"You knew?"
"Of course I knew. I like having you curled around me, and the moment you left, I felt alone. You went to see my father, didn't you?"
"How did you know?"
"You weren't satisfied with his answers. He k
new about Whitney's experiments, didn't he? You would have told me right away if he hadn't."
"I'm sorry, baby." He laced his fingers through hers and brought her hand to his heart. "I really am. I wanted it to be different for you."
She was silent, staring out the window for a few minutes before she took a deep breath and looked at him. "My mother?"
"She has no idea. She despised Whitney. I could read her mind, but I can't read his. I made certain she slept through our talk. I didn't want to cause her any more distress than she already has been through."
"What was his explanation?"
"If I tell you, Tansy, I'm going to tell you the entire story. Be very, very certain you want to know," he warned.
"That bad?"
"Yes." He kept possession of her hand when she tugged at it to pull away from him. He wasn't going to let that happen. Her father had hurt her, not him.
"Was he going to give me to Whitney?"
"Damn it, that's not fair."
"They hit my mother. He would do anything for my mother. If he thought they'd hurt her, he'd give me up and never look back." She turned toward Kadan. Lights from oncoming cars played over her face and then left her in shadow. "I know he loves me, Kadan, but it's always been about my mother."
"And that's all right with you?"
"I grew up knowing that. It was normal. I don't know what it's like for a child that isn't adopted, but . . ." She trailed off. He was so still. His mind was still, even when she touched it. She turned the pieces of the puzzle over and over in her brain. She was good at solving puzzles. Things clicked into place for her. And the click wasn't what she'd expected. She shook her head in denial. "I remember being in Whitney's laboratory. It was horrible. There was so much pain. There were other girls there and nurses. He had this little soundproof room he'd take us into. Some of the girls would have seizures and we'd all get nosebleeds. He'd just record everything, with this strange little remote smile on his face. If he frowned, you were in trouble. I even remember the day he brought me to see my parents for the first time."
"Both of them together?" Kadan asked.
"No. Just my father. I remember the way he stared at me. He reached out to touch me and I flinched away. I was wearing gloves, but it was so hard to control impressions and they hurt my head, so I didn't want him touching me."
"How was he looking at you?"
There it was again, that note. A piece of the puzzle. He wanted her to see for herself, but she kept turning away from the truth. She tightened her fingers in his, wanting strength. She was asking for the truth. She was causing him distress by insisting he tell her, yet she didn't want to see. She pulled up the memory.
She'd been so frightened. All the girls were frightened. A couple of the nurses tried to comfort them, but never around Whitney. He looked at them as if they were insects, and he didn't want the nurses "coddling" them. A couple of the girls were outwardly defiant, and that made him harsh and cruel. Even as a child she recognized the taint of madness, even though she couldn't really read him.
And then the girls began disappearing. Whitney would never respond when they dared ask where one of the girls had gone. When he'd taken her out of the laboratory, she'd been terrified, her imagination running wild. She didn't know what the outside world was like and it was so huge. Enormous. The sky was frightening; the noises overwhelmed her. He'd dragged her into a room and shoved her toward a man who had been sitting quietly in an office chair.
She stumbled and looked up at the man. He was tall and fit, with white gold hair, and he turned his eyes on her and she had been afraid to move. Shock. Absolute shock registered on his face. For a moment something fluttered in her mind. Recognition? But she'd never seen him before. She thought . . . I belong. She hadn't known what a father was before then. Now she did. She moistened her lips and glanced up at Kadan's stone-set features. "He's my birth father." She continued to look up at him. "Tell me how."
He told her then, all of it, holding on to her hand, his voice a soft, compassionate caress, his thumb stroking back and forth across the back of her hand.
She kept her head down, long hair spilling around her face so he couldn't see her expression, but he was in her mind, trying to surround her with warmth, with love, with everything protective in him. She remained very still, even in her mind, as if she was afraid that if she moved, she'd shatter.
Baby. He breathed the endearment, tempted to pull the car over to the side of the road and hold her tight. She didn't want him to though, he read that much. She needed time to assimilate what he'd told her.
"You're absolutely certain?"
"He told me himself."
"Mom doesn't know any of this?"
"No." He brought her hand to his chin and rubbed his jaw back and forth in an effort to comfort her.
"Good. I don't want her to ever find out." She looked at him then and he saw raw pain in her eyes. "Can you find out if my birth mother really is dead?"
"Whitney keeps files, and Lily has access to them using some complicated back door to a computer I don't understand. I'll ask her to start looking. If he has records on you, and I'll bet any amount of money that he does, she'll find them."
She gripped his hand tighter. He felt her in his mind. "Did you kill him? Is that why we had to leave so fast?"
"I wanted to," he admitted quietly, wishing he could feel remorse or shame. The man was her father. "For a minute I thought I might. But I think he's punished himself more than I ever could. And he does love you, Tansy. He certainly loves his wife."
"Don't tell me he loves me. He didn't love me."
"It feels that way right now, baby, but when you look back over the years you had with him, you'll know he couldn't fake the way he treated you. He loved you."
"But he didn't want to risk what he had to save the rest of the girls, or to find out if my birth mother was alive or dead or even murdered by Whitney." Her fingers fisted in his shirt. "He would have had Fredrickson turn me over to Whitney if I'd gone back."
"He wouldn't have had a choice. Fredrickson would have been willing to kill everyone to take you back to Whitney."
"You wouldn't have wanted to kill him if he had been trying to save my mother. You would have understood. It was more than that."
He didn't know what to say to ease her pain, and he cursed his lack of words when she needed . . . something. "I'm sorry, Tansy."
He wished he could take her pain on himself. He would have done anything for her, but instead he could only feel helpless. "I put a pillow there between the seats so you could lie down if you wanted." He willed her to close her eyes and rest. They had a long day ahead of them and she was worn out.
Tansy didn't reply, but she did straighten the pillow and lie down, her head against his hip. He stroked little caresses over her hair while he drove through the night. She didn't sleep for a long time. He had been afraid she'd cry, but when she didn't, it felt worse to him.
In her mind, Tansy withdrew from him. Even connected as he was, he could feel her huddling in a corner as far from him as possible, too hurt to trust anything or anyone. And he couldn't blame her. Don Meadows had been her hero, the man who rescued her from Whitney, and all along he'd been keeping Whitney's dark secret.
Kadan drove through the night, keeping one hand on her, insisting on the one connection when she was so far away. It took her a couple of hours to drift into a fitful sleep. By the time he'd pulled up to the house, she was in a much deeper sleep, and he was able to carry her inside and put her on the bed. He stretched out beside her and finally closed his eyes, wrapping both arms around her to keep safe, even in her dreams.
CHAPTER 14
Kadan woke with his arms filled with warmth, and the scent of cinnamon and sin surrounding him. His body throbbed with a monster hard-on, his shaft full to the point of pain as he lay curved around Tansy. He kept very still, breathing through need, disgusted that he could be dripping like a rutting animal, hot and thick, pressed so tight against the s
oft, tempting curve of her bottom, when she was still reeling in shock from the devastating revelations of her father's betrayal.
What was wrong with him that he couldn't give her the comfort she needed? He pushed his forehead against the back of her silky head, for the first time in his life really wishing he was different. He'd never cared before. It had never mattered to him to articulate his thoughts and feelings to another human being. He had no family or home, and he'd never believed he would either. And now here she was, soft and warm and smelling of heaven, feeling like paradise against his body, and all he could think about was riding her for hours, instead of finding the right words to comfort her, the right way to hold her, without seeming like all he really wanted was a fast, hard ride.
Sometime in the night he had wrapped his arms around her, his hands cupping her breasts so her nipples pushed into the center of his palms and the soft weight of her lay in invitation. He realized he was rocking his hips gently against her, rubbing his shaft along her buttocks, and he forced himself to stop, breathing deeply to stay in control. Cursing under his breath, he pulled his arms free and rolled away from her. With his groin so full and aching, it was a kind of torment to sit on the edge of the bed and just breathe her in.
He felt her move, felt her awareness, heard the small hitch in her breath as she woke. He didn't look at her, because if he had, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself from sliding her body under his. Instead, he padded to the bathroom on bare feet and took a long, cold shower that didn't seem to do anything but make him more uncomfortable.
His jeans seemed tighter than usual and his body didn't want to cooperate; there was no comfortable place to tuck his hard shaft, but he did his best. Tansy was already up and in the other bathroom, obviously taking a bath. He could smell the fragrance wafting out from behind the half-open door and hear the splash of water as she bathed. He closed his eyes, trying not to see an image of her nude, rising up out of the water, long hair flowing around her like a silvery waterfall.
He stalked into the kitchen and put on coffee, trying to keep his imagination from running wild, thinking about the water beading on her skin and where it might be running. And what the hell had he ever thought about before she came into his life? He used to have a brain; now all he thought about was sex.
He tapped his foot, determined not to go look at her. All that soft skin. The silky hair. Her enormous eyes. Mouth to die for--a mouth made for sin. He found himself at the bathroom door, nudging it open with his foot. He stuck his head in and lost his breath. She was rising up out of the tub, wrapping her hair in a towel. She looked at him, not even making an attempt to cover up, one eyebrow raised in inquiry.