The Girl Who Dared to Rise Read online

  “Shhhhh,” he breathed soothingly, his thumb starting to move back and forth on my stomach, massaging me gently. He paused for several seconds, and then to my surprise, he began to hum.

  The tune was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. I let him get a few bars in before I asked, “What is that?”

  The humming died down. “It’s a song called ‘Danny Boy.’ It has words, too, but I think they might be a bit sad for you right now. Maybe I shouldn’t have picked this song.”

  “No, sing it,” I pleaded, twisting my head around slightly to look at him. “It sounded so beautiful.”

  Leo licked his lips and then nodded, clearing his throat. I relaxed back into the pillow. The position I had been in was too painful on my neck to hold. Seconds later, he began to sing. “Oh, Danny boy, the pipes, the pipes are calling. From glen to glen and down the mountainside. The summer’s gone, and all the roses falling. ‘Tis you, ‘tis you must go, and I must bide.” His voice was surprisingly good, rich with timbre and warmth, but the song… It was hauntingly beautiful, and exquisitely sad at the same time.

  More tears, seemingly drawn from a never-ending reserve, slipped from the corners of my eyes and dripped down onto my pillow. I wanted to interrupt him—I had so many questions about the song—but instead, I just listened, letting the warm cadence of his voice take me away.

  4

  My eyes slid open, barely a slit, and I sighed. Grey’s strong arm was draped possessively over my waist, his body a hard line behind me. It was a simple thing, but one that helped chase away the nightmare I had been having. So many awful things this time, too: Tian disappearing, Maddox injured, Ambrose dead, and Leo somehow winding up inside of Grey.

  Thank Scipio it was all a nightmare.

  Behind me, Grey shifted slightly, his arm tightening around me, and my sleepy smile grew wider. He inhaled deeply, his nose planted against my neck, and then made a sound of masculine pleasure.

  “Liana.”

  I turned toward the familiar voice, moving languidly in his arms so as not to disturb him too much. As soon as I was facing him, I realized he was sleeping, and was touched that I affected him so much that he was dreaming about me. I hoped it was a better dream than the one I had been having.

  I watched him sleep, my eyes tracing the planes of his face, trying to memorize every detail. The tousle of dark blond hair that stuck upright in a few places, giving him a vaguely boyish look. The way his lips curved and dipped in the middle, complemented by the sultry fullness of his lower lip. His long, dark brown lashes, which lay like twin crescent moons on his cheek.

  His eyelashes fluttered, but otherwise, he was still, and I reached up and smoothed some hair from his brow, letting my fingers drift gently through the silky softness of it. Then I moved down, lightly tracing over his face. He was so beautiful. I could lie there forever.

  He sighed in his sleep, and I slowed my fingers’ meandering, worried I was waking him. Too late, it seemed, as his eyes slid open. Immediately they snapped into focus on me, first lightening to a warm, golden honey-brown, and then growing dark and heavy. I licked my lips, his look causing an intriguing bolt of lightning to dance down my spine.

  His eyes zeroed in on my tongue, and I watched as a slow, hungry smile started to spread wider and wider. I took a shaky breath in, the anticipation of the kiss he was about to give me sending more shivers down my back and along my skin. I wanted him to kiss me. I needed him to kiss me.

  I lifted my chin up just a fraction of an inch, and then his mouth was on mine, so hot and silky that it felt like heaven. He wasn’t gentle, either; he kissed me with dizzying intensity, like he was drowning and I was pure oxygen. It floored me, heat beginning to form and spread from that secret place between my thighs.

  We’d never taken it this far, but after the nightmare I’d just had, I needed him—wanted him with a desperation that scared me a little bit. His hand slid from my waist to my hip, and then he moved closer, rolling me partially onto my back before shifting one of his bare legs between mine. I shivered at the sensation of his leg as it stroked over my knee and calves.

  Grey chuckled in his throat as he moved to deepen the kiss, nipping at my bottom lip until my lips parted. Then his tongue slid inside my mouth, and I melted, my body jackknifing against his with a deep shudder. His kiss didn’t stop at simply loving me with his mouth; he kissed me to devour me. I was burning over his taste, his touch—and if he didn’t do something soon to put out this fire, then I would.

  I tried to lose myself in his kisses, my hands going to his chest and shoulders and stroking over them, but there was a niggling in the back of my mind, making me feel like I was missing something. But that was ridiculous. What could I be missing in this moment? I relaxed some, sucking his lower lip into my mouth and letting it go slowly, earning me a choked cry from Grey.

  The feeling didn’t go away. If anything, it intensified, trying to make me remember something. And… my mind kept floating back to my nightmare. Leo inside of Grey’s body.

  I kissed Grey harder, trying to ignore it, but it wouldn’t relent. It was like an irritating itch, one that was keeping me from enjoying the pleasure of Grey’s lips on mine and the tight way he held me. I broke off the kiss with a gasp, trying to rid myself of the confused sensation, and Grey leaned back, his eyes hooded and dark.

  “Liana,” he breathed again.

  I lifted my head as he dipped his down again for another kiss, and he started kissing my neck instead. My body shivered in response, but my mind… It kept screaming at me that there was something wrong. That this wasn’t a dream.

  But I knew that. I knew it wasn’t a dream. I was with Grey, and everything was fine. I’d just had a nightmare, that was all. Grey kissed his way back up the length of my neck, his tongue darting out to trace delicious patterns against my skin.

  Only this time, the hair on my arms and neck rose up in alarm as the nightmare from last night crept into my mind. It was getting ridiculous. I needed something to remind myself that this was real, and that everything else had been a nightmare. What had I done before I’d gone to sleep?

  He rained kisses on my jawline, trying to distract me, but a slightly queasy feeling started to overcome me. I needed to figure out what was going on. I closed my eyes and focused, and seconds later, it all came rushing back to me. I had wanted to dismiss it as a nightmare, but it hadn’t been. Ambrose had been murdered, Maddox beaten. I had broken down in the worst possible way.

  And Leo was inside of Grey. Kissing me.

  His mouth found mine again, but this time I stiffened, pressing my lips together into a hard line. He kept trying to kiss me, his mouth working on mine, trying to get me to soften. Suddenly I felt trapped under him, and the sensation grew steadily as he continued to kiss me, seemingly oblivious to my frozen state. I started counting the seconds off in my head, waiting for him to get the signal, but didn’t make it past two before I hooked his leg and pushed his shoulder, throwing him off of me and back onto the bed. Then I was up and moving, ignoring the icy touch of the floor under my feet as I tried to get as far away from Leo as possible.

  I made it to the corner by the door and turned, placing my back against the wall, my chest heaving. Leo lay on his side, watching me with a bemused glint in his now dark chocolate eyes. I couldn’t imagine Leo being capable of generating a look like that, but there it was… and it was filling me with some confused feelings. This needed to stop.

  “Leo, can we just… take a breath here?” I asked softly, fumbling for the right thing to say.

  He looked at me with heavy eyelids, and then slid out from under the cover and stood to his full height. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, only shorts that were similar to mine, but white. His chest wasn’t overwrought with muscles, but his abs were clearly defined in three little sets of two, stacked one on top of the other, and dragging my eyes inexplicably downward, to the hard length of him—which was barely being contained by his shorts. My face heated, telling me it had tu
rned beet red.

  His legs flexed, and he started to move toward me.

  “Leo?” I asked, alarm acting like ice-cold water being thrown on my spine. I ducked under him and moved to the next corner.

  But he slowly turned and began to follow me again, not responding. This wasn’t like him! In fact, the whole kissing thing wasn’t like him. Was something wrong with him? With Grey?

  My heart pounded in my chest. “Leo, are you okay?” I asked.

  His facial muscles were still. He made no response other than to start gliding toward me again, like a chunk of iron being dragged by a magnet. I knew he intended to kiss me again; I could see it in the way he held his mouth, and the power with which he stalked forward.

  A part of me wanted to melt right into him on the spot, but the rest of me was screaming that I had to stop him. “Leo!” I said sharply, trying to reach him.

  He said nothing, just closed the distance, one hand reaching for my head, the other for my hip. This had to stop.

  “Leo, you’re scaring me!” I cried out, flinching back.

  He froze. For several seconds nothing happened, and then he slowly blinked his eyes once, and a quizzical expression came over his face. “Liana? What’s wrong? Why are you shaking like that?”

  I inhaled and carefully moved around him, needing to carve a little bit of space between the two of us. I used the movement to consider his question. He didn’t seem to remember what had happened, and I wasn’t so sure that I was going to tell him. It was…

  I clenched my fists together, trying not to hyperventilate. I had just made out with Grey, only it wasn’t Grey. Had I just cheated on my comatose boyfriend? With himself? How did that even work?

  I wasn’t sure, but it was maddeningly confusing.

  “Liana,” Leo said, his voice carrying a symphony of concern. “What’s—”

  The door in front of me slid open, revealing Zoe and Eric, my two best friends in the Tower. Both were wearing the orange coveralls of the Mechanics Department—and very alarmed expressions on their faces.

  “We heard you shout, Liana,” Zoe said, stepping into the room. Her eyebrow rose when she saw Leo standing right behind me, and I felt heat start to spark into my cheeks. “Are you okay?”

  Scipio kill me now, could this awkwardness get any worse?

  “I’m…” I met my friend’s dark blue eyes and shook my head slightly, signaling my distress.

  Zoe narrowed her gaze and immediately took charge. “Liana, grab a robe and come have a cup of tea with me in the living room. Eric, keep Leo company while I get her all caught up, please and thank you, my love.”

  Eric brightened, as if someone had set fire to a stack of kindling somewhere inside of him, and I had to look away, my own mixed emotions making me feel unjustifiably angry. For several brief minutes this morning, I had forgotten about everything awful that had happened, and thought Grey was safe, in my arms. Now that it was all gone again, I resented their happiness.

  But that wasn’t right. I needed to get out of this room.

  I moved over to the closet, pointedly ignoring Leo’s wounded expression, and grabbed my robe. Then I left, keeping my eyes glued to the ground, Zoe letting me pass her and then following behind me. I only started to relax when I heard the door close, and then I exhaled sharply, stopping for a moment to catch myself on the wall.

  “Liana, what happened?” Zoe asked, one arm coming around my waist while the other draped my arm over her shoulder for support. I leaned into her and let her lead the way. “Why was Leo in your room?”

  I looked up at my friend and then away, shaking my head. “I… I…” I couldn’t make the words come. So I did what I did best: I lied and changed the subject. “That’s not important right now. Did you find Tian? Is Maddox okay? Have you heard anything from Lacey or about the investigation? Why are you here? Did Lacey kick you out of the department?”

  Zoe puffed out her cheeks. “We didn’t find Tian,” she began softly. “We couldn’t find any trace of whoever captured her, but Lacey’s people took lots of images and data. We’re still waiting for them to send it to us, although I’m not certain they will now.” She paused, her mouth working. “Leo told us about Ambrose and said that Lacey came here. What is she going to do to us?”

  I shook my head, remembering the devastated woman from the night before. “I don’t know,” I admitted, fear creeping up and lassoing itself around my heart. “I’m trying to figure something out, a way to convince her not to…” Well, I was going to be in a second—just as soon as I knew what was happening. “What about Maddox?”

  “She’s in her room,” Zoe informed me. We had just reached the kitchen, but as soon as Zoe said it, I started to turn. I had to see her.

  Zoe stopped me with a flex of her surprisingly strong arm. “Quess is in there with her,” she said firmly. “She’s going to be fine, but it was close. Her ribs were badly broken, Liana. They punctured her lung, and she was bleeding internally. If the Medics had been just a minute later…” She trailed off, shuddering, and then wrapped her arms around me. “I’m so glad she’s okay. I didn’t… I didn’t know what to make of her at first, but…”

  I hugged my friend back as she cried, giving her comfort and relishing the feel of her. My own eyes burned from all the crying I had done last night, but I stopped my tears from forming. The tear ducts were irritated, and I was dehydrated. Crying right now would feel like pushing grains of salt through my eyes, and besides, Maddox was alive. She was safe.

  Thank Scipio for the Medica. They could cure almost any physical trauma around, provided their patient was still alive in the first place—and they were good at keeping their patients alive once they got to them.

  If only Ambrose had still been alive when we had gotten to him. If only we could’ve gotten the Medics to him…

  Zoe sniffled and pulled away, scrubbing her eyes with the back of her hand. “We came over yesterday. I hope you don’t mind, but… I was afraid of what would happen to us if we slept in Cogstown.” I hated the nervous look in her eyes—the deep fear—and was glad she had been sensible and stayed here. “Anyway,” she continued, clearing her throat. “We have the Paragon with us, so don’t worry about that.”

  I hadn’t even thought of the stash of Paragon before she said anything, so I accepted the news with mixed feelings. On the one hand, I was glad she had the foresight to keep it with her. With the attack on Ambrose, I couldn’t help but feel vulnerable, and Zoe and Eric had been mixed up in Devon’s trial, victims of being my friends. If they had been watching me, they were watching them, which meant we couldn’t assume their homes, let alone our own, were safe. Leaving an illegal rank-altering medication lying around to be discovered was only a recipe for disaster. But I should’ve been around to remind her about it, and then reassure her that everything was going to be okay. Not wasting time in bed.

  How long had I been asleep? I prayed it wasn’t for more than a few hours; I couldn’t bear the idea that I had been sleeping when everyone needed me the most. I exhaled and looked at my indicator, untangling myself from Zoe long enough to check the time.

  Scipio help me, it was six in the morning. I wasn’t sure what time Leo had gotten me to bed, but I was guessing it was long before six p.m. yesterday. I’d slept too long.

  Again.

  Guilt flared through me, but I tamped it down. I needed to get on top of things, not wallow in self-pity.

  “Do we know anything about what attacked Tian?” I asked. “Any clues on how to find her?”

  Zoe ran her hands down the shaved sides of her dark hair and shook her head, her expression tight. “No idea who or what it was, and like I said, Lacey’s people haven’t sent the data they collected yet. We couldn’t do anything else after they finished their investigation. There’s no sign of Tian’s net coming up on the sensor sweeps that Alex and Mercury are running, and all of the nets Leo and you recovered belonged to the people who were killed.” I tried to block out the image of the handful
of nets we’d found with the tendrils still out, and failed, my mind flashing to the one piece that had a chunk of brain still attached at the end.

  The image made my stomach roil, and I quickly rushed over to the sink, coughing, on the verge of losing the contents of my stomach. Zoe was there, rubbing her hand against my back as I hacked, but luckily the only thing that came out of me was a lot of saliva, which I washed out of my mouth and down the sink. I splashed the cold water on my face and the back of my neck as well. It helped, and I slowly began to relax.

  “Sorry,” I muttered, slurping in a mouthful of water from the faucet and spitting again, trying to rinse away the sharp, acrid taste formed by dry heaving.

  I shut the water down a second later, and forced myself to suck in a deep, calming breath.

  “It’s okay,” Zoe crooned soothingly. “If you’ll remember, I did throw up when I saw them.”

  “And I went into shock,” I replied bitterly. It was true. I had. Seeing those bodies on the ground, coupled with my fear of seeing Tian among them, had proven to be too much for my psyche to handle. Another weakness.

  Zoe gave me an unreadable look. “What’s wrong?”

  “Other than everything?” I asked with a tired laugh. “Just everything.”

  Her eyes narrowed, and she tilted her head to one side. “I know you better than anyone else in this Tower, and I know when something else is going on. Is this about Leo? Did he do something to hurt you?”

  “What?” My eyes widened at the very idea. Leo wouldn’t hurt me. He was my friend!

  Who was also acting pretty oddly. Was it a side effect of sleeping? As an AI, he didn’t have to sleep, but in Grey’s body, he did. Maybe it was having some sort of weird effect that caused his libido to ramp up? Or… was it Grey’s libido that was having an effect on him? I was certain Leo understood the rudimentary principle of sexual intercourse, but he couldn’t have experienced a rush of hormones or pheromones in the moment. He didn’t know the pleasure of being touched, or how it actually felt. Maybe the sensations were too confusing, and part of Grey’s subconscious mind had taken hold?