As Cold As Ice by Mandy Rosko Page A

would expose a weakness in her, show Markus she
wasn’t strong enough to go out in the world and find fugitive
paranormals, or her brother.
    So Jessica continued to smile at him, bat
her lashes and look helpless and small whenever he was around,
because that was what clearly got him off, what made him want to
help her even more.
    Still, one day, she was going to punch him
for this, even if she never told him what it was for.
    The time awake, working with Soren, letting
him take her blood and even running around downstairs in the gym
with the guards who worked in the building, was the best. At least
then, she wasn’t alone in her cell.
    It had been upgraded since Markus had
decided she would be on his team. There was a better bed, a better
shower, and a television for her to watch all the propaganda
bullshit she wanted.
    Not that she had any time to do that, of
course. She was exhausted by the time Soren or Charles walked her
back to her room.
    The only thing really horrible about being
alone, aside from the fact that her door was locked and she
wouldn’t be allowed out for anything, was that it let her mind
wander back to Soren, back to the way he had touched her.
    Her blood heated, making her sex warm
between her legs as her nipples puckered. He hadn’t even really
touched her skin to skin, but it had still been his touch that
brought her off so damned well.
    The main problem lately was that she ached
so badly for more. She wanted to touch herself, to climb under the
sheets of her new—but still not great—bed and take care of
business. Or even do it in the shower, one palm leaning against the
tiled wall while her fingers worked inside of her.
    The thing that stopped her was the fact that
she was never really alone. Despite the better residence with the
peach walls and the floral prints, like in a Best Western or
something, she knew the mirror in her bathroom was still two-way.
She knew there was a tiny camera watching her in the corner. It was
bad enough that the people who were guarding her still got to see
shots of her ass and tits—she tried to avoid that, but there was no
way in Hell she’d been so lucky that they hadn’t seen anything as
she’d climbed in and out of her shower—but she wasn’t about to give
the faceless, nameless people watching a show.
    She’d come close, though. In her last
shower, as she’d stared down at her feet, hot steam rising around
her body, Jessica found herself fantasizing about Soren. She
imagined his palm between her legs, slowly rubbing against her
denim-clad clit, back and forth, harder and harder.
    It hadn’t made the throbbing ache any
better, and without meaning to, one of her hands came up to cup and
caress her breast. She’d tweaked her nipple before she’d realized
what she was doing and put a stop to it.
    The glass in her shower doors was frosted—by
design, not because of her—so whoever was watching her hadn’t
gotten the best shot of that, but there was no way they hadn’t
recognized where her hand had gone just then.
    Fuck. Why couldn’t Soren have just taken
her?
    The next day, during training, it was all
she could think about, so much so that when Soren’s loud voice
broke through the haze of her mind, she nearly jumped.
    “ You’ll pretty much be
going through your hunter training again. This should be a piece of
cake for you. I expect you to give these other young men and women
here a run for their money,” Soren would say as she and a group of
twenty or so other new recruits lined up to find out who was the
fastest, who could climb the rope ladders without tangling each
other up, and who could capture a paranormal the
easiest.
    When Jessica had gone through her own test
to obtain her hunter license, a paranormal had been released into
the room. Usually, they were volunteers, people with low-level
powers, or maybe an alpha werewolf to throw everyone off-guard.
They tended to be paranormals who turned themselves in and worked
for The Head Office