Deadly Game

Mari would have given anything to be able to take back the words the moment they left her mouth. She was lashing out in embarrassment, trying to hurt him, trying to get some reaction from him. It was petty and beneath her. She didn't care about his scars, although she had to admit she did wonder if they had cut him everywhere. She couldn't imagine a sadist like Ekabela-a man capable of genocide-not doing as much damage as possible to another man he hated and feared.

That drove out every other thought-Ekabela had feared this man-yet she was deliberately provoking him, prodding a coiled viper with a stick, digging into a predator's wounds just to cover her own humiliation. She looked up at him. uncaring that the room seethed with tension and his brother wanted to pull the trigger. The two men were very connected. Jack must feel a stab of pain cutting as savagely as the knife that had cut his twin each time he looked at Ken. She would feel it if someone had tortured Briony and left visible evidence behind.

'Take the catheter out. Doc.' Ken said, his tone mild. 'And don't you think it's a little dramatic to hold a gun on her. Jack?' He sighed and brushed more stray strands of hair from her face. 'Jack likes to shoot first and ask questions later. I've sent him to a couple of psychiatrists, but they always send him back and tell me there's no help for him.'

She couldn't apologize, couldn't say the words in front of the others. She could only look up at his carefully expressionless face and wish Jack would pull the trigger. She doubted Ken allowed himself to be hurt by much, but her barb had gotten to him. He didn't show it at all. but Jack had and that seemed worse. As if her thoughtless comment had gone so deep Ken couldn't show his reaction.

He was her enemy. She repeated the words over and over as the doctor removed the IV and catheter. All the while she kept her gaze locked with Ken's, seeing every detail, the perfect bone structure, the heavy dark lashes in contrast to his gleaming silver eyes. There was latent sensuality there, but she knew those grid patterns on his face were all most people were ever going to see.

'What did my sister say when she saw you?' She whispered the words aloud, needing to know, knowing the question would be misconstrued, but it would tell her the truth, tell her things she needed to know in order to keep going on her course. She had to be right about Briony's character.

'Damn you,' Jack hissed, taking an aggressive step forward. 'Shut the hell up, before I do it for you.'

Ken cut him off with one smooth step, blocking his twin's path to the bed, the only reason, she was fairly certain. Jack hadn't knocked her out with the gun butt.

'Briony never seems to notice unless someone else does, and then she turns protective like a mama tiger,' Ken answered. 'Does it bother you so much?'

She should have said yes. She desperately needed protection, some kind of armor, some distance between them, but the lie wouldn't come. 'No.'

Jack took a breath and let it out, shoving the gun out of sight and turning away. 'Doc, you're out of time. Stay low until you're contacted that it's safe. You know the drill. Thanks for all your help and I apologize for the knife. I underestimated her abilities.' His gaze bored into her. 'It won't happen again.'

She flicked him a glance. 'Sure it will. You're heap big caveman and I'm just the little woman, too stupid to know how to fend for myself.'

Jack left the room, following the doctor out to the helicopter, leaving her alone with Ken. Instantly the room felt too small, too intimate.

'Stop baiting the tiger,' Ken said. He slipped his arm around her back and gave her another drink of cold water. 'We're only going to be here an hour or so, just enough time for you to rest.'

'He only thinks he's the tiger. That's what you make everyone think, isn't it?' She made it a guess, but she knew it was the truth.

'Don't think for one moment that Jack wouldn't pull that trigger. He's no kitty cat,' Ken said.

'Maybe not.' Jack might be the quiet one, the no-nonsense one, but Ken lured the enemy into a false sense of security. He smiled more often than Jack, but it never reached his eyes. There was something inside of him, still and watchful and so full of danger it made her heart beat hard in her chest. 'But neither are you.'

Ken watched the way her throat worked as she swallowed the water. He could barely keep from leaning down and touching his tongue and teeth and fingers to that fragile expanse of skin. He longed to taste her. To put a mark of ownership on her. To brand her his to the rest of the world. And that need disgusted him. He had faced danger his entire life, but this one woman held more threat to him personally than a thousand rifles had ever done. She would take his honor and his self-respect and expose his deepest, ugliest secret to the world.

'Why wouldn't Briony come to see me, if you really know her?'

'Jack doesn't trust you.'

'That wouldn't stop me.' She was inexplicably hurt. If she found out where her sister was. she would move heaven and earth to catch a glimpse of her-as long as she could be certain Whitney would never find out.

Ken allowed her to lie back, and he straightened, once again giving her a feeling of loss. 'You said you were there to protect the senator. Do you know who gave your team that order? I'm assuming someone said there was going to be an assassination attempt on him.'

He looked so remote-so utterly alone. She felt that way inside, where no one ever saw who she was. No one ever cared who she was. She was a soldier. It was everything and yet nothing at all. She sometimes felt, especially recently, as if she had no humanity left-as if it had been stomped or trained out of her. She wasn't certain which, but it was gone. Do you feel that way? She asked it silently, wanting to reach out to him, needing to connect after she'd raked at him with her claws. Do you feel as if you have no humanity left in you? That they stamped it out and made you into something you don't even recognize anymore?

His gaze moved over her face, seeing too much. For one moment she felt connected, as if he had managed to crawl into her skin and share it with her. I was born without humanity so I have never had it to lose.

The words were harsh, but his voice, moving through her mind, was a caress, stroking at her insides, raising her temperature and setting her on fire. She was struck by the utter honesty in him, when what he was saying was impossible. Ken obviously believed what he was saying, and that confused her. What kinds of monsters were hidden behind that mask of scars? He'd once had a face of masculine beauty. Had that been a mask as well?

She studied him, trying to be objective, trying to really see him when the chemicals in her body were reacting and rushing through her bloodstream in wild abandon. Whitney was fond of experiments. He had a way of twisting everything good into something that left a bad taste in one's mouth. She had been raised with discipline and control, but to her orderly mind, everything Whitney did seem to be chaotic and wrong-a subtle or not so subtle form of torture.

Mari shook her head. 'Whitney has no humanity. He's cruel and callous and hasn't an ounce of kindness or compassion in him. You aren't like that.'

'Don't kid yourself, I'm exactly like that.'

'You do kind things.'

Ken shrugged his shoulders. Most of the time he felt nothing at all, but when he did, it was an icy rage that burned so deep it terrified him. Now his emotions were all out of whack and he wished he could go back to the familiar. He did kind things because he had to do them-it was necessary to keep Jack safe. And above all else, Ken wanted Jack in the world, happy and healthy and living his life. One of them had to survive, and Jack was extraordinary.

Ken bent down once more, his breath stirring tendrils of hair from her face, his expression harsh. 'It gets results.'

She studied the scars up close. The torture had been recent. She should have been intimidated, but Mari didn't scare easily. She knew soldiers, and she recognized control when she saw it. Ken had discipline and restraint down to an art. She reached up and brushed his face with her fingertips, needing the tactile experience, the flood of information that could accompany a single touch of skin to skin.

Everything inside Ken went still as her fingers traced the pattern of his scars. She left tiny pinpoints of fire burning on his face, when he couldn't feel his own touch. He didn't have sensation on most of his body, yet he could feel her beneath his skin, sparking damaged nerve endings to jump and sizzle with electric current. The sensation spread from his face to his chest, a heat so thick it felt like lava pouring through his veins and tissue, gliding like hot silk over muscle to burn him from the inside out. The fire settled in his groin,