by Unknown
“Maaaaa,” Dime chimed in, egg spilling from his mouth. Hannah handed him a napkin and urged him to use it. He patted his mouth and threw it down. “Maaafloooer husband gone.”
He returned to eating as if he’d said nothing significant at all. Everyone stared at Mayflower, waiting for an explanation. She shrugged and pretended to be intensely interested in the hem of her shirt.
“Husband?” Mark spoke first, anger oozing from the one single word. Mayflower sighed. They’d probably find out sooner or later. How embarrassing it was, though, like something out of a soap opera.
“All right, all right. After the synthbot attack, nobody knew who I was and when I didn’t return home after a month, my husband had me declared ‘dead in proxy due to synthbot error’ and married my sister. End of story.”
“What a dick,” Selena empathized, and Mayflower nodded, not looking up.
“Yep, I’d have to agree.”
Mark reached out, touching Mayflower’s hand as she glanced up at him from under her thick lashes. By holy Aphrodite, was she beautiful.
“How did you know this happened?” Dix questioned her. “Did someone tell you?”
“Chico told me when we hooked up, but I never believed him. I sneaked back to the Blue side and saw it for myself.”
Dix’s eyebrows furrowed. “You sneaked back? You know a way back to the Blue side?”
Her eyes widened. “Of course. I thought everyone knew how to get back across.”
Mark squeezed her hand. He jumped up from the table, ran around it and hoisted her into his arms. He kissed her until they were both breathless.
“Mayflower, I think you just saved us a trip to Chico’s club,” Selena rasped.
“What? How? I don’t understand.”
“Chico probably finally figured out you knew how to get to the Blue side without getting caught. Probably figured you had a map. It’s how the Blues transport weapons to the Blacks and how the Blacks transport their drugs to the Blues. Whoever controls it controls everything.”
Dix clapped his hands and shouted orders, putting the Camp on alert. Residents scurried about making ready for their attack. “Mark, you want to lead this time, or shall I?”
“I say we lead together,” Mark suggested, the battle juices flowing.
Mayflower looked from one to the other, confused. “What’s happening? What did I do? What are you guys doing?”
The concern in Mayflower’s voice softened something inside him. Niobe never cared if he returned from battle. Most of the time, he got the impression she hoped he’d die.
He kissed Mayflower, massaging her soft, full lips with his and letting his erection poke her.
“Mayflower, baby, we’re going to save the world.”
Chapter Twelve
For some reason, Mayflower thought saving the world would take longer.
In three hours, Dix and Mark and their band of cybernetically enhanced warriors returned from their mission no worse for wear. Selena and Mayflower watched them return, and Mayflower noticed Selena stared in disbelief. Since she’d come to realize nothing fazed Selena, Mayflower decided worrying herself into a frenzy qualified as the best course of action at the time.
She ran to Mark and jumped into his arms, wrapping her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. He seemed uninjured. Even his cock remained erect. As a matter of fact, none of the soldiers appeared even tired. Most seemed disappointed.
“Dix, what happened?” Selena asked as she helped him set the mismatched odds and ends he called his gear on the ground.
“Patrols from the Blues and the Blacks took over the path last week. Diplomats constructed an agreement between their factions. There’s an uneasy peace there, but it’s stable for now.”
Mayflower’s stomach churned. All this for nothing? Chico chasing her all over hell, endangering Dime and killing Chilly—for nothing?
Mark’s amber eyes searched hers, his hands on both sides of her face. “Is there anything else Chico might have wanted? Think, baby, think. Is there anything of yours he might have thought valuable?”
Her heart pounded and her mouth went dry. She had nothing except Dime. She had no clue. No family. No possessions.
Wait a minute.
“I’ll be right back,” she promised, and ran for the building housing the neural trauma victims.
Hannah and Dime weren’t in their usual spot, but it didn’t take long to find them. Moans led Mayflower to a room off to the side, where she found Hannah straddling Dime. The two writhed in pleasure, rocking back and forth. Apparently, fucking helped improve Dime’s verbal skills tremendously.
“Hannaah, fuck me, Hannaaah,” he groaned, and Hannah did her best to accommodate him.
Mayflower stood back, her pussy wet as hell from watching two people have sex. She waited until the afterglow set in before barging in. Hannah gasped and tried to cover herself, but Dime grinned.
“Love Hannaah, Maaaflooer,” he said, and Mayflower kissed his forehead.
“I do, too, baby. And I love you,” she said, stroking his hair from his face. “Dime, I need to take my necklace back, okay?”
Dime reached for Hannah as Mayflower removed the smooth silver box with rounded edges and hung it around her own neck. She rushed back, hoping she’d stumbled on to something. If not, back to feeling powerless again.
Mark helped unpack supplies as she rushed up, his muscular thighs working in his tight jeans. Damn, a man never looked so good. Her breasts swelled and her nipple hardened. How ironic.
“This might help,” she said, holding the necklace out in front of Mark.
He tilted his head, his quizzical expression endearing. How she loved his eyes and the way his curls bounced. An archetypal Greek god.
Between this and listening to Dime and Hannah, Mayflower’s breasts ached, and her longing for Mark’s cock inside her grew exponentially as his fingertips brushed hers.
He lifted the necklace to the sunlight.
“Did they give you this in the hospital after the attack?”
“Yeah. My nipple’s in there. If we reattach it via nanotech, we can look at the information stored in it.”
Mark pulled her to him, kissing her soundly and running his hand down to her ass. He kneaded her hips as his tongue played with hers.
“Are you sure?”
She lifted her leg to his hip, trying to get closer, to wrangle his hard cock in her general direction. Alone by the Camp’s mini tank, having a brief go at it was a definite possibility.
“Yes, I’m sure,” she whispered into his mouth as her pants fell to the ground.
He turned her abruptly, placing her hands apart on the tank. He secured the necklace around her neck, kissing his way to her ear and nibbling. She shuddered, electricity shooting straight to her clit, and lifted her ass to him.
He accepted her invitation.
His fingers slid into her wet cunt, stretching her, making her ready for him. His cock followed shortly after, his girth opening her lips and gliding along her smooth, swollen channel. He played with her clit as he pummeled her, his balls slapping her ass. His fingers entwined with hers, he pumped himself into her, his heavy breathing setting her afire.
Her orgasm neared, their bodies slamming together. She whimpered, and Mark pushed deeper, whispering her name over and over.
“Mayflower, Mayflower,” he grunted. “I love you.”
Her world tilted. Pure feeling exploded inside her, heightened only by his climax just seconds later. His thrusts slowed, and she panted, suddenly aware they’d just fucked their brains about on a mini tank. How bizarre.
Even more bizarre was she thought Mark said, “I love you.” She could have sworn he said it, actually. Just like he yelled Aphrodite when he came.
“Mayflower, I said I love you.”
He did say it. She wrapped his arms around her and wiggled her ass against him. That secure, content feeling crept over her again.
“I love you, too, Jovinious Markus A
rtinuous,” she said, trying to get a handle on all her emotions. She reverted to what she knew best. Sarcasm. “So if you love me, why do you shout ‘Aphrodite’ when you come?”
Mark chuckled. “To please the goddess of love, of course. Otherwise, I’d have bad luck in love.”
“It took her two thousand years to hook you up right, Mark. I think you can safely assume she didn’t give a shit.”
He nipped at her neck and she yelped. “Better late than never, my love.”
She had to give him that.
* * * *
Reattaching her nipple with the nanotechnology didn’t hurt. The memories it stirred up did. Her nipple, excised after the attack to store information about the victim and the crime per Black procedure, contained her real identity, someone she hadn’t been in a very long time.
Selena oversaw the procedure, helping Sian, the medic, when he requested. He removed the black ink, partially faded anyway from lack of reapplication, from around her nipples and set about sterilizing the area. Once he placed the nipple where it belonged, the nanobots would do the rest.
The information, once activated by the re-attachment, would pour through Mayflower’s brain and download into the computer from an electrode placed near her ear. Sian offered her relaxation drugs, but Mayflower refused them.
“Ready?”
“Ready.”
Sian carefully placed her nipple to her skin, and the nanobots immediately matched the nerve endings, expertly creating skin connections to fuse her nipple back on her breast as if it had never been removed.
Without warning, the pictures began to play through her mind, and Mayflower closed her eyes against the onslaught. Hundred of images of the attack, her memory of it and all the police reports, soared along her neurons, forcing her back. Tears involuntarily sprung to her eyes and she gripped the chair arms until her fingers turned bright white.
As if from a distance, she heard Mark calling out. “Can’t you do something for her?”
Then it was over.
* * * *
Mayflower woke up in Mark’s arms, coming from a deathlike sleep. The last thing she remembered was Sian sticking her with a needle after her blood pressure spiked. Then nothing.
“You okay?” Mark’s voice filled her with warmth, and she snuggled into his shoulder, sighing. “Yeah, you’re okay.”
The next time she woke up, darkness had descended and the moon rose high. Voices carried into the tent, where she lay alone, the memories drifting around like lazy wisps of smoke. What she saw today surprised her, but she didn’t remember why exactly. Something to do with the synthbot attack, something about it being fake.
Fake.
A memory plant. The whole horrible thing had been a fake scenario implanted in her brain. She recognized the scene tags; hell, she’d watched Chilly create enough of the awful things to supplement his lith habit to recognize one in an instant.
She’d been set up.
She hopped up, which proved to be a mistake. A wave of grogginess washed over her, but she steadied herself and stormed out of the tent.
Mayflower found Mark, Dix and Selena sitting with Sian. Images played across a computer screen, but no one seemed to notice after she walked into the room. Everyone except Mark, who studied the ground, stared at her again. The intense mixture of sympathy and something she couldn’t quite identify in their gazes stopped her in her tracks.
“Maia Weston?” Dix spoke first.
God, how long had it been since she’d heard her given name?
“Maia Weston Wellington?”
Wow, it sounded even stranger with her married name thrown in there.
“Yes, I guess that’s me. Why is everyone looking so down?”
“Because, Maia Weston Wellington,” Mark ground out. “I killed your son.”
Chapter Thirteen
Mark couldn’t bring himself to glance at Maia before he fled out the door of the Camp’s med building. He’d killed her son, just like he’d killed his own boy. Why in the name of gods did he still exist?
He ran to the edge of the cliff beside the bell, staring at the water, wishing Zeus saw fit to strike him dead with a lightning bolt right then and there. But the gods showed him no mercy over the years; why would they now?
Minutes passed, the cold seeping into his bones, making him shiver. His greedy search for a cure to his vampirism took the life of an unborn child. He dropped to his knees and shouted at the sky.
Was it too much to ask? Klyper Corporation developed the cure, made it available, and Mark had fought so long, in so many battles. He’d grown so weary. He just wanted a chance to go to the Elysian fields with his brothers in arms.
The Hundred Years War, the Civil War, every damned revolution that came along, he fought in it. Served well. Saved lives. Taught raw recruits everything he knew.
All the World Wars, all the Asian conflicts. How was he supposed to know Klyper’s cure required a pregnant woman’s body to process it or that they’d use a woman without her permission?
“Mark?”
Mark remained facing the ocean. He deserved to die a coward’s death. He crawled closer to the edge of the cliff. Defy the gods, end it now. No shield, no battle. Just an ending.
“Oh, no, you don’t, you coward!” Maia shouted, throwing herself on him, pounding him with her fists. “You don’t get out of this pissy-assed Greek tragedy farce if I don’t. I have to live it and so do you. I need you, you stupid heroic bastard. I need you!”
Maia fell on top of him, and instinct brought his arms around her waist, pulling her under him. He trapped with his body, thrusting his leg between her thighs.
“Run from me, Maia Weston,” he choked out, kissing her. “I’m nothing but a curse. Anyone I love dies.”
“If you want me to run, why are you kissing me like that?” Maia shot back, grabbing his head in her hands and tugging his lips with her teeth. “It wasn’t your fault my sister decided to use me as a guinea pig just to get rid of me and the only heir to the Weston fortune.”
Mark smoothed a tiny bit of hair from Maia’s face. The moonlight glistened in her eyes, making her appear ethereal, like a goddess. His goddess.
“What are you talking about?” he asked.
“My sister wanted me dead because I carried the heir she could never bear. She wanted my dad’s fortune. She set it all up. Even planting fake memories and dumping me in Black territory. Sound familiar?”
His mind whirled. No one was ever supposed to see the name of the donor, but he’d peeked. No one would have known if he hadn’t been curious. Maia continued.
“Getting my husband was an extra bonus, I guess. Just for the record, he was a dick anyway. Who the fuck marries their sister-in-law so soon after their wife supposedly dies? He was a pussy, like all the Wellingtons.”
Adorable. His spirited little woman was adorable. And feisty. His cock hardened. Again. He’d never get used to wanting her.
Dix’s yelling interrupted his lust. They gathered themselves from the ground, dusting each other off, and her touch threatened to undo him. After one more brush of her lips, they headed back, holding hands like young lovers on a date in the ’90s.
By the time they returned, Dix and Selena were in serious discussions with Rocky and Melanchor. Dix waved them over.
“Chico wanted the dirt on the Blues because if it gets out that Klyper Corporation did illegal cures, the Blues are in for a PR fiasco. With peace talks in the toilet, his gang continues to dominate the lith market.”
For some reason, the way Dix stared at Maia made Mark a little uncomfortable. He leaned forward, ignoring Mark as he took Maia’s hand in his own. Mark glared.
“Maia,” Dix said, “if we can prove this wasn’t standard operating procedure, that it was a rogue event done by an employee bent on revenge or something like that, we can offset this and save a lot of lives.”
Mark stepped in front of Maia.
“I know what you’re thinking, and like hell will that
ever happen,” he nearly shouted. Maia stepped in front of him, shoving him out of the way. “Since when did you decide what I can and can’t do?” She paused for a second, biting her lip. “Um, Dix, exactly what do you want me to do?”
Dix folded his hands in his lap, and met her gaze directly. His blue eyes blazed.
“We need you to go to the Blue side. Find the evidence we need to prove this was a one-time ordeal, whether it was or not.”
Mark slammed his hand down, frustration boiling over. “No, dammit, I said no!”
But Maia already left.
Chapter Fourteen
Wow, Maia’d forgotten how blond her hair really was after all these years of hiding it with the hair adjuster. And her green eyes sparkled so after she removed her violet contacts. Damn, she’d even say she was pretty, in a Blue sort of way.
Maia stepped back into the building, where Mark sat, glaring at Dix, at least until she strolled in. He fixed his gaze upon her, letting it rove up and down her body. He stopped at her face, and his cheeks colored.
“Honey blond,” Maia said, pointing out her real color. “Think I can pass for a Blue? I’m kind of looking forward to scaring the shit out of my husband – er, ex-husband.”
Selena lifted Maia’s silky strands. “So lovely,” she murmured, as if she’d never seen long blond tresses before. Mark gulped. “So pretty.”
Maia’s face heated. “Thank you.” A momentary silence followed, with no one speaking or moving, until Maia, never one to enjoy silence for long, clapped her hands together. “Now let’s get going, shall we?”
Everyone jumped into action except Mark, who just sat and stared, his expression unreadable.
* * * *
Once Dix communicated with the commanders of the Blue and Black forces along the Path, soldiers from both sides secured Mark and Maia’s transport. He’d said nothing since she’d revealed her true hair and eye color. After all they’d shared, it took so little to displease him? Hell, she’d dye her hair if it was that big of a deal. All he had to do was ask.
