by Lauren Dane
The rage at what had been done to her coursed into his system again. Never far away.
“What they did to you will not go unavenged.”
She pulled away to look at him. Her thoughts took her away somewhere for a while. And he waited as she worked it through. “I suppose sometimes I’m to say no. To say it’s over and it’s best to move on.”
She tipped her head and her hair slid forward. He resisted the urge to brush it back. He hated that she ever found the need for those tic behaviors. But he respected that for her at times they were necessary.
“I want to hurt the people who did this to me. I want the people who make me tremble like a scared animal sometimes for no reason to be punished. I want to punish them for taking my parents. For stealing so much of my life.” Her words blurred together as she sped her pace. Just to get it out, he figured.
There was still anger. But she articulated it now, as opposed to the rocking and shivering she’d done before. Pesch had said it was a good sign. But Vincenz still wanted to put a bullet into the head of every single person who’d harmed her.
“Beautiful Hannah, it doesn’t make you a bad person to want to see the people who did this to you given their due.”
Noise in the entry and a quick look toward the monitors told Vincenz Julian had returned.
“Is it time to go now?”
Vincenz stood and put her on her feet. “Soon.”
Julian came into the room and grinned at them. He tossed a packet to Vincenz. “Documents all taken care of. Our berth is ready.”
His expression softened when he turned his attention to Hannah. “Hello, my lovely.” He pulled her into a hug and kissed her soundly.
“You taste of outside.”
“Do I taste of how much I missed you and Vincenz today?”
She smiled, blushing. “Perhaps.”
“I have a little something for you.”
She barely refrained from clapping her hands and Vincenz leaned around her to kiss Julian. It was meant to be a quick, affectionate peck, but Julian stepped closer, pulling her between them, wedging Hannah between their bodies as Julian did what he did best.
Julian allowed himself to sink into the moment. Vincenz rushed through his senses. So sure in himself, Vincenz slid into a kiss the way he did everything else. With utter surety and total attention.
A nip of impatient teeth against kiss-swollen lips. A teasing taste and a promise of more.
“Yes, I think you taste exactly like you missed us today.” Vincenz stole one more kiss before moving back.
Julian held them both to him. Getting used to something he shouldn’t. It was absurd to think this could work given the crazy situation all around them. But there seemed to be nothing else he could do.
Hannah rested her head on Julian’s chest. “Sometimes you two are so beautiful I wonder if I’m still in the lab. That maybe I’ve finally broken and this is all a lovely dream.”
Julian swallowed around a knot of emotion lodged in his throat. He was a hard man. He’d seen a lot in his time. Very little had the ability to move him deeply. But the sum total of that stood right there against him. Hannah and her wild, brutal honesty, the well of strength she had no idea she possessed. So ridiculously intelligent even Vincenz had trouble keeping up at times.
He looked down into the face he’d give his very life for. Not just strong, not just intelligent, but beautiful. Lush. Her curves had filled in as she’d been with them. As each man had plied her appetite with treats as well as all the things she’d need to get better.
What could he say that could do justice to what she did to him? He bent his head to her mouth, brushing his lips to hers. She sighed into his kiss, giving herself to him.
“Don’t you want your present?” he murmured against her mouth before pulling away.
“It’s a terrible flaw. I’m avaricious.”
She said it solemnly, but he saw the humor in her eyes.
He drew the long, slender silken pouch from his inside pocket and put it in her palm. Her eyes were wide with delight, a smile on her face; the flush on her cheeks was just exactly what he was going for. The way she reacted to his gifts did something to him. Eased some long deep knot in his chest.
He and Vincenz watched as she drew the deep blue lacquer hair sticks from their sheath. “Oh!” She looked up from the sticks and into his face. “They’re beautiful. I think I’ll wear them today.” She tiptoed up to kiss him swiftly. “Thank you!”
He watched her disappear around the corner before turning back to Vincenz.
“I love it when you give her presents.” Vincenz kissed him again. “Makes me happy to see your reaction as much as hers.”
He shrugged and changed the subject. “We’re booked on a standard transport to Asphodel where we’ll pick up our private craft. I’ve gone over the cover with her; she’s got a solid grasp on it. Certainly enough to get her out of most kinds of trouble.”
“Do you think we’re doing the right thing? Taking her with us?” Vincenz had worried, Julian knew. He did as well.
“What are our other choices, baby?” He cupped Vincenz’s cheek. “Can you leave her? Even in Ravena where it’s so much safer? Can you walk away and know she’s back there without the people who understand her most? Who will hold her when she has the dreams? Who will know to leave her be when she lets her hair fall around her face? Hm?”
He’d developed a terrible selfishness when it came to her. But in all honesty he believed they were the best things for her.
And she them.
Vincenz nodded. “I know. I want her where I can touch her. And it’s not a lie that she’ll be helpful on his op.”
“She needs to be useful. You know that. Hells, I feel it too. They took everything from her.”
She came back, her hair held up with the pretty ornamental sticks. His heart stopped at her loveliness. And then wondered just what her life would have held for her without the horrible direction it had taken her in the year prior.
“They’re very pretty. Thank you.” She danced through the room to a song only she could hear. Vincenz put an arm around his waist and they watched her move.
“Are you ready to go?” Julian asked as she twirled to him and he caught her, laughing.
“If you’re both still ready to have me.”
“Where else in all the universes would you belong?” Vincenz asked and she paused, cocking her head at him.
“Nowhere.” Her voice was serious.
“All right then. That’s settled.” Julian stole a kiss from each one of them before marshaling everyone to get them out the door and to the portal.
Chapter 12
The Portal city was loud. The air scented with the spice of the food carts, the acidic bite of the fuel used in the transports, the mélange of people from all over the Known Universes.
The hum of it lived in her belly, soothing her jangled nerves. Vincenz walked behind, Julian in front, the two of them keeping her from being jostled by the thick midday crowds.
Vincenz kept a hand at the small of her back. A lifeline.
They hadn’t asked her over and over if she was okay. Which was nice or she may have screamed.
Vincenz kept an eye on her, Julian knew. But he wanted to kick himself for not getting them on a transport at a less busy time of day.
It wasn’t that she had lost it. No, it was the way she so ruthlessly held herself together as they made their way through the lanes leading to the transports. The tension radiated from her body, but she continued to move, never betraying her anxiety to anyone but those who’d know her well.
“Almost there. It’s a pretty day, isn’t it?” Vincenz had moved from his place behind her to tuck her against his body. His gaze flicked to Julian, who nodded, readjusting his pace so that he came to her other side, his arm around her waist. They squeezed in a little more and the fine tremor in her muscles eased back a little.
She nodded, looking up at the sky.
“A picnic
, I think,” he said to cut the tension a little. “When we return, we need to take a blanket and a big feast up to the mountains. I know of a lake, crystal clear, surrounded by trees. Hot springs feed into little pools at the northernmost edge. You can swim there even at the height of the cold season.”
The tension lines around her mouth eased. “Really? I do so love to swim. I’ve never gone in the cold season before. Aside from pools of course.”
Vincenz pressed a kiss to her temple. “I had no idea you were a swimmer.”
The joy on her features underlined how much Julian needed to make it happen. She certainly loved the bathing tub at home. He began to look forward to seeing her frolic through the water.
“It’s a good way to keep in shape.” She shrugged, but Julian knew it was far more than that to her.
“We need to go up the steps here. I’ll keep in front.” Julian moved to shield her.
The ticket taker looked him up and down with a smile. Hannah looked the ticket taker up and down right back. At least she didn’t feel like throwing up from all the chaos around her. This woman had some cheek to flirt with Julian with Hannah right there.
She sniffed and Vincenz snorted a laugh in her ear. “He doesn’t even notice the attention.”
“I think he takes it as his due. He’s quite delicious to look upon.” And who was she to feel jealous? He was Vincenz’s before she came into the picture.
“I suppose. It’s part of what makes him so alluring I think. He can render me totally witless sometimes.”
“Do you feel that way about me?” she murmured as he pulled her against his body.
“Like I want to lick you all over?”
“Yes, that works.” She smiled as Vincenz handed their documentation over to the ticket taker.
Julian took her hand, Vincenz keeping the other as they made their way into the big transport.
“This is a mass transit transport. I booked us into the VIP level. Should be less crowded.”
She nodded, knowing her eyes were as wide as a girl’s on her first time to the city. She wasn’t a universe traveler, though she’d been on a portal transport a handful of times in her life. Of course, some of those were to kidnap her. But Vincenz and Julian were here. And she was with them of her own accord. No one had drugged her or coerced her.
She made her own choices now. Which seemed to help with the fear.
They took a lift up to the special levels and when they exited she saw how much quieter and less crowded it was. She squeezed Julian’s hand in thanks.
Expertly, Vincenz led them to a seating area in a far off corner. The departure gongs sounded. A ten-minute warning. She wondered if she should have taken the offer of the medicine Hal had offered. A simple sedative. She would have been conscious the whole time. But the edge would have been dulled.
Thing was, she was done with that. She couldn’t live her whole life with the edge dulled by medications. Couldn’t avoid the public. She chose the fear over the numbness.
“I brought along something you might like.” Vincenz rustled around in his coat pocket and procured a pretty pink box tied with a bow.
“Two in one day? It’s not necessary for you two to spoil me so.” She grabbed for the box even as she said it. Vincenz laughed.
“We like spoiling you. It’s better than any vid to see the way you react to presents.”
She hadn’t received a lot of presents. Not that she grew up with privation and want. She came from a solidly middle unranked class family. Though her mother was from the Imperium. The community they lived in never seemed bothered by that. Her parents had been practical sorts. She always had enough to wear, enough to eat, a roof over her head and whenever she needed the credits for an extra class or something related to her schooling, her parents gave it to her gladly.
But she hadn’t grown up with pink boxes filled with … “Oh! Chocolates. How did you know?” She remembered her manners in time and offered them each a piece before she looked down at the shiny dark brown shapes nestled in the tissue paper.
“Spoiling you is one of my greatest pleasures.” Vincenz leaned forward and brushed a kiss over her lips.
Chocolate wasn’t practical.
But, she thought as the sweetness of the caramel spread through her senses, it was beyond wonderful and she loved it.
“I never had chocolate until a few years ago.”
The tug in her belly and the flickering of the lights signaled the transport had unmoored from the clamps and was sliding into place to enter the portal.
“Really?” Julian seemed surprised.
“Sweets aren’t good for you. My mother was always worried about my brain. She said sweets were a waste of calories and energy.” She shrugged. “When I went away to school I was a research assistant for one of my professors. She made it a point to educate me on the wonders of things like chocolate.” And high heels. Hannah smiled at the memory.
“Chocolate is totally impractical. Which is why it’s so wondrous.” Julian grinned.
She popped another into her mouth, agreeing.
“What were they like?” Vincenz asked.
“My parents?” She swallowed past the lump in her throat. “As I said, my mother was a practical woman. A daughter of traders, she went out on trips with her father from quite a young age. I don’t think I can recall anything she wasn’t good at. A confident woman, but not …” She paused, thinking of the right words as they flittered around in her head. “She was not fancy. But she loved books. That’s how she met my father. He was a student and she had a patch of grass at the university where she sold her wares. He would come by every day to moon over them. And then he noticed her. She says it took two weeks for him to look away from the books and to her.”
Vincenz laughed.
“She was what he needed. Where she was practical and accomplished, he was … he lived in his head. Brilliant, my father. But it was hard for him sometimes to remember he had women to tend to. He often stumbled from his offices, surprised to see us, as if he’d just remembered he had a family. He was a good man. A good person. He made a difference.” She put the lid back on the little pink box and methodically wound the ribbon back around, tying a bow. Trying very hard not to let her bottom lip tremble.
Julian took her hand, kissing her fingers. Right at the same time the transport slid into the portal and began to move. A free fall of emotions skittered around in her belly.
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You didn’t kill them.” She did. Shoving that away, she looked to Vincenz. “In fact I know how many people you contacted to find my belongings. Thank you for that. Thank you both. For everything.” Not all her things had been destroyed after all. Vincenz had recovered a large percentage of the things her parents had put into storage for her. She’d go through it all when … well, whenever she found the time she supposed. It seemed less important now that she was making a new life than it had been before.
It would be nice to have a day without this insanity messing up her every thought.
“The boxes should be at the house when we return. I was hoping they’d arrive before we left.”
It had been hard enough looking through her parents’ things. No, it was better to wait. Better not to have sifted through her old life right before she jumped into the wild beyond with these two men on some sort of secret mission.
That part was nearly as exciting as finding herself wedged between two of the most beautiful, sexy and thrilling men in all the ’Verses.
“What about your family?” she asked Julian.
“I don’t know much. I grew up in an orphanage.”
She cocked her head and looked at him. Sometimes he was so confident, ruthlessly so, in his abilities it was hard to imagine he had hurts of any sort. But it was clear by the brief appearance of the lines around his mouth that he had them.
“When did you … meet Wil?” Hanna wasn’t sure how much she could say so she tried to keep it simple.
“I was nineteen standard. I’d done two years already in lockup.” He looked at his hands and then back to her face. “He came in and interrogated me for over an hour. I don’t know if I hated him or admired him. He really pissed me off that day. And then he left. He thanked me for my time and walked out. Two hours later he showed up again and sprung me.”
What must that have been like? A man like Wilhelm Ellis through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old petty criminal?
Whatever it was about Ellis, she’d never seen anyone inspire so much loyalty.
“Were you shocked by the massive size of him?” She had to bite her lip to continue asking questions. She wanted to know them, but also understood the public nature of their situation just then.
Julian’s gaze cleared and the smile came back into it. “I was just glad he wasn’t a jailer there to beat me up. I was a young prick so it wasn’t as if I was undeserving of such an event. But he came back and I went into the military.”
And he’d met Marame. She rarely spoke of the other woman to him. Not because she was jealous or worried over a dead woman. But because she hated to see the pain in his gaze.
But the shadow didn’t come so she left it alone. It seemed silly to feel accomplished just then, but she did. Because it felt normal. The sort of thing you do when you’re with people you care about. It had seemed like another life when she’d been that person before. And she supposed it had been another life in a number of ways.
“Was it hard? Adjusting to that new life?”
“Before the military I don’t think I’d ever been up so early in the morning. Every day. The only running I’d done regularly was from the polis so I was out of shape. Mentally and physically. There were some days when my legs felt like jelly and I wondered if they’d just fall off from all the running.”
She actually giggled and Julian’s smile widened. Probably to match the one Vincenz wore.
“Are you mocking me?” Julian teased.