Midnight Star

by Ophelia Bell

  “I have summers off,” she finally said. “Assuming your counteragent works and I get back in shape for competition.”

  Val found it hard to resist smiling and whooping for joy, even though what she offered barely scratched the surface of what he really wanted. He would take it.

  “It will work. I promise you that.”

  27

  Javin

  Javin loped through the shadows toward the rear entry of the secluded facility. He wished he could shift. His wolf was far more adept at stealth in his true shape rather than being trapped behind his human eyes. But he needed pockets and he needed to be able to remain stealthy for the entire mission, and naked men were decidedly not stealthy. Simon would have had an even harder time of it, though the big hyena shifter was surprisingly agile and silent.

  They reached the door and Javin stepped back, allowing Simon to take the lead. He gripped the door handle and his muscles bunched beneath the black spandex of his athletic shirt. A moment later something broke inside the door mechanism and Simon yanked, pulling the entire handle free. The door swung toward them, admitting them to the building.

  The hallway they entered was dark, but his heightened senses allowed him to see well enough for what they needed. They’d cut the power to the building before entering, which would allow them to take care of business undetected. However, they only had a brief window to get things done before whoever oversaw the building sent security to investigate the outage.

  “Move,” he commanded in a loud whisper and they jogged down the hall. The door at the end was locked and Simon held up a hand, indicating for Javin to back up. Then Simon took a few steps back and charged the door, aiming his shoulder at the area just above the latch. The frame splintered and the door flew open.

  “You sure you’re not part rhino?” Javin joked, eyeballing the destruction as they strolled into the lab.

  Simon’s laugh echoed through the room, betraying the size of the space they’d entered. “No, but I have trained with a few. The ball’s in your court now, buddy,” he said, gesturing at the tables of equipment.

  This was why the four of them had paired off the way they had. Javin was the one who could identify the drug and who understood how to destroy it most efficiently, but Simon was needed to simply break in. Val and Astra would have no trouble getting into his lab but Val was the only one who could create the counteragents.

  A blinking LED caught Javin’s eye on the far wall. “They must have a backup generator. Do you see any other lights?”

  “No, just that one,” Simon said. “I’ll stand guard. You do what you need.”

  The broad-shouldered shifter settled back near the doorway, relaxed but alert as Javin headed toward the blinking light. It was set in a control panel at the base of a large, cylindrical canister of shiny steel. The container was as wide as his torso and half as tall, its cone-shaped bottom leading into a steel tube. He followed the pipe to another contraption farther down that resembled a mechanical centipede with a dozen legs.

  His adrenaline surged when he recognized the cartridges that Simon’s stash of the drug had been stored in. This was definitely the place where they’d been filled. Each little “leg” of the machine was attached to a tube that distributed the drug across the cartridges, packaging them into the sealed vials for distribution.

  Returning to the first small vat, he flipped the switch, killing the light, then gripped the pipe where it was sealed to the valve and uncoupled it with a twist of his hand. It was tight but he was strong. He opened the valve and the pungent liquid began to spill out over the table and onto the floor. Javin stepped back to avoid getting any on him. He doubted it would affect him but didn’t want to take any chances.

  While the vat drained, he headed farther down the line and began to empty any cartridges he found there. But at the end he reached a stack of crates that were filled with them.

  “Fuck. I need your help!” he called to Simon. It would take more effort to destroy these. He darted a look around the lab for a quicker solution and found it on the far wall. A panel labeled Incinerator sat in the shadows. He grabbed one of the crates and headed toward the panel, calling back over his shoulder again. “Simon, here!”

  A snarling growl echoed through the big room, followed by a deafening bang. Javin’s blood went ice-cold and he turned in time to see Simon had shifted, his enormous hyena leaping at a burly man holding a gun. Blood gushed down Simon’s side, staining his spotted fur, but the man beneath him only struggled for a second before Simon ripped out his throat.

  More men spilled in, yelling and pointing guns and flashlights.

  Javin dropped the crate and ducked, lunging for the shadows around one table. He headed toward the fray, tearing off his shirt as he called on his wolf. His pants fell off him when the wolf leaped over a table, straight at the back of one of their attackers. The man’s gun went off, the bullet flying wide and crashing through a window. Javin bit down on his shoulder, careful to aim for the nerve that would knock him out rather than kill him.

  There was no way to communicate don’t kill to an angry hyena, but when he spotted Simon surrounded by four men with guns, he stopped caring.

  Javin charged, leaping straight at one man’s throat, his movement distracting the others enough for Simon to attack.

  The man beneath him let out a strangled yowl and Javin relaxed his bite just shy of piercing the jugular, but held tight while Simon dispatched the other men. The hyena slipped out the door and disappeared for a moment, leaving Javin snarling down at the terrified human beneath him.

  A moment later a naked, bloody, and human-shaped Simon appeared in the doorway, panting and holding a hand against one bloody shoulder. “We’re clear. I have no idea where the fuck they came from. What’s keeping you from finishing him off?”

  Javin shifted out of his wolf form, keeping his knees against the man’s chest. “Hold him,” he said and Simon obeyed, kneeling down to press the man’s wrists to the floor.

  “Who do you work for?” Javin demanded, staring down at the man beneath him.

  The man’s eyes were wide. “C-Carver. He said to be on alert for a breach. It’s only about the paycheck, man. I don’t want to fucking die!”

  “You’re a mercenary?”

  The man nodded, darting a fearful look up at Simon, who held him down with little effort. “What the fuck are you guys? I knew shifters were strong but you two are fucking mutants.”

  Javin snorted. “We’re purebred. Earth shifters are the mutants, though we just call them hybrids. If you want to live, you’re going to help us, got it? I’ll make sure you’re paid double if you do.” He assumed Val would be good for it if he asked.

  “Anything,” the man said, his eyes glinting at the offer of more money.

  Javin slipped off him and patted him down for more weapons, removing a holstered gun and several knives. Javin handed the knives to Simon, who winced when he reached for them.

  “You were hit,” Javin said, his nostrils flaring to find the scent over the other blood that had been spilled tonight. Simon’s was a sharper, more pungent odor thanks to the toxin in his system, but there wasn’t much of it compared to the blood of the dead men around them.

  “I’ll survive long enough to get the counteragent.” Simon took a deep breath and stood. “Tell us what we need to do to finish up and get out of here.”

  “You two dump as much of this shit down the chute to the incinerator,” Javin said, pointing at the crates and the equipment. “Anything that isn’t nailed down that will fit. I’m going to go find the server where they store the data.”

  He found an office that was miraculously unlocked and proceeded to rip the computer off the desk and carry it to the incinerator. By the time they were finished, not much remained that hadn’t been shoved down the chute—even the vat that had held the drug had disappeared, and Simon and the mercenary were discussing how to dispose of the bodies.

  “I say just leave them for the cleaning
team,” the man said. “The assholes who own this lab aren’t exactly on the up and up. They’ll deal with the mess, but you guys are going to want to disappear fast.”

  “We will leave the planet tomorrow if tonight’s a success,” Javin said. “What about you?”

  “As soon as we’re out that door, I’m in the wind.”

  “You’ll want to get paid,” Javin said. “That can’t happen unless you stay with us for a little longer.”

  The man shook his head and reached inside his jacket, producing a brick-shaped package containing a pure white substance. “This is my payment. Found it while we were cleaning up. Better for us to part ways sooner rather than later.”

  “You accept drugs as payment?” Javin said. “Let me see that.”

  “This has nothing to do with the shit you were after,” the man said. “Whatever that drug you destroyed was is useless to me where I’m going. This is currency on the streets. I’ll survive.”

  “Fair enough. Good luck.”

  The man gave him and Simon a quick salute before jogging out the door and into the night.

  “Let’s get you patched up, then go meet the others,” Javin said, clapping Simon on the back. “I hope like hell Val and Astra had a less eventful night.”

  28

  Astra

  “So what do we do, just wait?” Astra asked, pacing through Val’s lab, picking up and putting down the various tools situated around the tables.

  “It takes time,” Val said. “I only have the single sequencer so I need to do each one separately. While yours is in the theta cycler, Simon’s is being analyzed to determine its structure. Then I have to do Dad’s.”

  She had no idea what he’d said, but she didn’t care much beyond the fact that he’d done hers first. “And when mine’s done with the thingy, it’ll be ready to take? I’ll be fixed?”

  “Not quite,” he said, spinning on his stool to face her. “The counteragent has to go through a maturing stage. Basically, it has to steep, but I can put it into a portable capsule that handles that step.” He held up a small silver cylinder that reminded her of the one Javin used for her treatments. A little blue light was illuminated on the top, but the cylinder was empty. “It’ll go in here. In twenty-four hours the light will turn green and you can take it.”

  She grimaced and sat down on the stool beside him.

  Val laughed. “Impatient girl. You do like to have your cake and eat it too, don’t you?” He closed the distance between them and pushed her legs apart, rolling close. She couldn’t help but lean in when he cupped the back of her head and lowered his mouth to hers.

  Behind him, the machine he’d moved her serum to whirred, then went silent and she jerked away and stared at it. “Is it done yet?”

  Val cupped her chin and turned her back to face him. “No, love, it will be a while longer. Will you let me distract you?” His lips drifted along her jaw and she sighed, arching into him as his hand toyed with the buttons at the front of her blouse. He’d insisted she dress like his lab assistants might, in the most boring shirt and pants, then teased her with the promise that she actually looked “good enough to eat” in the outfit. As if.

  But now she didn’t mind so much as he began to undress her. Once her shirt was half unbuttoned, he slipped his hand inside and cupped her breast.

  “You’d have been safer with a bra, you know,” he murmured into her ear.

  “When did you ever get the impression that I like being safe?” she asked, reaching down between them to grip his erection.

  He groaned and nipped at her earlobe. “What I’d like to know is whether this means you decided to forego panties too.”

  “There’s only one way to find out.” She turned her head to find his mouth again. She captured his lower lip between her teeth, nipping, then sucking. He growled as he took the bait, slanting his mouth over hers and plunging his tongue deep. At the same time, he dropped a hand to her waistband and unfastened the button, slipping his hand inside.

  Finding no other barrier between his fingers and her pussy, he cursed and, in a smooth motion, swiveled and lifted her off her stool and onto the steel table beside them.

  Astra laughed as Val yanked her pants off one leg and pushed her legs apart, then she fell back with a rough moan when he pressed his mouth to her pussy and licked.

  “Holy fuck, this is way better than cake,” she said.

  Val chuckled against her sensitive flesh, hooking a hand beneath her knee and putting her foot on his shoulder as he delved deeper. Within moments he’d pushed her to the edge, and when he reached up to tweak her nipples, she flew over, crying out and bucking against him as the orgasm commandeered her body.

  She collapsed back, her elbow bumping the machine beside her. “Have you ever fucked someone in this lab before?” she asked, staring up at the grid of lights in the ceiling.

  “Never, and I’m not going to start tonight, either.”

  She propped herself on her elbows to look at him, pouting. “Aww, oral sex is fine but not fucking?”

  “Making you come is always fine. It may sound weird, but I don’t want to make love to you without Simon and Javin.”

  He licked his lips, his cat eyes gleaming with smug satisfaction at her languid pose. She recognized the sense of conquest in his posture and rolled her eyes, hopping off the table and slipping back into her pants.

  She leaned down and whispered, “One of these days I’ll show you what it really feels like to be with a dragon.”

  Val hooked an arm around her waist and pulled her off-balance, forcing her to grab hold of him or else fall. He vibrated beneath her in what she realized was an actual purr, his chest humming from her proximity. “I will relish any and every lesson you wish to teach, Astra.”

  He nuzzled her neck and she sighed, surrendering to his embrace and sinking into his lap. She tried a few times to get into his pants, even offering to suck him off, but he kept refusing, so she finally relented, simply making out for the duration of their wait.

  Val made it so easy to succumb to his attention that she didn’t mind. He worshiped her lips with his talented mouth until she was dizzy with desire, and when he pushed her hand away from his erection a third time, he said, “Let me love you my way. You’re a dragon. You can handle the heat, can’t you?”

  He said it with a quirk of his lips and she sensed the subtle challenge. She narrowed her eyes and gave him a sly smile. “You’re damn right I can handle the heat. I just want to find your limit.”

  Val laughed as he nuzzled the sensitive place behind her ear. She tilted her head with a sigh.

  “I’m more than willing to share all my limits with you.” He nipped his way back to her mouth, her need to taste his lips again swelling to a fever pitch by the time he was kissing her once more.

  She’d forgotten entirely about the tests they were waiting for, lost in the rhythm of their kissing, her dragon hypnotized by Val’s constant attention. When they parted for breath she kept her eyes closed, delving inward to that damaged bond. She found her dragon easily, the animal’s consciousness drunk from desire but happy—and easy to rouse and command if she had need. And all because she had held back from her desire for sex.

  “What is it?” Val asked, brushing a knuckle down her cheek. “You disappeared there for a second.”

  She met his concerned gaze and smiled. “I think you might be part of the cure. I haven’t been this close to my dragon in days.”

  He searched her eyes for a second and she froze, regretting her admission that their closeness had acted like a balm. She didn’t want to give him any excuses to suggest mating.

  But Val only pulled her close again and said, “That’s wonderful. The closer to the surface she is, the quicker the counteragent will work. You’ll get her back, I promise.”

  She was suddenly overwhelmed by emotion strong enough for her eyes to burn. She kept her head buried against his shoulder, holding him tight to hide the signs. Mostly she felt gratitude that he unde
rstood her, but also love, and while her palms tingled with the need to mark him, her dragon was alert and attuned enough to her desires that it wasn’t overwhelming. She could control herself.

  “I’m going to miss you,” she said when she finally got herself under control.

  Val stiffened against her, and at the same moment, the faint pinging alarm on the machine went off. He urged her off his lap and stood, taking a moment to adjust his massive erection before taking a breath and opening the small chamber of the machine to withdraw a shining cartridge.

  “Two down,” he said, giving her a sad smile. He stowed the cartridge inside a small, oblong black case, then put it into his lab coat pocket.

  Astra rubbed her bare arms, suddenly chilly from his absence. He worked in silence, setting up the machine to produce the final counteragent for his father.

  Her throat burned and she forced herself to swallow. She had to say something, but what?

  “We’ll see each other again,” she finally said.

  Val took a deep breath and folded himself onto a stool as if bracing himself to respond. “Not soon enough, but I guess I have to live with that. You guys happened fast. These feelings would take anyone time to process. More time than we’ve had. There’s no denying how I feel though. How we all feel. So if you don’t mind, I’d rather not think about you leaving just yet, okay?”

  “Fair enough,” she said. They both turned to stare at the machine in silence, the moment taut with all they left unsaid. Astra refused to let herself say how she truly felt. What good would it do? He belonged here on Earth. She and Simon and Javin would return to Nova Aurora in a day or so. There was nothing either of them could say that would change that. Their lives were bound to different places.

  Beside her, Val took a deep breath and reached out, clasping her hand in his and squeezing.

  A loud beep interrupted their silent moment and Astra jerked her head up as the lab door swung open. Then all hell broke loose.