when he bent over her, he whispered, “Come for me, Angel.”

It was Derek’s voice.

* * *

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