by Kit Rocha
There was every chance he’d do it again if Ashwin didn’t appease him—which was, perversely, the reason Ashwin trusted him so much.
When Cruz promised to protect someone, he didn’t renege.
“We crossed paths,” Ashwin said finally. “Recently. After the war, I returned to the Base to undergo recalibration.”
Cruz studied him for longer this time, as if searching for something. “You don’t look recalibrated. Your stance is too relaxed. You touched Kora. You seem…”
The words trailed off, but Ashwin knew what he was thinking. Cruz had grown up on the Base, too. Not as a Makhai soldier, but one of their most elite. He was observant, intelligent. But not cruel enough to say the word.
So Ashwin did. “Human. I seem human.”
“Yes.” Cruz exhaled slowly, then frowned. He reached out to nudge Ashwin’s sleeve out of the way, and his eyebrows shot up as it revealed his new tattoo. “Ashwin…”
“The Base sent me,” Ashwin supplied, before he could ask. “Gideon knows that. So does Kora.”
“The Base wanted you to join the Riders.”
“Yes.”
“Do you know why?”
Maybe he was developing a sense of humor, after all, because the question made him want to smile. “Do we ever?”
“No,” Cruz admitted. “Not until they come down on us like a ton of bricks. Some days, I still expect them to pop back up and ask me why I haven’t reported in for a new mission.”
Cruz was a valuable resource, and the Base hated to lose those. But the generals weren’t stupid men, nor were they short-sighted. They could haul Cruz back and try to make an example out of him, but they’d never have access to his skill set again. Worse, they’d enrage Dallas O’Kane, who had already shown himself capable of winning underdog rebellions against tremendous odds.
“I don’t think they will,” he told Cruz. “You’re more valuable to them here. If they come at all, it will be to remind you how generous they were to let you walk away from your post...and to ask for your influence with Dallas.”
“I’m sure he’ll love that.” Cruz shoved his fingers through his short hair and sighed. “Does that mean my debt to you is repaid?”
On the surface, the words were a request for Ashwin to absolve Cruz of his obligation, but his real meaning was just the opposite. Cruz was offering him approval. Acknowledgment. Reassurance that the Ashwin who was standing before him wasn’t the same one who’d torn through a war zone to terrorize Kora.
It wasn’t offered lightly, and knowing that lifted an invisible weight from Ashwin’s shoulders. “Consider us even.”
Cruz held out his hand. Ashwin hesitated only a moment before clasping it. He still didn’t have handshakes down—he squeezed too hard and he knew it, but it didn’t feel like a test he’d failed. Cruz just laughed and turned to push open the door. “Come on. We should save Kora. Ace will drive her crazy with questions.”
Ashwin followed Cruz through a bedroom and the attached bathroom. On the other side he found Kora in a nursery, her face buried in a bundle of blankets in her arms.
She made a noise against the infant’s belly, and the baby waved its arms and gurgled. Ace stood by, beaming as if gurgling and arm-waving was a clear portent of exceptional future aptitude. “See? Rosalía is kicking and babbling already. That’s a three-month milestone.”
Rachel shifted another baby in her arms as she looked on with indulgent humor. “All babies develop at different rates. You’ve read the same books—”
“You bite your tongue,” Ace cut her off indignantly. “Our daughter is a goddamn genius.”
“Ace.” Cruz’s rumble managed to be affectionate and exasperated at the same time. “At this rate, her first words are going to be goddamn genius.”
“So? She should know it and own it.”
“You’re both right,” Kora insisted, passing the baby back to Ace with a grin. “She’s developing perfectly.”
Ace tucked his daughter into the crook of his arm, but his triumphant smile faltered when the baby in Rachel’s arms coughed.
“Let’s see him.” Kora took the child and began to examine him, stopping often to coo or make exaggerated, wide-eyed faces at him. Even Ashwin could read the yearning in every breath, and an odd feeling settled low in his gut. That craving that was both utterly rational and madly uncontrollable, the ultimate in survival instinct.
His DNA. Hers. And Ace thought his child was a genius. There was a definite possibility that any child with his and Kora’s enhanced genes really would be able to read Zeke’s mind.
It was probably something he should mention to Kora before he gave in to any regressive, instinct-driven fantasies of carrying her off to his safe house for sex with no contraceptives.
Finally, she pulled an oxygen sensor off the bottom of the baby’s foot and gathered him in her arms. “His breathing is fine, lungs are fine, everything is fine. He’s just stuffy because he has a cold.”
Rachel smiled sheepishly. “That’s what Dylan said.”
“He’s a good doctor, you know.”
“We know,” Cruz said. “And we trust him—”
“But our babies get the best of everything,” Ace said firmly. “And you’re the best.”
On that, if little else, Ashwin and Ace could agree.
»»» § «««
Ashwin had new scars.
Kora soaped her hands and finished rubbing them over his back, from the top of his neck down to where his Makhai tattoo disappeared into the scented water. She’d stopped trying to tell herself that she only noticed the scars because it had once been her job. That might account for a certain level of professional annoyance, but not this strange mixture of concern and wrath. Of tenderness and fury.
The tenderness won, mostly because if he thought she was upset, he’d haul her out of the tub before she had a chance to finish her exploration.
Ashwin tilted his head forward in obvious invitation, sighing in soft pleasure as she worked her hands back up to his neck. “I’m beginning to understand the point of wasting this much water for a bath.”
“It isn’t wasted.” She tickled his earlobe. “It gets treated and used for irrigation.”
“Of course it does.” He huffed, a noise that sounded suspiciously like the start of a laugh. “Everything in this house is deceptive. The things that seem humble and rustic are expressions of wealth, and the things that seem like frivolous luxuries are ruthlessly practical.”
“Welcome to Sector One.” The bathtub was, like everything else in her suite, extravagantly oversized. She was ashamed to admit that she only noticed when she stopped to think about it. She’d been accustomed to opulence in the city, so the only difference for her was in the style. The giant bed was still simply a place to sleep, the bathroom somewhere she would brush her teeth and wash away the stresses of the day. The exquisite hand-built desk, a place to work. “I’m pretty sure Gideon hates it, but he can’t build a new house just because the one he inherited from his grandfather doesn’t suit him. Besides, people expect him to live in a palace. So he changes the invisible things.”
Ashwin glanced back at her. “You think he hates it?”
“The extravagance? Yes. He’s just…” It was hard to explain the dichotomy of a man who felt he deserved power but not the trappings of wealth that often went along with it. “If he had his way, I think he’d live in the barracks with the rest of you.”
Ashwin seemed to consider that as he turned to face her. “He’s difficult to read. Understanding people has never been my strongest skill, but I’m capable of recognizing common behavior patterns. I find him almost impossible to anticipate.”
His irritation was palpable, and Kora laughed as she reached for the soap again. “I think he would consider that a compliment.”
“Undoubtedly.” Ashwin caught her wrist and plucked the soap from her fingers. He turned the action of soaping his hands into a slow, seductive movement—but it was nothing compared to when h
e slid them onto her shoulders and glided them down her arms. “I used to think I could anticipate you.”
“Mmm, definitely a compliment.” One of the scars she’d found bisected his left collarbone—light, barely noticeable, except to touch. “This one is new.”
“From the final battle in the war.” He smoothed a path back up her arms and traced his way down her sides. “That one was a broken bottle. I misjudged whether or not an enemy was down for good. He wasn’t.”
It’s over, she reminded herself, a past she couldn’t erase or change. “I wish I’d known what you were going through.” Then, because she couldn’t contain the question, “Why didn’t you tell me?”
His gaze fixed somewhere off to her right, and his fingers flexed uncertainly on her hips. “I…” Ashwin inhaled. Exhaled. “I’ve never been rational about you.”
His words from the first night by the bonfire flashed through her mind, and her skin prickled as if he was whispering them into her ear now. You know what happens to a Makhai soldier who lets himself become bothered. “You think you were fixated on me.”
“I was fixated on you.” His gaze finally clashed with hers. “I am fixated on you.”
“I don’t like that word.” The psychologists at the Base had ruined it for her forever, misapplying it to any emotion instead of the truly dangerous kind. “I don’t think it’s accurate.”
“No?” Ashwin gripped her chin, holding her in place as he bent lower. “I watched you, Kora. For years. I knew every time you passed a security camera. Every surgery you performed, every date you went on. Everything. What word would you use?”
“I don’t know.” But maybe it would have been different if they hadn’t trapped him in such a tiny cage. If he’d been allowed to embrace his feelings instead of shoving them down, hiding them like the forbidden things they were, then watching might have turned into something more. “If they had let you, you might have loved me.”
“Love is subjective.” He stroked down until his hand rested at the base of her throat, his thumb over her pulse. “I know I’ve lied for you. I’ve disobeyed direct orders, killed people who were trying to hurt you. I’ve committed treason for you. And I would die for you.”
Her chest tightened until it was difficult to take a breath, and blood roared in her ears. “Do I make you happy?”
“You make me confused. You make me frantic. Overwhelmed and irritated and sometimes you make me feel like everything I ever learned about how the world works is turned upside down. You make me feel vulnerable.” He leaned down until his forehead touched hers. “And I regret every minute I spend away from you. Because when you’re touching me, I just feel you.”
Everything else ceased to be—the water, the room. The world. She slid her arms around him and pulled him closer into this new, secret space where only the two of them existed. “Congratulations,” she murmured, words nearly lost to his mouth. “I think you do love me.”
He kissed her, and with his kiss he showed her. Action over words, objective truth. He kissed her deep and long, taking his time to tease her lips apart, taking longer to coax her tongue to tangle with his.
Not until she was gasping into his mouth did his hands begin to move. Her arms. Her hips. Her thighs. Trailing up to cup her breasts. The water made everything slow and slick, every movement setting off ripples that came back to tease over her heated skin.
She slipped one hand under the water, but he shook his head and turned her around so that her back pressed to his chest, trapping her arms between them. The water splashed as he settled on the tile seat on one side of the tub, his erection pressed against her ass.
Every movement was precise. Gentle but firm. He skimmed his hands down to her thighs and coaxed them apart. His middle finger settled over her clit, hard enough to spark electricity up her spine, but too light to satisfy the ache.
“This is what I need,” he murmured against her ear. “This focus. Making you feel all the things that I couldn’t. Do you have any idea how brave you are?”
She opened her mouth, but the question on her tongue vanished when he circled her clit again. His finger dipped lower, worked inside her with lazy thrusts that slowly filled her—and still left her so empty.
“This is the first thing that ever felt right,” he continued, rocking his palm against her clit. The sensation jolted through her, but he wrapped his other arm around her to hold her in place. “Making you come.”
Her wet hair clung to their skin as they rocked together, and Kora let herself fall into it. Into the rhythm and sway, into the steam rising around them, into the sensual spell he wove with his hands and voice. Into him.
And then, when he lifted her hips so that he could thrust into her, she fell into him.
They barely moved. Just his hands, one sliding up to cup her breast, the other finding her clit again to stroke. He held her in place so all she could do was rock in tiny, fitful movements as he forced her to feel every moment of the slow climb toward release.
His lips found her ear, his breath hot. “You’re everything, Kora. And you’re finally mine.”
The water now seemed cool in comparison to the molten pleasure. It surged through her, ebbing and flowing until there was nothing else. It consumed her, shattering her as she came with a cry. And for once Ashwin didn’t hold back from her. As her body clenched around him, he groaned against her ear and followed her.
The shivers went on forever, and Kora sank deeper into dizzy, quivering oblivion. She was only vaguely aware of moving, and of Ashwin sitting her on the cushioned seat beside the tub. He wrapped a warmed towel around her, intensifying the dreamy, weightless feeling.
Another towel rasped over her sensitive skin as he dried her, and then himself. He combed the damp strands of her hair with his fingers, his expression adorably serious. “Should I braid your hair for bed?”
It seemed like the last skill he would have picked up. “You know how?”
“Survival training.” His fingernails raked lightly over her scalp as he gathered her hair up. “You’d be surprised how many organic materials can be fashioned into makeshift rope.”
Of course. “I usually leave it down.”
“All right.” He ran the towel over his own short hair, leaving it rumpled and sticking up in tiny, chaotic spikes. Then he swept her up into his arms and carried her to bed.
The same sense of peace that suffused her radiated from him as well, and Kora basked in it. He was relaxed, easy in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever seen in him before. Such a far cry from the unrelenting tension that had gripped him before, day in and day out, whether he was facing down an enemy or leading her by the hand into his room in the barracks.
She smiled into her pillow as he tucked the duvet around them. “Let’s stay here tomorrow. No one needs us.”
He kissed the back of her shoulder. “I would, but I promised Deacon I’d go to Sector Two with him. We’re doing some sort of construction on a soup kitchen, I think.”
“He can live without you for one day, can’t he?”
“Probably.” His hand settled on her hip, warm and possessive. “But I made a promise. I swore oaths. They matter to me...and I need them to matter.”
He’d been devoted to her on some level for a long time. Now, she’d have to share him with the Riders and the rest of Sector One, but she didn’t mind. He’d been forced for so long to keep himself separate from others, from feeling, and the only way for him to move beyond the habit was to break it, over and over. To care—about his brothers, his community, his home.
There was enough heart in him to go around.
“Fine.” She snuggled back against him. “Just make sure you come back to me.”
“I will,” he whispered softly, and it sounded like more than a reassurance or even a promise.
It sounded like a vow.
Chapter Eighteen
Sector Two should have been a wasteland. Just under a year ago, Eden had ordered the Base to deploy a drone strike meant
to send a message to the rest of the sectors: fall in line, or face the lethal consequences.
But instead of bombing a strategic military target, they’d wiped out an entire district of brothels, as well as the training houses where young girls learned to ply their trade. Civilians, women and children.
That decision had changed everything—not just in the sectors, which had shifted from simmering resentment to outright rebellion, but on the Base. Ashwin hadn’t been there for the coup that had followed, but he had approved of the swift and decisive action that had removed officers blinded by corruption and severed their relationship with a city collapsing under the weight of its own greed and waste.
The last time Ashwin saw Sector Two, it was still a mess of collapsed buildings and precariously stacked rubble. Now, scarcely seven months later, Ashwin and Deacon maneuvered their motorcycles down clean roads lined with evidence of industrious construction.
Ashwin supposed the new leader of Two had several advantages when it came to cleaning up the mess her sector had been. Not only was she wealthy in her own right, with a controlling interest in many of the farms that provided food to the sectors and Eden, but she was an O’Kane, allied with the leaders of Sector Four, and in a relationship with Gideon’s cousin.
Ashwin suspected the last advantage was the one that brought him and Deacon to her sector today. Gideon took family seriously, whether they shared his blood or not. But as tempting as it was to end his assessment there, Ashwin had to acknowledge the truth as he followed Deacon into the parking lot in front of a freshly constructed wooden building.
Gideon gave every indication that he actually cared about people, and not just the ones who paid into his coffers by tithing to his religion, or the ones who served his family by donating their time, skills, or labor.
All of the evidence Ashwin had collected pointed to Gideon simply...caring.
Deacon climbed off his bike, squinting against the morning sunlight as he began rolling up his sleeves. “Do you know anything about generators?”
“Enough.” Ashwin set his helmet on the seat of his motorcycle. “I can’t build one, but I can usually repair them, if I have the appropriate tools and parts.”