by Kit Rocha
But not for Ashwin. He obviously thought about it all the time, not just for his own sake, but for hers, as well. “You’ve been worried about me?”
“Almost none of the project participants made it to your age without developing substance abuse problems or—” He broke off and took an unsteady breath. “What if you’ve done so well because you didn’t know you should be falling apart?”
“You can protect me from a lot of things, Ashwin, but not from who I am.” Even if she told him about the sobbing, sleepless nights, it wouldn’t accomplish anything. Maybe someday she would try, but she wasn’t sure it was possible to understand, not unless you’d lived through the helpless confusion. “All my life, I’ve thought I was weak. Everyone else seemed to handle things okay, but I struggled every single day. And if I had known—” Her voice failed her, and the pressure in her chest grew again until she could barely breathe, much less speak. But she had to. She had to. “If I’d known there was a reason things were so hard for me, it might have helped.”
He released her face and silently gripped the blankets on either side of her hips. “I understand,” he said. “I didn’t give you the intel you needed to manage the situation. Worse, I could have died during the war. That file would have rotted away in one of my safe houses, and you never would have known. That’s unacceptable.”
Kora shook her head. Considering that possibility made her hands tremble—and not because she never would have seen her file. “You’re here, and that’s what matters. This is important to me, but not as important as you.”
Finally, finally, he opened his eyes. “I’m sorry for not telling you. Maybe we were both right. All the ways they taught me to compartmentalize didn’t make my emotions go away, but it twisted them. And I hurt you. And I can’t promise I’ll make the right choice next time. I’m still learning how much I’ve been lying to myself all along.”
“So talk to me,” she urged.
His fingers curled around the blankets. His gaze never left hers. “I think...I think the files were the first lie. Not yours. Mine.”
The words were raw. Exposed. “You found your parents?”
“Mostly my mother. There wasn’t as much about my father—just that he was Special Forces.” He cleared his throat and looked away. “Rupali Malhotra was my mother’s name. She was a scientific researcher in the mid-21st century. She held advanced degrees in mathematics, biochemistry, and philosophy. Some of her papers and books still exist in the restricted archives. She wrote extensively about the ethics of genetic engineering.”
Kora touched his hand. “That can’t be a coincidence, can it?”
“I doubt it.” When he glanced back, there was a vulnerability in his eyes. “I was only fourteen when I found my genetic parents, so I didn’t think about it much. But over the years I wondered if she changed her mind. Or if she joined the project to shape their ethics doctrine. Or if she even knew what her genes were used for. The woman who wrote those papers... She wouldn’t have approved of my life.”
Kora had a feeling she would have approved of Ashwin, though. “You took her name.”
“Her surname.” His hand relaxed slightly under her fingertips. “I tried to research naming conventions of the Indian subcontinent, but it was difficult to find reliable sources. So I took her father’s first name, too. Ashwin.”
“So you know,” she whispered, “what it’s like to need answers.”
“I don’t know. I told myself it was efficient. Logical. Even at fourteen, I could tell that names mattered to other people. Parents gave their children names that acknowledged their heritage, or their families, or where they came from before the Flares. I thought I would be less conspicuous if I had that sort of name.”
“Efficient.” She couldn’t help but chuckle, though she tried to soften it with a kiss to his cheek.
His brow crinkled. “Is that funny?”
“Very, but you’ll have to ask Cruz about it.”
The confusion didn’t disappear, but he pressed his forehead to hers. “It doesn’t matter. I think you were right. When I reassess the choices I’ve made in my life, a statistically significant percentage indicate a subconscious need for connection. To family. To Cruz. To the other Makhai soldiers. To you. To the Riders.” Now he made a sound almost like laughter. “And they’ve never been very efficient. The domestic handlers helped stabilize me, but it was like kicking dirt on the edges of a fire. When you touch me, all the air leaves the room. The only fire that can burn is the good kind.”
The same way the world stopped spinning when he was holding her, and everything felt firm and solid. Made sense. Kora slid her arms around his neck and slipped into his lap. “Every time I fought with the Base administrators, it was because of you. I would close my eyes and see your face, and I had to try—to help you, to save you, I don’t know. Something.”
“You did.” He settled his chin on her head, tucking her snugly to his chest. “You helped me. You saved me.”
She curled her fingers into his shirt. “I hope so, because you saved me, too.”
“Kora?”
She wasn’t ready to relinquish the steady thump of his heart beneath her cheek, but the gentle hope in his voice lifted her head.
“Will you teach me how to do this right?” His expression was so serious. So earnest. “How to love you?”
A person could live a thousand years and never be worthy of those simple whispered questions. “I can’t,” she admitted. “I’ve never been in love before. We just have to learn together.”
He smiled—honest, open, without hesitation or artifice, and it was the most beautiful thing she’d ever witnessed. Her heart skipped, then started to race as he brushed his lips over hers.
Love could only exist when it was given freely, without reservation, but trust like this was another matter. She’d have to earn it, day after day, moment after moment, with every earth-shattering decision and the tiny, mundane details that made up a life.
And it would be worth every single second.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Ashwin left Kora on the perimeter, tucked in a well-concealed hunting blind, and approached the safe house on foot.
It had been over eight months since the last time he’d seen it. The wood was weathered and cracked, and the doorframe had swollen. He slid his fingers along the edge of the jamb until he reached the spot where he’d applied a thin coat of invisible epoxy. Not enough for anyone to notice while trying to force the door, but enough to split apart if they did. His fingers found the smooth surface undisturbed.
Ashwin repeated the check at all five windows before returning to the front door. He’d already retrieved the key from beneath a small boulder five hundred yards to the north, but the keyhole was rusted. It took a few minutes to finesse it open, and a few more to run a sweep of the cabin to assure himself it was safe.
Only then did he go back to where Kora was hidden. “It’s all clear.”
She had her hand propped on her chin, and her elbow resting on a wooden crate he’d converted to a small table. “Was that really necessary?”
“I like taking precautions.” He smoothed back a lock of her hair, the curling piece at her temple that always seemed to work its way free of any braid or ponytail. “Especially with your safety.”
“Mm-hmm.” She slipped her hand into his. “Show me my palace, Ashwin.”
For someone who lived in a literal palace, the cabin wasn’t much to offer. The porch stairs creaked as they climbed them, and the rusty hinges on the front door wailed. Inside, the cabin was dark. Heavy curtains blocked out the daylight. There was no electricity. Even if he’d rigged the roof for solar power, they were too deep in the woods for reliable sunlight.
The table held a solar-powered lantern with a stash of batteries. He slipped one into place and turned the lantern on high. The gentle glow filled the main room, illuminating the wide bed with a brightly patterned quilt and an unnecessary number of fluffy, soft pillows. A bookshelf stood
next to the bed, filled with a carefully curated selection of pre-Flare books. Novels and blank notebooks and big, glossy books with art on the cover, each one a treasure obtained on the black market at an impractical cost.
The opposite side of the cabin held a cookstove, sink, and a battery-powered refrigerator. The door behind the table stood open, revealing a bathroom dominated by a full copper tub. Another impractical detail, considering the fact that water would have to be pumped into the cabin and heated over the fire. But, like the pillows and the books, it was proof of what it had taken him years to admit.
He’d always loved Kora. Denying the possibility never changed the reality, only the expression.
She drifted to the bookshelf first, tilting her head as she ran one finger across the dusty spines. “Where did you even find these?”
“In shops and junk stores. Some I found in actual museums.” He pulled out one with a cover dominated by a cheerful mountain landscape with fluffy whimsical clouds and bright blue flowers. “I remembered...you liked to visit the museum in Eden. You mentioned it once, while you were suturing one of my wounds.” Later he’d cross-referenced the video footage of Eden’s three art museums to discover how frequently she attended, and on his next trip past the deserted ruins of Reno, he’d side-tracked to break into the abandoned art museum and ransack its gift shop.
She stopped just shy of touching the book’s cover, and her hand was trembling. “You got them for me.”
She sounded so shocked, he realized he’d made another critical error. Actions were so clear to him. Definitive. But Kora needed words. “Of course. Everything in here was for you.”
Her gaze tracked around the room, taking it all in with a growing expression of warmth and wonder. “Everything?”
As if it was so hard to imagine. As if she didn’t deserve twice this, a thousand times this. He’d build her a palace with his bare hands, if she wanted, at least as decadent as Gideon’s and filled with anything that pleased her.
But first he had a new mission: making her believe.
He stepped up behind her and nudged her hair away from her ear. “The pillows certainly weren’t for me. Or the giant copper bathtub. Transporting it to the middle of the woods was a logistical nightmare, but it will be worth it the first time I see you in it.”
She turned in his arms, a smile curving her lips—and reached for his belt.
His pulse skipped.
He wasn’t prepared for the feeling that roared up inside him. It was the wanting and the craving, the need and the desire. Emotions that were growing familiar, if not necessarily easier to manage.
What was new was the dark thrill of having her here, in the safe little bolthole he’d created for them. What was left of his intellect recognized the culmination of the most basic of instincts—food, shelter, and a mate. The caveman fantasy.
He’d never had so little intellect left. As her fingers tugged at his belt, her smile made of knowing mischief, every rational thought he’d ever claimed fled into the darkness, leaving him trembling in the grip of sudden certainty.
No matter how much the Riders grounded him in humanity, Ashwin would always be a bit of a monster. But he was her monster, utterly loyal, completely devoted. Loved—not in spite of his darkness, but because of who he had become by embracing it.
Kora left his belt hanging open and nipped gently at his chin. “I like pillows. And giant bathtubs. And books full of art.” Another nip, this one close to his mouth. “And I love you.”
The words hit him hard. Higher than his gut, somewhere in his chest—maybe that was his heart. He hoped the words never lost this magic, the power to make him feel, raw and wild, like it was the first time. He caught her mouth with his, kissing her hard, as if he could lick the taste of I love you from her tongue.
It tasted like joy.
Kora moaned, a low sound that he felt more than heard. She opened his pants, then broke the kiss to haul his shirt over his head. Then, instead of fusing her lips to his once more, she stepped back and kicked off her shoes.
He almost reached out to help, but there was something very deliberate in the way she stripped off her clothing. Slowly. Teasingly. Kora had always seen into him so clearly, even when he was lying to himself about what she might find. Maybe she could see this fantasy, too, the desperate, hungry need for her to be his.
Her shirt slipped to the scratched wooden floor. Her bra followed, baring breasts and nipples that tightened in the cool air of the cabin. He closed his hands into fists to keep from reaching for her as she toyed with the button on her jeans. When she popped it free, he was so attuned to her that the rasp of the zipper shattered through the room.
He held his breath as she coaxed her jeans and underwear down her legs, only to let it out in an explosive groan as she finally stepped free of the fabric. He started to reach for her then, but she slipped away to the bed and picked up a pillow.
And placed it at his feet.
Blood pounded in his ears. He couldn’t remember ever being this aroused, and she’d barely touched him. But she was here, in the place where he’d channeled everything he wasn’t supposed to have felt for her. Naked. Flushed.
Sinking to her knees with that same mischievous smile. But there was a vulnerability in her now, too, a tremor in her hands as she reached for his jeans.
She was offering herself to the monster. And it was the monster who stroked her disheveled hair and curled a lock of it around his finger. The monster who recognized his perfect mate, because she was just as inhuman as he was—too human. Impossibly, unbearably human.
And he would spend the rest of his life using every skill the Base had given him to protect her from every vulnerability they’d inflicted upon her.
She was his. Forever. “I love you, too.”
She rubbed her cheek against his hip. “Say it again.”
“I love—”
Kora parted her lips and closed them around the head of his cock, and the ability to speak joined his ability to reason. He groaned instead, rocked by the visual of her bright-blue eyes staring up at him as she took him deeper.
Not slowly or nervously this time. The tease of her tongue joined the heat of her mouth, and then her hand, gripping his shaft. And then suction, hot enough to make him lock his knees so he wouldn’t stagger under the gut-punch pleasure of it.
Her free hand touched his, guided it to sink into her hair, and he knew what she wanted. What she needed, the slow twist of his fingers wrapping in her hair until the tug burned at her scalp. Sensation, enough to overwhelm the clamor of other people’s pain, enough to purge it.
They both needed it. And now they both knew why.
He tightened his grip until her eyes watered, until she moaned in helpless arousal. And as beautiful as she was like this, on her knees, so sweet and willing—
It wasn’t enough. Not for the monster.
The bed was dusty. So was the rickety table. But Ashwin didn’t need a surface. He reached down and hauled her up his body, lifting her until she scrambled to wrap her legs around his hips. Her pussy rubbed against his cock, wet and hot, and he gripped her ass and rocked her against him, grinding hard against her clit. “Do you trust me?”
“Always,” she whispered. “With every breath.”
A lifetime of physical training made it effortless to raise her higher, to align their hips perfectly. The first few seconds of pushing into her body almost rattled his control, but he ignored the tight grip of her pussy and the sweet noises she made as he exerted rigid command over his muscles and lowered her onto his cock.
When he was as deep as he could go, he brushed a kiss to the delicate point of her chin. “Close your eyes and tilt your head back.”
She complied with a slow, blissful smile. “You’re a resourceful man, Lieutenant.”
He’d never been so grateful to be resourceful. Sex had always been a perfunctory way to scratch a physical itch, not an exercise in creativity. The list of places he wanted to explore the li
mits of their shared stamina had grown rapidly.
But this was the first. Here in this cabin, with her clinging to him like the only solid thing in the world. Because that’s what he wanted to be for her—safe. Her strong foundation.
Maybe, someday, her world.
“Hold on,” he whispered, lifting her hips until he was barely inside her.
Then he started to thrust.
It was bliss. Hot, clinging bliss. Her body was tight and sweet, her noises even better. She moaned and gasped, and when he tilted her hips a little and found the perfect angle, she cried out, her fingernails biting eight crescents into his shoulders. He shuddered at the sweetness of the pain and fucked her harder, until the sound of their bodies colliding made its own obscene music in counterpoint to her groans.
She came screaming his name, and the rush of satisfaction was so intense it overrode his need to follow her. Instead he lowered her to the floor and backed her toward the door, spinning her to press her hands against the flat surface.
It was more intense sliding into her like this, from behind, and she arched her back and let her head crash back against his shoulder. It put her neck right there, soft and exposed, and he timed his first bite with his fingers settling over her clit, relentless as he chased her pleasure.
He wanted her undone. Wrecked. Destroyed. He fucked her through her second orgasm, and then a third, holding her up when her knees started to buckle. “One more,” he promised, whispering the words against her ear as she whimpered and shuddered. She was so wet his fingers slid easily, coaxing and commanding. “I love feeling you come around me.”
Her parted lips moved, silently forming a plea.
It was enough. He felt the tremors, the soft flutters deep inside that cascaded until she was clenching around him so hard, his vision blurred. The hoarse crack of her voice was what tipped him over the edge, though.