Nero: #2 (Luna Lodge: Hunters of Atlas)

by Madison Stevens

Nyx shook her head. She was going to have to move further in, even if it was a risk.

  She made her way slowly down the passage, gun still in hand. The air around her warmed with each step she took, and she wondered what sort of place could maintain this heat. The Group had certainly never cared for their comfort. Perhaps some sort of generators or production facility?

  She arrived at the opening at the end and stepped through. A small lantern hung from a rock ledge near a large pool of water. Clothes hung next to the lantern, the very ones she had just seen on Nero.

  “What the—”

  Something moved out of the corner of her eye. She swung her gun around, but it was too late. He was on her, knocking the gun out of her hand and clasping her wrists in his massive hands. Too damned slow.

  “Let me go,” she ground out.

  Nero stilled.

  “Nyx?”

  She could hear the confusion in his voice and stopped struggling.

  “Who the hell did you think it was?”

  She stared at his shadowed face. Surprise clung to his face like a mask.

  He stepped back and ran a hand through his dark hair. Her eyes widened as she watched his muscles ripple across his arms and chest.

  “I didn’t really know,” he said. “I heard some noise and took position. The damned water must be messing with my smell.”

  She watched in silence as he spoke, her mind a blank as he tried to explain what had happened. Only one thing filled her thoughts.

  “You’re naked,” she said.

  The words were out of her mouth before she could even stop them. It wasn’t that she planned on keeping it a secret but more that she wasn’t quite sure what to do. She’d briefly seen other men naked but never like this and never this close.

  She’d been tested by the Group. Her chances of reproducing were deemed little to none. It might have been more a blow, but in the end it meant that she wouldn’t be a part of their dangerous mating experiments. That being the case, seeing a man naked just wasn’t something she was used to and damn well not something she’d expected when following Nero.

  “Shit,” Nero whispered and turned away quickly.

  Her eyes lingered on his back. The bright blue tattoo swirled over the contours of his perfectly chiseled form.

  As she stared at him, her gaze landed on a deep groove on his side. The skin puckered into a scar. The more she looked, the more of them she found.

  Nyx reached out and ran a finger over the deep scar on his side. Whatever left the scar had to have hurt like hell. The original wounds might have even gone to the bone.

  “What happened?” she whispered.

  Still facing forward, Nero took hold of her hand and pulled it away from the old wound.

  “You need to go,” he growled, his voice low and warning.

  “Or what?” she breathed and stepped a little close. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but it definitely had nothing to do with the Horatius Group.

  His breathing picked up, followed by a rumbling growl.

  She was surprised when he stepped forward.

  “Just go, Nyx,” he said and sighed loudly. In one swift movement, he dived into the water. She watched as he swam through a hole in the stone wall and disappeared to the other side. The steam from the disturbed water plumed into the air.

  Nyx waited for a moment, not quite sure what to do. He hadn’t been up to no good like she had suspected. Instead, she found him naked in more ways than one. The scars that covered his body meant something. It meant that despite his past, Nero had been a victim of the Group as much as any of them had. Maybe even more.

  She had to know him. The true him. Was it just the pills talking? No. Maybe they helped bring her guard down, but it’d be a lie to deny half the reason she’d been so hard on him was because she wanted a reason to deny her attraction.

  Placing the gun back inside her pocket, Nyx shook her head.

  This was likely a colossal mistake, but the part of her drawn to him had to know. Had to offer some comfort.

  She slid off her jacket and hung it on the rock next to his. She toed her shoes off and left them sitting on the ground. Her pale pick pajama pants and shirt came next.

  In just her pale pink panties and bra, she dove into the water after him.

  Chapter Eight

  Nero watched from the other side of the cave as Nyx broke the water’s surface. He pressed himself back into the shadows as she looked around. He knew when she’d seen his favorite part of the cave and looked up, smiling.

  In the center of the cave, the moonlight filtered through the porous holes in the ceiling, the result of venting from the earth. The holes resembled small stars that had been locked away in the ground. The faint illumination hit the water and bathed them in tiny lights, like they’d discovered some different world, almost mystical.

  He pulled his gaze away from the ceiling and jumped at her nearness. He swallowed. Being this close was a mistake. They couldn’t be together, but it was only a matter of time in the warm, sensual water. Her presence called to him, to his body.

  “Is this where you come?” she asked quietly. Her hushed voice surrounded him in the cave, the only other noise the faint trickle of water.

  Nero nodded and tried to scoot away, but there wasn’t anywhere to go. The beautiful object of his lust had trapped him.

  His heart hammered in his chest as she sat next to him on the ledge he’d found.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she said and sighed.

  His attention drifted to the line of water as she leaned her head back. Her ample breasts crested the water. Nero swallowed hard and shifted. The hardness between his legs ached. He returned his gaze to the ceiling, the rock less arousing than Nyx’s firm breasts. All he had to do was not think of the nearly naked woman sitting next to him and how much he wanted her.

  “Do you ever think of what life might have been like before the Group?” she said, her voice almost a whisper.

  He glanced over at her. She rested her head against the earth behind them and just seemed to be relaxing and soaking up the heat.

  “No,” he said firmly.

  Whatever life had existed before the Group didn’t matter. He’d never get back that life, and even if he could, would he be willing to risk the wrath of the Group? Petty concerns like ethics and morality didn’t constrain them, let alone the law. They’d launched countless attacks against the Luna Lodge hybrids and subverted governments.

  He couldn’t do that to people who had once cared about him. And that was assuming he’d not been sold to the Group by people who didn’t care, an all-too-common scenario for many hybrids.

  “That life is gone,” he said, his voice hard as he tried to maintain some distance emotionally. “I can never get it back, so why care? What good does it do me?”

  He stared up at the little dots above them, trying not to think about the life he may have been forced to leave. He had no memories of being a child. It was as if he opened his eyes as a man and started the day. Even his early days with the Group had vanished from his mind, no doubt a side-effect of the procedures he’d experienced, or maybe even purposefully taken by the Group to make him a less distracted warrior.

  In the end, he knew nothing about himself. The Horatius Group had created him in every meaningful way and defined his existence. Now he’d left them, and the only thing he truly was sure about was Nyx.

  But was that enough? He didn’t deserve her.

  Nero jumped when he felt soft fingers glide along his chest. The puckered scar there was still sensitive to the touch.

  “They hurt you,” Nyx whispered.

  “They hurt us all. They performed experiments on us all.”

  He turned his back to her, not ready to face that part of himself, the darkness that even the blue injection had not been able to cleanse. If there were gods, they had a twisted sense of humor to leave him only part of what he could be. Or perhaps, he mused, they wanted to remind him that his face had changed
but his soul had not.

  “They may have hurt us all, but these are more scars than most of us have,” she said. “They hurt you more.”

  “Battle scars,” he said, his words low.

  “From other hybrids?”

  Nero shook his head. “My time with the other hybrids was limited. They couldn’t have someone like me tainting the line. They may have found me useful, but in the end, they still thought of me as a mistake.”

  She shifted in the water behind him. Nyx slipped in closer behind him, and he tried to ignore the ache he felt at her nearness, the longing painful. The gods might have found the ultimate way to taunt him.

  Her hand traced a line up his back, and he shivered when she placed a hand on his side, covering the scar he knew she had seen before.

  “These are not battle scars,” she said, her mouth close to his ear, her warm breath passing over him. “I’ve seen more than my share of battle scars. Tell me, please.”

  Nero glanced over his shoulder and then turned back around. At this point it didn’t really matter, it wasn’t like he could hide from himself.

  “Glycons,” he said, keeping his eyes anywhere but on her. “I was their trainer. It was clear that I was never going to be like the hybrids. No scientist could really figure out why I had mutated the way I was. They stopped caring after a while. However, it made me a good weapon. Someone as scary as the Glycons that could do battle with them and take what they dished out, but who still had enough of a mind left to be useful. I was a useful accident: the intelligent beast to train the beasts.”

  He sighed loudly, remembering the long training sessions and all the times he’d left the battle room battered and broken. More than once he had been seriously injured but pushed to continue the fight. They didn’t really care if he lived. They didn’t even pretend to care.

  At times he was sure they only had him fighting to test how far someone like himself could be pushed, to be nothing more than another data point in their sick experiments. Still he kept on. He trained the rabid Glycons and earned their fear. He’d cowed soulless monsters into submission.

  “I was the one who taught them how to kill effectively,” he said with disdain. Among the damned, he’d been the king. “I helped focus the mindless beasts so they could make a good weapon.”

  Nyx remained silent behind him and ran her thumb soothingly over the scar on his side. There was a part of him that wrestled with going on. She didn’t need to know it all. There was no way she’d find out.

  Still, he knew. No amount of time could change what he had done. He wanted to tell her, wanted her to know. It wasn’t as if she could absolve him of his guilt, but still, if they were to be together, he had to be honest, earn her trust, even if he didn’t deserve it.

  “I trained them to kill hybrids,” he said finally.

  Her hand stilled on his side, and he knew that his words had killed any chance there ever might have been. He’d let himself go down that path, and now he would have to pay the price for it.

  Nero started to move away but stopped when he was suddenly pulled back gently from behind. He nearly choked when Nyx circled her arms around to his chest as she leaned against his back, her soft cheek resting against a set of deep claw marks.

  A trickle of water ran down his back. It wasn’t until he heard her take in a breath he realized they were tears.

  Nero turned in her arms and stared down at her in shock. This tiny, wonderful woman was crying for him.

  “You trained them so you could live,” she said quietly. “Rem knew. He said as much.”

  Nero frowned. Did Remus know? It was so hard to tell what he knew. The hybrid leader kept everything so close to his chest and rarely showed his cards.

  “But—”

  “We were all tools of the Group. We all were forced to do bad things. You’re not to blame. The Horatius Group is to blame.”

  He stood suddenly, pushing her hard away from him. It had been his choice to do what he had done. They didn’t just get to pretend he was the victim. He was anything but a victim.

  Chapter Nine

  Nyx stared up at him as he stood in the warm water dipping dangerously around his hips. Water beaded down his sculpted chest and disappeared into the pool. His eyes glowed. The deep blue illuminated the whole room.

  “You don’t get to feel sad for me,” he said. His nostrils flared with menace.

  Nyx reeled back as if she had been slapped. He was mad at her because she cared? His reaction was insane.

  Maybe she wasn’t understanding correctly. The painkillers she’d taken all but erased her pain, but they also fogged her brain.

  “I was a solider,” he growled. “I did my job, and I did it well. You don’t get to wipe my hands of the blood. I may not be the same monster on the outside, but that doesn’t mean I’m not the same inside. So don’t feel sad for me.”

  He stepped closer and leaned down to where she still sat.

  “I made choices that benefited me, and don’t think I wouldn’t do the same,” he said, glaring at her. “You’re right not to trust me.”

  Anger pushed through her. Nyx leapt to her feet, forcing him to take a step back from where he had been leaning over her. The water only came just below her breasts, but she didn’t care. She was too pissed to be embarrassed.

  “You’re full of shit,” she shouted.

  Nero frowned at her, likely not expecting she would say that.

  “What—” he began.

  Nyx stepped forward and jabbed a finger hard into his chest.

  “You’ve had plenty of chances to sell us out for your benefit,” she snarled. “I bet the Group would reward you for your loyalty.”

  “Fuck them,” he growled. The loud rumble from his growl filled the room.

  She knew the idea of it angered him off, and that was just the reaction she had expected. He cared. As much as he didn’t want to, Nero cared about what happened to the hybrids he’d been living with. Not just them. He cared about her.

  All this time, she’d been expecting some sort of traitorous plot from him, but he’d spent months watching them and alone. He’d tried to help Remus despite everyone, including her, giving him shit, brooding over dark choices forced on him by the damned Horatius Group.

  It wasn’t fair. They could be more than what the Group said.

  His eyes resembled burning blue coals, and she could feel her own eyes flash in anger.

  “Why are you here?” she asked loudly. “If you really don’t give a shit, why are you still here?”

  Nero started to turn, but she was faster. Before he could she was there in his face.

  His growl only grew in volume.

  “You’re playing with fire,” he said, his voice dangerously low. “Don’t start what you can’t finish.”

  “Why are you here?” she whispered.

  For a brief moment his gaze flicked to the opening in the wall, his chance to escape.

  He snarled loudly.

  “You,” he said.

  His mouth crashed hard against her own. He refused to hold back the passion burning between them.

  Nero pushed hard into her mouth, and she moaned at the invasion, her tongue winding and swirling against his own in an erotic motion.

  She gasped when his hands slid into her hair and pulled her head back, forcing his tongue deeper inside.

  Nyx slid her hands around his shoulders and pulled him closer, melding them into one form.

  She groaned as she moved against him, her bra preventing her from rubbing her aching breasts against his chest. Nyx pulled her arms down and let the fabric slid off. She flicked the wet garment to the side, not really caring where it landed as long as she could press against him.

  Her soft skin pressed against his hardened muscles. Rising to her toes, she let her aching peaks slide against the wet skin. His chest rumbled against her, only making her nipples harder.

  Nyx groaned as his hips pushed forward. His hard length pressed against her stomach, and
she pulsed deep in her center.

  Although she’d never been with a man, the warmth spreading in her was familiar, the delicious throb from deep inside that always seemed to ache for more no matter how many times she made herself come.

  She let her hands trail down his chest, running her nails lightly over the dips she found there. A deep scar lay puckered just below a rib, and she traced the line.

  Nero pulled back and stared down at her. She could tell he wanted to tell her to stop, but she kept moving lower and lower until she brushed his long, thick member with the side of her hand.

  He sucked in a deep breath, his blue-black eyes steady on her. Not wanting to wait, she slipped both hands around his length and pumped him.

  A long, ragged breath followed, and for a brief moment, she worried that maybe she’d hurt him.

  “Nyx,” he groaned.

  A smile played on her lips as she continued moving her hands over him. Up and down she moved over his hard cock, letting her hands slide over the slick head and then back down to the base again.

  His eyes closed as he tilted his head back.

  Knowing she could make him feel good with her hands satisfied her in a way she’d never expected.

  After a moment she pulled one hand away and rubbed her throbbing clit through her soaked panties. Seeing him this way excited her. It fed a burning need in her.

  Nyx gasped loudly as she was suddenly empty handed and being spun around. With ease Nero moved in behind her, coaxing her to kneel near the spot they had just been sitting. This spot was slightly higher as she climbed up.

  She turned to face him but stopped when he moved behind her again, his hands firmly on her hips.

  As if it were nothing, Nero tore through her panties on the side.

  “Hey,” she said. She sat up and turned to frown at him. “Those were my favorite.”

  The wet scrap of lace slapped loudly as it hit the nearby wall.

  “I hate them,” Nero mumbled, his hands already snaking around her body to her aching breasts.

  She watched as he cupped her, the hard peaks pressing firmly into the center of his hand.