by Cara Bristol
“Trying isn’t good enough. Promise me.”
“I can’t promise.”
“Damn you! Lie to me, then.” Tears sprang to her eyes and clogged her throat. Panic swelled. She’d found him, and now she would lose him? They were both going to die; the only question was who would go first.
“I won’t do that either.”
“Why not?” She swiped at her eyes with the back of her hand.
“Because I love you,” he said.
She couldn’t wipe fast enough to contain the tears. “I love you, too, and that’s why you should lie to me.”
He had her in his arms before she realized he’d moved. He pressed her wet face to the side of his neck. Her knuckles scraped against the rough wall as she snaked her hands around his waist to hold him. She sobbed, needing the release, but hating herself for needing it. Male agents didn’t cry during suicide missions. Except she wasn’t crying because she feared death—she wept for the time they wouldn’t have together.
Sonny rocked her. “You don’t have to go with me. You can stay here. You’ll be safe.”
Let him go on alone? Sacrifice himself? “Hell no!” she all but shouted. Tears halted, and she yanked away, grazing her knuckles again. She glared. “Have you lost your fucking mind?”
He grinned. A lopsided, rakish, heart-stopping smile. “That’s my girl.”
Before she could punch him, he kissed her.
Fear, anger, and a love so real she could taste it exploded in a rush of sensation. Kiss him, hit him, she didn’t know what to do, so she did both. Fresh tears streaked her face, and she clung to him, giving everything she had, taking as much as she could get. She lashed with her tongue, nipped with her teeth, while pounding her fists against his shoulders, railing against the unfairness, the inevitable. Just when she could admit her feelings, there was no future. Her cyborg’s intuition had kept her alive in the past; this time it warned of death.
“Don’t cry. I can’t stand it when you cry.” Sonny kissed the corners of her eyes.
“I can’t stand it, either. I hate being weak.” Hated feeling it, hated more that she’d shown it.
“You’re not weak.”
“What am I?”
“Tough. Strong. Brave.” He slipped his hands under her shirt to cup her breasts. “And soft.”
She shook her head. “I don’t feel that way.”
“You don’t feel soft?” He squeezed a mound, and brushed his thumb over the hard nipple. “Well, this part isn’t.”
“You know what I mean.” She curled her fingers into the fabric of his shirt. She wanted to rip it off him, but they had only the uniforms they’d been given by the Resistance, so she controlled herself and undid the fastenings. But when the shirt came undone, she flung it away.
“Did my shirt offend you?” he asked.
“All your clothes offend me.”
“We can’t have that.” He stood up and stripped with remarkable speed in the cramped space. He wasn’t pretty, but he was ripped. Strength and brawn in a hard, male package. Scars predating his transformation to cyborg had left white streaks in the curly hair matting his chest and abdomen. A street thug he’d been. She wished she’d known him then. She would have run with him; what a team they would have made.
Between his legs, his cock stood out thick and erect. Her stomach fluttered, and her mouth went dry. Ahh. He was all perfection: his scarred face, the tattoo he kept to remind himself of his criminal past, his lopsided grin, body and face marked by old brawls. Of the recent fracture, he sported pinker skin on his shin. In another day or so, the trace would disappear, too. Expedited healing, was a benefit of being a cyborg. But enhanced musculature, protective nanocytes, and lightning-fast computer processing wouldn’t save them from a photon blast, a microexplosive device, or strafing from an infantry drone.
They could only count on this moment.
She wouldn’t have guessed cybernetic eyes could convey such emotion, but the dark desire and the sweet tenderness in his gaze as she disrobed caught the breath in her throat.
He wanted her. He accepted her. As she was.
Her. Amanda Mansfield. A father’s disappointment. A military washout. Current mission fuckup.
Sonny saw her clearer than any human ever had. He saw the anger, the impatience, the arrogance, the doubt, the fear, the imperfection—and loved her anyway.
A smile quivered on her lips, and she blinked back tears. Enough already. Weepy, she had never been. He brought out the tears. A side effect of falling in love.
His gaze shifted to the packs. “We have a converta-bed.”
“May as well try it out,” she said. The rocky tunnel floor would leave them cut and scraped. To get him inside her would be worth it.
With a flick of his wrist, he unfurled the compact roll of silver fabric and spread it out. He patted the ultra-thin, almost filmy sheet. “Not much cushioning.”
None, from the looks of it. “Good enough,” she said.
Sonny stretched onto his side, his back pressed against the wall, giving her space to squeeze in beside him, breast to chest. Abdomen to thick, hard cock. She snaked a hand between their bodies and grasped his erection then widened her eyes as the thin bedding inflated.
It pumped up to a comfortable cushion between them and the hard floor.
“Pressure activated,” Sonny said.
“Here, too,” she teased, and stroked his erection. Already firm, it grew harder still, precum pearling at the opening.
He sucked in a breath. “Doesn’t even take much. A look will do.”
“Like this?” She fluttered her lashes.
“You’ve got it.” He kissed her.
Amusement evaporated under lust. She moaned into his mouth. Urgency ruled. She dug her fingers into his hair.
Sonny lifted her thigh, and she hooked her lower leg around the back of his knee and rocked, rubbing against his cock. He cupped her ass cheek, encouraging her movements before delving between her legs. Warm fingers drew hot circles around her clit.
His mouth fused to hers. With little nibbles, he traced the line of her jaw. She arched her neck. Smacked her head against the sandstone wall with a crack.
“Are you okay?” He rubbed her head.
“Maybe we should have done this standing up.”
“Let’s not give up on this yet. Hang on.” He clasped her tight against him and shifted, rolling her under him.
The problem became obvious. The sandstone walls were so close, she couldn’t spread her legs wide enough for him to slip between.
She giggled. He pushed up and flipped her onto her tummy. Lifted her hips. A hard cock probed her entrance. Laughter became a long moan as he slid inside, stretching and filling her the way she needed to be.
The space allowed enough room for his hand to snake over her hip and cup her mound. Applying friction to her clit, with long, delicious strokes, he pumped inside her.
His raspy jaw nuzzled her nape. When he nipped the juncture between neck and shoulder, a shaft of lightning-hot desire shuddered through her. “Oh fuck,” she gasped. “I’m going to come.”
He growled and nipped the other side. Her pussy clenched.
She rocked against him, moving faster, needing stronger thrusts. “Harder, please. Harder.”
“Well, since you said please…” He dug his fingers into her hips and pounded into her. Tension coiled, and then she shattered into a brilliant orgasm. His body shuddered and bucked. Lights burst behind her closed eyelids. Inside her, his cock jerked and he plunged deep, groaning as he climaxed.
They fell together, his body flattening hers. His right hand found hers. Fingers threaded and squeezed.
She floated on a cloud of peace and contentment, fear a memory. In this moment, she touched eternity.
Chapter Sixteen
“There’s nothing here.” Amanda unwound the protective scarf. “The oasis is all dried up.”
Sonny unwrapped his own scarf and let it dangle around his neck. Wind howled through petrif
ied trees, buried in sand halfway up their trunks. Lit by moonglow, the stony trees resembled headstones. He picked his way to the well, switched on a glow stick, and peered inside. Dry. Had been for eons. Fortunately, they hadn’t come here for water.
“Doesn’t appear Kilead’s maps are up-to-date,” he said. “Guess cartography isn’t a priority.” He switched off the light.
“Not involving their own world,” she said. “I did a quick review of some of their off-world charts. The ones I was familiar with seemed current.”
“Targets,” he said.
She nodded. “Some of them. I suspect others are strategic outposts or safe zones with allies.”
“Invaluable information.”
“If Lamani moves before we can transmit the intel, Cy-Ops will at least have an idea of where to start searching.”
Assuming they got to Mt. Torva. To fake out the drones, they’d hiked to the oasis with the idea it would be a good place to plant a false trail.
Sonny eyed the stony trees, monoliths of a bygone era, yet symbolic of the present. Had Lamis-Odg always been so intractable, so self-righteous? Their way or no way? Had they ever been open and accepting? Their past was a mystery to off-worlders, lost like the sand swirling in the wind. The people and the planet had been unknown until space travel introduced them to the rest of the galaxy.
They quickly became the new neighbors you wished you had never invited over.
They had rejected almost all alien culture, only latching onto its technology, which they used to annihilate dissenting opinions and convert others to their mythology. Believe or die. Unwittingly, the galaxy had given Lamis-Odg the means to conduct its crusade of terror.
“If they find our ID chips here, they’ll realize it’s a ruse,” she said. “There’s no reason to come here.”
“We can’t risk traveling with tracers any longer. We’re caught between a rock and petrified tree,” he said. “We need to ditch the chips before a drone zeroes in. We went ten kilometers out of our way to get here and need to proceed to the relay station. I wish we had a biochip extractor, but we don’t. He dug the universal implement from his pocket. “You want to go first, or do you want me to?”
“You can do me first.” Amanda rolled up her sleeve and twisted her arm to reveal the tiny subdermal lump.
“This will sting,” he warned. “The chips go in easier than they come out.” It seemed like eons ago they’d embarked on this assignment, and Amanda had injected them with the identifiers.
“I’m a big girl.”
With the blade tip, he made a small incision. Blood sprang to the surface of her skin. She didn’t utter a sound, but stared straight ahead. Working quickly, he pinched out the 125 millimeter electronic chip with the forceps tool. Blood trickled down her arm. He wiped it away then applied pressure to the wound with a disinfecting cloth.
“Where’d you get that?”
“The wipe? Hala packed a mini MediKit.”
“She thought of everything.”
The woman had been thorough in the supplies she had provided: the inflatable bed, NutriSup bars, water, the MediKit, and sand shoes enabling them to tromp across the dunes without sinking.
After a minute, he checked the cut. Bleeding had stopped; her nanos had begun to knit the wound closed. “Okay?” he asked.
“Good as new.” She rolled down her shirt sleeve.
He cleaned the blood from the chip and the tool and handed the latter to Amanda. Sonny unfastened his shirt.
With a cheeky grin, she smoothed her palms over his chest. A tingle raced down his spine. “We don’t have time,” he said.
She sighed. “I know. Ready?”
“Ready.”
The cut stung, but she tugged out the device quickly and applied the disinfectant.
Like he’d done with Amanda’s, he wiped the blood from the tag. “If they find the chips, we don’t want our DNA on them.”
This would seal their fate: without false identities they had a much better chance of eluding capture long enough to transmit the intel, but they couldn’t get off the planet. Unable to pass a bioscan, they wouldn’t be allowed aboard any departing vessel. Since they topped the wanted list, removing their identification was a nonissue. They’d be shot or handed over to Sorviq if they showed up at the shuttleport.
Sonny opened his hand. The chips had disappeared.
He hugged her and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth. “Let’s go.”
They shrugged into their packs. Under moonlight, hulking Mt. Torva appeared as a darker blotch against a midnight sky. They didn’t need to see it to get there; they’d both plotted the coordinates in their cyberbrains. With eyes closed, they could find the relay station.
A flutter of white waved against a petrified tree. Delicate petals as pale as snow formed a full blossoming head bobbing on a slender stem. The flower reminded him of a Terran peony. “Look,” he nudged and pointed.
“A hala! The native, sacred flower. It’s much more striking in the wild than in still vids.”
“Striking is right.” Garvit’s warning echoed in his brain. “I’d pick it for you, but it might bite off my hand.” The flower bobbed, petals quivering. As they studied it from a safe distance, a single droplet of dew trickled like a tear from the center of the blossom to fall upon the sand. The head drooped.
Fascinating. Could a plant be sentient? Could it feel emotion?
Sonny gestured to Amanda, and they turned to leave.
The flower growled. Petals peeled back to reveal a maw of razor-sharp teeth. The flower snapped its jaws and snarled. No peony ever did that.
“Still think it’s pretty?” he asked.
Taking once last glance around, they set off into the desert. Their webbed shoes left a distinctive impression in the sand, but the omnipresent wind would remove their footsteps before anyone saw them.
Amanda tucked her scarf around her face. “Speaking of Hala, she did an extraordinary job in providing supplies.”
“She did. The Resistance was well prepared.” They were cyberoperatives. Fighting against the odds is what they did, but the sand shoes and the scarves made the trek a little bit easier. Sonny twisted his mouth. “Having seen a hala up close, I doubt I would have named my daughter after one.”
“It’s probably a popular female name. Lamis-Odg is quite proud of the flower. It’s even on their flag.”
“I noticed. They plaster the flag everywhere. I’m surprised there isn’t one staked out in the middle of the desert.” Everything anyone needed to know about their intention flapped in the wind. The lamiknot, symbolizing mythology, the dangerous hala, and a weapon. Red flags. Literally. The banner’s background was crimson.
“I wonder if they update their flag when a new model photon blaster comes out,” she joked.
Sonny laughed. “I wouldn’t be surprised.”
They stomped up a massive sand dune. At first, they’d gone around them, but there were too damn many. They had to put as much distance between them and the compound as they could—and get to Torva. The detour to jettison the chips had burned a couple of hours. Even with the special footwear, hiking through shifting sand took stamina. If he hadn’t been a cyborg, his leg muscles would have given out by now.
“They’re not all bad,” Amanda said. “Cornar, Garvit, Tannah, Hala—they all helped us. They’re not motivated by altruism—they have a vested interest in our success—but they are risking their lives.” She halted and grabbed his arm. Which reminds me…let me send you the intel, she said via wireless, and then a stream of code organized into files shot into his head.
Sonny blinked. “From Kilead’s PerComm?” He wasn’t as good a hacker as Amanda was. Written in Odgidian, some of the stuff looked like gibberish to him.
She nodded. “In case something happens to me—if I don’t make it to Torva, you can send the information.”
He could do that much, but would do everything to ensure he didn’t have to. “You’re going to make it. We both are.”
Like most cyborgs, Sonny performed at his best in emergencies. While chaos swirled around you, you got through it by remaining cool, calm, and collected. But this mission had put his emotions to the test.
He was scared. Not of losing his life, but that Amanda might lose hers. He had to accept the facts: the odds were against success, like Carter had said. They couldn’t outrun the enemy indefinitely. Two people—even cyborgs—couldn’t best an entire army. To contemplate even a minute without Amanda reamed a gaping hole in his chest. His sister’s death had been bad enough. He couldn’t stand to lose another woman he should have protected but failed to. The woman he loved.
Maybe he could bribe a guard to let Amanda board a shuttle. Offer to surrender in exchange for sending her home. The guard would be a hero if he took him into custody and presented him to Sorviq. Lamis-Odg didn’t think women were worth anything. He could convince him he was the mastermind behind Kilead’s death. Let them work him over. He’d never give up Cy-Ops secrets, but he’d invent some plausible sounding shit and let them think they’d gotten some valuable intel.
He kissed her knuckles, warm against his lips. Nanos kept them comfortable when the night temp dropped close to freezing. Hot as hell during the day, colder than Lamani’s heart at night. What an inhospitable planet.
“I promise you’ll get home.” He would do anything to ensure that happened. Anything.
“If one goes home, we both go. We’re a team.”
“If only one of us makes it. It will be you. Don’t fight me. If there’s a chance to get off this planet and there’s only one space available, I’ll haul your ass kicking and screaming to the shuttle.”
“You’ll have to haul me kicking and screaming, because I won’t go otherwise.” Her eyes blazed. “I’ll fight you all the way.”
“Amanda, damnit!”
She planted her hands on her hips. “We knew we were signing up for a potential suicide mission. Carter didn’t sugarcoat it. He didn’t order us here. He called for volunteers.” Her eyes filled, her lower lip quivered, and Sonny’s heart seized at the sight of her tears. “Do you think I’m not scared? Do you think I want to die? Do you think I could ever leave you here? You’re my fucking partner. And worse—the man I love.”
