Elizabeth Bevarly - You've Got Male

“Oh, well, that sort of negates the whole voluntary thing, doesn’t it?” she said sarcastically.

“—and you will be brought in to the nearest OPUS office for questioning by an agent working for OPUS who is familiar with the charges against you.”

“Charges against me?” Avery said indignantly. “What charges? You said I wasn’t under arrest! I want to see these alleged ‘charges.’ In writing.”

Again he ignored her and continued. “And since I am such an agent—”

“Says a piece of paper that could have come out of a box of Cap’n Crunch,” she pointed out.

“—not to mention exceptionally good at bringing in people who violate statute—” he went on relentlessly.

“Oh, no ego on you, pal, is there?”

“—then that leaves me with no choice but to bring you in for questioning involuntarily.”

“I object!” Avery shouted. Mostly because she had no idea what else to say.

“Your objection is noted.”

“Oh, well, thank you so much for that measly considera—”

She was never able to finish what she had planned to say because Santiago Dixon—or whoever the hell he was—stepped forward and curled his fingers easily around her upper arms. And that, if nothing he’d said tonight, finally shut Avery up, because where she had expected roughness, he was gentle instead. When he pulled her to standing, it wasn’t with animosity but with concern. And when he tugged her away from the couch, that was done gently, too.

And if she hadn’t been silenced already, having her body pulled flush against his like that would for sure have done it. Because instead of manhandling her like a criminal, Santiago Dixon held her the same way he might have held a woman he intended to kiss. Her mouth went dry at the realization.

But she didn’t have time to think about that. And she didn’t have time to notice, either, the way his hard, muscular torso felt pressed against her own soft one or how upon contact her own traitorous body surged forward to meet his. Nor did she have time to marvel at how her struggles this evening with Santiago Dixon were the closest thing she’d had to a sexual encounter for a decade. Her mind was too scrambled, because he wrapped his fingers firmly—intimately?—around her waist. Then she couldn’t think at all, because he lifted her off the ground and threw her over one shoulder. Then he started to walk toward the front door. Then he opened the front door. And then, with Avery still slung over his shoulder, he walked through it.

Or at least tried to.

But there was one potential outcome for the situation tonight that he hadn’t considered, and that moment was when it kicked in.

Santiago Dixon hadn’t counted on the fact that Avery Nesbitt was totally whack.

IT WAS ONLY ONCE THEY were over that Avery could really get a handle on what happened during her panic attacks. In the calm of the aftermath, she could recall the dizziness, the disorientation, the sheer, unmitigated terror. She could recall how her entire body trembled and perspired, could remember the paralysis of speech and interruption of breath. She could recollect the pain behind her eyes, the insensible workings of her brain, her certainty that she was going to die. Usually when she came out of an attack, she was curled into a fetal position on the floor of the shower stall or in the back of a closet, and she had a towel or article of clothing pressed hard against her mouth. That last, she’d always figured, was an unconscious effort to keep the psychological screaming from escaping through actual cries from her mouth.

But this latest panic attack, she realized as she gradually emerged from the fog, had been different. For one thing, she couldn’t remember ever fighting with corporeal monsters during one before. And she couldn’t recall ever shouting aloud threats to faceless menaces. Nor had she ever come out of an attack lying spread-eagle on her back, on a bare cot beneath a stark white fluorescent light, her wrists and ankles wrapped in leather restraints. Nor had she ever found herself being stared at from above by someone like Santiago Dixon, who seemed to be as breathless, as terrified and as insensate as she.

So this was a definite first.

“What happened?” she asked when she was coherent enough to manage it.

Before the question even left her mouth, though, she knew. Vaguely she remembered pounding on Dixon’s back and yanking at his hair and screaming something about how she would place certain parts of his anatomy into a variety of equipment normally reserved for torture and/or food processing. And also something about lepers and gargoyles. That part wasn’t too clear at the moment, so maybe he could help her fill in the blanks later.

But he didn’t help her out at all, only gazed at her in wide-eyed silence, as if he couldn’t quite figure out who or what she was. Then, “What happened?” he echoed incredulously.

She nodded weakly.

He shook his head almost imperceptibly, in clear disbelief. “You just about beat the hell outta me, that’s what happened. And you nearly gave my partner a concussion.” He jutted a thumb over his shoulder and glared at her some more. “And there are a couple of nurses out there filling out paperwork to enroll themselves in art school.”

“Oh,” Avery said. “I’m sorry.”

His lips parted marginally in surprise, but he said nothing more. His hat and jacket were gone, she noticed, and without them he seemed less menacing somehow. Until she bumped her gaze up to his face again and saw those cold green eyes and the jet-black hair spilling over his forehead. He seemed to be staring straight into her soul. And he seemed to not like what he saw there.

“Really,” she tried again. “I am sorry. I don’t usually attack people when that happens.”

“When what happens?” he demanded gruffly. “Just what the hell was that anyway? You were totally out of control.”

She hesitated, not wanting to share any part of herself with a total stranger she didn’t trust. Most especially she didn’t want to share the damaged part. Not that there were many parts of Avery that weren’t at least a little impaired. But he wasn’t the sort of person who would understand any of that. He was handsome, savvy, intelligent, confident. He wasn’t damaged at all. To try and explain to someone like him what it meant to be terrified of what he would consider nothing would only make her look crazier than she must already seem.

Still, she supposed she owed him an explanation. If nothing else, it might make him stop looking at her as if she were some kind of freak.

“It was a panic attack,” she said softly.

“A panic attack,” he repeated evenly.

Again she nodded. But she said nothing to elaborate. What else was there for her to say?

He shifted his weight to one foot, hooked his hands on his hips in challenge and flattened his mouth into a tight line. “Peaches, that was no panic attack. That was transglobal, thermodynamic warfare.”

She made a face at him. “Oh, stop it with the hyper-bole.” Although, now that she studied him more closely, she realized there was a big red spot on his cheek. “Look, I said I was sorry,” she said again. “It’s not like it’s something I can control. And usually it’s not that bad.”

“Just what is it then?”

She sighed. She wished she could tell him. At least in terms that wouldn’t make her sound weak and timid and nuts. Unfortunately, over the past several years, Avery had pretty much come to the conclusion that she was weak and timid and nuts. Which made her even more reluctant to tell him the truth.

In spite of that, she told him, “I wasn’t trying to be coy or uncooperative earlier when I told you I couldn’t go anywhere with you. I was telling you the truth. I can’t leave my apartment. Not without some serious preparation first.”

“What, like you need to make sure you have your wallet and house keys and a token for the subway?” he asked sarcastically.

“No. I can’t go out, because…” She sighed, resigned to revealing more of herself than she wanted him to know, because there was no other way to make him understand. “Because I have agoraphobia.”

He eyed her dubiously, “Which is what?” he asked. “Fear of the outdoors, right? But you weren’t outside yet when you went psycho.”

She tried to sit up, remembered that she was strapped down, so fell back against the cot with an exasperated sound. Honestly. Talk about overkill. So she’d roughed him up and called him a leper. So she’d nearly given someone a concussion. So she’d taken a couple of nurses out of commission. Like that didn’t happen every day in some boroughs of New York.

She tugged meaningfully at her restraints. “Let me up, will you?” she pleaded. “I’m fine now. I swear.”

“What you are is completely whack,” he countered. “Has anyone ever told you that?”

“Once or twice,” she said softly. Then, more forcefully, “I’m fine,” she repeated. She jerked at the restraints again. “Get me out of these things. Let me up. Please.”

Although he obviously didn’t believe her, he bent over her and, after a moment’s hesitation, cautiously unfastened one of her wrist restraints. But he waited before loosening any more, apparently wanting to take this thing slowly, in case she was still a little, oh, homicidal. After another moment, evidently satisfied that she wasn’t going to go all Hannibal Lecter on him again—probably—he carefully freed one of the ankle restraints, too. Then the other. Then finally the last, on her other wrist. Then he took a giant step backward and positioned himself near the door.

Where was she anyway? she wondered as she folded herself into a sitting position on the edge of the cot. It wasn’t quite a padded cell, but it was a tiny white room, empty save the cot on which she had been restrained, and there was a window in the door for observation from the other side. He’d mentioned nurses, so she must be in a hospital of some kind. God, she couldn’t even remember how she’d gotten here.

“What time is it?” she asked.

He flicked his wrist to glance at his watch, returning his attention to Avery in less than a nanosecond. “It’s ten after two.”

“A.m. or p.m.?”

“It’s two-ten in the morning,” he said. “You’ve been here for about an hour. But it took me and my partner almost an hour to get you here.”

Avery nodded, waiting for the panic to rise again, because she wasn’t in normal surroundings where she felt safe. Not that she ever really felt entirely safe in her normal surroundings. But nothing happened. She was a bit edgy, to be sure, but who wouldn’t be upon one’s discovery that one was in a strange place and couldn’t remember how one had arrived there? Not to mention when there was a man like Santiago Dixon staring at one as if one had just emerged from a pea pod from outer space?

“And just where is here?” she asked.

“You’re in an OPUS facility,” he told her.

Well, at least it wasn’t Bellevue.

“An OPUS psychiatric facility,” he clarified.

Oh. So it was Bellevue. Only without all the glamour and accountability.

She looked down at her attire, at the loud pajama bottoms and ragged purple sweatshirt. There was a rip in one sleeve that hadn’t been there before. One of her socks was missing, and the toenails of her one bare foot were painted five different colors. No telling how that had happened. The lost sock, she meant, since she had painted her toenails herself. One of her braids had come almost completely frayed. She looked at Dixon again, at the mark on his face for which she was responsible. She was lucky they’d only put her in restraints. Any other place would have performed a full frontal lobotomy by now.