by E. A. James
Bane knew when she knew. He might have read her mind. Maybe it was just the sexual charge in the cell. Either way, he made short work of getting her undressed. He peeled off the coat, pulled her shirt over her head and made work of her bra like he’d dealt with one before. He pulled down her pants and her underwear, and then she was as naked as he was.
The blankets had slipped down, revealing his lust and his hunger and it seemed to match hers.
He touched her again, his hands on her breasts this time, making her gasp. Her body melted into his hands and she lay back on the bed, unwilling to keep herself upright again.
Bane crawled over her. He was all muscle and raw sexuality and in his eyes she saw the promise of sex and pleasure and closeness like she hadn’t felt before. Her skin was alive with an electric current that could only be coming from him and no matter where he touched her, a jolt traveled through her.
He positioned himself between her legs and her thighs fell open as if they had a mind of their own. He was at her entrance, and the next moment he slid into her and erased everything that she could be thinking about but him. He was everywhere. In her mind, over her body, all around the cell, deep inside her. She gasped and moaned as he started moving, and she gave herself to him completely.
This was what she wanted. She wanted him to have every part of her. Not just her body, but her heart too. He pumped in and out of her, pushing her closer and closer to an orgasm. Her body was hot and the sexual heat filled her up like a cup being filled with hot water. Any moment now she was going to spill over.
She’d just thought it when Bane put his lips on hers and pushed her over the edge. The orgasm shattered through her in a white light and she cried out against his mouth.
When she came down again he was right there with her, and she had the strange sensation that she was falling.
He would catch her. She didn’t know where the thought had come from, but it was right there. She could fall, and he would catch her. Every time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
They were on their way. Bane could feel them, inching closer to this planet, bringing their wrath and their vengeance with them. Hocus and Mage, his travel partners, had seen him captured. They had seen him taken by this planet’s cruel race and they’d gone back to the others to rally a rescue team.
Bane knew because it was what he would have done. You don’t leave a soldier behind. That was how they were trained; it was how they cared for each other.
They were going to destroy this planet. Most of the humans deserved it. What he’d seen of them was heartless and merciless and they deserved to suffer for the pain they’d caused him. At least, that was what he’d thought until Hannah had come along.
She was different. She was the kind of person that made him believe that there could be life without war. There was hope for peace when he looked into her eyes. But not for people like her father, and Bane got the feeling that the earth consisted of more people like him than like her. There were the few that were worth saving, but they didn’t outweigh the bad that Earth had to offer. It was hard to believe they could coexist with such cruelty, that there were people out there who believed it was acceptable.
“What’s wrong?” Hannah asked. She’d gotten dressed again after he’d taken her. It was the most powerful emotional response he’d ever had with someone. He’d never felt like that with anyone, not even of his own race, and he hadn’t felt like that about someone, either. Hannah was different. It was almost impossible to think that they were worlds removed from each other. It felt like she was the missing piece to Bane’s life and it had only been a matter of time before he’d found her.
It was the sex that had opened his feelings to the pending doom. He was troubled because he knew that if they arrived and he didn’t do something about it, everything Hannah loved, everything that made up her life, would be destroyed. He didn’t want to be the one to cause her such pain. He could tell by how her father treated her, by the pain and the distance she created when he was around, that she had grown up in a home of abuse.
She looked at him now with eyes that felt like they looked right into her soul, even though Bane knew that she couldn’t sense emotions or read minds the way he could.
“The others. They’re close now. If we don’t do anything they will destroy the earth and everything in it. It will be for me, for how I have been treated.”
Hannah nodded, looking at her hands. The tension in the air, the loaded sexual atmosphere, had changed into something more serious and quiet.
“What can I do to help?” she asked, looking up at him. The question caught him off guard even though he could usually sense what was going on in her mind. This was something else. This was genuine – her heart speaking to his.
“What would really help is if I can escape this facility. I can meet the troops and stop them.”
He looked up at her. Her face was closed and her emotions were too. He’d learned that she switched herself off when she was in deep thought or when she retreated into herself.
“I’ll help you,” she said, emerging again from some deep place inside her. “Tomorrow night.”
Another unexpected response. Sometimes she managed to say something he couldn’t guess at. Those were the times when it meant so much more.
“Really?”
She nodded. “You’re not just a specimen, and if I have to be honest with you, to hell with my father and his testing. I have spent my whole life aspiring to be good enough for him, and to do that I’ve realized I have to become a monster. No more.”
Bane wanted to take her face between her hands and make love to her again. He wanted to make her his own the way he had almost an hour before. He wanted every inch of her for himself because she made his life complete in ways it had never been before.
“I have to go. The night guard will start his rounds soon. I will be back tomorrow night, and then you’ll get out of here. We’ll make sure everything works out.”
Hannah leaned forward and kissed Bane. It was the first time she made the move, and a first of warmth glowed in his chest, a feeling that slowly spread through his body and felt nothing like the consuming fire he’d felt while they were naked together. This was different. This was a kind of force that could sustain him through his lifetime.
He cared for her, he realized. Very much. She was someone he’d come to need in his life, and leaving her behind would create a hole that hadn’t been there before – a hole that only Hannah could fill. It was dangerous being that dependent upon someone’s existence, but that was the truth and it had happened without him being able to stop it.
Hannah got up, straightened out her clothes, checking that she looked decent in case she ran into someone out there. The last thing anyone here at the facilities needed to find out was that her relation with the specimens – with Bane – was much more than just an interest in species. That was much more than friendship, in fact.
She stopped at the door and turned to look at him. “Tomorrow night,” she said, and there was promise in her voice. She was going to be back for him, and he believed her. Hannah didn’t break her promises. She was pure and kind and true.
She turned and pulled the cell door shut behind her. Bane heard it click. He waited for the soft click of her shoes on the linoleum as her feet carried her away from him to a home he could only try and imagine. She was almost gone when something occurred to him.
He reached out, hoping it wasn’t too late. He found her, dim and fading as she moved further and further away, but he could still read some of her. He looked for something that resembled his own feelings, something that mirrored the shape of his heart. And he found it. It was the smallest flicker before she was out of range and it disappeared completely, but Bane hadn’t imagined it.
He felt complex feelings for her, and she felt the same for him. It wasn’t strong yet – uncertain – but it was there. Love was what she called it. Bane didn’t know how to describe it in his terms, but here there was a word for i
t. Love.
That was definitely it. He closed his eyes and lay back. Hannah would come for him. He knew now without a sliver of a doubt.
CHAPTER NINE
Hannah waited until the other employees left. The day had never felt as long or dragged on as slowly as it had that day. Two of the employees who always left at five on the dot decided to work late. It was as if everyone was set on finding some way to ruin her plans. Bane had to get out that night if they were going to stop a war from happening, and nothing was going Hannah’s way.
She’d sat with a fist of nerves turning in her stomach every couple of minutes. She hadn’t been able to focus, hadn’t been able to eat. At least none of the employees spoke to her which meant that it wasn’t strange that she was keeping to herself. She produced less work than ever before and Doyle had to ask her to rewrite reports twice.
He hadn’t seemed to think that there was a problem, thank God, or he might have gotten suspicious.
Finally, when it was well past six, the others left and Hannah was left alone. She hurried, finding the keys she’d jacked from her father’s office. She’d volunteered to take documents to him and the bio engineer whose responsibility it really was had been relieved. No one liked going face to face with Stirling, but it was a small sacrifice. Getting the key had been easy – he ignored her most of the time and started a phone call while she was still in the office.
Hannah walked to the cell. Bane was waiting for her on the other side. He looked strained, wrinkles of worry fanning out from his icy eyes.
“I couldn’t get them to leave,” she breathed, opening the door. He stepped through. He was naked, still, and they had to fix that. Hannah took only a moment let her eyes slide down his body and then she turned to the closet with all the coveralls. She found the biggest one and offered it to Bane. It was a little snug around his shoulders and his thighs but it would have to do.
“We have to leave through the loading dock. The night guard is posted at the front until his rounds are due.”
Bane nodded and Hannah led the way. They moved through corridors that she didn’t know very well. Hannah prayed they wouldn’t get lost. Every now and then she had to peek over her shoulder to see if Bane was still behind her. He moved on cat feet, so quiet that if she didn’t know he was there she would have sworn she was alone. He was a soldier, he’d said. It was apparent through the way he moved and the way he looked around him, listening for sounds.
Now that Bane was out of his cell a different side of him came to the fore. Hannah hadn’t seen him like that before – able and in his element.
They found the door – thank God - a garage door that rolled up to almost two stories high, made for the cages with the massive creatures they brought in from time to time. Creatures like Bane’s dragon.
To the side a smaller door was carved out of the big door and Hannah pushed against it. It was locked and none of the keys she had taken from the office worked. She cursed under her breath. A sense of urgency pressed her on. It was getting urgent. She realized that it came from Bane. He needed to get out there.
Bane tapped her shoulder lightly and she stepped aside from him. He placed a hand against the lock. Hannah watched him intently. She expected fire, brute strength, something violent that would break through the door and they would be out in the open, free. Instead, he concentrated on the lock, staring at it hard for a moment, and then it clicked open.
Well, that worked, too.
Hannah stepped through first. She would scan for people and when it was safe she would signal for Bane to step through. They couldn’t afford being caught just yet – the quieter they could slip away, the better.
Hannah had just stepped through the door when a hand clasped over her mouth and a thick arm wrapped around her body, lifting her off her feet so she had no leverage. She tried to squirm, screamed, but it came out as a mumble and her squirming didn’t help at all.
The attack forced her back down onto the ground, holding her at an angle where she had no strength. His hand was still clasped over her mouth. He looked at her and his eyes blazed like fire. They bore into hers. His face was pure menace and Hannah knew right away that he wasn’t from this world. She didn’t know how she knew it – she just knew.
He had brown hair. He looked human. But she was dead certain he came from Bane’s planet.
“Filthy scum,” he said and his voice left his throat in a hiss. He smelled like charred wood. It was strange, coming from someone that looked human. “Take me to him.”
She tried to speak but his hand was over her mouth, still.
“Scream for help and you’ll die,” he hissed again, and Hannah believed him. He took his hand away from her mouth, slowly, and she gasped for air.
“You’re looking for Bane,” she said. The fiery alien narrowed his eyes. “I’m helping him escape.”
“You’re lying.”
“I’m not. Read my mind. Reach into me and see that I speak the truth.”
He narrowed his eyes. “You know much about Bane. It is his rare talent to read a creature’s grid like that.”
A creature he called her.
“I’m telling the truth. He’s inside. I’m just—“
“Silence, human!” he cried out, cutting her off. He spat out the word like it tasted bad. “You will die.”
He raised a hand and it was the second time in so many weeks that Hannah saw the face of death.
“Hocus,” Bane’s sounded behind her. Calm and full of authority. The alien that held onto her froze.
“Bane, you live.”
“I do. And she is saving me.”
The alien called Hocus glanced at Hannah and for a moment it looked like he was willing to believe Bane. But horror crossed his face instead and he threw her to the side.
“You will side with a human?”
Hannah fell to the ground and scrambled back. There was anger in the air, and Hannah knew what happened when anger was thrown into the mix.
“She is not to be harmed,” Bane said. “Or you will have to face my wrath.”
“You will die for a human?”
There wasn’t an answer. A pop sounded and Hannah covered her eyes. Bane was shifting. He’d lost his temper. With his own. For her.
Another pop followed, and a moment later roars filled the night sky. When Hannah opened her eyes the night sky was bright with shooting flames and two dragons fighting it out.
The one was Bane, blue-green and beautiful, like water on its scales. The other – Hocus – was orange, red and black, and he looked like the fire he represented. The fight was furious and the crashed into the building.
Alarms went off.
“Bane!” Hannah shouted but her voice was lost between the roars and the alarms. The authorities were going to arrive and they were going to find a full on extra-terrestrial war if the two men didn’t do something about their fight.
As if on cue, a whole fleet of ships appeared, lighting up the night sky as if it was daylight with floodlights. Everything was illuminated.
The sound of helicopters and fighter jets filled the air. The military had been alerted. Perfect.
“Bane!” Hannah shouted again. Her voice was again drowned out by a fighter plane that flew over them, highlighted against the backdrop of alien lights. It dropped a missile that aimed straight for Bane. The missile hit him in the neck with an explosion the size of a car.
Hannah screamed. Bane roared and tumbled to the ground. Hocus would have attacked if he hadn’t had his hands full with fighter planes that targeted him too. Hannah ran to the dragon on the floor. As she watched, Bane’s dragon started shrinking. The scales gave way to skin, and a few moments later he was a man again. Naked, bleeding from his neck, and unconscious.
“Oh, my God, oh, my God,” Hannah muttered. The war suddenly raged overhead, the aliens opening their own fire. If Hannah didn’t get Bane out of there they were both going to die.
She grabbed one arm and flung it over her shoulder, trying
to get leverage. She got her feet underneath her and hoisted his limp body up. It was hard to drag him, unconscious and heavy, but there was no choice and adrenaline gave her the strength she lacked. Somehow she managed to get him back through the door and closed it behind them.
The war raged on outside but the sounds were muffled now that they were on the other side of a wall. There was only one place to go where she could take care of him and keep them safe for the time being.
Hannah moved again, her body sagging under Bane’s weight. She limped to the other side of the loading dock and pushed through a door. Everyone knew the pin code for the metal door and she opened it. A set of stairs led down into a pit of darkness. Hannah struggled, tried to get the door shut, nearly failed.
She hit the switch and lights flickered to life in intervals all the way down and into the bunker.
