WE SAT around the dining table, Blaze’s usual spot filled by Dess as he squeezed in at the corner, too close to Garrison for either of their liking. If I had to hear another second of bickering from them…
“You eat so much pasta that you smell like it,” Garrison chided, taking a bite of his chicken.
My mouth became a thin line as I awaited Blaze’s comeback.
“You eat so much chocolate that… you know what? You don’t smell like chocolate.” Blaze smirked. “You smell like a heaping pile of dog—”
“You both fucking stink,” Dess cut in, her mouth full as she spoke. My spine straightened as she said it, and I couldn’t help but chuckle a bit. Having someone else break up the constant heckling between them was a blessed relief.
She looked at me with a glint in her dark eyes. “Don’t think that you smell any better.”
Everyone looked at Dess for a moment, and she smiled at us. “Talon’s the only decent one here, isn’t that right?” she added, giving him a wink.
Talon, for all it was worth, looked pleased with her announcement. He continued eating with a hint of what might even have been amusement on his face, but he didn’t reply.
I looked around the table again, noting the homey feel that had settled over our group even with a relative stranger in our midst. Of course, the truth was that Dess barely felt like a stranger now. We knew who she was on a level she’d shared with almost no one before, and the same for her with us. I didn’t need to watch her from the corner of my eye every few seconds, checking for hostile moves.
It was so much better this way, having everything straightforward and clear. It would make our jobs easier, and we’d be able to help her more when we weren’t blinded by lies.
Dess stood up from the table and took her plate to the sink. Now that I knew what she was—what she’d been trained to do—I could pick up on the strength and agility that marked even the simplest movement, every motion she made deliberate and coordinated. Everything about her screamed “dangerous” if you knew how to look right.
But there was still so much about her that none of us knew, her included. So many things about her past that could prove more dangerous than she was.
Who was she? Who was after her? We could obviously expect further threats to arise, but where and when and to what extent?
Not knowing how to prepare left me on edge. I dealt in certainties and absolutes, planning our missions and our overall security down to the smallest detail. Anything left to chance could pop up and bite us in the ass at the most inopportune moment.
I didn’t have much choice, though. The only other option was turning her loose, which she didn’t want… and neither did I. Every particle in my body said both she and we were better off with her among us.
I wanted to help her.
The thought of those people wrenching her from her family and forcing her to become their murderous tool brought a bitter taste to my mouth. Fury flared to the surface at the memory of the fight in the sewers this morning, when her former trainer had sicced all those men on the woman she’d raised since early childhood. I’d like nothing more than to rip through every person responsible for Dess’s imprisonment, and I’d be counting the days until we found them.
My hand dropped to the military-issue Beretta M9A1 at my hip. The feel of the cool, smooth metal settled my nerves, even though there was no one in front of me to shoot just yet.
“I think we need dessert,” Blaze said, cutting off my train of thought.
Dess laughed lightly as she rinsed her plate at the sink. “Do we? Let me guess, you have a sweet version of pasta for that.”
Blaze snorted. “If only. How’s this for an idea? We have ice cream, and I know that Garrison keeps a tub of chocolate syrup in here somewhere. To celebrate your newfound freedom, why don’t I whip you up a chocolate milkshake?”
I doubt any of us had failed to notice Dess’s enthusiasm for all things cocoa-related. Her face lit up the second Blaze mentioned the syrup. But as he finished his suggestion, an uneasy twitch ran through her slim frame. The eagerness in her expression dimmed.
“That’s all right,” she said, her voice oddly stiff. “I’m actually pretty full.”
I studied her for a second, my brow furrowing with confusion, before it hit me.
In the videos, her bitch of a trainer had used the phrase “garlic milkshake” to completely control Dess as a child. She must have unpleasant associations with that combination of words—and maybe with each of them on their own as well. Very unpleasant, if it’d shaken her adoration for chocolate.
“Thanks anyway,” Dess added quickly, and headed to the exercise room that’d become her honorary bedroom in the apartment. Blaze started after her, puzzled and apologetic. “But… she loves chocolate,” he murmured to himself after the door shut behind her.
Garrison scoffed and cuffed the back of his head lightly enough for the gesture and the words that followed to come across more teasing than hostile. “For someone supposedly so smart, you can be one dim motherfucker.”
Blaze scowled, and I stepped in before they got going again. “You remember what her control word was at the household?”
Blaze’s eyes flickered the way they always did when his brain was moving at a million miles a second putting the pieces together, and then he smacked himself in the forehead. “I think we need a codeword for milkshakes.”
“Maybe we should simply avoid them for the time being,” I remarked dryly, but afterward, my gaze slid to Dess’s door. There might be other ways to start solving that problem—ways that got right at the source. If she wanted that.
There was only one way to find out.
As the others finished clearing the table, I walked over to Dess’s room. After a second’s hesitation, I knocked.
“What?” Dess asked from the other side.
“It’s me,” I said. “Can I come in? There’s something I’d like to talk to you about.”
“Sure, come in,” she said, sounding normal enough. But when I opened the door and saw her sitting on her cot, I couldn’t help noticing the slight slump to her shoulders and the pensive crease on her forehead that she managed to smooth away a moment later.
I considered asking the most obvious question: Are you okay? But I knew how quickly I’d deflect an expression of concern like that. And I was coming to see that Dess and I had a lot in common.
I sat across from her on the workout bench, spreading my legs as I leaned my elbows into my knees. “Do you want to talk about it?”
She sighed and made a face. “Not really.”
I nodded. “I get that, but I might be able to help if I know what’s going on. We heard the phrase your trainer used in the videos. I’m guessing it still bothers you?”
Her mouth twisted tighter, a little of the pain I didn’t think she wanted to admit showing through. “It doesn’t just bother me. It can control me.” She swore under her breath and pressed her palms to her forehead. “What if I can’t fix what they broke? Not completely.”
My heart ached for both her and the girl I’d encountered all those years ago. What if I’d taken her under my wing then? Not that I could imagine she’d have let me, but her life… it could have been different. Better.
All we had to work with was where she’d ended up in reality, though.
I shook my head. “You’re not broken. You just have some interesting features.”
She raised her eyebrows at me, and a small smile curved her lips. “That’s one way to look at it, I guess.”
“Maybe all those features will come in handy one day.”
Her eyes sharpened. “If this situation doesn’t get me killed first.” She sucked a sharp breath in through her teeth and held it for a few seconds before releasing it. “During the fight, Noelle used the code word, and it almost worked. I followed her halfway to the exit before I could stop myself.”
I winced inwardly. No wonder that wound was raw for her. “Noelle’s dead now,” I reminded her.
“Yeah, but she didn’t work alone. Anyone else who knows or gets ahold of that phrase could use it to give them enough time to take me down. Even one second of distraction in a fight could cost me my freedom. You don’t know how it feels to have someone else in control of your body, screaming at yourself to stop and getting nowhere.”
Her breathing quickened as she spoke, and she was right. I had no idea how that felt, and I didn’t even want to imagine it. But that didn’t mean I couldn’t offer her anything.
I clasped my hands together in front of me, holding her gaze. “In my special ops training, we learned a variety of techniques for avoiding mental conditioning. It’s easier to put up those barriers before the conditioning happens, but the exercises can help to fight off the compulsions too. Mental conditioning is dangerous, and it’s a testament to your strength that you broke through it so quickly. Most people could never hope to do that, especially when they’ve been programmed since early childhood.”
Dess tilted her head with a curious expression. “Did anyone ever try to condition you in that way?”
“No,” I admitted. “Nobody ever caught me for long enough. But I practiced the techniques all the same, and I talked to guys who were held prisoner who managed to resist.”
“I guess it can’t hurt to try.” She straightened up, the new resolve in her stance already reassuring me that she wasn’t shaken too badly. “Can you teach me those techniques?”
“That’s what I was thinking. I can give you the grounding, but what’s most important is that you make sure to practice them regularly on your own once you’ve got the hang of them.”
“Oh, if there’s one thing I’ve got in spades, it’s self-discipline.” Dess’s mouth quirked into a more genuine smile, one that brought the beauty in her face into clearer focus. Damn, this woman was gorgeous when I let myself notice.
But now wasn’t the time for thinking about her looks. She needed guidance, not ogling.
I motioned to the floor. “We need to sit for the first exercise. It’s a meditative experience, and it’s best to get centered on a flat surface with nothing to distract you.”
She lowered herself to the ground and crossed her legs, pulling them in tightly as I followed her. “Is this how you learned that you like to meditate?”
I blinked at her. “How did you know I meditate?”
She shrugged. “Blaze mentioned it. He said he learned how from you.”
“I practice yoga,” I said. “Meditating is the only part Blaze enjoys, so that’s what he does. I do it all. There’s a lot more to it.”
A sly glint sparked in Dess’s eyes. “I bet that makes you flexible.”
Damn it if my dick didn’t start to harden just with that brief remark, as if she meant anything like that by it. I gritted my teeth against the pang of arousal and evened out my breathing.
“Yes, but that’s not what you want to be focused on right now. There are two main strategies that we can use, but before we attempt either of them, you need to be relaxed. I suspect that’s going to take some work. I can feel your tension from here.”
“I’m not sure I know how to relax,” Dess admitted.
“You’ve got to learn, or none of this will help you,” I said, and she huffed. I watched as she willed her shoulders down. “Good. We’ll work on relaxing you more, but first I want to tell you the two things we’re going to try. Visualization and disassociation.”
“Those sound like fancy words for sitting on my ass. Is this really all that meditation is?”
I took a deep breath. “Do you want to learn or not?”
She winced. “Sorry. Continue.”
I took in the way her black hair tumbled across her shoulders. Her spine remained straight, her slim figure on lovely display within her fitted tee and sweats, but her pert chin dipped in concentration.
Then I mentally swatted myself across the head for leering at her. Maybe I shouldn’t be lecturing her about staying on topic.
I reined in my other impulses and thought back to some of my earliest lessons. “The conditioning is in your head, so you’re going to need mental tricks to deal with it. That’s why it’s best to clear your thoughts as much as possible first. With visualization, you can imagine that the conditioned commands are a wave that simply washes over you without catching hold. Picture yourself holding firm while the words roll over you and slip away. Can you try that?”
Dess nodded, her movements already slowing as she sank into the sort of mental zone I was familiar with. She did pick up training fast, didn’t she? She stayed still for a while, her chest rising and falling within her cotton shirt, and I definitely wasn’t noticing how well her toned curves moved beneath that fabric.
“You said the other way is disassociation?” she prompted after a few minutes. “What does that involve?”
And so eager to learn. Another thought that shouldn’t have sent a twinge of desire to my cock but did.
I pushed those emotions aside yet again. “That’s right. You can disassociate yourself from the girl who went through the conditioning—convince yourself that it happened to a different woman, separate from who you are now. If you aren’t the one who was conditioned, then the effect can’t work on you.”
Dess hummed to herself. “That makes sense. I like that one. I feel different already.”
“That’s a good place to start, then.”
She inhaled and exhaled even more deeply than before. I could see the loosening effect spreading through her entire body. Gradually, more of the tension fell from her posture and her face. A softness crept over her features, totally at odds with her usually tough exterior.
Not many people would have gotten to see the vulnerable side of this woman. I was honored to witness it.
What was passing through her head right now as she sat there, a goddess of death incarnate? She looked so breakable, but I saw the illusion for what it was. I knew how unbreakable she truly was.
The two factors in combination made her all the more appealing. When had I ever known a woman like this in my entire life? A woman who could hold her own against me in so many ways…
But as lust flickered up from my belly, a memory snuffed it out. The memory of the eleven-year-old girl with desperate eyes, dashing into an alley.
Dess needed help now just like she had back then, not to be treated like a conquest. I wasn’t going to take advantage of her while she worked through her tangled past. Maybe when she’d healed more—
No, I wasn’t even going to let myself think about that.
Other questions about the future lingered in the back of my mind. She could be here with us for quite a while. With her deadly precision and strength, she’d be an incredible asset in our line of work. Having the Ghost as part of the Chaos Crew? We’d be even more unstoppable than we already were.
Would she even want to join us? I couldn’t see broaching the subject just yet. But while she was with us, I’d get the chance to see just how well this cunning assassin could fit within our ranks.
The rest we’d have to take from there.
