Page 23 of Lust
She’s not pulling away.
Pupils were blown. Color painted her freckle-dusted cheeks. Her gaze darted to his lips every few moments. She squirmed, as though unable to contain the sensations in her body.
She’s into it.Into him.
The realization surged through him with triumph.
This was what he wanted. Kissing her was all he’d damn well wanted for the past twenty years. That’s why he pulled away.
She chased his lips with her own. A hard warmth bloomed in his chest. Amusement hit his eyes. Yes. He liked this better.
It was Liza’s turn to wait.
He opened the door. “We have a strategy to prepare.”
She blinked at him.
“After you,” he prompted.
“Whoareyou?” she breathed, squinting at him.
“The same guy I’ve always been.”
When she walked past him, her body brushed his front, and thank Christ she didn’t look down. His gig would have been up.
7
Despair descendedcreaky wooden steps into the basement level of a laundromat that doubled for a Faithful headquarters. There were nine such establishments around Cardinal City. This one was special.
She paused at the foot of the stairs and scanned the large room. In it, twenty or so Faithful in white robes reclined and gathered in leisure, their usual white Halloween masks discarded or pulled back on their heads. Billiard tables, gaming stations, and large flat-screen televisions depicting the latest streaming entertainment were scattered about the room. Help-yourself bars filled with all you could eat food and drink were at either side of the room. But at the front, directly ahead of Despair, was the pièce de résistance on the podium next to a lectern—a replicate tank.
The Syndicate rarely revealed their prized intellectual property, but this replicate tank was special. Inside grew a clone of the leader of the Faithful—Quarry. Not just a clone, but a new and improved clone. A replicate. Floating in viscous water was a blemish-free, younger version of the man standing at the lectern, giving a speech.
The real Quarry had scars down one side of his body. He’d been in a devastating car accident when he was younger and was left disfigured and partly disabled. The Syndicate had promised him eternal life as a powerful, superhuman being. The evidence of which floated in the tank in full view.
Faithful numbers had been dwindling as the Deadly Seven had grown in power. The deal with the Syndicate was the Faithful had to give their life to the cause and, in return, the Syndicate would resurrect them as a perfect, immortal replicate. Except the Deadly Seven had made it a point to keep captured Faithful alive for as long as possible, having them sent to prison instead of killing them outright.
If they weren’t dead, then they wouldn’t be regrown as replicates. It was a firm rule of the Syndicate, only one copy of each human being alive at one time. Multiple clones of oneself existing would draw too much attention.
It was getting hard to entice loyalty when the promise of a quick resurrection was taken from the Faithful. Nobody was a fan of prolonged suffering.
Something had to be done to inspire devotion again. Despair’s gaze washed down the replicate tank. The virile specimen neared maturity and already sparked with electrical surges. Occasionally his limbs jolted with spasms, eager for life.
She slid her gaze to the Quarry and sneered. That was the name he’d given himself when he’d joined the Faithful, and he encouraged all others to pick new names too. It was all part of the experience. Shed your lowly human life and pick a god’s name, because that’s how people will see you when you’re reborn.
His old name was Gareth Smith.
Pity he didn’t know the truth. Unless she retrieved stem cells from Wrath’s unborn child’s umbilical cord, they wouldn’t be able to halt the expiration problem with the replicates. As it stood, replicates died at a few months of age. If any of them knew that, this place would be empty.
Quarry gave her a small nod of acknowledgment and then finished up his speech. The five people listening at his feet nodded emphatically like star-struck groupies. From their lack of robes, they were new recruits. When Quarry stepped down from the podium and approached Despair, he first stopped and graciously shook the hands of the newly converted cannon fodder.
Despair had plans for them.
“Enforcer,” Quarry said. His lip was split, and he had bruising down one side of his face.
Enforcer, or Falcon, was the name these cretins knew for Despair. Her father Julius, one of the leaders of the Syndicate, knew her as “my darling” or Despair. And her family—her brow flinched—the Lazaruses—knew her as Daisy. Identity was becoming a fluid thing for Despair. She hardly knew which name to go by.
“What happened to you?” she asked.
