by Stasia Black
Not that Jonas minded.
Most of the men who’d come with them were part of their own clans, but there were a handful of unbonded men who’d come from the Security Squadron and though Nix trusted them, that meant nothing to Jonas. It had been his second in command who’d turned out to be Travis’s spy last year.
Yeah, and you were no better at spotting Henry—
But Shay’s frantic cries of pleasure were soon tuning out any other thought.
She was coming. Her pussy quaked and spurted her sweet juices into his mouth. Jonas lapped them all up.
Fuck. She was his favorite meal. Always would be.
She shuffled backwards from the cot, and when Jonas looked up, it was to see her licking her lips and swiping at her chin with her forearm. She was a swallower. So fucking hot. She was the sexiest damn thing he’d ever seen in his whole goddamned life.
“Love you,” Charlie said, reaching out a hand for her. She took it, lifting it to her lips. She was smiling so wide that tears glistened in her eyes.
“You’re my hero.” She leaned down and kissed him on the lips. “My miracle. You walked through fire for me. My protector.”
Jonas watched the peace that settled over Charlie’s face at her words.
And he was so fucking jealous he could barely stand to be in his own skin.
Jonas got to his feet and was about to try heading out again—they’d all fucked like Shay wanted, so she could count that box checked.
But Shay’s hand flew out to block him, eyes dark when he looked over at her. “Now tell Gabriel how you want him to fuck me. I’d like it if you do it at the same time, but I leave the details up to you.”
She took a step back to put herself on display, then lipped the tip of her finger, circling her own nipple like the goddamned vixen she was.
“What are you—” Jonas tried to object. “I’m not going to—”
“Oh yes you are,” Shay said, teasing the same finger down her stomach all the way to her sex. She gasped and arched her back as she rubbed her finger over her clitoris. “I want a G-spot orgasm, and you two are just the ones to give it to me.”
Jonas’s eyes shot to Gabriel but he held up his hands like, hey man, this is on you.
Then Shay spun where she stood on the blanket they’d laid out on the cave floor as a makeshift rug.
She looked over her shoulder at Jonas, ass out. Her bottom was positively luscious in the flickering candlelight.
“Who do you think should take my ass, Jonas? You? Or do you want Gabriel to fuck me there while you plow my cunt? I’m not sure I could take you back there.” Her eyes flicked down to Jonas’s erection that he’d freed while he ate her out. “You’re so thick.” She bit her bottom lip while she said it, and when her eyes came back to his, he’d swear she was all but salivating. “But if you think I should try to take it, I will.”
Her words set a fire blazing in Jonas’s chest.
His baby doll was toying with him and it both pissed him the fuck off and turned him the hell on. He wanted to march over to where she was standing and bend her over his knee. He wanted to turn that pale, milky white ass of hers pink with his hand print.
And, as if she could read his thoughts, she leaned over and grabbed hold of the bottom of the cot, her ass on display like the Thanksgiving turkey. Bent over as far as she was, Jonas could even see her pussy. The candle light glinted off the moisture drenching her.
When he didn’t move—because Jesus, he could barely breathe—Shay shifted slightly so she could look around her shoulder at him.
And what he saw in her face fucking slayed him.
“Baby, I think the reason you couldn’t pull the trigger was because you’re a good man, not a coward. And the thought of taking the life of another human being, even one as worthless and evil as Arnold Jason Travis—” she shook her head “—was too abhorrent to the kind of man you are. A good man.”
Jonas started to say something but she held up a hand to stop him.
“And even if that wasn’t why you couldn’t shoot him, I don’t have your fatal flaw, Jonas. I’m capable of forgiveness. The question is, can you be a real man and accept it?”
Jonas’s eyes fell shut at her words. They hit him like a tsunami crashing over his soul. Because goddamn, just like always, she’d seen straight to the heart of it, hadn’t she? She’d seen what a hypocrite he was. He’d been a nasty, cold bastard to her when her mistakes came to light.
People aren’t perfect, she’d once said. They make mistakes. If you can’t ever forgive them, how will you ever let anyone close to you?
But Jesus Christ, it was like he’d lived as if he thought he perfect. Judging everyone else around him so harshly. Decades after he’d rejected his father’s path, he’d still been just like him—passing judgement on everyone he met. The world failed him? Fine, he’d withdraw from society. Shay made a mistake? He wouldn’t even hear her out. She was all but dead to him.
Who the fuck did he think he was? Jesus?
Probably not even Jesus could live up to the impossible standards Jonas had set.
“Shay,” he said, his throat so raw her name came out half-croaked. “I’m so sor—”
“I forgive you,” she cut him off, eyes full of compassion. But then she smiled and a wicked gleam entered her eye. “If you really want to make it up to me, though, you and Gabriel can fuck me so hard I’ll feel it into next goddamned week.”
Heat flared through Jonas’s skin and his cock jumped. “Oh baby doll.” He rubbed his hands together. “Be careful what you wish for.”
And then he stalked like a predator over toward the woman who’d turned his life upside down more times than he could count—and who just now had, yet again, saved him.
Epilogue
Meanwhile, Right After President Goddard Was Assassinated…
Compared to all the other places Drea had been imprisoned, the President’s personal detention center was pretty nice, all things considered.
It was in the basement of the Omni. He had to have had it build special—a series of ten cells, bars and all. Smaller than you’d find in say a local county jail, but then, these were obviously just meant to hold one person apiece.
Because that wasn’t creepy. That the President of the Republic kept his own little jail-slash-torture chamber in the bottom of what was essentially the capitol building.
“Ya know, like you do,” Drea whispered under her breath, working her way down the bars, testing each one for weaknesses again. “Not abnormal at all.”
The bars were steel, she was pretty sure. So bending them and trying to slip through wasn’t an option. And the joints and pegs were on the opposite side of the door so she couldn’t jimmy those loose. But maybe if she—
“You sure are pretty.”
Drea didn’t give the guard the satisfaction of a reaction. He was middle-aged, had hair that was more gray than brown, and a potbelly that hung so far over his belt she imagined it had been half a decade since he’d been able to see his toes.
Drea stood stock still.
“And with all that pretty blonde hair. I bet you could make a fella feel reaaaaaaal good.”
Drea breathed out a sharp breath.
Don’t lose your temper. Don’t lose your temper.
Use all the tools at your disposal.
Even if it makes you want to gag on your own dreadlocks.
She slowly crossed her arms across her stomach in a way that propped her boob up and out. She rubbed her arms up and down.
“Say, it sure is chilly in here,” she said, face slightly downturned so that she was only looking the guard through her eyelashes. “Do you think I could borrow your jacket?” She bit her lip and continued blinking up at him. “I promise I’ll be good.”
Shit, she was laying it on too thick, wasn’t she? He’d see right through her act and—
“Well, I could always warm you up.”
Or not.
She smiled and dipped her head. “If
it wouldn’t be too much trouble, I mean. I know all you men here at the capitol have such important jobs. Working for the President and all.”
“Aw he wouldn’t mind me seeing to the comfort of a prisoner. The New Republic is all about treating people humanely after all.”
“Oh my gosh,” Drea said, jumping up and down and clapping her hands—she was just purely channeling Sophia now.
Jesus, never thought she’d see the day. She might only be eight years older than the nineteen-year-old, but it felt like five decades separated them.
The guard was just eating this shit up, though.
Men were so fucking easy.
She’d shake her head if she weren’t so busy keeping to her act.
That’s right, buddy. Reach for those keys.
She fought to keep her eyes on his face while his hand went to the keyring at his belt.
He lifted a warning finger. “Step back now. Don’t give me any trouble or you’ll regret it.” His hand went to the retractable billy club on his belt.
“Oh no, sir,” Drea simpered. “I would never. If I could just have a friend in this cold place, it would mean everything to me. I’ll do anything just to have someone on my side helping me. I’ll pay you back however you want.”
He grinned lasciviously. “However I want, huh?”
Drea nodded over and over, feeling like a bobblehead. She backed up against the far wall right beside the twin bed, hands up where he could see them.
He reached down and readjusted himself right before sliding the door open.
Patience.
Not yet.
He stepped inside the cell.
Not yet.
Smile. Look innocent and harmless.
She giggled and ducked her head as he shrugged out of his guard’s jacket halfway across the room.
NOW.
She struck while his arms were still half-caught in the jacket, yanking and twisting it to trap his arms at the same time she swept his legs with a low kick.
Dad would be so proud.
Right as the guard hit the floor she was on him, yanking the billy club off his belt. Because the other thing Dad taught her?
Hit first and ask questions later.
It was something of a family mantra.
In one swift downward motion, Drea had the billy club extended and she went to work.
The guard was a screamer, so she went for the throat first. One swift hit to his larynx had him grasping his throat and choking.
She tut tut tutted at him for being dumb enough to expose himself like that. Because obviously her next hit was going to be to his scrotum.
That was just female self-defense 101.
She struck a few other of the best impact points to make sure he was disabled. One hard blow to the solar plexus, then, when he curled in on himself, a couple of strikes to the kidneys from the back.
He gasped for air and—was he crying?
She shook her head at him. Pathetic.
Let it never be said that she ever behaved like one of those clichéd blondes from old horror movies who always celebrated too early without double checking that the monster was really dead. Drea always made sure that her was enemy down.
She raised the club one last time and put all her weight behind a hit to his knee.
Then she reached and grabbed his keys off the floor from where the guard had dropped them, then she hurried out of the cell and locked it behind her.
Only to find the door to the stairs was being pushed open.
Shit.
Of course there were probably cameras on the cells. Someone had seen. The question was how many they’d sent down to subdue her.
Screw it. She’d come this far.
She raised the billy club and ran at the door, knowing surprise was her best weapon.
“Drea?”
Wait, what?
“Eric?”
She was running so fast she couldn’t stop herself in time and she collided with him. He wrapped his arms around her and together they rammed into the door, knocking it shut.
For a second it was just the two of them, breathing hard, him looking down at her. Wow, his eyes were really blue blue weren’t they?
Wait, wait, wait.
Record scratch. Back the fuck up.
She hated Eric, The Commander, Wolford.
Okay, maybe hate was a strong word. But she strongly disliked him. He was a chauvinist pig who’d come up with the most ridiculous, degrading system of treating the women in his territory. Giving them out as fucking lottery prizes, for Christ’s sake. She’d had to lie and say she was a lesbian else he was gonna try to force that shit on her.
And he refused to help her go back to the Gulf Texas island where he’d found her to rescue the other hundred women who she’d once been a leader to. Until a fucking man came and made them all prisoners.
Drea jerked away from Eric. “What are you doing here?”
He raised his arms in an isn’t it obvious? motion. “Rescuing you.”
Drea huffed out a laugh and then waved back at the guard on the floor of her cell behind her. “Thanks but I can rescue myself just fine.” She pushed the billy club back into its retracted position and shoved as much of it as she could in her pocket.
Eric crossed his arms and leaned against the wall. “You got out of your cell, but how exactly were you planning to get out of the city in the middle of a coup?”
Wait, what? She couldn’t have heard that right.
“A what?”
“A coup.”
“I know what a goddamned coup is.” Drea narrowed her eyes. “What makes you say one is happening here?”
“Oh you didn’t hear? President Goddard was just assassinated. About…” He looked down at his watch. “Twenty-eight minutes ago.”
Drea felt her eyebrows all but hit her hairline. Shit.
“Even better, they think it was someone from our group. I’m surprised your pretty head is still attached to your neck.”
Despite herself, Drea’s hand lifted to her throat. As soon as she realized what she was doing, she dropped her hand and glared at Eric.
“And why do they think that?”
He waved a hand to brush her off. “Shay’s sculpture may have exploded and either someone in her clan or Vanessa’s is most likely working for Arnold. Colonel Travis I mean.”
Drea coughed in disbelief. “And you’re so calm about this… why?
“Well, it’s all finally happening now, isn’t it? I’ve been waiting for the shit to hit the fan for a long time and,” he held out his arms. “Shit, meet fan. Now come on. I know where the President keeps his private helicopter.”
“Why didn’t you fucking open with that?” Drea growled, pushing past Eric
“You’re a very complex girl to rescue.”
Drea pulled the billy club out of her pocket. “Call me a girl one more time.”
Eric lifted his hands in a surrender gesture. “I apologize. You’re a very complex woman.”
“And I rescued myself, remember?”
“Ah, but I’m the one with the helicopter, remember?”
***
“You were saying?” Drea put a hand on her hip as they looked out the window of the door that led out to the President’s private helicopter pad.
The helicopter pad currently swarmed by soldiers wearing black and gray fatigues.
“Shit,” Eric swore. “Those are Travis’s soldiers. I thought they were at Jacob’s—” Then he shook his head. “It doesn’t matter.”
He took Drea’s elbow and started pulling her back toward the stairs of the four-story parking garage that was a block away from the Omni.
Drea jerked out of his grasp. “Okay, we tried it your way. Now it’s my turn.” She strode in front of Eric and started down the stairs.
As she did, she realized this had been her problem all along.
She wasn’t the kind of woman who waited for other people to help her get shit done. No, she blazed ahead and di
d it herself.
Why the hell had she even come to Fort Worth pandering to that asshole of a President in the first place. She should know—you wanted shit done, you did it yourself.
Well, lesson learned. How much time had she already wasted? She was going back to Nomansland to rescue her people today. Fuck everyone else.
“What do you— You don’t even know this— Have you even been to Fort Worth before?”
She didn’t answer him until they got to the first floor of the garage before turning to face him. “No. But I know how to hotwire one of those.” She pointed to the Harley she’d seen on the way in. In fact, there was a whole bunch of them lined up. She smiled sweetly and tilted her head at Eric. “Now, you don’t mind riding bitch, do you?”
Eric’s face darkened as he glowered at her. “I hate motorcycles,” he muttered. But he did start walking in the direction of the Harley.
She had the thing hotwired within three minutes and she handed a helmet to Eric. “Safety first.”
He took the helmet but stared down at the growling motorcycle as she slung her leg over it. “You realize this is most likely a Black Skulls motorcycle.”
Drea just grinned. “Where do you think I learned how to hotwire a hog? 4H?”
Seeing how Eric’s eyes went saucer-wide almost made the whole shitty day worth it. She patted the seat behind her.
“Climb on.”
He shook his head like he was rethinking his decision to ever come back for her in the first place. But he put the helmet on and climbed on behind her.
And if she noticed how good it felt having his strong arms around her waist? Well, that was just her damn hormones talking.
She turned her head to the side, not looking all the way back at him. “Hold on tight. I’m not gonna take it slow, and if you fall off, it’s your own damn fault.”
Eric’s only response was anxious swearing.
Drea laughed and closed the face visor on her helmet before pulling out of the garage. He’d be in for a surprise when he realized they weren’t heading for Jacob’s Well. Having the purr of a big twin engine between her legs felt far better than she’d like to admit.
And as she rode south, the morning sun to her left, she thought, aw, this might even be fun.
