Page 55 of Cuckoo (Kindred)

“I love you so much,” she said and dug her teeth into his jaw as she scratched her nails into him.

“I’d never let anyone hurt you. You don’t have to be afraid of being hurt by—”

“That’s not why I brought it up.”

“So why did you bring it up? Did someone proposition you? Was it that fucking lawyer from CI? He’s been slobbering to get into your panties for months. I’ll give him the scare of his life, we’ll get Tuck to hack his address and I’ll—”

“No. I have to tell you something,” she said, running her hands up over his jaw to tempt his eyes to hers. “And I think it’s going to shock the shit out of you… I’m not quite sure how to say it.”

“Just say it,” he said, and the stiff suspicion in his eyes made her wonder if he suspected her of infidelity, and that was something she wanted to dispel quickly.

“It’s about Caine.”

“Fuck! Did that bastard touch you?” Thrusting her body away from his, he leapt out of bed before she got her hair out of her eyes. “I promise, baby. I’ll make the fucker suffer, I should’ve—”

Leaping to her knees, she clambered over the bed and caught his shoulders before he could walk away from her. “He’s not obsessed with you,” she said, searching the confusion in Brodie’s features. “It’s not him who’s been stalking you. I mean it is, but…”

His scrunched expression betrayed that he wasn’t following her, and she didn’t blame him. “You’re not making any sense.”

“It’s Cuckoo, Corvi, Mischa, whatever you want to call her. She’s the one… she’s been directing him, since the beginning it’s been her.” He still didn’t seem to get it. “She told me, today in Grant’s office. She told me how she used Caine to get to you and about how he got his scar after he found you and her in bed together. She told me that after you dumped her and took off with Art, she went to Caine. She makes him report your every move to her. She told him to come to me in Purdy’s. She told him to call Grant to insinuate himself into our lives. She’s the one who made him bring me to Sutcliffe’s compound, everything he’s done… he did it for her.”

Her chest moved with the heaving weight of every panting breath. Brodie gave nothing away, just stood there absorbing her words for so long that she thought he might burst. For years, he’d accused Caine of being a nuisance and had ignored him because Caine had always been on his tail, even since the early years of their association when Caine idolized him.

“She’s in love with you,” Zara said, moving her palm to his cheek. “The reason she came to CI was to rekindle your romance. All this time… she’s been in love with you and using Caine as a stenographer. He sends her reports, pictures, anything she wants. In return, he gets sex… or at least sexual contact, and a pat on the head. He’s not obsessed with you. He’s obsessed with her.”

This was a lot to take in and she knew that, so she gave him some quiet time. Reading Brodie took work, and she used past experience with him to interpret what he was feeling. But there was no frame of reference this time. No way to judge his reactions to what she was saying because she’d taken what he assumed was a given fact and disproved it in one rush of conversation.

If Art was here, she could’ve taken the information to him, or they could’ve delivered it together to give Brodie some kind of support. At the moment, it was just her and she didn’t know what he needed.

“I’m sorry, beau,” she said, soothing him with a caress. “I’m sorry that I—”

He turned around so fast that she wobbled and fell to sit on her feet to prevent herself from tumbling off the bed. His hand rose to rub the nape of his neck, and she gave him some more time to process. She didn’t know what was more shocking to him, that Caine wasn’t the enemy they thought he was or that the ex-girlfriend he’d thought was a part of his past had never given up hope of reviving their romance.

When he did speak, his words were quiet but deliberate. “I brought her here because I thought it would force Caine’s hand. I thought he’d be angry. Thought he’d come for me and then I’d have the opportunity to end him.”

But eliminating Caine wouldn’t necessarily change anything. Cuckoo had plenty of friends and could manipulate men with her body, she’d asserted that before. Just one look at her would tell any rational person that Cuckoo had the goods to support her flirtations. Getting Caine out of the way would be getting rid of the devil they knew. Cuckoo’s next errand boy may not be as restrained as Caine had been.

“What are you thinking?” Zara asked when silence stood between them for more than a minute.

“That I have to get rid of the disease not the symptom,” he said and followed it with an exhale. “Art always told me Cuckoo was crazy.” Moving in a half circle as he said the more upbeat words, he fixated on her. “How the hell did you get her to tell you that?”

“I didn’t,” she said. “I didn’t go in with a game plan or anything. She asked me about Game Time. I told her I wouldn’t tell her anything and I could see that she was pissed. I guessed that she’d asked you and that you hadn’t told her about it either. It got to her that she couldn’t manipulate you into giving her what she wanted.”

“She’s good at that.”

“With other guys, sure. But you recognized her tricks, or you weren’t interested in taking advantage of her incentive. Whatever it was, it pissed her off, and it only got worse when I called it right. She told me you two were meant to be, that I was temporary and that she’d have you again. Then she went into the whole history lesson. She plans on asking you to kill Caine just as soon as you’re back together, by the way.”

He took a step toward the bed. “You didn’t—”

“Of course I didn’t believe her,” Zara said and stretched her arms toward him.

He came to her but sat on the bed instead of walking into her arms. Moving upward, he propped himself on the headboard and pulled her over between his thighs to hold her. Brodie wasn’t going to go into a speech about how this changed things because she wasn’t sure that it did. Caine had still been a bug in his ass for long enough that Brodie probably wanted rid of him even if he was innocent. Except now that they understood the extraneous circumstances, she felt a bit sorry for Caine.

Warmed by the embrace of the man she loved, she was pleased he had accepted the news without flipping out. It was a shock but didn’t change their lives. Caine would keep on following them and reporting for as long as Cuckoo needed him or until someone killed him.

Cuckoo was a problem, and Brodie had said he needed to take care of the disease. But the CEO was a woman Brodie had once been fond of. Zara didn’t know if sharing a bed with Raven exempted a person from facing Maverick’s wrath.

Caine had caused trouble in their lives, and she had no plans to become best friends with him now that she knew he was being manipulated. But Zara did feel awful for him, she pitied him, for being so in love with a crazy bitch who was using him for her own ends. He’d lost years of his life to her cause, and he had to believe there would be some reward for him at the end.

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