Free Reawakening Eden by Vivi Andrews Page B

realization that someone in Jonah’s camp had stripped and bathed her in perfume while she was unconscious.
    She tried to sit up, but her muscles refused to respond. She felt like her entire body had been packed in pudding, a gooey resistance dragging her down. If she focused, she could move a couple inches, but gravity was not her friend right now. Escape wasn’t an option yet.
    With her body incapacitated, her brain whirred, a mess of questions. Were Hannah Rose and Lucas nearby? Were they frightened? Hurt? Would Jonah try to use them to barter for her cooperation like he had in the past? What about Precious? Had the dog really died of her wounds? Or had she, by some miracle, made it back to Connor? Would he come for them? Would he even know where to look? She’d told him some about the commune, but had she given him enough details to find them? Dammit, she should have drawn him a freaking map, just in case. Of course, that was presuming he even cared enough to stir himself for her. And that he had any way of knowing something was wrong.
    The sound of a toilet flushing in the bedroom’s en suite slapped a stop sign in front of her racing thoughts. She strained to hear, picking up the sound of the faucet running, and then the connecting door opened. Jonah Carter himself strolled into the room, his eyes widening and a bright smile lighting his face when he saw her watching him.
    “Finally. You’re awake.”
    Her reactions were all sluggish—even the reflexive recoil she felt in his presence was delayed and muted. She must still be feeling the effects of whatever they’d given her to knock her out.
    Jonah approached the bed. His smile shifted into an expression of benign disappointment that could have belonged to a teacher scolding a favorite student. She’d always thought there was something vaguely professorial about him.
    Jonah Carter didn’t look like she’d expected a zealous cult leader to look. Clean-shaven and attractive in a nondescript kind of way—as if his face’s perfect symmetry crossed a line and became uninteresting—he was average height and had a wiry build, but his looks weren’t his strength. It was his voice that could hold an audience for hours.
    It rolled over her now, rich, warm and filled with layers of feeling. “You shouldn’t have run off like that, Eden. Our people need you. You know that.”
    She tried to respond, but her mouth felt gummy and no sound emerged.
    He stood next to the bed, looking down at her with a martyr’s smile curving his lips. He gently brushed tendrils of hair away from her face, never even glancing at the body that had been laid out like a buffet for him. For all his preaching about the need for sex and repopulating the planet, Jonah Carter was not an overtly sexual man. Even when he’d attacked her in the sanctuary, it seemed like it was because his God told him he needed to more than any physical attraction he felt for her. She was a symbol to him, not a person. It hadn’t even occurred to him that she would say no.
    “You’re the key,” he said softly, almost lovingly. “I know it is a heavy burden to bear, but we must stay strong for our people. They’re depending on us.”
    This was another of those moments when she wasn’t sure if he was a con man, a religious zealot or a complete whack job. When she first met him she was convinced he was an opportunist—just someone who had seen the vulnerability in others and knew how to exploit it to elevate himself to a position of power. But the more he preached, the more convincing he became. And the more she realized he might actually buy his own line—which was much more frightening than the alternative. Eden had found herself watching him, searching to see if she could detect the uneven edges of his faith. His belief was like a wax mask pressed over his skin, but it never cracked. It was seamless. Perfect.
    Except for those flickering moments when something manic flashed in his eyes and his holy quest