by Lauren Dane
He counted each one. Made sure they were dead, those who weren’t would be within a breath. If they hadn’t caught them by surprise, he was sure their victory would have been a far closer thing.
Andrei dispassionately recorded the scene, or what was left of it. Daniel spoke from the mic in Andrei’s ear as he relayed the data via his comm. “A dozen Skorpios. On our soil. Bold, isn’t it?”
Andrei thought the same. “Shows a certain . . . confidence on their part. Now, why is that, do you think?”
“Dispose of that garbage. Get me some samples and let’s see what Vincenz can make of them.”
“The run we made earlier had more body armor. I used the slowacting powder.” The powder was a little something Benni had brought him only the day before. When used in a closed container, it would eat away at the contents, leaving nothing behind but dust.
“Andrei,” Daniel hesitated a moment, “things are rapidly declining. What else do they have there?”
Andrei managed to dig the comm chip from the melted console. “Chip looks moderately damaged but salvageable.”
“Vincenz can crack it in no time. I want you to take care of this mine. Can you do that?”
“Yes. I’ll get the chip to Vincenz.”
“Take it personally. I don’t trust anyone else to do it.”
Unexpectedly, he balked at the very idea of leaving again. Not of leaving Asphodel, that was happily at his back once he got on a transport. But of leaving her.
“Understood.”
He signed off and headed back up to where she actually waited with her weapon trained on the scene below.
“I need to do a few things. I have to borrow the zipper. I’ll return it later.” He began to disassemble the rocket launcher and stuffed it back into the bag. He’d need to clean it more thoroughly.
He’d deal with the issue of getting off-’Verse later. Right then he needed to get her back to the compound and get back out here to clean up. May as well take the bodies out into the caldera. No one would find anything left out there. Storms danced all day long in the caldera.
She got into the cab and fired the engines up. “No one flies this but me.”
He sighed. “Fine. I’ll hire one in town.”
“Why would you do that when I am right here?” She flew right down to the scene below, and he cringed inwardly. “We need to get rid of the bodies, right?” She laughed. “What, you thought I didn’t get that?” She hopped out, tossing him an extra pair of gloves.
“Just stay in the cockpit.”
She grabbed a fistful of his hair and yanked. “Hey! Why don’t you try listening to me for a change?”
He showed her his teeth, and her eyes widened briefly.
And then, being Piper, she showed her teeth right back. “There he is. I was wondering if that part of you had been sliced out altogether or whether you just hid it well.”
Spinning to deal with the dead was easier than having this discussion. “Look around the site to find anything we may have missed. Clothing, shoes, whatever may have been blown off. Leave the body parts to me.”
“This might work with the other women you deal with. But I’m not like them.” Which was true, of course, but holy matrons of heaven, this was not pretty to look upon.
“No one knows that more than me.” He continued to wrap the bodies and drag them into the cargo hold, where he’d begun to stack them like bloody tinder.
“Do you think I’m too fragile to see this? Growing up here?” She found a boot with a foot still inside and tried not to gag.
“Do not think of them as people or you’ll get sick. And this is not what we grew up seeing.” He motioned at the carnage. “But if we don’t stop it, it could be what the next generation does.”
“Which is why I care to help you. I can handle it.”
He growled, and she realized the only way he’d part with his precious words was if she pushed him so hard he lost control. She wasn’t sure why that had escaped her until that moment. After all, she was a master at needling her brothers into a response.
“One really needs to wonder,” she tossed another shoe into the hold, “what sort of women you consort with.”
He must do this sort of thing on a fairly routine basis. His manner was automatic and efficient. Wrapping, tossing, moving back to do the same. How he managed to keep totally clean while doing it she had no idea. Probably because the blood was too scared to dare land on his body.
“What shall we do about the conveyance? From the air, it’ll be visible, and while this isn’t a very well-traveled road, it does get flyovers from the polis and some of my compatriots.”
“I have no munitions with me, but they did.” He jerked his head at a partially melted ammunition box he’d pulled free of the rubble. “I’ll improvise a solution.”
She noted the crystallized dust on the windscreen. “What is that? What were they carrying?”
He paused and then, as if he’d given himself permission to speak, did so. “An ingredient in the device they’re building to destroy portals. They’re mining it here.”
She froze. “We have to stop that!”
He turned to face her again, stripping his gloves off and tossing them into the cargo hold with the bodies.
“I do. Yes.”
“It’s past that I do bullshit, Andrei. We. We. We. I am here. You’re sleeping in my house. After last night you’re sleeping in my bed. This is not yours anymore. It involves me and my ’Verse. My family and friends. It involves you, and because of that, it involves me, too. So. What are we planning to do to stop it?”
He heaved a long, long sigh as he got to his knees and wrested the lid of the ammo box open.
“This is my job, Piper. It’s what I’m trained to do. I’m good at it. You have been a great deal of help so far, but there’s no reason to involve you in every single aspect of my mission. They will not take another load from that mine. I will see to it.”
She watched, fascinated, as he began to pull things apart and wire them back together. “Handy.” She indicated the mass he held on his lap.
“Yes. Get in the zipper and get the thrusters up.”
“Caldera?”
He nodded, his attention elsewhere.
She closed the cargo doors and hopped into the cockpit, firing the thrusters and setting her course for the outer edge of the caldera. Once they arrived she could eyeball it, see where it was safest to fly in.
“Let’s go. We won’t be safe here in less than a standard minute.” He strapped in and leaned back, opening up the nav tray and checking over her course as she picked them up and got the seven hells away.
Her mental countdown was underlined by the sound and shockwave of a very large explosion in their wake.
“Won’t there still be debris?”
“They had liquid fire grenades.”
“I thought they were banned after Varhana.”
“Your shock and surprise that Fardelle and his animals would use such horrible weapons only makes my point that this is not business you should be involved in. It was stupid of me to involve you.” He closed his mouth, as if surprised he spoke at all.
“This is tedious. You’re determined to see me as incapable of doing things.”
“I think you’re too good to have to see the . . . outcome of what I do.”
Oh. “Well. Thank you. Sort of. You’re totally wrong, of course.” He kept his head down, ignoring her, and she allowed it as they were in the middle of something, after all. But she’d revisit this topic very soon.
“The fire will destroy everything then?”
“Yes. They were meant to destroy metal. The Imperialists will send a crew out to find them, and there will be nothing left but a burn mark.”
“You want them to know the conveyance was intercepted?”
“Yes. I want them to know someone will kill every last one of them he finds. Head due east. Skirt Mandaball Peaks.” He examined the radar. “We should be able to drop these bodies
and get gone. Landing will be tricky, though.” He tapped his chin as he thought it over.
“I can hold her in place for two or three minutes. Pop open the cargo doors. Strap yourself in with a harness and push them out. There’s a mass just north of here. Storm rising, and it’ll sweep through this way. Problem solved.”
He shrugged as he eased from the seat and headed back into the hold.
Five minutes later and the problem had been solved, and she was heading away from the storm as quickly as she could.
Chapter 9
“You need to head back to the compound. Nightfall will be a better time to seek out the Wastelands.”
Piper glanced over his way, watching the way his fingers flew over the keypad, readjusting the map and the coordinates to take into account the weather patterns.
“That’s where the mine is? Makes sense no one has said much about it. How can they move all this, what did you call it?”
“Liberiam. I’m told it’s a rare mineral and not found anywhere in the Imperium.”
“Suppose that’s why they’re here. How do you know the location?”
He simply looked at her with one eyebrow up, and she snorted. “Sneaky.”
“Yes. I’m going to tell you to stay in the zipper, and I mean it this time. I have to travel some ways on foot into territory that is inherently dangerous. This is my operation.” He held up a hand to stay her. “I make the decisions here, and if you don’t like it, take me back to the compound, and I’ll get my own way out here.”
“I don’t understand why you won’t let me help.”
“You are helping. Right now you’re taking us back to the compound like I asked you. Otherwise, you don’t need to. This isn’t a debate where you need to prove your side or I need to prove mine. Just let me be in charge for this one thing.”
She narrowed her eyes and rode out a gust of wind that sent the monitors and readouts skittering and blinking out until she got them through the other side.
The zipper landed easily enough once they arrived back home and he sprang out. “I’ll clean this up.”
Kenner strolled out to meet them both. “What have you been up to?” He looked Piper up and down, noting the smudges and dirty spots. Andrei, of course, appeared to not even have gotten a single wrinkle.
“You should tell him.” Piper tipped her chin toward her brother.
“I should get this cleaned up is what I should do.” He gathered supplies and returned shortly with a bucket of sand, good for cleaning, and some brushes.
Kenner’s eyes widened, but he moved to pitch in, scrubbing the dried-up blood and other debris from their earlier cargo. “Someone needs to tell me what the seven hells is happening here.”
“Kenner, they’re here and running a mineral to use in their machine.”
Andrei sent her a look, but didn’t interrupt her story.
“And this is the remains of that problem? Good.”
“There’s more. We’re heading out to fix that part later.”
“No. I am heading out later to fix that part.” Andrei straightened. “For now I plan to get cleaned up and see what’s in the kitchen.”
“He took on an entire squad. He was . . . he was magnificent, and he thinks he’s a villain. I hate that.” Piper and her brother watched him walk away.
“We’ll help him. He says he doesn’t need any. And hells, doesn’t look much like he does. But he’s our family and this is our ’Verse. We can’t not help.”
She grinned. “I knew there was a reason I loved you.”
Kenner paused, putting a hand on her arm, just briefly. “Aren’t you worried?”
“About what? Danger? In case you haven’t noticed, we’re up to our necks in it. This way I can get some of my own back.”
Her brother sighed, a familiar, put-upon sound that never failed to make her smile. “No. I mean, well, it looks like you’re getting attached to him again. What happens when he leaves? Have you thought about that? I can see it on your face. You can’t afford to love him, Piper.”
She had thought about it. A great deal. “If and when he does, I’ll survive. What can I do other than love him?” It seemed so clear to her. “He needs that. Needs me.”
“He’s a big boy. He does just fine on his own.”
But that wasn’t it at all. Sure he did just fine on his own. But it was the “on his own” part that got to her so deeply. As far as she could tell, he let very few people close, and even fewer close enough to watch his back.
“Who does he have, Kenner? He has us. He has me, and I like it that way.” She gave herself to him freely and without expectation of whatever he’d do in return. Did she want him to stay or work a way to be with her? Yes. But love wasn’t about what you got from the other person. It was about what you gave. And because he never asked anything, it only made her love him more.
Her brother took a deep breath and nodded. “All right. If he breaks your heart, I’ll have to beat him. After he is asleep, or we drug him or something.” He quirked a grin and kissed her cheek before ducking away.
Andrei allowed himself the luxury of a shower that lasted longer than three minutes. They’d refilled the cistern earlier that day so there was enough for it. The death wouldn’t wash away, but he’d gladly take it on to keep her safe. To get rid of this threat to his people.
The door opened, and he sighed. Shilo again, he wagered. “Someone is in here.”
“I know.”
Not Shilo at all.
“I’ll be out in a moment.”
She walked into the space, naked and beautiful, and every single resolution he’d made to keep away from her fell right from his head.
“You look even better wet. Turn around so I can get your back.”
He obeyed, even as he knew what a horrible idea it was to let her get away with this sort of thing.
Ha! Let. As if he had any choice.
And even if he had, he wouldn’t have stopped her hands now kneading his shoulders and back.
“You’re not a villain, you know.”
He snorted, turning the water tap back on and letting it sluice over his head and body. Warmed by the sun, the water felt good against his muscles.
“I’m flying you out to the Wastelands. Period. Kenner wants to help as well, and I know Taryn will. This is ours. You’re ours. Mine most especially.” She pressed herself to his back, hugging him from behind.
Warmth settled in his belly, and he hadn’t the strength to resist.
“Come back to my room. Be with me before meal time.” She climbed out and handed him one of the robes hanging nearby.
Why he allowed it, he wished he couldn’t say. But it was that he didn’t want to refuse her. Even knowing he was not good enough, he still wanted. Wanted her so badly his hands shook from it.
The small room smelled of her, and he took a deep breath, pausing a moment to take the space in. It had its own kind of femininity. Despite the rifle in the corner and the scuffed work boots under a nearby desk, there were bits and bobs strewn here and there. A shiny necklace, a bright scarf, a tie for her hair. Her bed was large and not slept in.
They’d slept in his bed the night before, and he’d laid there when he first woke up, breathing her in where she lived on his sheets.
Here it wasn’t a wisp of her scent; her scent lived in the air, wrapped around his senses and squeezed to get his attention.
She dropped the robe. “I think I need some recharging. Can you help me with that?” Her mouth—Gods, her mouth—curved into a half smile. A knowing smile a woman wears when she knows the man she’s smiling at will be inside her shortly.
Two steps and he was on her, his mouth descending to meet hers, taking it in a kiss of possession. He wanted to mark her in every possible way.
When it was really the other way around. She’d marked him for most of his life, and it was still there. Her fingerprints on his very soul. Nothing had changed, but everything had changed in ways he didn’t know if there was a w
ay around.
But for that moment, for those stolen moments between them, it didn’t matter, because she was his and he hers. Naked to the bone.
He tried to hold back, but it was useless to try. His desire swelled, bursting through him until it was everything and drowned him.
Her back met the wall, her arms around his neck and her legs about his waist. Skin to skin, the heat of her was a fever. He eagerly swallowed her surprised breath as he continued to kiss her. The sounds she made deep in her throat drove him mad for her. Made the blinding, crippling desire for her crawl over his skin, marching onward until he gave in.
His teeth caught her bottom lip as he spread her a little wider. She hooked her ankles at his back and suddenly, her cunt engulfed his cock, welcoming him in a tight, hot embrace so good he had to pause or come right that second.
She writhed, trying to get more, and he pushed her back, his body against hers enough to keep her in place. Instead of being horrified, her wide-eyed gaze went half-mast, glossy with need. “Yes. Take whatever you need from me, Andrei.”
Her words settled in his mouth as he licked over the curve of her bottom lip and he groaned, pulling out nice and slow, only to reverse and push back in as deeply as he could. Her nails dug into the muscle of his shoulders. Pinpricks of pleasure/pain like hot sparks.
“Tell me, Andrei. Give me your words.” Her voice was laced with pleasure and something else. Whatever it was, it stoked his own response, his own pleasure, and yes, he accepted what they had, what they once were and what she had always been to him.
“So good.” He kissed the hollow below her ear. She tasted like tears. In that place where heartache and great joy can sometimes slide against the other. He stroked his chest against hers, her nipples hard points against his skin, bumping over his nipples in the bargain. He gasped, and she tightened around him.
“Your pussy is so fucking hot and wet. Perfect.”
Her upper back rested against the wall, rough-hewn enough to scrape just a little. Enough to remind her of the intensity of the moment as his cock filled her and left her empty in turns again and again until she writhed to get more, until she could no longer hold back the words.
