But all that flow of thought pipelined alongside the main point: Mari’d gone down to Dallas with the express purpose of meeting up with Nathan. During his initial surge on the cloud, Heron had faceprinted the dark figure on the rock, the one who’d shot Mari. And just about a half hour ago, he’d logged a communication from Chloe identifying the sedated and restrained stranger who had been transferred to a Pentarc holding cell as Mari’s ex.
And ex in this case didn’t just mean ex-partner.
“There’s something you need to tell me about him?” Heron tried not to sound terse or peevy, but once again, he found himself talking down the beast.
Jealousy had never lit him up like this before. Fear, anger at injustice, furious loyalty: these things had tempted him to the edge of control on several occasions. But never something as pedestrian as jealousy. For all that he still believed Mari brought out the best in him, he wondered if she didn’t bring out the worst as well, like a double-bladed knife for him: both the thing that tethered him from being lost and, at the same time, the one that made him want to roar all over the universe, stomping it beneath his digital boot heels.
“You don’t have to get all scary as hell—though I’ll grant you it is turning me on,” Mari said. “He didn’t hurt me, partner. I told him I was wearing a dentata, and he recalled my fascination with the sharp and shiny just enough to buy it.”
She realized he could make the Pentarc detention cell gut-yankingly uncomfortable, right?
“I don’t dare ask why you even needed to reference dentata, but the fact remains that he did shoot you. And kidnap you. And I swear to God, Mari, if he did anything else to you, anything that you’re keeping from me, I’ll burst-fry every single one of his circuits until his eyeballs boil.”
“Like what the feds did to Adele?”
“Significantly more gruesome.”
“Okay, I take that back: scary as hell is really turning me on. Do it some more.”
Well, wasn’t that strange. He could actually see sexual tension now. The air molecules in that space between him and Mari were fractionally more excited than the others in the room. The interstice went orange on his infrared cameras.
“You aren’t going to try to talk me out of killing him?”
“Nope.” Mari’s grin widened. Clearly, she was in come-hither mode now. The thermals turned red. “’Cause I know who you are, Heron Atreus Raymond Neruda Farad. You could have taken out every federal agent in the Pentarc, and you didn’t.”
“Those agents didn’t hurt you.”
“They wanted to.”
“However,” and he paused here, not sure he was ready to admit this, but then he plowed on, “you didn’t follow them, pining all over Texas for years. You aren’t in love with them.”
“Now hold on. That sounded like jealousy.”
Heron didn’t say anything. What could he say? Denying it would be a lie, and he had a personal policy against lying almost as strong as his personal policy against murder. These restraints on his id helped him hold it together, especially now that his reach was so expansive. He couldn’t afford to let his ethics slip. But he also couldn’t bring himself to admit out loud that he was, in fact, jealous of that son of a bitch rotting in his holding cell.
Mari drew her eyebrows together, pinching her face up in her serious look again. At the same time, she leaned back against the conference table, and her hands went up to the catch on that corset. She unhasped the second hook.
“Ain’t any need for it, though it is flattering as hell,” she drawled. “No, I wasn’t in love with those feds, and I’m not in love with Nathan.” Another hook came undone. Her breasts were almost touching down the centerline. “I’m in love with you, Heron. Now tell me that doesn’t terrify the bejeezus out of you.”
Heron closed his eyes, processing. He didn’t really need to pause for that anymore, but it was a habit.
Love. Funny thing was that love had never been hard for him. He’d never steeled himself against it or pretended that it didn’t bite him on the ass from time to time. He’d never been stingy with his love. He loved his mothers and his crew, and he wasn’t embarrassed about it.
But what he’d done for Mari, what he was prepared to do for her, surpassed all those other relationships by several orders of magnitude. It’d been a long time since he’d called what he felt for her love. The word was too small.
Except when she said it. In her voice, coming out of her mouth, the word got a whole lot bigger. It filled him completely.
“I love how you tilt your head to the side just a smidge when you’re processing something,” she went on. “I love that you were waiting for me on Sixth Street behind that slow-ass bus that must have made you crazy. I love how you always know what I’m saying, even when I mutter. I love your game face when you’re on a job. I love your voice. I love your eyes and your hands and your scars and the way you can stay so goddamn stoic even when things gotta be buffeting you on all sides. I swear, Heron, even if a superstorm was breathing down on you, you’d just stand there and take it.” She paused, waited. “Say something, damn it.”
He took a shallow breath. “You have one hook left.”
“How can you tell? Your eyes are closed.”
“The metal scraped when you undid those top seven. Also, the pressure of the air between us shifted slightly when your breasts came free.” He was still getting video and thermographic feeds from the security cameras, too, but he didn’t feel a need to mention those. He kind of liked that she thought he had super powers.
“Yeah? What am I doing now, then?”
Yanking the last hook on her corset, stepping out of that pretty crinoline, toeing off her boots. Hoisting herself up on the granite conference table. Her bare ass squeaked on the polished surface. He could smell her, could feel/see/hear the slight change in ambient temperature. He allowed his cock to fill in response. That was one part of his body at least that had never been altered, and he’d never been more grateful for that fact.
“Being impossible.” He spoke in barely a whisper, but he pushed the sound into her cochlea. He fired neurotransmitters, making the rub of his voice tactile as well as aural.
She caught her bottom lip between her teeth, then let it out slow, lingering on the pain. “Heron, the last time we were together, both times, in fact, you gave me what I wanted, and I do thank you kindly, but you were holding yourself back. Maybe because of the transmission thing, but… You ever thought of what would happen if you just let go?”
Input, input, input: Go. Surge. Along the chair arms, his fingers flexed, even though he knew he hadn’t told them to.
“A modicum of restraint is necessary, I’m afraid. These alts are wired into my reflexes and augmented musculature. If I don’t concentrate very hard on being gentle, I could break you.” Also, he could possibly create an unintentional power surge in the Pentarc. He was still experimenting with his new processing capacity. She’d mentioned blowing a fuse before, but really, she had no idea.
“But see, that’s the silver lining. If what my fa… If what Damon Vallejo told me is true, you can’t break me. I’m not breakable. God knows the federales in that prison tried to. But they failed. Nathan failed. I’m fucking indestructible.”
Heron opened his eyes and, at the same time, allowed himself to process the vid feeds. She was sitting on the granite table, one heel up on its edge and naked as sin, and even as he watched, she worked one finger hard against her clit. He could see it surging through the hood of flesh, distended and dark and glistening. The space beneath his tongue went dry.
“Know what I think? I think you’ve either done it before or seen somebody else let fly, sucking up all that power in the cloud, and you’re scared shitless of doing it again. But you were scared of even climbing on that horse, if you’ll recall. And you did fine. Heron, you did just fine.”
“Because of you
.”
“Well, do fine again because of me. ’Cause I don’t want a leashed version of you. I want all of you. Right now, on this table.” She slicked her finger back up the curve of her mons, trailing wet upward and along the valley between her breasts.
She dipped that finger between her lips, licking her passion off it with the same tongue that had touched his mouth just minutes ago. The visual nearly set him on fire. Clearly, she didn’t realize that setting him on fire right now could very well set the western seaboard aflame as well. He felt precarious on the edge of restraint.
Because she was right. He had been holding back. He’d been holding back pretty much all his life. And she was right about something else: he was terrified of losing that iron control.
But he’d been right about something, too. Mari Vallejo was about the most tempting thing he’d ever encountered, and when she asked, he couldn’t refuse. Didn’t even want to.
In one movement, he was out of the chair, between her knees, his thighs hard against the granite table. Afterward, he didn’t recall opening his pants, but he must have done, because there was nothing between them, nothing stopping him at all, when he rammed his cock into her, hilt-deep in one shove.
She yowled something dark and dirty and delicious, something about taking up reins and riding hell for leather, but he heard nothing but the roar of blood, the roar of data, the surge of energy screaming through his conduits, the primal need to plant himself inside her, to combine their bodies into one blazing inferno of creation.
If he had been all metal, he might have melted in the heat of that passion, and melted her as well. He might have melted the whole bloody Pentarc. As it was, he climbed over her, on his knees between her legs, bringing his face to hers, fucking her mouth with his tongue and her cunt with his cock, blurring every line he knew of that separated them. They were organic, bodies fitting together in the most natural, nondigital way possible.
If she’d flinched at all, he would have stopped. He could have. He’d spent his whole life leashing various parts of himself, keeping the beast at bay, and he was good at it. He had never let it out like this, but now, right now, he didn’t want to put it back. It was better than speed, better than control, better than the thrill of discovery.
Mari’s hands scored his back, and he reveled in the slight pain. The marks she left on him were signs of possession.
Because even as he fucked her the whole length of that table, slipping their bodies on the polished surface in defiance of all the laws of friction, grinding bruises into her pelvis and rubbing his skin so hard against hers that surely they were one tissue by now, Heron knew this wasn’t about command and control. This was about giving himself to her. All of him. She’d asked for it, and he gave.
He felt her come around him, a violent squeeze and shatter. Her electricals lit up like fireworks on his bioscan. She screamed his name and dug her sharp nails deep into his shoulder blades. And it was too much. Too much surge, too much bright, too much power, too much perfect.
“I love you,” he told her, no longer certain whether his voice was aural or digital or tactile or photon. “Mech, organic, nano, monkey: I don’t give a shit what your body is made of. I love you, querida. So much. And you. Can’t. Make. Me. Stop.”
“No, holy shit, don’t you dare.” She lifted her head off the table to pour a kiss of fire into his mouth. “Come.”
And that afternoon, on a closed loop of orgasm and a storm of electricals and a shout that very nearly broke the impact glass, all the lights went out in the Pentarc.
Every single fucking one of them.
Epilogue
Heron knew he’d find Kellen out here in what they called the barn, the open-sky structure wedged between two Pentarc spires. This was where they kept the animals they’d managed to rescue from theaters of war and environmental desolation. Sure, the whole half acre smelled like hay, shit, and wet fur, but it was the only place on the planet where Kellen seemed comfortable in his own skin, surrounded by all the things he loved.
Or most of them. Heron needed to talk to his friend about the one person he’d been studiously avoiding for weeks.
Late afternoon sunlight had warmed the barn, but Heron could feel the hint of approaching winter. The sun was going down in a couple of hours, and this place would get cold fast. Still, Kellen was out here with no jacket shin-deep in some kind of hay, so either the physical exertion of caring for these animals provided sufficient warmth, or he was on a self-tormenting kick. Regardless of the reason, he needed a break.
“Got a minute?” Heron called.
Kellen squinted against the sunlight, pushing his hat toward the back of his head. “Sure thing, cap’n, though I have to wonder how you do, now Miss Mari’s staying here permanently.”
“Appropriating time is like any other resource management. Checking up on you is listed as important in my hierarchy.”
Kellen worked a pitchfork, distributing hay for the rescue animal Fanaida had brought north from her last mission to Bolivia. Kellen had been so patient with the animal, training it, garnering its respect without ever putting himself on equal footing with it. The little llama-looking thing nosed at him eagerly, and he flicked his fingers in front of its mouth, waited a long patient second, and then petted its soft head.
“You don’t need to check up on me,” Kellen said, his attention unwavering on the animal. “I’m right as rain.”
Yoink had come up with Heron on the lift and now wended between his ankles, inviting attention. She didn’t like it when Kellen was tending the other animals. She fancied herself the center of his universe. Heron bent, rubbed her between the ears, and accepted a rough lick on the back of his hand. Her saliva contained correct levels of enzymes and protein Fel D 1. Also traces of gardenia pollen. Ha. So she did sneak up here when no one was looking.
“Adele wants to know why you don’t come to her family suppers anymore,” Heron said, looking at the cat and, at the same time, watching his friend keenly through the security camera lenses.
Kellen hadn’t been to one of Adele’s big cook-outs in the food court for weeks. Not since Senator Neko had come here seeking haven. The one night both she and Kellen had sat at the same table, Heron noticed the warmth between them, the easy banter and sense of camaraderie, maybe even friendship. The kind of connection that could grow to something deeper.
Kellen had always been happier around animals than people, but that night, Heron had thought that maybe his friend was peeking out from behind the defensive isolation he’d worn for so long.
Since that night, though, Kellen hadn’t come to supper. Heron knew from his cameras that the two interacted rarely, spent most of their time apart. Other people in the Pentarc had noticed. Adele had, Fanaida had. Chloe certainly had. Heron felt obliged to get to the bottom of it, for all their sakes.
“Tell Adele I’m sorry,” Kellen said. “I just been busy.”
“She thinks there’s something wrong with her bean recipe.” Heron wasn’t above using guilt as a tactic.
“Ain’t nothing wrong with her cooking,” Kellen said, looking up from his crouch. “Swear I’ll tell her that next time I see her. Those beans are good eatin’.”
“I, on the other hand, suspect it’s something wrong with the company,” Heron said, making his voice as gentle as he could. “Specifically with our guest.”
The senator’s name hung unspoken on the air between them.
Angela.
Kellen’s easy movement stiffened perceptibly. He unhooked a pair of wicked-looking trimmers from his utility belt and set to work on one furry foot, not looking anywhere near Heron. The vicuña, obviously not anxious at all, leaned into the touch and made a humming sound.
Connection. Action and reaction. There would be consequences to having Angela stay here. And even though he couldn’t go back and renegotiate at this point, Heron hoped he hadn’t cr
eated an untenable situation for his friend.
“Can’t think of any particular problem there,” Kellen said. He didn’t look up from his toenail clipping, but his tone was dismissive.
Heron plowed on. “I agreed to let her stay, but I didn’t ask you first.”
“You were kind of busy, so I see how it might’ve slipped your mind. Besides, you own the Pentarc.” Kellen shrugged. “I don’t like it, I can leave.”
But he wouldn’t. Kellen would no more leave that vicuña, those miniature goats, or the new baby squirrels than he would hack his own arm off. Even more than Heron, he had built something precious here, something worth protecting.
“I never meant it to be just my place,” Heron said. “We thought this up together. Our haven, right? When the world goes to shit—when, not if, and that time is coming soon—Pentarc is our safe place, our home. All of us. And I think Angela Neko might need a harbor in the storm as well, but I don’t want to offer her a permanent place here without your agreement.”
Kellen squinted in the sunlight, and his mouth beneath the hat’s brim might have pressed tighter. It was hard to tell in the shadow, though. “If keeping her here keeps her safe, I’m for it completely. Just…let’s just leave the rest of it be.”
Heron shifted his weight, as uncomfortable as he had been in a long while. This conversation was far from over, but he wouldn’t be getting any more input on the topic. Not today. Maybe he’d just give it time, let Kellen and Angela get used to sharing a time zone again.
They had been close once, those two, though seeing what they had each become in the time since, Heron couldn’t picture them together. How could someone with a soul as big as Kellen’s, with such an elemental need to comfort and care, ever love the sort of woman who was a shoo-in to be the first war minister of the continental government? Angela was all sharp edges and schemes, and Kellen…well, he wasn’t that.
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