“Why do you think Judd stayed?” Claire turned back to her slowly. “If he could have escaped this hell as well, why didn’t he leave with Gideon?”
“Graeme,” Cat corrected her almost absently, her own thoughts lost in that question for long moments before she finally shrugged. “Judd was as secretive as Graeme. He never told me.”
“And you never asked?” Claire tipped her head to the side as she watched her inquisitively. “That doesn’t seem like you, Cat. You’re so damned nosy nothing ever gets past you. Why would you let Judd get by with not explaining that? I know you would have wondered.”
“I thought Graeme was dead.” She wanted to jump from the cot, wanted to throw herself out of it, desperate to escape the dream, yet she seemed locked in place as she watched Claire. “I guess I just assumed the soldiers assigned to the euthanasia team hadn’t been ordered to take Judd.”
What the hell was going on? What did Claire want from her that required them to be here?
Claire shook her head. “Until you realize you never left this place, until you ask yourself why and answer that question honestly, then you’re risking not just your life, but also Graeme’s.” She sighed. “I always thought I was the coward, Cat, but I’m starting to believe, in ways, you’re just as much a coward as I am.”
“Don’t piss me off, Claire,” Cat warned her, narrowing her eyes on her. “I can still kick your ass. Dream or not.”
Claire smirked. “You can’t come off that cot, Cat. You can’t kick anyone’s ass in this dream. You’re locked there, just as you were the morning those alarms woke you. Alarms that you knew meant an attempted or successful escape.”
Cat shook her own head at this point. “I thought the scientists were trying to trick us . . .”
“Why?” Claire laughed derisively. “Why would they do that, Cat? He was gone. You were smarter than that. Gideon made certain you were smarter than that.”
“Graeme. His fucking name is Graeme,” Cat corrected her, growing angry now. “Stop this, Claire. If you want to talk to me, then do it as you always have. We talk much better when I’m awake.”
Leaning against the steel bars, Claire watched her with such intent somberness that Cat almost feared the other girl would keep her within that dreamscape forever.
“You can leave anytime you want to, Cat,” Claire whispered, her expression never changing. “It’s up to you to wake up, just as it’s up to you to realize it doesn’t matter if you wake up, you’ll still be here.” She waved her arm slowly, encompassing the cells, the life Cat had once lived. “Realize that before it’s too late for both of us.”
She could wake whenever she wanted to? Well, she wanted to wake up now. Right now.
Closing her eyes tight for several seconds, she willed herself awake, willed herself away from the sad, waifish vision that showed far more backbone in hell than she’d shown in life.
“Hell?” Claire whispered. “This isn’t hell, Cat. This is what shaped you. This is where he saved you. Where he realized what you were to him . . . Before you took the first therapy, that enraged animal realized it and quieted, calming the maddened boy and allowing him to learn far more than any young mind should be able to learn. But he learned. For you.”
She would open her eyes and she would be awake. She’d be lying in Graeme’s arms, naked, his body warm against hers, his arrogant superiority infuriating her. All she had to do was open her eyes.
“Yes,” Claire whispered, sounding strangely distant now. “All you have to do is open your eyes, Cat. But even open, they’re closed. Poor Graeme, he’ll always be Gideon in your eyes, no matter how much he’s changed, no matter how much he loves . . .”
She didn’t want to hear any more. She couldn’t bear it. She would wake up now!
Opening her eyes quickly, she found herself staring up at Graeme, the gold swirling in those dark green Bengal eyes of his. The fires of fury, she thought. The madness. That part of himself he called the monster.
A low, warning growl sounded in his throat. “That presence will cause me to become violent.” The low, vicious snarl was one she’d never heard from him. Even when he’d warned her that the monstrous part of himself was roused, still he hadn’t sounded so powerful, so enraged.
“A dream . . .” she whispered desperately. It had to have been just a dream.
“Mine.” Moving over her, his legs parting hers with dominant strength as he came over her.
There were no preliminaries, but she didn’t need any. Her body answered his hunger, his need, just that quickly.
“Graeme . . .” Her gasp was followed by a low moan as his hands caught her wrists. Securing them to the bed next to her shoulders, he pushed inside her with a hard thrust.
“Oh God. Graeme!” Crying out his name, she was shocked at the sudden, answering slickness that filled her inner flesh, that met him, aiding the penetrating of his swollen cock.