by Lauren Dane
The command now embedded in the system, he hit execute, and they headed to the stairs to get the seven hells out of there.
Andrei and Piper waited for them on the roof with an ultraquiet zipper. Vincenz had never been more relieved to see Andrei as they hustled inside and strapped in.
Hannah’s gaze was glassy, her hands still trembling as Julian simply buckled her in and then himself. She didn’t even shoot him an annoyed look.
Vincenz sat on her other side, pressing against her as they lifted off and moved away so very silently.
Andrei handed Hannah a little black square. “If you press that switch, the explosives will go off.”
Her eyes cleared as she took him in, understanding he was letting her do the final work on destroying the plant and those labs.
“Now?” She swallowed hard.
Andrei nodded and squeezed her knee as he sat back.
With her gaze intent on the structure just out of shock wave range of the zipper, she flipped the switch.
At first nothing happened that they could see, but as Vincenz knew, it would be just a short time and then … ah, there it was, the first round of explosions and fire. The building shook and began to fall as more explosive packs went off.
“We can get you closer to the portal this time. That ridge was a bitch to climb,” Piper said as she piloted away from the site once they were sure everything had been destroyed.
Chapter 16
Julian’s head ached from having to control himself so tightly. They managed to get Hannah off the zipper. Andrei had indicated they’d meet again soon as Piper had hugged Hannah, speaking to her quietly.
Oh his sweet Hannah.
They were far closer to the portal and their transport, but would still have to spend another several minutes to get to it, skirting the Imperialist authorities, who’d been involved in clashes with Federated soldiers who’d landed just a few days before.
Vincenz had taken her pack, though she’d protested. He’d also paused to pull the shirt of Julian’s she wore so often from it and hand it her way. Tears had brimmed in her eyes, the sight of it, and of the way she hugged his shirt around herself had torn through him.
Her hair was down, around her face, a face drawn with deep lines of concentration, and she’d most likely have a riot of bruises around her cheek and right eye from the beating she’d taken. But he knew she needed to get to the transport on her own steam. Needed to do it for herself. But he wanted to do it for her anyway.
He and Vincenz moved as quickly as they could, both needing to get her inside and safe.
The small clearing was empty and the security they’d set was still in place so they hadn’t been discovered. In his earpiece he heard the chatter from the local authorities who’d discovered the processing plant had been burning and were on their way out to the site.
It was a good thing to have trouble in the opposite direction, keep their focus away from them until they were well and away from there.
Though, he thought as he prepared the transport while Vincenz fed data into the uplink, he wouldn’t have turned his back on the opportunity to kill some Imperialist assholes.
It wasn’t until sometime later, once he’d gotten the transport through the portal and on a set route, that he was able to step away and go to her.
Vincenz was still on the comm with Daniel so Julian passed, squeezed his shoulder and kept moving to her.
When he found her she had wrapped herself in a blanket and wedged her body between the bed and the wall. Her head rested on her knees, her hair obscuring her face.
Rage coursed through him. His hands fisted, wanting to punch someone, wanting to hear the crunch of bone. Wanted retribution for what they’d done to her. To Marame. To Vincenz, whose face so often bore guilty lines over what his father had done.
“Hey there, baby. Can I take a look at you? You took some hits in the hallway back there.”
She looked up and as he’d suspected, bore the beginnings of quite a spectacular black eye. He pushed his anger back and opened up the first-aid kit.
“That your first black eye?”
“No. Before … just once. And then they didn’t hit me in the face anymore.”
He dragged a breath into his lungs and let it out slowly. “That doesn’t count. You were abused. This time you got it brawling.”
Her bottom lip trembled.
“Is it that you killed a man?” He tried to remain calm as he took a wet cloth to her face to clean off the remains of the blood spatter. He needed to be sure it wasn’t her blood. And to focus on something other than wanting to go back to Silesia and take on the entirety of Fardelle’s army.
She shook her head, allowing him to tip her chin and get the cut above her eyebrow cleaned and bandaged.
“I don’t feel bad that I killed him.” She winced as he unbuttoned her shirt and he found an abrasion on her neck. “Don’t get mad that I took the vest off.”
He paused, brushing the pad of his thumb over the curve of that trembling lip. “Can’t be mad at you. It’s impossible. As for not feeling bad? Guilt is wasted on doing what you have to do.”
“Does it get easier?”
He helped her to her feet. “I need to take the shirt off.” He’d learned early on to part her with his shirt and other things he’d given her with a careful approach. And her permission.
She held still while he looked her over, running his hands over her ribs to check for anything broken. He couldn’t resist leaning down to kiss her shoulder, over the yellowy purple bloom of a bruise.
“To answer your question … it should never be easy to kill anyone. In that way, no, it doesn’t. But over time I’ve become better at letting the parts that make sense matter to me more than the parts that don’t.”
She nodded, thinking over what he’d said.
Something he’d never said to anyone before.
“Sometimes we have to do things because they need doing and no one else is willing.” He held up the small patch of pain medication. “I’m going to put this on. You’re going to be very sore. Not just from the fight back at the plant, but the hike too. Just a standard pain blocker.”
She held her arm out and he applied it.
“Thank you.” She took his hand and kissed his knuckles, keeping hold. “My turn to check you over.”
She dealt quickly and efficiently with the abrasions on his knuckles before she moved to the cuts on his face.
He allowed her to take his shirt off. “That’s what you did on Ceres, isn’t it? The hard thing no one else would do. The right thing.” She cleaned the gash on the back of his right arm. “This needs some sealant.” She reached past him to rustle through the kit until she found what she needed.
Yes, he supposed, it was exactly what he did in Ceres. Sometimes he’d felt so alone, but now he had Vincenz and Hannah. Hannah, who watched him with those big, startled eyes and understood everything. Vincenz who walked the path with him, knew the same demons and loved him anyway.
She cleaned his wounds quickly and efficiently as they both forgave themselves a little bit.
“Do you promise to always treat my gashes and bruises without a shirt on? It hurts far less when your breasts are part of the package.”
She smiled a little, which had been his intent. “It might be simpler if you stopped getting injured.”
“Wrong line of work for that. Still, might come in handy, having my own personal doctor.”
“At some point I’m going to need a job again. I’ll take a wild guess and say there would probably always be a need for one around you and Vincenz.”
He bent to retrieve his shirt, drawing it around her body again to keep her warm. The deeper they went into the portal, the colder it would be, especially in such a small transport.
“Don’t want you getting a chill. Come lay in the bed with me?” he asked, gently sliding his palm over her hair.
Her gaze met his and he wanted to growl at the shadows of anguish there. He want
ed to ask if she’d like to sleep. If she needed a sedative. Anything at all that would soften what she was feeling. But he knew she wouldn’t do it.
So he shook the blanket she’d been using out and pulled the bedding back so she could slide in. And he slid in after, pulling her close as he buried his face in her neck. She sighed, the sound catching slightly, as she snuggled back into his body.
Words he didn’t know how to say lodged in his throat as the warm, solid feel of her body stirred him, even as he found a deep comfort there.
Let himself take the comfort from her, even as he gave her everything he had to give.
Moved, Julian closed his eyes and took a breath of her. He kissed her neck and she turned to him, tears in her eyes, her bottom lip trembling.
“Are you all right? Do you need a booster on the analgesic?”
“I’m sorry.” She shook her head, wiping her eyes on his shirt, which made him smile even as he was annoyed by her apology.
“What in the Known Universes do you have to apologize for?”
“I fell apart.”
“No, you didn’t.” He shook his head, keeping his arms around her, dipping his mouth to taste her briefly.
“I don’t want to be like this.”
His heart ached. “You’re perfect the way you are.”
She shook her head. “No.”
“I wish you could see what I see.”
She blinked up at him.
“Today you handled yourself as well as any other operative. Operatives who’ve had years of training. Operatives who grew up in rough, hard places. You’re strong, Hannah Black. You’re strong and smart and you forced yourself past some scary stuff because you knew there was a job to do. And you did it.”
“You didn’t have any trouble.”
He laughed a little, but there wasn’t much humor there. “Of course I did. I totally missed the soldiers in the hall.” He raked his gaze over the bruises on her face, remembered the rage as he’d turned to see the man beating her with closed fists, but he was fighting his own battle, too far away to stop it.
“Ellis spoke to me. In my earpiece.”
“He did? What did he say?”
“He told me where the man’s weapon had fallen. Told me I could do it.”
“And he was right. I’m sorry it was necessary.”
Interesting that Ellis would break through and speak to her when he so very rarely ever commented while they were on an op. But Wilhelm had his own plans, and his own ways of making them happen, so Julian had ceased to question why he did what he did a long time ago.
She sighed, hiccupping a little, and burrowed into him. He tightened his embrace, noting the way the tension seemed to wisp away from her when he did. “Close your eyes and rest. I’ll be right here. Vin and I will take care of you.”
She shuddered and took a deep breath, her hand fisted in the front of his shirt.
Chapter 17
After having been out the entire day, Vincenz moved with purpose from the front entry to where he knew she’d be. In the doorway to their workroom, he paused. Simply watching her as she sat at the comm station—her comm station as it had come to be over the last months. Features intent, fingers flying over the keys, pausing only to grab a pen and take longhand notes.
In the days since they’d returned from Silesia, she’d dived into the data they’d mined from the plant. But he knew she still held herself responsible for nearly breaking down. He’d tried to disabuse her of that notion, as had Julian, but he saw the shadows there anyway.
It was time for a new approach.
She looked up and her concentration washed away with a smile. Love flooded his senses. “Hello there, Operative Cuomo. You look like sunshine today.”
Oddly pleased, he got to his knees in front of her. “Why, hello there.” He gripped the chair arms, caging her in, slow and steady, the tension between them building. “And why is that?” He leaned in and nipped her bottom lip. Breathed her in and fell into her mouth. Forcing himself to only take a taste.
“You’ve been in the sun. Your hair lightens when you’ve been in the sun.”
“Ah.” He took another taste, meandering through the wonder of kissing that mouth. She sighed, her fingers sliding through his hair. He pulled away but it didn’t last long and he was back for more.
His tongue teased along the curve of her bottom lip before he sucked it into his mouth, grazing it with his teeth.
She shivered against him, moaning so very softly.
“You taste like late summer. Sweet, and ripe, delicious,” he spoke into her mouth.
She smiled against the kiss. “I missed you today. It’s hard to think without your sounds and the way you smell.”
He rested his forehead to hers. “We have the entire house to ourselves. No visitors. I’m going to fuck you hard enough to make you scream.”
Her pupils enlarged as she gasped. And gave herself over to him.
Greed sliced through him. “I don’t remember a time when I didn’t need you so much.” He kissed the fluttering pulse in that sweet spot under her ear. She softened, exposing her throat to him.
“No one thinks worse of you that you had a rough time back on Silesia.”
She stiffened and sighed, trying to straighten. But he kept his upper body against hers, his waist insinuated between her thighs.
She wavered between anger and searingly hot desire. She shouldn’t get hot all over when he was this way with her. So aggressive and dominant. His way of holding her down was no less powerful than Julian’s was.
Her reaction to and connection with it went to her bones. All the noise and chaos wisped away when he took over.
Her entire body had lit. Already wet. Each time he pressed himself against her, the seam of her panties tightened, pressing into her pussy, stroking against her clit. That wave of pleasure broke over her annoyance that he’d brought up Silesia. Sent all her thoughts of anything but his mouth on her neck, the slight sting when he bit and more pleasure when he licked over the bite, skittering away.
He pulled away quickly, leaving her gasping at his sudden absence, reaching for him. Covetous hands stroked over her arms, up her sides and over her breasts. He hummed his pleasure at the hollow of her throat, the vibrations sliding straight to her nipples, which now slid against his palms.
“Bare breasts. My favorite.”
Before she got the chance to formulate a reply, he’d pulled the front of her shirt away from her body and then ripped it open, sending buttons everywhere. The shock of the cool air against her skin beaded her skin, but her nipples hardened because of the man kneeling between her thighs.
His gaze on her was a tangible thing and she suddenly felt a little bit like a mouse with hawks about. Only the fear was replaced with anticipation.
“It is not that you faltered when confronted with not only labs that looked a great deal like the one you were held in but a man who tried to kill you with his bare hands, having to kill that man and then had to walk through yet another set of labs, this one with cells.”
She made a face, annoyed. Why did he keep bringing this up? She had no one to blame for her terrible performance but herself.
He stood. “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.”
She frowned at his back. But didn’t move.
When he returned it was with one of the little black bags he kept all manner of naughty toys in.
He bent, kissing her and before she knew it, her wrist was strapped to the arm of the chair. She pulled against the hold, sending white-hot shards of pleasure through her system.
At first she knew they wanted to be rougher with her than they were. But they remained ever so gentle as she healed. But it never felt totally real to her, their desire for her, their connection to her until the first time Vincenz had let his control go and gave her exactly what she wanted, how he wanted to.
And when he trusted her to know what she wanted, when he trusted himself to let himself want her, to give himself permissi
on to take her, everything felt utterly right.
She kept her words, watching him as he bent to strap her other wrist to the chair.
“You and I have a problem, Hannah.”
He knelt again, this time to strap her ankle to the chair. And then he paused to look into her face carefully, assessing, she knew, to be sure she was still all right with what he was doing.
“That’s the difference, you know.” Her face was solemn.
He rested his chin on her knee. “What do you mean?”
“Between what happened to me—what they did to me while they kept me prisoner—and what you do to me.” She licked her lips just before he pinched her left nipple, tugging until she arched as well as she could against the leather pressing into the ultrasensitive skin at her wrists.
She stuttered a breath. “This is what I want. I choose this.”
He paused, caressing her neck. So much emotion on his face. She was utterly helpless against what she felt for him. There was nothing she wanted more than to be here with him. To be his.
“I should cease to be surprised by you. I try to get you to see a truth and then you turn around and do the same to me.” He swallowed hard. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to make you think about before.”
“That was about breaking me. About stealing parts of me until there wasn’t enough left to stay together. It was about humiliation and harm. What you do, what Julian does, it’s different because it’s about holding me together, not ripping me apart. For a time I felt as if I might fly away. I was so light, so empty, it felt as though I could lift up and float on the breeze until no one knew me anymore.”
She needed him to understand, but she barely understood it herself.
“I can remember who I am when you touch me.”
He bent to her nipple, licking over it. “It’s because there is much about us that is the same. A foot in two worlds. Your story makes me think of my own though it’s not entirely the same. You came to me, let me give you a place to call home and then you did the same for me.”
