Eternal Refuge

by Annabelle McInnes

  Nick and Kira were making the final preparations to their sleeping quarters. He removed the googles and approached.

  ‘Thank fuck,’ Nick muttered when he saw Euan. ‘Thought we were gonna have to fight off the rats as well as Parker’s men tonight.’

  ‘Should keep us warm too when the adrenaline wears off,’ Euan offered.

  Even with the softness in Nick’s voice, he avoided the brush of Euan’s skin when he took the blankets from his hand and laid the first one over the straw. His grunt of ‘You’re gonna need them,’ had Kira narrowing her eyes at Nick’s back.

  Euan took a breath before he moved forward to help. He was not looking forward to another night without their warm bodies wrapped around him to keep the nightmares at bay. But what he’d done was not forgotten, and even as they battled for their lives, Nick could not yet forgive.

  Chapter 8

  Kira

  Safety was always relative. As Kira woke, she realised the bunker that had housed her had only provided an illusion of safety. It was the big man that held her, the biker who watched her, and the brother that had kept her hidden, that provided the true sanctuary. Euan might not understand it, but it was men like him that would see an end to this madness.

  The comforting warmth created by body heat cocooned her, wrapped around her, pulled her under the layers of sleep and threatened to never let her go. She relished it for just a moment, a fleeting second where the realities of their situation were banished and not allowed to intrude. A single breath where they were not fleeing for their lives, where her childhood home hadn’t been abandoned to fire, where there were not men biting their heels for one glimpse of her, one touch. One taste …

  Despite the warmth, she shivered.

  She was not going to permit any of that to tarnish this moment. Not the memories of Euan’s butchered form being carried out of the back of an SUV, his survival precarious. Not Nick bent over that bloody body sobbing, his shoulders shaking with his anguish, his hands stained black with Euan’s blood. Not the destruction of Euan’s face and eye, and the subsequent limitations it had imposed in this dystopian landscape. Not the weeks it had taken for him to break through the fever.

  Nope, none of that.

  One big palm rested on her hip. Long fingers were curled around the protruding bone and into the crevice created between her stomach and her thigh. Even through the layers of fabric, the sensation burned.

  ‘You’re squirming, sweetheart. Need something from me?’

  Heavens, that voice. Deep, rumbly, magnificent. Rough with sleep, it curled around her and gripped her throat. There had been a time where she had thought she would never hear that rich baritone again. She wiggled further into him, took another precious moment to feel the warmth of that body press against her. The long leg that rested up against her thigh, encased in the waterproof fabric that mirrored hers.

  Everything that she could have lost.

  ‘A hug.’ Her voice was muffled under the layers of blankets, but Euan’s superhuman senses heard her regardless.

  The big hand moved. Another joined it. Together, they coaxed her body until she rested flat upon him. She loved this. Being wrapped in his arms. The perfection of her tiny body cradled by his enormous one.

  ‘When this is all over, I’m going to find a bath and soak for the longest time. Even if the water is cold.’ The blankets still covered most of her lower body, but her head and shoulders were free. His fingers tunnelled into her hair, pulled at the strands to entice a delicious sting that zipped down her spine. She arched in his hold. He chuckled low in his chest. She fisted the fabric between his broad pectorals.

  ‘Can I watch?’

  Her fist tightened, her lips tipped up. ‘Only if you reconcile with Nick first.’

  He paused long enough for her to lift her head. ‘I’ll be doing that anyway,’ he said.

  She met and held the gaze of his single brown eye. Exhaustion marred his features. The lines at the corner of his eye were deep, the groves around his mouth pronounced. Hollows, shadows and pale skin stared back at her. The bandage around his head was black with soot and dirt and was strapped to his head at an odd angle. She reached out, hesitated when his focus tracked her movement and narrowed.

  ‘It needs to be re-bandaged, or taken off entirely,’ she told him.

  He studied her. The assessment was serious, confronting. Under the blankets, his hands squeezed her hips. ‘Are you ready for it?’ he asked.

  She nodded. In her chest, her heart beat a rhythm of a thunderstorm, dark and ominous. He asked as if he didn’t know. As if he didn’t realise that it had been her that had helped with the dressings over the weeks he lay unconscious, tormented by fever and nightmares. The bandages that covered his shoulder, his feet, his face. The tears that she had wept over his body were dry now, they had condensed into a solid lump that sat in the pit of her stomach, that would sometimes travel upwards to clog her throat, weigh her heart down. She would never be ready for what she knew was under that bandage. Not because of the physical scarring, but it was because of what it represented to Euan, to his inner self. And to what it meant to the trust he had in her and Nick.

  She swallowed around the lump and nodded.

  He held himself unnaturally still as she carefully unwrapped the bandage. Her fingers were almost as dirty as the wrappings. He was lucky his wounds had healed past the point of infection. In this environment, he would surely succumb to the poison.

  Then, the bandages were gone and his bare face was before her. The dawn had lengthened, grown in strength and the rain had moved on. Orange light filtered through the lingering smoke and enlightened the significant scarring across the left-hand side of his face. Lily had done the best job she could to minimise the disfigurement. But Rodgers’s intention had been to maim, torture. The pink puckered scar ran from his forehead, bisected his brow, down through the eye socket, which had been stitched closed, and over his cheekbone. It ended towards his ear. The stitches had been removed, but tiny little white pinpricks dotted the edges, a testament to the numbers needed to hold his flesh together.

  ‘That bad, huh?’ he asked, his face blank.

  The tips of her fingers touched his lips, shortly followed by her own. They were soft under her touch, her pressure. The hairs of his beard were coarse against her chin. She breathed in and smelt the strong scent of smoke and Euan. Forest and pine.

  ‘Flawless.’ She spoke against his lips. The soft brush tantalised, teased.

  His lips curved beneath hers. ‘For some fucked-up reason, I believe you.’

  ‘You should,’ she murmured. ‘I never lie.’

  His hands left her hips to cup her jaw. They engulfed her face, his palms warm. She felt safe in his hold. ‘Not even about an escape hatch hidden behind a closet?’

  Kira squished up her nose. ‘You would have been disappointed if I hadn’t kept it to myself.’ She said those words instead of what flashed through her mind.

  You would have died. We would have died.

  He read her thoughts anyway. He always could. ‘I’m sorry.’

  She studied his face further. The beard was back, a deep, russet brown. The hairline with only a hint of stubble, his cauliflower ears. ‘You said that to me, that afternoon in the bedroom when we first met. I told you I was lonely. Do you remember?’

  A small tilt touched the corner of his lips. She pressed a finger to it, savoured it for the priceless thing it was. He nodded.

  ‘You terrified me. And I thought I had made the worst mistake of my life, approaching you, telling you about the bunker. It just kind of came out, and I was horrified that you would take advantage. Then you just said you were sorry, and I wanted to sob in your arms.’

  ‘I do have that effect on women.’ His voice was deeper when he was amused. She found it charming.

  There was silence between them as they relaxed. She bent down to place her cheek against his uninjured shoulder. He heaved a sigh beneath her and began to reacquaint himself
with the shape of her body.

  After a time, he murmured, ‘I thought you were so impossible.’

  A sharp edge of glass pierced her heart, she lifted her head. ‘Seeing all this, living through it. I can understand why.’

  ‘I never wanted this for you, for Nick.’

  She petted his arm, fiddled with a seam. ‘I know.’

  His smile faded then. His eye burned. She held her breath. ‘I love you. Always, Kira.’

  She leaned back into his body, wrapped her leg around his hips and buried her face into the crook of his shoulder and neck. She breathed in. His scent filled her lungs, settled her, calmed her. He tunnelled one hand into the waistband of her pants to cup her bottom over her panties. His other hand massaged her nape. He crushed her close. She found it difficult to breathe but didn’t care. She needed this, he did too.

  Long moments, a hundred heartbeats. Finally, Kira reluctantly pulled her face from the warmth of Euan’s skin. ‘I’ll start breakfast. Is it safe to light a fire?’

  Nick’s bare feet slapped the concrete as he entered the stall.

  ‘Looks it,’ he answered instead of Euan as he set down his rifle. His voice was rough, the gold in his eyes was laced with fatigue.

  Kira glared at Nick. ‘You didn’t wake me for my watch.’

  Nick shrugged. The nonchalant action looked petty on a grown man. ‘I couldn’t sleep, no point in all three of us being awake.’

  The muscles around Kira’s eyes tightened until she closed them. The surge of anger was vivid, violent. How could she convince them? How could she, little tiny Kira, make them see that they would fail if they didn’t include her on this? Euan spoke of union as if she was just the back wall that supported them. He didn’t see what she saw. A man broken by torture and flame, another one tormented by anger and grief. Neither of them were in a position to fully drive this mission, their limitations diverse yet related. If they didn’t get their heads out of their backsides, one of them was going to make a mistake.

  She would be a part of this. An active part. For the men she loved, she would protect them as they did her.

  She would no longer let a small thing like their permission get in the way.

  Not anymore.

  Euan felt her shift against him and gripped her bottom more firmly in response. ‘It makes sense, Kira.’

  She tried not to grind her teeth. ‘So, I’m taking the first watch tonight?’

  The two men shared a silent, communicative glance and the lid on her temper blew away. ‘You are both chauvinist bastards. If you don’t let me be a contributing member of this trio, I am going to get up and leave in the middle of the night just to teach you both a lesson.’

  They both responded to that in their own unique way. Kira should have thought her statement through before she said something as argumentative to Euan while his hands were so close to her sensitive bits. While Nick flashed a smile at her brazenness, Euan’s growl vibrated beneath her, but she had no time to relish the wonders of what that did to her insides when she was flipped until she was on her back, his larger body over her. ‘Don’t make threats like that. We are not back at home, covered by layers of steel, surrounded by an arsenal. You will be treated like a contributing member of this trio when it’s appropriate. Your safety is paramount in this.’

  ‘And what about your safety, Nick’s?’ she fired back.

  ‘We can look after ourselves,’ he growled in response.

  She showed her teeth, the need to hiss and spit rolled within her. ‘Seriously? That is still your argument? Are you crazy? Nick is one single human who cannot stay awake forever. Neither can you. When will you understand that we are stronger together than we are apart?’

  He was trying, he was. Behind eyes of brown velvet, Euan debated her argument. Disputed the merits and the negatives. He was sexist, but he was honest about it. He was also measured in his approach to all things, considered, thoughtful. She knew that points were being added to her corner when he said, ‘If you promise me you’ll do as you’re told, follow orders, defer to me if required, I’ll consider it.’

  Nick snorted. ‘Such a pushover.’

  Euan’s grip remained tight, his body heavy, but his gaze left her to cut to Nick. She couldn’t see the look he gave him, but the blond man’s shoulders fell, his humour dissipated. He nodded.

  He turned back to her. One hand left her hair so the pads of his thumbs could caress her cheeks. Instinctively, her eyes closed and she sighed. She was upset, but not so much so that she couldn’t see the love they had for her, the reasoning behind their overbearing protection. She was no fool, she understood the environment they now lived in, as best as they would allow, but like they had when they lived sheltered in the bunker, it wasn’t sustainable, and it could not be how they moved forward.

  The new world, and the men in it, deserved better than broken, frightened women that hid underground.

  It deserved warriors, counterparts in all things, equals that stood by their sides and growled at the oncoming rise of dystopia with them.

  She said, ‘I’m not backing down in this, Euan. But I promise you, if you truly let me be your equal, I’ll do as you command, just as any other man under you would.’

  The smile was slow, but when fully formed, radiant. It was so large, she could see the gaps where he’d lost his molars. She freed her hands from beneath him, cupped those bearded cheeks and smashed her lips against his. He answered, like he always did, with restrained aggression. She revelled in it.

  The clearing of a throat had them reluctantly pulling apart. Nick’s features were impassive, but the heat that filtered through his green eyes could not be denied. Neither could the bulge against the fly of his pants.

  Measuring them and their reaction, he sat in their nest. Kira noticed the space he left between himself and Euan was less than he’d allowed last night.

  ‘You’re right, Pix,’ Nick said, ‘and he knows it. He’s just being a stubborn ass.’ He elbowed Euan, who cut him a sly glance. ‘Look what I found.’

  From Nick’s outstretched fingers, a black eyepatch hung from a string of dark elastic. ‘I found it in the tack room, in one of the drawers. It’s big, probably for one of the horses.’ He waited for Euan to reach out before he finished. ‘You’re gonna be infamous with this thing.’

  Euan grunted, took the patch from Nick’s grasp and positioned it over his ruined eye. Their combined acquiescence had eased her temper, and the patch further destroyed it. She swallowed it all, closed her eyes, took a breath, centred herself. Suppressed her irritation that would do no good to them now. They needed her, more than they were willing to accept.

  ‘Looks good,’ Nick whispered when the patch was in place. The scar was still visible above and below the leather, but it removed the brutal realities of his torture from view.

  Kira stood and brushed the straw from her knees and out of her hair. She couldn’t let him see her tears. She wouldn’t allow them to comment on the salt water that pooled in the corners of her eyes, to comfort her, to provide a retreat. Not after her tirade. She had asked for equality. And yet she cried when Euan put on a simple eyepatch.

  They had come so far, but he had travelled the hardest road.

  She shook her head when she heard Euan move to stand. She stepped out of his reach when the corner of her eye caught his attempt to reach out to her. She swiped at her cheeks and was disappointed with her voice when she finally spoke. ‘Plans? Strategies? Thoughts on what we’re going to do next?’

  Never fooled. Never distracted. Euan pressed his large body against her spine. The warmth that radiated out from him, that woodsy smell. His physical presence …

  The tears slipped over her cheeks in silence.

  ‘You can stand by our side and still be who you are, Kira. Being equal doesn’t mean you have to be less feminine.’

  His hands were on her shoulders. So big, they cupped the entire rounded edge. She leaned into him, allowed him to hold her, and she closed her eyes
, just for a minute, and she allowed herself to feel him, and all the torment that came with it.

  Nick’s touch was just as assertive, just as possessive. Like they had that first night, they wrapped her in an embrace of solidarity and hope. But this time, love anchored them. Love tied them to their foundations. Love drew them closer, pulled them tighter. Love extinguished the anger that simmered between them.

  Love made them whole.

  Kira felt safe, free from the terror that surrounded them, until Euan said, ‘We go back home, see what’s left, what we can salvage and then find somewhere safe to live out our lives together.’

  Kira’s stomach plummeted.

  Chapter 9

  Nick

  The bomb had been dropped. The ultimate goal voiced. But at the heart of the explosion, there was no unanimous agreement.

  The rain had cleared but the sky was white with high cloud. Grey wisps hovered below the expanse of colourless mist, shielding any blue from view. The wind had removed the smoke, and the orange-red glow that had accompanied the sun in the previous day no longer surrounded them. Now, the sky was white and the scent of smoke absent.

  Nick emerged from the barn with cautious steps. His lips were chapped and the skin on his checks stung when the wind hit them. He wrapped one of Kira’s scarves around his neck and mouth to keep the worst of the breeze at bay, but until things warmed up, he was resigned to endure freezing fingers.

  He looked back over his shoulder. Within the shadows of the barn, Euan and Kira were still wrapped in each other. Not sleeping and not fucking, just finding comfort in the warmth of their shared embrace and the safety of each other’s arms. Even if disagreement simmered between them.

  Nick eyed his boots in his hand. They were still wet but no longer soggy. His socks were merely damp now too. But he still begrudged the icy hold on his toes that he knew would come as he sat his ass on the concrete step and slipped his feet into the boot. He repressed the shiver, but not the grimace.

  He stood and adjusted his belt. He’d take a piss and then, in the light of day, he would see what he could find in the farmhouse they had avoided for the sake of safety the night before.