by Lyssa Hart
But had she liked it? That was the burning question in his mind.
Had she liked it enough that she’d let him do it again?
Or more?
He wanted to mate with her. He knew what he wanted.
But he worried that the rules of the squad applied to that like it did everything else—alpha leader had first dibs.
And Hawk was alpha leader.
If Hawk wanted to mate with her he was going to expect to be first.
Raven hadn’t been first with their woman, Nika, as far as he knew, but realized he couldn’t be absolutely sure of that.
All he knew was that Nika had taken Bull and Lynx into the bathroom and there’d been enough huffing and puffing and scuffling it would have been obvious to a blind man that fucking was going on.
In any case, Hawk wouldn’t give a fuck what had gone down in Night Raven’s squad.
This was Hawk’s squad and his rules.
Beyond that, he thought he was getting vibes that she was close to accepting Hawk—way closer than she was to accepting the rest of them. He’d watched her with Hawk and he was pretty convinced she’d liked it when he did that to her.
He just wasn’t as certain as he wanted to be that the same could be said for her experience with him.
Hell, he’d had as much experience as Hawk had, he thought angrily.
He couldn’t think of any logical reason she wouldn’t accept him if she had accepted the leader.
He shook it off after a while.
Which was probably a good thing, because he discovered something was up with the grounds guards.
He focused on them and for another thirty seconds or so watched them and decided he was going to have to break radio silence.
“Heads up. You’re about to have a lot more company.”
As quietly as he’d said it, he’d hardly gotten the message out when he heard a click right behind his head and then felt the muzzle of a gun against his skull.
“Well shit!”
* * * *
It transpired that the work going on in the basement of the building was a very good thing—always assuming they hadn’t gotten to the big bosses stuff yet and Hawk thought it was probably a pretty sure bet that they’d started with his.
But he’d gone up to the roof to make entrance and hadn’t encountered even a half dozen guards. Which would have been a cake walk if he’d been totally on his own. Since Cham-Two and Puma had climbed up, though, they hadn’t been far behind him and they’d managed to take the lot of them out while they were moving in on him cautiously.
They took the roof access door to the company offices for the bigwigs and scouted them out until they got to the door of the top exec.
It had his name and title emblazoned on it—hard to miss.
Hawk’s belly knotted when they got inside and he could see the place had been gutted already, but Cham-Two settled down to crack the guy’s password anyway.
It took him less time to get in than any of them had expected.
He would’ve seen that as a sure sign of a setup except Cham-Two found the password taped to the underside of the desk.
It took another ten minutes to scan through the files on the computer, but they found the research and development files and started scanning through them for the one thing they considered most important.
Cham-Two found a mention of a kill switch just about the time they got a head’s up from Brahma. “It’s in here,” he said grimly.
“Make it fast.”
“I’m hurrying.”
Puma, on watch at the door, uttered a hiss of warning.
Hawk moved back to the wall on the other side of the door and he and Puma waited to pounce on whoever it was approaching.
Turned out, it was the man himself—sent to take cover—and only escorted by two security guards.
Good place for it, Hawk thought with grim amusement, taking out one of the guards while Puma took out the other and then grabbing the man by the throat before he could run and giving him a shake.
He went limp.
“Gods damn it! Tell me you didn’t fucking break his neck?”
Hawk narrowed his eyes at Puma. “Chill. He just fainted.”
He plopped him in a straight chair in front of his desk, searched the room quickly for something to bind him with and finally ripped the curtains down and shredded them. He was half way through tying him to the chair when the guy came around.
Hawk stopped and grabbed the guy by the face. “Tell me about the kill switch,” he growled.
The man gaped at him as if he didn’t have a clue.
“Don’t tempt me to break your fucking neck. I’m running out of patience here. Tell me about the fucking switch and don’t to lie. We’ve already found the reference on your computer.”
“We didn’t install one! I swear!”
Hawk narrowed his eyes. “Why is on the system then?”
“We discussed it. We wanted to but the buyers were against it. They were afraid it could be used to disable their … army. If it could be hacked and we hadn’t worked out how to make it hack proof.”
“Well, since we’re talking proof here, I want to see that conversation,” Hawk growled. “Call me paranoid, but I’m just having a hard fucking time believing you.”
Instead of untying the guy, he lifted him and the chair and dropped him into place behind the desk.
“Tell Cham-Two where to go and what to type. Quickly if you value your fucking life more than ours.”
The man nodded jerkily and began to stammer out the directions.
It was touch and go.
They all heard the charge before the data had been located and copied.
Puma and Hawk braced for the onslaught.
Apparently, whoever was in charge had a fair idea of who they were dealing with. It seemed they’d brought the entire army. Hawk and Puma had their hands full holding them off while Cham-Two finished up. “Got it!”
“Good, I’m getting low on fucking ammo,” Hawk growled.
“I thought we were going to be down to hand-to-hand,” Puma agreed.
“I’ll hold them and give you two a head start down,” Hawk said.
Puma and Cham-Two hesitated, but they rushed off to get out of Hawk’s way as quickly as they could.
There was already a firefight in progress on the ground, they discovered as soon as they went out the window, but after scrambling around the corner of the building for cover, they realized the bullets weren’t coming their way.
“Brahma,” Puma said grimly.
He and Cham-Two were halfway down to the ground when Hawk burst through the top floor window and plummeted toward the ground for two or three stories before he caught an updraft beneath his wings.
He landed with no attempt to be quiet behind the men that had cornered Brahma, opening fire before they could whip around and find the new target.
Puma and Cham-Two raced across the grounds to join him, shooting as they ran.
They managed to convince the security detachment that retreat was in order and as soon as they headed for cover, Night Raven II, raced to catch up with Brahma—who was on his feet but staggering.
Hawk and Puma caught him under each arm and carried him with them.
The van, thankfully, was where they’d left it.
“Start it, Alex!” Hawk bellowed. “We’ve got company on our heels.”
Alexis nearly jumped out of her skin when she heard Hawk. Grabbing for the keys, she turned the ignition switch. It churned but didn’t catch. “Fuck!”
She switched it off and then tried again.
It caught just as the guys reached the van, snatched the doors open, and dove in.
Alexis gunned it and tore out of the parking space, nearly mowing down a half dozen men that had been right behind the guys. They leapt away right and left to clear a path for her, but they recovered a lot faster than she would’ve expected and began trying to turn the van into a sieve.
Screaming
when a bullet shattered the rear view mirror over the dash—right by her head—she whipped around a corner and floored the gas pedal again.
The guys returned fire until they rounded another corner on two wheels.
Having gained a little distance, Alexis whipped around what looked like a deserted warehouse, or at least unoccupied at the moment, and went up a ramp and through the first bay door she could reach.
Huffing for breath, she idled the engine, trying to listen over her pounding heart.
Hawk came up behind her. “Move to the back. I’ll drive.”
Alexis whipped a look around, but nodded jerkily and got up.
They did a little waltz switching places and then she settled in the back with the others.
She saw Puma was wrestling with bandages—real or improvised.
Brahma was laying on the floor.
Her heart clutched painfully in her chest. “Is he … Is he ok?”
Puma sent her a sharp look. “Aside from having about a dozen new holes?” he asked dryly. “Sure.”
Alexis felt her chin wobble and a knot the size of a baseball swell in her throat.
“Maybe you could tone it down a little, Puma?” Cham-Two growled.
Puma shot a look at Cham-Two and then Alexis. “Sorry, baby. He has nanos. He’ll be fine. I’m just tying up the wounds to keep from leaving a blood trail for them to follow.”
All of them were shot to shit, she saw when her eyes adjusted enough to see the bandages.
Puma had at least four that she could see.
Cham-Two six.
Hawk had had four or five.
Brahma had caught the worst of it, though.
She could see that his chest was rising and falling, but his breathing seemed labored.
She asked Puma about it.
He shrugged. “Pain, I’m sure. We heal but that don’t mean it doesn’t hurt like a mother when we get wounded.”
“And he isn’t really built for that much running,” Cham-Two pointed out soothingly.
She felt the urge to offer comfort and the aversion to risking rejection at the same time. Since Hawk swung the van around just then, though, she had to focus on keeping her balance and staying put.
She let it go, but the urge didn’t really pass.
Thankfully, she’d managed to get far enough ahead of the men chasing them that they hadn’t gotten a very good look at what they were driving—beyond it being a dark van.
Hawk made it out of the industrial park without another chase and then wandered aimlessly to Alexis’ mind for a while and finally parked the vehicle.
“Can Brahma walk?” he asked when he’d swiveled around in his seat.
“I can make it, boss,” Brahma responded a little drunkenly.
Puma and Hawk exchanged a speaking look.
“I think, on second thought I’ll get you three a little closer.”
“Might be for the best,” Puma agreed neutrally.
Starting the van again, Hawk wandered up and down about ten more blocks and finally pulled into an alley. Puma, Cham-Two and Brahma got out.
Alexis didn’t know whether to stay or go.
She glanced at Hawk questioningly and discovered he was studying her.
“Stay with me. They’re going to have their hands full.”
She didn’t argue, but it made her uneasy when they left the three. Brahma was in no condition to run or fight and the other two couldn’t protect him and run or fight.
They were going to be in serious trouble if any of the people looking for them caught up.
Then again, she realized that was why Hawk didn’t want to leave her.
She would’ve just been another liability for them.
It sucked to acknowledge that, but she was no soldier—not even close.
Hawk left the alley in the opposite direction, covered maybe half of that end of the city and finally returned to the same place where he’d parked before.
“We walk from here.”
Nodding, Alexis got out. “Did you guys get what you went for?”
Hawk glanced down at her. “Yeah. We got it.”
He didn’t tell her what they’d discovered and she found she wanted to know in the worst way. She felt like it was unlikely there had been a kill switch built into them for several reasons, but the most compelling one that she could think of was the fact that they were still walking around, breathing, and creating mayhem for their creators.
It seemed to her that they would’ve shut them down immediately.
The only reason that didn’t comfort her like it should have was because she knew the military was the buyer and they wouldn’t be in a huge rush to destroy the super soldiers the company had developed for them.
A lot of money had gone into the project already and a lot of time.
“We didn’t actually get the chance to look at it,” Hawk added after a few moments.
“Oh.”
Something about the way he said it made Alexis think things hadn’t actually turned out the way they’d hoped.
Chapter Eight
They kept to the shadows as they made their way across the city heading in the general direction, she supposed, of the alley where they’d left the others. There weren’t a lot of people out, given the time of night and the area, though. Not at first, anyway.
They’d gotten into a more populated area when Hawk apparently spotted something that convinced him dragging her into a darkened alley and humping the fuck out of her was a good idea.
Alexis, frankly, was too lost to figure it out.
From the moment he lifted her against the wall and captured her mouth beneath his, not another thought crossed her mind—at all. She descended almost instantaneously into a pool of lava, scorched by the heat of his kiss, drunk from his essence, and so completely focused on the rod she was riding that she spared not a moment for the fact that he’d chosen way too public a place for it for her tastes.
She’d reached the point where she was ready to strip down to allow full access, too impatient to further enjoy the tease, when he dropped her almost as abruptly to her feet as he’d yanked her up to start with.
She would’ve kept going except he managed to catch her and steady her.
“They’re gone now,” he said gruffly.
“Who?” she asked vaguely.
“The patrol.”
Fuck! She’d been humping him in the alley while a freaking patrol went by?
It was enough to jolt her back to reality.
Not enough to cool her jets, unfortunately.
Her erogenous zones were throbbing like an aching tooth and it was hard to get her mind off of it.
They traversed another block before Hawk pulled her into another alley.
Alexis was of half a mind to give him a piece of her mind if he tried that dry humping bullshit on her again.
And of half a mind to demand more.
Instead, he led her down the alley and removed a sewer cover. “This should bring us close.”
Alexis stared down at the black hole. “Close to what?” she asked blankly.
“Base of operations—temporary,” he responded. “Come on … before we’re spotted.”
“Uh … I’m not crazy about the sewers. One tour was enough, thank you.”
He snatched her off her feet and shoved her down the hole in spite of every effort she made, cat-like, to prevent it. Fortunately, the drop wasn’t a long one.
She still hit the bottom and her legs sort of telescoped and dropped her on her ass.
Hawk covered the man hole behind him and slid down the ladder by bracing his hands and feet on the side rails.
“You hurt?” he asked, pulling her to her feet.
She clutched at him—because she was as blind as bat in the pitch blackness. “I can’t see anything.”
He scooped her up and headed out at a jog.
She clenched her teeth together.
When the tunnel narrowed, he set her on her feet and took o
ut a tiny light for her, grabbing her hands and curling her fingers around it.
It wasn’t much of a light, but it made it possible to watch his ass as he headed away from her.
She glanced around a couple of times but decided even though she was pissed off about the manhole thing now was not the time to feel independent. Or to try to express it.
They’d been walking a while before Hawk stopped abruptly in front of her.
Alexis plowed into him and he turned around to glare at her.
She glared back at him. “What did you stop for?”
He shook his head and pointed to a hole in the wall.
“What?”
“You first.”
“Oh hell no!” Alexis growled. “I’m not going in there! I don’t know where it goes, damn it!”
He picked her up and shoved her through.
Fortunately, there was what looked like train tracks on the other side.
“It’s part of the old subway,” he said when he’d climbed through and started to pile stones in the opening.
“You couldn’t have told me that before you shoved me through?” she growled.
“Would you have gone if I had?”
She thought that over.
“I didn’t think so and I don’t have time to coax you to let me save your neck at the moment.”
She sent him a resentful look, but realized she had no reasonable argument to lodge against that. The search was on for them, in deadly earnest, but that didn’t mean it was over for her. The company was busy cleaning up. She was part of the trash they were burning—a loose end they didn’t want left breathing and able to testify against them.
“We don’t have to worry about a train, do we?” she asked when they’d followed the tracks for maybe a half a mile.
“Running over us? No. It doesn’t look abandoned to you?”
“It might if I could fucking see it,” she growled. She’d hardly gotten the comment out, though, when she noticed a glow ahead of them. “What’s that?”
“Base camp.”
That wouldn’t have thrilled her under ordinary circumstances. Given their current situation, Alexis felt an instant lift to her spirits. Light!
