My Familiar Stranger by Victoria Danann Read Free Book Online Page B

having breakfast. Storm wasn’t really thinking about the game. He didn’t need to. He’d always been - what did they say? - too smart for his own good. He had learned chess from a cousin in fifteen minutes when he was ten and had never lost a game since.
    Elora took Storm’s knight with her queen and, in the same tone one might use to inquire about the time, asked, “Why are they recording everything I say?”
    He stared into those arresting turquoise eyes and realized that they had continued to get bigger and more pronounced as the swelling receded by tiny increments each day. For the first time he noticed her irises had yellow and gold flecks. Scabs had turned to ivory pink skin and it looked like there would be minimal scarring, if any. There was still swelling, but the black and purple bruising had gone through the even more gruesome green and yellow stage. What remained looked more like streaks of jaundice than anything. A nose had slowly emerged in the center of her face and was starting to look like it might be well proportioned and a little upturned like that video of the young Elora Laiken. The mouth that had once been nothing more than a gash in a hideous lump of flesh was now softening into lips formed in the shape of a bow. Her hair was pulled up in a severe ponytail, bound at the crown of her head so that all that thick, beautiful hair hung down to her collar bone, and swiveled enticingly from side to side as she moved her head.
    He met her gaze head on so she would know he wasn’t holding back or playing omission games with the truth. “Because you arrived here in a unique way, a way no one has ever seen or heard of, and because we don’t really know anything about who you are, where you came from, or why you’re here.”
    “I see,” she sat back in her chair appraising him. “Reasonable. Understandable. Prudent.”
    “ I don’t know what happened to you, but it doesn’t take a genius to know it was awful and that you probably didn’t volunteer.”
    Elora sighed and looked out the window. “Awful,” she repeated. Her eyes seem to be transfixed on something in the trees, glazing over as she took on that melancholy expression he had seen so often since her face had started to become more readable. Once again the whole trauma was playing across her memory in quick time.
    After a beat or two she blinked and turned her attention back to Storm, hair swiveling across her shoulder to her back as the focus in her eyes took on a crystal clarity and seemed to drill through him.
    “Who are you? What do you do? And what kind of place is this? Really.”
    It was his turn to lean back and study her. He forced himself to smile and deliberately broadcast nonchalant body language. “You want to trade answers? Question for question?”
    She stared at him as though evaluating the pros and cons of the offer. “Have you ever heard of someone named Monq?”
    “Is that your first question in trade?” He didn’t try to hide the fact that he was amused by the possibility of an intriguing game.
    She pressed her lips together. “Your proposal is tempting. Because I do want answers. Of course you know that, don’t you?” She nodded to punctuate that it was rhetorical. “But I don’t want to have to tell my story more than once. I’d rather make a deal for one time. One time only.”
    Storm leaned forward looking intent and serious. “I think that’s fair. When you’re recovered I’ll set it up. You say when.” He looked down at the checkered board between them, moved a piece, and she saw a fleeting hint of satisfaction flash in his eyes right before he said, “Check.”
    Her mouth twitched involuntarily. Yes. She was in mourning, but she was still alive and able to relate to the pleasure of winning. After all, who likes to lose? “Just tell me one thing now. Am I a prisoner?”
    Storm kept his expression blank while his emotions ran the gamut. Those were the words he had been dreading. A hundred times he