Battlefield Love

by Skyler Andra

  He gave me a frankly disbelieving look. “I beg your pardon.”

  “You wanted to see what I could do? Well, this is it. Check your pocket.”

  He reached into his pocket and drew out a condom, flipping it onto the table in front of him with a look of repulsion. “Is that all that you have manifested? All of this time and trouble for this?” The chair rolled out from beneath him as he stood.

  “Hey,” I said. “I never told you to break into my goddamn apartment.”

  “This is pointless,” bird-beak interrupted.

  Dartmoor shook his head, red blotches erupting on his face. “I’m not quite ready to give up yet. She will comply if she has to.”

  I shivered when he pulled a Taser out of his pocket.

  “Make sure that Dr. Victors is on her way here.” The coldness in Dartmoor’s voice froze my blood. “We’ll see if a moderate dose of trauma can move things along.”

  Dartmoor approached me and I ran to the door, but was stopped by the two guards. When the creep was within range, he pressed the button, and two electrodes flung out and zapped me. Electricity surged through my entire body, setting every nerve alight. My muscles contracted and my body shook. I felt to the floor shaking. A rush of pain rode inside me. I wanted to curl up into a ball but couldn’t.

  “Show me what else you can do, Miss Casey,” Dartmoor warned. “Or that won’t be the last time you experience that.”

  “Stop,” someone shouted. A woman. She rushed to my side, brushing my face. Horror twisted in her gaze and her mouth. Her white coat suggested she was a doctor. I remembered her face from the physical examination from the previous day. Dr. Victors from memory. But my memory was all hazy right now from the Taser.

  The effects of the mini-electrocution remained and I couldn’t beg the woman to take me back to Byron.

  “Too much of that and you might give her brain damage or inflict serious harm.” The woman lifted me up. “Help me take her back to her chambers.”

  Two bonehead security men lifted me up by my arms and dragged me back to my room.

  Back in my room, I was finally able to mumble, “thank you,” as they threw me on the floor.

  The doctor’s fingers found my pulse.

  “Give it a few hours and you’ll be back to normal,” she advised me.

  I grabbed her wrist. “Get me out of here,” I begged, my voice hoarse.

  She yanked her hand away. “Don’t ask me that again. They’re great men. Doing great things.”

  I glared at her. “It’s not worth this. You know that, right? I’m pretty sure you know that.”

  Whether she knew it or not, she didn’t say another word to me as she helped me up onto the bed I shared with Byron. She left with a guilty look on her face, and I thought vindictively that guilt was the least she could feel for helping these assholes.

  Chapter 20

  “Jesus Christ, what the hell did they do to you?” Byron crawled on the bed beside me, and I was grateful for the support. He clasped my hand, while I stared at the ceiling for a bit, letting the dizziness fall away.

  “It’s no big deal,” I answered him.

  “Yes, it is,” he urged me. “Tell me.”

  Truth was, the Taser had zapped me of energy. My muscles ached and felt weak at the same time.

  “Taser,” I said.

  “What?” Byron’s hands cupped my face. “I’ll kill them.”

  Hearing those words from his mouth was both sexy and disappointing know that an academic posed little threat to men with weapons.

  “They wanted to see if they could bring out my mystical powers,” I added, enjoying the way he held me, his thumb stroking my cheek. “Apparently, they weren’t impressed with my nifty condom trick. It’s really a shame how no one in this day and age is interested in safe sex.”

  Byron didn’t appreciate my joke, and his jaw hardened. “We need to get out of here.”

  I gave him a look. “Because it was okay when they were just going to do these things to you?”

  Byron glared at me, and I knew the answer was yes. Goddamn him.

  “We’re not going anywhere, Byron,” I said. “Just, let it go for tonight, okay? I’m not in any state to be wandering the desert.”

  He agreed, but it was likely as much because we figured that the place had to be bugged as much as anything. I lay still for the rest of the evening, not really feeling like myself again until it got dark.

  The pain from the Taser had been hideous, but not worse than I could stand. It felt like getting hit with the absolute worst cramp I’d ever had, every muscle in body tensing up before being allowed to relax. In an hour or so, the pain was only a memory, but I was beginning to suspect that the torture was not the biggest part of it. This was Dartmoor’s way of saying that he could do exactly what he liked with me, that my body belonged to them, and that he would do whatever it was he had to do to make it perform.

  My conversation with Mads came to mind.

  There’s a way out of this, I thought to myself. There definitely is. After all, you’ve still got an ace in the hole, don’t you?

  I hadn’t let myself drop down into that trance state again. I figured it would look too weird for them to see me zoning out as I checked out their relationship status through the cords I could see. While I was resting in bed, I tried looking for the cords, but as it turned out, my brain was fried, and I needed to see the person in question to see what I was doing.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the vivid red glow of Byron’s own cord, and I broke away before I could really look at it closely. Despite everything that had happened to us, I felt as if it was some kind of oddly unbearable intimacy to do it, as if that was seeing too much.

  Later that night Byron managed to cook us a desultory meal of sorts, and we ate it, although neither of us felt terribly hungry given the day’s events.

  Afterwards, to my surprise, Byron turned to me. “Take a shower with me.”

  I blinked at him. “What?” My muscles were weak like jelly.

  “Come on. Take a shower with me.” He gave me a smile that looked absolutely nothing like a smile at all.

  I’d heard dumber come-ons, especially on the phone sex line, but this didn’t feel like some kind of pick-up line or like the world’s worst way to get me in the mood. I mean, who thought of sex with a woman after they were tortured?

  “Um,” I said. “Okay. But you might need to hold me up.”

  Despite that, however, I got a little hot down below, getting at least a little turned on when I followed him to the enormous bathroom. Apparently, it took getting kidnapped before I got to stay in a beautiful hotel room with a raised pedestal bathtub and an imitation rainstorm shower.

  Byron switched on the shower and the water hissed from the gold faucet.

  For some reason, I felt a little shy when I stripped. I’m not all that self-conscious, but this was Byron. I peeked over my shoulder at him as he stripped with a matter-of-fact thoroughness, and warmth clutched my cheeks at the sight of his muscled back. I had wondered if this was going to happen, and whether I would compare him to Rane when it did. Not that it was happening right here and now. We were just having an innocent shower. Byron was helping me out when I felt like crap. Besides, there was absolutely no reason to compare them at all. They were different, and I wanted to run my hands over both of them.

  Byron entered the shower and beckoned me under the spray with him. For a moment, I simply enjoyed watching the water drip down his toned physique. Until he stepped out and pulled me in, pressing my back to his chest to hold me upright. Next to him, I felt his breath quicken, and his cock stir. I let the warm water work the stress of the day out of my shoulders and my back. When I looked at him, Byron was looking at the burn marks on my chest, where Dartmoor had hit me with the Taser.

  “Son of a bitch,” he muttered, lifting his arm from my waist to brush his fingers against them. His fingers so close to my breasts made my heartbeat skip.

  “T
hey don’t matter,” I said softly. “Not right now.”

  All I wanted to do right now was enjoy being in the shower with him. Possibly to continue the amazing kiss we’d shared in his bedroom. Before all this shit started. I slid in his grasp and turned to face him.

  Byron nodded. “Right. Okay, so the reason I brought you in here is because I think I’ve figured out how to make a bomb.”

  My stomach dropped. Oh. How stupid of me. Practical as ever Byron.

  I stared at him. “What?

  “A bomb,” he said. “You know. And keep your voice down. I think the water will wash out any words past their ability to record them, but I’m not exactly sure.”

  “Oh.” I pressed my lips together, feeling even more stupid. “We’re in here to talk about a bomb?”

  Byron nodded, and then gave me a blank look.

  “No.” I waved a finger at him. “I am not going to be the strange one here. It is not weird that someone I like a lot asked me into the shower and I was not expecting him to want to talk about bombs. Wash my back.”

  I grabbed the loofah dangling from the faucet and shoved it at him.

  He was silent for a moment until he complied. “Fine.”

  I could have rationalized it that just because no one could hear us did not mean that we weren’t getting watched on some sleazy camera by security. but it was also because I was in a shower with Byron, he had gotten seriously hot since the last time I’d seen him, and dammit, I was not going to let this chance go by.

  Whatever he thought about his own ability to read the social cues that he was sending out, he did a good job washing my back, running the loofah from my neck to my waist as the water removed the last traces of soreness from my body. Well before I was ready to give up the luxury of his hands moving along my slippery skin, he started to talk again, leaning forwards so that his mouth was inches from my ear.

  “There are a few places,” he whispered, intent on continuing the conversation at the worst possible time. “Some blind corners I’ve observed, where I think I can build an extremely primitive incendiary device. If I set it off, I can probably at least send them into a panic, and then we can get out of here.”

  “And about the desert?” I asked, leaning my head to one side as he brushed my neck.

  “Thought of that too,” he added. “The major vehicles that they use to get here are locked down, but what isn’t locked down are the cars of the cleaning staff.”

  “The cleaning staff?” I started to turn to face him, but he grabbed my hips, running the loofah across my stomach, telling me he was in charge here.

  “Yes. I think they drive in, spend a few hours here, and then leave.” The way he circled my stomach had me seriously heating up below. “Judging from some of the things I’ve heard, the staff here said this place used to be an ultra-secret resort of some kind.”

  “Ah, that explains the everything,” I moaned.

  “It does.” He snuck the loofah across my chest, tracing circular motions across my breasts, making my nipples harden. “I figure if we coordinate for right before they take you away or right after.”

  Byron was making it ridiculously hard to concentrate. “How in the world do you know how to make a bomb?”

  “I look things up.” He carefully cleansed my arms and his motions felt like heaven. “I have the Internet at my place.”

  “That’s how you end up on lists, you know,” I groaned.

  Why wasn’t this turning him on? Despite the circumstance it was incredibly hot. No guy could pass this opportunity.

  “Yes, but now I have the ability to come up with a distraction that can get us out of here.”

  I hesitated. “Wait.”

  “Why the hell would I…”

  He clamped a bubbled hand over my mouth and I tasted the coconut flavor of the cleanser. “Shush, we have to stay quiet, remember? I just don’t think we need to take the risk yet. Your plan sounds insane.”

  “No, what sounds insane is staying here and letting them do whatever they want to do with us. What happened to getting all of the information that we can get?”

  “Well, obviously that was a mistake,” Byron said, and I could hear the impatience in his voice. “I didn’t realize we were going to be stranded in the middle of the desert or that the asshole in the suit would decide that you were fair game for a Taser!”

  “Oh, and it was totally cool when it was you who was possibly getting tasered or smacked around or whatever?”

  “Yes!”

  “Oh god, why are you like this? Why are you so you?”

  “I figured that was one of the reasons you came looking for me,” he said, a stiffness clinging to his words. “Unless being close was actually the only major qualification here.”

  This time he let me slip away to face him. “No! Dear god, it never has been, you idiot! Seriously, you’re going to bust out of this place with a bomb you learned to make off of like, Yahoo Answers. You think we’re going to get away in the janitor’s car. You think it’s perfectly fine that the bad guys might decide that you don’t need kneecaps to be a good hostage. You get me into the shower to talk about cloak and dagger stuff, and you don’t care…”

  At the last sentence I choked up.

  “I do care,” Byron said, his voice croaking, which made me stop abruptly.

  “Really?”

  “Well, let’s just…well.” He spun me around to face the wall. “Don’t turn around.”

  The husky sound of his voice made me shiver deep inside. He bent down and cupped the back of my knee, lifted my leg, running the loofah over it in long, smooth strides.

  This was it. I could turn away, and we could keep things the way they were, or I could take one more mad risk in the middle of everything that had happened.

  There were about a million reasons not to do it. We were in enemy territory, and the enemy probably had surveillance cameras keeping an eye on all of us. A tense situation was like a powder keg, and who knew what might make it blow? I should also probably learn more about this entire bomb thing before I said yes or no.

  Then I said fuck it, because I was sore and tired and he just felt too damn good. I leaned back against him. For a moment, I thought Byron was going to pull away, maybe ask me more about what I thought of his plan, but I reached behind me to grab him by the wrist. He was far stronger than me, and he could break my grasp whenever he wanted to. Instead, I felt a tremor go through his entire body, and it was so very obvious that he wanted me just as much as I wanted him.

  His cock felt large against the base of my back, hard and thick, and the water still streaming down our bodies made us both slippery and sleek. Deliberately, I wiggled against him, feeling him get even harder, and I laughed softly.

  “So how long have you been hiding that?” I asked.

  Byron swallowed in my ear. “More or less as soon as you started stripping.”

  “Well, that’s good,” I purred. “I’m glad that it wasn’t me yelling at you that got you so hard.”

  Byron chuckled a little, reaching forwards to set his hands on my hips. For a moment, I remembered hands that were larger, harder, but then I banished the memories of Rane because this was Byron with me right now.

  “I mean, if that’s what gets you off, I would let you yell at me,” Byron murmured. “I’m easygoing like that.”

  “Or maybe just easy?”

  “For you, I’m definitely easy.”

  He slid his hands up my sides to cup my breasts in my hands, and it was astonishingly sexy to look down at my body and see him massaging my flesh. He worked my nipples until they were erect, plucking lightly at the tips in just the way I liked, massaging gently even as I pressed ass against his crotch.

  “Put your hands on the wall in front of you,” Byron murmured, and I glanced over my shoulder at him.

  I smiled at him. “You’re enjoying giving orders.”

  “You can give them next, if you like.”

  “I might just hold you to that.” M
y breath caught in my throat when he shoved the loofah between my legs, massaging my pussy, making me even wetter. “Oh!”

  When he was finished, he let the loofah hang on the faucet. Then he pressed me forwards, and I placed my hands on the wall instinctively to brace myself. Byron reached up, raking rough fingers through my soaked hair from the base of my neck to the back of my head, and then he wrapped my hair in his fist, pulling back gently.

  “I’m going to make you feel so good,” he promised next to my ear, and I trembled from the way his words made me shake.

  “Yes…”

  He pressed his leg between my thighs, making me widen my stance and press my rear out behind me. I had a brief and hazy idea of how very provocatively I was posed, but just then, I didn’t care. There was some part of me that really liked being pushed into this position, exactly what Byron wanted, in exactly the pose he wanted most. His hand in my hair put the most delicious pressure on my scalp, and I moaned as he tilted my head to kiss the base of my neck.

  “There are probably other ways to beat the microphones,” he said softly.

  “Is there?”

  “Yeah. Blankets insulating the closet maybe. Walking around outside.”

  Fuck. Not this again.

  Chapter 21

  “Why didn’t you choose one of those?” I tried to turn around, but he grabbed my hips holding me still.

  “Why do you think?” he asked, rolling his hips against my rear.

  The heat of his cock pressed against my bare thigh, and the idea of him filling me, making me cry out as he made me take every last inch, made me whimper.

  “Because…because you kept thinking about doing this?”

  “Ever since I saw you again,” Byron admitted, his voice heavy with desire. “Hell, I wanted to do something like this back in school, but somehow we just never got around to it.”

  That wasn’t true. I tried to, but I’d missed the boat.

  “Don’t know what we were thinking,” I joked, steering away from that topic.

  “Gonna make up for lost time now, I think.”

  I started to reply to that, but then his hand was on my thigh, squeezing just this side of pleasure. There was something almost casual about the way he handled me, as if I were a product he was thinking about buying, something on display that he manipulated as he pleased. Maybe I should have been offended. But I was just turned on.