18% Gray

by Anne Tenino

  Embarrassingly, he yelped. A small yelp. Fortunately, it was drowned out by her shriek. Her very loud, attention-getting shriek. Matt’s training kicked in, and before she finished he had one hand over her mouth and was muscling her into the room.

  She struggled, but didn’t really fight him. Didn’t even try to take advantage of his obviously injured shoulder. Did they teach these nuns anything about self-defense? Christ. It wouldn’t have been hard to get away from him. He was still weak and his shoulder hurt like fuck, restraining someone like this. Matt shoved her against the wall, uncomfortably aware he was in his shorts and pressed up against some of her girly parts. Ick.

  She had on enough layers for both of them, fortunately. Matt held her pinned there, still covering her mouth. “I won’t hurt you, but you have to be quiet.”

  She nodded vigorously.

  “I’m going to take my hand off your mouth, and you’re going to stay silent. If you start shrieking, I’m going to knock you out and gag you. If you try to run, I’ll knock you out, tie you up, and gag you.”

  More frantic nodding. It was downright enthusiastic. Carefully, Matt lifted his hand off, letting it hover in front of her mouth for a good minute. Her face was white and her eyes were huge, but she remained silent, breathing rapidly.

  “Good. Okay, now I’m going to—”

  Suddenly the door burst open and James came in, shutting it behind him firmly. He was on full alert. Matt watched James scan the room until he found Matt pressed up against the nun, next to the door. For a split second, he looked really, really pissed. And hurt. Then James’s face slipped into his normal non-expression.

  Although it didn’t seem so normal anymore. Matt had seen so many sides to James in the past few days, and most of them didn’t wear this expressionless mask.

  “Situation,” James snapped out. Matt tried very, very hard not to roll his eyes. He might even have been successful.

  “I thought you were having trouble working the lock, so I opened the door for you and found, um, her.” He tipped his head toward the girl-nun.

  “You opened the door?” James wasn’t expressionless now. He looked like he thought Matt was a gargantuan idiot.

  Matt gave his eyes full rolling privileges. “She was gonna come in anyway, James. I was able to grab her.”

  James appeared to have a jaw tic Matt had never noticed before. “What’s with the undershorts?”

  Matt stared, speechless. On the queer spectrum, he was about as penis-centric as a boy could be. “I. Just. Woke. Up.”

  James blinked. “Oh,” he said, relaxing a little. They stared at each other a minute. Matt felt like it was maybe a little meta-communication. He just didn’t know what he was saying. James relaxed further, unclenching his jaw and looking away.

  Oh. He’d been reading his brain waves. The ones he hadn’t been shielding. For some reason, this pissed Matt off. He could feel his own jaw clenching. James glanced at him, then away again.

  “Excuse me,” the forgotten nun said in a tiny, shaking voice. Matt and James both re-focused their attention on her. “Um, are you going to ravish me now?”

  SISTER BENIGNA—the girl-nun—apparently felt ravishment was in order. “You’re wearing your undershorts,” she pointed out with patient logic from her perch on the bed. Matt had set her there once she agreed not to run, scream, or fight. “It’s the logical next step.” Somehow, Matt wasn’t convinced that logic was her forte. Or calm her MO.

  James, for reasons Matt couldn’t understand, seemed to find Sister Benigna hilarious. He was actually laughing. Matt gave him a narrow-eyed stare. “Th’fuck, James?”

  James wiped his eyes and tried to sober up a little. He came and stood close to Matt, sub-vocalizing, “She wants it.”

  What, and James wanted to give it to her? Matt kept glaring at him. James sobered up for real, this time. Matt was leaking brain waves, but didn’t care enough to fix it.

  “No, I don’t want to give it to her! I just think it’s funny. And I think she’s checking out your package.” He was grinning again.

  Grumbling, Matt went over to their packs and looked for a clean pair of all-weathers. Let Mr. Chuckles deal with Benigna.

  Oh, nice. Mr. Chuckles did the laundry.

  “Sister, how long have you been in this convent?” James was incredibly nice to her. Just like he was with everyone, Matt remembered. Everyone he felt needed his protection. Matt stopped just short of sealing his fly when the thought struck him.

  So, when James wasn’t nice to someone, was he protecting himself? What did that mean about when he wasn’t nice to Matt? Or those times when he was so pathetically nice?

  “My parents sent me here when I was twelve,” Benigna answered cheerfully, recalling Matt’s attention. “They really couldn’t afford so many kids, and I was the oldest, and everyone knows you can send your daughters to the sisters and they’re always happy for new novitiates—”

  “How long ago were you, um, ordained?” James interrupted her.

  She tittered—God, she was just the old-school nun stereotype, wasn’t she? Except for the horny thing. “Oh, I wasn’t ordained. That’s for priests, silly!” She batted her eyes at James. Matt frowned at her, but she didn’t notice. “I took vows! Like getting married. I’m one of the brides of Jesus Christ, our Lord and savior.” She sounded less than enthusiastic about that. “And that was three years ago, when I was eighteen.”

  She was twenty-one? She looked fifteen. She barely topped five feet. Malnourishment in childhood, probably.

  James looked over at Matt, giving him a long stare. Matt stared back. What?, he thought, feeling James might like to talk to him in private. But they couldn’t leave the nun here on her own, at least not without cuffing her to the bed or something. James gave a little nod.

  Matt shook his head. He wasn’t tying up the nunette.

  James sighed and turned toward her, clearly thinking he would have to do it. He wasn’t proud of it, but Matt perched his hands on his hips and stomped his foot. No you aren’t! James looked at him with both eyebrows raised.

  Matt scowled back.

  James quirked his lips.

  “Um…,” Benigna said. James turned away from her, to the door.

  That’s when Pearl knocked and walked in. “Shit,” she said in a resigned voice. “I should have figured you’d make it here, Benigna.”

  IT APPEARED Sister Benigna was a known troublemaker. Pearl had cuffed her to the bed—and threatened to cut off her sulky lip, in the process—telling her, “If you didn’t stick your nose in where it doesn’t belong, you wouldn’t be cuffed to a bed.” Then she gagged her.

  Matt thought that was just because she’d always wanted to stuff a sock in Benigna’s mouth. A dirty sock. Yuck.

  James was grinning again. Matt decided he didn’t need to know anything about a nun’s fantasies and how being cuffed to a bed figured in them. James looked at him and smirked.

  Then he winked. Matt got the feeling that while James found it amusing that the nunette thought bondage was titillating, his amusement was just in regard to her. But in regard to Matt being cuffed to the bed…. He shivered. And licked his lower lip. Completely unconsciously. Really.

  James’s pupils dilated, his eyes focusing on Matt’s mouth. Then he slowly tracked lower over Matt’s body. He still wasn’t wearing a shirt. He wondered if James could see his heart beating under his rib cage, because it sure felt like it was trying to escape his chest.

  Gah. He was getting hard and there were two nuns in the room. James’s smirk grew, and he took a prowling step toward Matt.

  This must mean he was forgiven for yesterday?

  “Ahem!” Pearl said. She gave them each a hard stare. Matt was sure he hadn’t blushed in years. Good to know he still knew how.

  Pearl turned back to Benigna and plopped a pair of noise-canceling ’phones on her head. “Okay, we need to figure out what to do with her.” Pearl was strictly business when she turned back to Matt and James. />
  “She wants to go with us,” James said. Then he shot a look at Pearl and amended quickly, “I bet.”

  “It’s all right, James. I know about your biocybe implant.”

  Matt was watching James’s face when she said it, so he caught the flash of shock and dismay. Crap. He had to talk to James about what Pearl had told him yesterday. But with a nun chained to their bed, it might be hard to find the appropriate venue.

  “I’ll need to discuss this with my partner. I’m going to have to leave her here,” Pearl nodded her head toward Benigna, “while I go and figure this out. I don’t want to bring Sister Carmella here. Just in case Benigna isn’t ‘neutralized’ effectively, Carmella shouldn’t be exposed, also.

  “Matt, this might be a good time for you to talk to James about my past,” she added briskly. Her tone didn’t adequately cover up her uncertainty. She walked out the door before James could react.

  Matt blew out a breath. He decided to just get it over with, like pulling off a med patch. “She didn’t explain it to me, exactly, but it seems she might know something about your implant. I didn’t tell her anything.”

  James was pissed. Even if his expressionless mask didn’t give it away, the tic in his jaw and the look in his eyes did. Instinctively, Matt reached out and laid a hand on James’s forearm and opened his mind completely. Somewhat to his surprise, James didn’t shake him off.

  “She wants to talk to you about it. She regrets it, James.”

  James blew out a breath, puffing out his cheeks. “That explains why she always feels so nervous around me.” James looked at Matt for a second, then pulled his hand out of his pocket, letting Matt’s hand slide down his arm, catching it in his. “Yeah. I think she wants to help me.”

  Okay, there were advantages to having a serious talk with a guy who could read feelings. Instead of the long, painful conversation Matt anticipated, it was this one-minute clarification.

  Wow, all men should have boyfriends with mind-reading implants. It would prevent a lot of girly, emotional scenes.

  Shit, did he just think boyfriend? James looked up at him sharply, wide-eyed. His hand tightened convulsively over Matt’s. Did James hear that? Or pick it up as meta-communication? Or whatever it was?

  Oh fuck. As in, they hadn’t yet, and he was unconsciously thinking of James as his boyfriend. Well, consciously, now. This wasn’t good. James probably thought he was a possessive freak who went around sinking his claws into any guy who kissed him and ground his erection in his ass a little.

  James tugged on his hand gently, reeling him in. He was looking in Matt’s eyes. It wasn’t until he was so close that Matt could see the individual whiskers in James’s beard shadow that he realized what James wanted.

  James’s rough lips were on his, hot breath across Matt’s mouth. Gentle suction, capturing first his upper lip, then his lower. Matt slid one hand around James’s neck, James’s hand sliding around to the small of his back. Just the tip of James’s tongue flicking inside Matt’s slightly parted lips. Matt opened more, needing James to take what he wanted. He might have moaned a little.

  A shocked sound came from the direction of the bed. A sort of muffled gasp-shriek.

  The fucking nunette.

  Benigna’s eyes were round as mini-discs. Matt had never actually thought anyone’s eyes could fall out of their head before, but now….

  James got that grin again. Jesus, Benigna must have some kinky little brain waves in there. He turned back to Matt, gave him a quick kiss, and then nuzzled up to his ear and told him, “She wants to watch us fuck.”

  They were going to have to take her back with them. She’d never survive here.

  MATT was still laughing when the door opened, admitting Pearl and another nun. Of course it was a nun—what else would it be?

  The new nun was basically a pinch-faced crotchety old lady. She looked like a barrel of laughs. Not that SEALs were generally the life of the party. “Sister Carmella, this is Matt Tennimore, with QESA, and First Lieutenant James Ayala, Psi-force.”

  Then Sister Carmella smiled, and she became a friendly, crotchety old lady. “Hello, boys. Nice to meet you. I’ll skip the BS, Lieutenant. I’m sooo retired. Call me Carmella.” She turned and looked at the bed, and her mouth became pinched again. And sour. She stalked over and ripped off the ’phones. “I see you’re entertaining Sister Maligna.”

  James snorted, and Matt laughed outright. Sister Benigna made indignant noises behind her gag. Carmella smiled nastily. “She’s not my favorite nun,” she told them. Unnecessarily.

  Pearl just raised an eyebrow and set the tray she was carrying on the table next to the bed. On the far side from Benigna. “Matt, you really need to eat in order to continue healing. I’ll look at your wounds once we deal with Benigna.” She tossed Matt a roll after setting the tray down. He could see butter on the tray, but was too hungry to bother getting it. He took a bite of the roll. Mmmmmm. Homemade. With real wheat flour.

  Carmella turned back to them. “So, Ayala. Pearl tells me you can read minds.”

  Matt turned to Carmella. Apparently they were going to talk freely in front of the nunette. “Not exactly, but I can pick up feelings and intent. Sometimes a word or two.” James turned and looked at Matt when he said that. Matt reddened (it was becoming a habit). James must have picked up the “b” word earlier, just before kissing him. Shit.

  Of course, the kiss might be considered a positive reaction.

  Pearl glanced at Matt and then James interestedly, and raised both her eyebrows. Matt looked away and ate his roll.

  “And Benigna is interested in going with you when you leave?”

  James hesitated momentarily. “She wants out of here. Whether she really wants to go with us, I don’t know.”

  Benigna was making more noises behind her gag, pleading noises. James quirked one side of his lips at her. “She has quite the dirty little mind, from what I can tell. I think she feels it’s wasted here.”

  “MMMMMPH!” Benigna was now glaring daggers at James. He quirked the other side of his lips. Matt almost felt sorry for her. Except she had almost exposed them to God knows what by stumbling in where she wasn’t wanted. That effectively killed his pity.

  “Well, we gotta do something with her,” Carmella said.

  Pearl chimed in. “We don’t particularly want to… eliminate her. But if she poses a threat….” Pearl shrugged. Matt bet she was less dispassionate than she seemed. Carmella would probably eliminate Maligna, though, like a bad tumor (were there good tumors?).

  Ah, scare tactics. Not his forte.

  “But if she went with you, and we could trust her not to escape, that would solve all our problems.”

  Benigna was nodding fervently, and making eager, agreeable noises. Clearly, she would happily go with them in order to avoid “elimination.” And probably the free porn she imagined she’d be getting on the trip.

  James made a show of being reluctant. Matt let him have at it and wandered over to his tray to eat more. He was starving. Besides, James was better at emotionless badass than he was. When he wasn’t being nice. Strange that a guy who could be so nice could also come across as so callous when he needed to.

  Soon, Benigna was free and breathlessly proclaiming her willingness to accompany them to Oregon, promising not to escape. James seemed to be buying it.

  Carmella looked less than convinced. But she hauled Benigna away. “Come on, Maligna. We’re going to tell Mother Superior that you’re doing penance in my kitchen for the next two days. Two days?” she inquired, turning back.

  “We shouldn’t leave any later, but if we can leave earlier, we might,” James answered. Pearl nodded.

  Carmella looked satisfied with that. “So, you’ll be spending one to two days in the kitchen with me while I get you ready. I have lots of little jobs I think you’ll enjoy,” she purred, smiling maliciously.

  Carmella and Benigna left, Benigna yammering on to Carmella about how she was fine with traveling with
the two men, even if they were sodomites.

  Matt choked on a carrot, and James had to whack him on the back. Which wasn’t actually necessary, but probably made James feel like he was helping.

  Once he caught his breath, Matt sat on the bed, pulling the food tray to himself, setting it in front of his crossed legs.

  Pearl and James were trying not to seem like they were avoiding each other’s eyes. Matt sighed. “Why do we need to leave within two days?” he asked, giving them a break. He could practically see Pearl’s shoulders fall in relief.

  “When I checked in this morning, Lance had arranged a rendezvous for us with a SpecOps/Contract team at Brownlee Dam. It’s about thirty kilometers away, but we probably need to give ourselves two nights for travel. I don’t know if we can find the horse again, and now we’ll be dragging Maligna along.”

  “When’s the rendezvous?”

  “Fourth night from tonight at 0330. Two nights of travel should be plenty. The team’ll create a distraction near the border crossing downstream from the damn, and we’ll cross at the dam then. Because of the current no-fly truce they won’t be able to cross the OR-ID border.”

  “So, I guess we should see how my wounds look.” Matt sighed again.

  “Yeah, we’re going to have to swim for it, so you have to be healed enough to get across. The eco-terrorists only partially destroyed Brownlee Dam. We’ll have to go through some swift water.”

  “No broken skin,” Pearl clarified.

  “I can’t just dose up with anti-bionanos?”

  “You could, but there are still parasitic bugs, not to mention pollutants.”

  Duh. “Shit,” he muttered. James came and sat next to him, sliding a hand around the back of his neck and giving him a squeeze.

  “Won’t leave without you.” James seemed to think this should be comforting. His eyes widened in surprise when Matt’s instinctive reaction was to force him to go. “That’s not okay with you?”