by JC Hay
He held her like that, giving her body time to adjust to the delicious stretch of him. When she could, she eased her hips up, then slid back down again. His patience was infuriating. She wanted his control to break. Needed the real him, raw and just as desperate as she was. Her nails carved down his chest again, and he slammed into her with a grunt. There. Finally. So perfect she could only whimper his name in response.
His pace quickened, and she levered herself to match his rhythm. His fingers were tight on her thighs, and she'd be bruised in the morning, but didn't care. This was what she needed. What she wanted. He balanced her on the edge of the table and changed the angle of her hips, somehow driving even deeper, and she flew apart with a scream. She bit into his shoulder, and he stiffened, his metal and composite hand slamming into the tabletop as he spent himself in time with her.
She pushed her hand along his sweat-slicked scalp, nuzzling into his neck as the tremors continued to shake her body. "I think I left a mark." Truth be told there were several—delicious welts raised on his skin that gave her a primal feeling of ownership. Of having marked him as hers.
He kissed her, gently this time, his voice thick. "When you hurt me, I'll let you know."
Zar kept waiting for it to feel wrong. The galley had been desperate and perfect. Round two, when he'd dragged her back to a cabin with an actual bed, had been even better. Panic should be setting in, or at least the complicated twist of nausea and regret that nagged him when he fucked up. Instead, when Yashilla pressed closer to him, he pushed her hair back from forehead and felt nothing but low satisfaction.
She yawned and splayed her fingers against his chest so she could leverage up and melt into a kiss. "How long was I out?"
It was a rhetorical question; icebreaking, rather than legitimate. She could have checked the chrono readout in her visual display as easily as he could. It didn't stop him answering. "Not long. An hour or so."
She nodded and nestled back against him, draping his cyberarm around her. "Ask you a question?"
He curled the composite fingers against her hip, the pressure receptors in his hand sending a constant stream of data so that he didn't bruise her. Without thinking, he responded, "Of course."
"What happened in Nassau?"
His breath hitched, the question unexpected but, he supposed, unavoidable. He reached across to sink his fingers into the fringe of her hair. For a half-heartbeat, he considered not answering, but was surprised to find that for the first time he felt like sharing it instead of carrying it on his own.
"I'd been working as a bodyguard for a doctor." He took a deep breath, tensing before saying her name out loud after five years. "Liza—Dr. Neysmith—was part of a team doing cutting-edge work on autoimmune drugs with her partner, Dr. Hardie. I'm not going to lie and say I understood exactly what she'd done. But it was clever enough that Integrated GeneTech wanted them protected."
Yashilla traced her fingertips along the curve of his arm. "And they were right to be concerned, I assume."
Zar closed his eyes against the sudden flare of pain. "I was assigned to Dr. Hardie, but that meant working with both of them, and Liza and I were together for the better part of two years. Proximity led to friendship, and that turned into...more. We had been lovers for over a year when CorpServ sent in an extraction team." The pain broke on a bitter chuckle. "I don't even know which corporation hired them."
Her arm tightened across his chest, and she pressed her lips against his side. He shifted slightly, accepting her warmth and tugging the lightweight sheet over them before continuing. "When they attacked, I did my job. I grabbed Hardie and got us to the safe room. But CorpServ killed Liza's bodyguard and captured her."
Hooks caught in the wall of his chest and twisted, and Zar took a deep breath against the memory. "They'd done their homework. They offered me a trade. If I had been stronger, I would have been able to turn them down."
"You weren't weak. They're monsters. No one offers a person's life up like they own it."
"I did." He looked down at the black and chrome of his fingers spread over her hip. "I accepted the deal. Opened the door and gave up Dr. Hardie. They waited until Liza was almost to me before they shot her. With the head of the team, they didn't need both doctors. But they weren't going to let Integrated GeneTech continue competing research."
"That's not your fault, it's theirs. You can't blame yourself."
"I can, and I do. If I'd been smarter, I could have found another way to resolve the situation, but once they threatened Liza, I short-circuited. I only wanted to see her safe." His chest ached, too painful to breathe, and the lump at the back of his throat threatened to cut off what little air he could find. "I mean, if I'd stopped to think for just a moment, she'd still be alive. They wanted the head of the project, but they'd have settled for her. If I'd said no, they'd have taken her and gone. She'd still be alive."
"And locked away somewhere, doing gods only know what for her new masters." She poked him in the chest. "Do you really think she'd thank you for that? That she'd prefer it?"
"At least she'd be alive to have that option."
Yashilla shifted, perching atop him, and grabbed his chin. Her alluring milk-white eyes focused on him, even as she narrowed them. "That's a choice they took from her. Not you. You can't carry the weight of their evil on your shoulders." As an afterthought, she added, "Regardless of how big they are."
His surprise barked out as a laugh, incongruous and inappropriate, but it served its purpose all the same. He slid both hands to cradle her hips. "So that's the story. And that's why I'm nervous."
She tilted her head slightly. "Why."
"Because you and Dr. Hardie are the only people who know that story. And the bastard that pulled the trigger." He took a deep breath. "I assume you looked on the 'Net."
Her face softened, and she laid her head down on his shoulder. A wisp of her hair tickled his nose, and he shifted to kiss her temple before she spoke. "I thought about it, but I didn't. It's your story to tell. It felt wrong to take that from you."
"You wouldn't have found much if you had. Liza's death was a black eye, so they shut down any mention of it. The news completely vanished, even more than normal for Corporate Services." He stroked her side, feeling gooseflesh raise on her back where his fingers trailed. "You would have liked her. She was—nontraditional."
He wasn't sure why he'd said it, or why it mattered, but having admitted it out loud he knew the truth of it. And it went both ways—Liza would have enjoyed the iconoclastic energy and the active subversion that Yashilla radiated. In their own way, they were similar, and Liza hacked the human body just as easily as Yashilla did a security system.
Zar reached for the plastic bottle of water beside the bed and took a quick swallow against the tightness in his throat. "She used to say 'You take what you can, while you can.' It was her response to my concerns over getting involved. That I thought we might be endangering Dr. Hardie."
"She sounds remarkably clever, despite recycling carpe diem for a new generation." He must have looked confused because Yashilla laughed and translated. "Seize the day."
He nodded. "I'm not unfamiliar. There are better things to grab hold of though." He increased the pressure of his fingers on her hips as a suggestion.
She braced her forearms on his chest and glared down at him. "Did you seriously talk about your dead ex just to try for a sympathy lay?"
He laughed again, residing somewhere in a Venn diagram that overlapped shock, horror, and amusement. "You brought it up, not me. But..." He rolled his hips against hers in a slow reminder of how they'd ended up in bed in the first place.
"I've heard worse excuses." She grinned as she pushed herself the rest of the way upright, and the sheet that had draped over them dropped to pool around their hips. "I mean, we don't have to, but..."
He was half-hard already, just from the maddening way she squirmed against him. "But what?"
She reached behind her to curl her fingers around hi
s cock and give him a teasing stroke. "If you're not interested, it's going to make the next five days of this journey pretty dull."
He rolled to his side, pinning her against him as he shifted to claim her mouth. When he broke the kiss, he smiled. "Well, we can't have that. Who knows what kind of trouble you'd start if you got bored."
She laughed and nodded. "Indeed, it's clearly for the best."
"I think I can make that sacrifice."
Chapter Six
Z
ar didn't want the trip to end. Not because he was scared of the mission—the chance to hit Corporate Services on their own turf, to really hurt them, was worth the risks. But that meant working, and the end of whatever this thing was that he and Yashilla had started. The five days since the pirate attack had passed in a blur of planning, frequently interrupted by rounds of lovemaking. Already, his hand itched to touch her again.
As though summoned, she walked back into the room. She had a towel tied precariously around her, and rubbed another through her hair. Her grin could only be described as predatory as she crossed the space between them and planted a kiss on his shoulder. "Who said you could put on pants?"
He chuckled, warmth blossoming under his skin even from the incidental kiss, then indicated the water boiler in front of him. "Self-preservation. The other option was to risk burning something sensitive, and then you'd be disappointed."
She snorted, reached past him, and grabbed the food packet he'd already prepared. "I suppose it's okay then." After collecting a spoon, she flopped down on the composite bench and leaned against the wall. "Zero hour today."
The words twisted in his gut, killing what little appetite he had. Only knowing that he'd need energy to fight made him finish stirring hot water into the envelope of food before he wandered over to join her. She immediately shifted to lean against him instead of the wall.
He planted a kiss on top of her head. "What's the plan?"
As though they hadn't been discussing it in detail. As though they hadn't practiced segments of it until they were exhausted and his skull ached as badly as his muscles. They would need to be perfect to pull this off.
She shrugged. "At this point? We make it up as we go. That's what works, near as I can tell. Or you could charge in naked. That would make them run in terror. Or swoon."
"Somehow, I doubt they're the swooning kind." It didn't stop him from laughing at the thought.
She placed her food on the floor and rolled to face him, losing her towel in the process. The heat of her skin against his blazed through him, and the pants she disparaged suddenly felt tighter. "They could be, you never know. I didn't think I was either." She raked her nails across his chest, leaving parallel welts that set his blood to boiling.
He cupped the cheeks of her ass to lift her face the rest of the way to his mouth. "You do many things, swooning isn't one of them." He nipped at her chin, then her bottom lip before kissing her.
The floor rumbled and vibrated, and she pulled away immediately. Her face went slack as she scanned the ship's systems before standing and focusing on him. "We just adjusted direction and speed. We're on final approach to the Bulwark."
His heart sank, and he forced himself to remember that what they'd had on the ship had always been a fantasy. Too few days away from the world and he'd already started to pretend it didn't exist. Attachment wasn't a thing he could risk. It was how people got killed. Had already gotten people killed once. He took a deep breath. "Go get dressed. It's showtime."
Regret didn't stop him from admiring the sway of her hips as she walked to their quarters, or enjoying the flex and play of the muscles in her legs. He tried to fix the images of her in his mind, hold them for a few more seconds, before compartmentalizing them away.
He grabbed his sleeveless shirt off the bench and pulled it over his head. As he tugged on his boots, the communications window opened in the corner of his vision. You ready for this?
The scene replayed in his memory with a fresh agony—the subsonic huff of the bullet, the hot splash of blood on his skin, the lifeless weight of Liza's body falling into his. It was too easy to imagine Yashilla's face looking back at him. Instead of rage, cold fear pooled in his belly and rooted his feet. He couldn't go through it again.
Wouldn't go through it again.
The only way to prevent it was to keep her safe, and that meant being at the top of his game. Anything less than perfection on his part meant she was in danger. Zar tapped the corner of his jaw to activate the pickup so he could reply to her message. "I'm ready. You have the feed from inside the Bulwark?"
A quick diagnostic scan of his arm showed all its systems optimal. He walked into the hall and was waiting when she came out. She grinned at him and replied aloud, "Not yet. But I will once we're inside."
He gave her a thumbs-up, then headed towards the stairs to get into position. "I'll secure the first room, so you have a safe place from which to operate."
She froze, swiveled to look at him. "That's not the plan we discussed."
"You're going to be distracted, searching through systems and locking things down. It's best if you work from a secured room."
"That's bullshit and you know it." Anger made her voice tremble. "There's no telling how they've got security set up, how much of it is on independent circuits. Without me next to you, there's a chance you'll be locked down in the first hallway. Not to mention that I need to have direct access to their mainframe if I'm going to collect any data."
His teeth ground together. "This isn't the time to argue."
"You're right. Which is why we're not changing plans. You drive. I'll navigate. Just like we practiced." She tapped onto her arm with angry jabs of her fingers, and the words appeared in his vision. Just follow the plan.
He heard the composite squeak as he clenched his fist past the cyberlimb's base tolerance. After a moment to calm his pulse, he managed to force words past his clenched teeth. "The plan puts you in unnecessary danger."
She smiled sadly, reaching up to lay her palm against his cheek. "So does hiding me away where we could be cut off from each other. At least this way, what happens to you happens to us both." She popped up onto her tiptoes to kiss him. Quick. Tender despite its speed. "I'm not her. I can handle myself. And I trust you to handle the things I can't.
He leaned into her touch but resisted the urge to close his eyes. He wanted to remember her like this—fiery. Confident. Trusting. He'd keep her safe, even if it meant sacrificing himself in the process. After a moment, he dragged her back to his mouth for another kiss. Her lips parted eagerly, and he swallowed her sigh of pleasure.
When he pulled back, she smiled. "That's the kind of sendoff I could get used to." She hoisted the shoulder strap for the protein matrix over one shoulder and the ditty bag full of her tools on the other. "Got everything you need?"
Zar smirked as he flexed his cyberarm and closed his hand into a fist. He gave a twist, and with a whirr of motion, reinforced plates locked down around his cyberhand, changing it from a fist into a piston that would punch through anything softer than reinforced concrete. "I'm good."
The milk white of her eyes widened, and she broke into a feral grin. "Far from it. But I'm okay with that. Let's go be bad."
The moment the container they'd hidden in was lifted from the ship, a text window appeared in Yashilla's vision. Its presence would have alarmed her at the best of times, given how carefully she protected her contact information. She didn't receive unexpected messages. Further, she kept her gates locked down tightly; someone would need more than the average modicum of skill to breach those defenses and get a message to her in the first place.
And yet there it was all the same, glowing pale blue in the darkness of the closed container. About time you arrived. Have this.
An indicator told her she had a file waiting. Without activating the glow of the keys, she typed a quick response. Who is this?
Call me Amira. There was a pause that lasted a heartbeat, then, You will want
the security key I sent you.
Yashilla was not reassured. The container swayed slightly as it changed direction, moving into the receiving bay where it would be opened and unloaded. She cut through the barriers protecting the localized 'Net access and looked for security cameras that would give her a view of the room. There was nothing. Barely even enough traffic to populate a break room.
Another message floated up. I told you. Use the key. Security on its own network.
Yashilla typed back. You're on the inside?
Not for long if you do your job as hired.
That made sense at last. Venkat had implied there would be help from inside. That didn't mean she trusted a random voice from the 'Net. While they shouldn't know she and Zar were coming, Corporate Services had found Venkat's offices. She hadn't survived by being reckless. With a few quick strokes of her finger, she partitioned off one of the two matrix drives resting in her skull. By touch, she was able to pull a puppet box out of her tool bag, and she plugged it into the partitioned drive. Only then did she scan the file.
As promised, it appeared to be a private encryption key. She patched it into the security request gate, and suddenly a whole separate network was laid out. Yashilla took control of the cameras in the receiving bay, where a pair of bored operators manipulated the crane. No other security was apparent.
She tapped on Zar's shoulder lightly, then whispered, "Two. One to open the door. One three meters out."
She saw him nod in the dim light, just before new text appeared. You're cautious. Don't trust me. Smart.
A clang reverberated through the container and shook Yashilla's teeth together as they dropped the last inch to the floor of the bay. Zar squeezed her leg, sending warmth rushing along her nerves. He leaned in close. "Which side?"
