by Lauren Dane
She put it on, tucking the tail of her hair through the circle at the back. Just then, her face devoid of cosmetics, glowing with natural beauty, she looked incredibly young.
Vincenz pulled out sun shades and put them on her face. “Now you’re doubly protected. The light here isn’t filtered as strongly as it is in some other places.”
Thanking him, she stood at the ready. Julian took a look at Vincenz and took point as they headed up the nearby hillside, up and up until they’d reach the ridge above.
The trees were lush at first, protecting from the ridiculous heat, but thinned the higher they went. Vincenz made them stop here and there, mainly to hand her snacks and be sure she was hydrated.
“I’m not going to fall apart.” Her brow furrowed, she fisted her hands and glared at them both as they approached the second-to-last incline. “I know how to ask for a break if I need one. I’m a doctor, I know how to keep fluids in me and rest when necessary. I don’t want to slow you down. If I’m doing that, then why am I even here?”
“I need breaks too, you know. And neither of us thinks you’ll fall apart. We wouldn’t have brought you out here if we thought that. It wouldn’t be good for us, or, more importantly, you. Let us take care of you, Hannah. It makes me happy to see you eat and I know you’re getting enough water.” Vincenz managed to make an order sound like a sweet request.
“That and I’m bossy, beautiful Hannah. I like knowing how the people I care about are feeling. So sit. We’re going to take a dip in that pool over there in a few minutes. I want to do a little scouting first while Vincenz sets up some security on the perimeters. The sun is high and it’s too hot to walk that ridge. We have to wait an hour or so.”
“Swim?” Her features perked up.
Though she’d mentioned enjoying swimming, he had no idea she’d react so positively, but he loved it just the same. Loved bringing her happiness any way he could. Made him feel strong. A good provider for his woman.
He paused at the vista ahead, using the field glasses to spy on the valley below. No activity other than a few animals. There were people farther away but at their closest they still weren’t near enough to pose a threat.
But there was a threat in any case. One he was far more vulnerable to and that was the fact he already considered Hannah his woman. He loved Marame with everything he was. Had considered her his, albeit not in the same way he saw Hannah. But the love was the same. The surety in your connection to that other person you trusted to know all of you.
But then his darkness had grown when Marame was lost. To his surprise it had been Vincenz who’d known that darkness and still loved. Surprising to have looked up one day and felt that zing.
His tip into that first kiss with Vincenz had been borne from a great deal of pent-up emotion. And he’d been feeling an attraction to Vincenz that seemed to deepen each time they’d been together.
A row over orders had been the spark. Vincenz had been pecking at him. Pushing him. Boxing him in until he had to look at it, look Vincenz right in the face and suddenly his mouth was on Vincenz’s.
He hadn’t even thought of having anyone else once they’d kissed that first time. Vincenz hadn’t pushed a relationship. He’d let Julian set the pace. It had been all hot need. That heat still existed between them. Every time he looked at Vincenz he wanted him. But what they’d had deepened, roots digging in, uniting them emotionally as well as physically.
And then Hannah, who’d blown in like fluff and had put down roots. At first she was outwardly fragile. But each day she surfaced more. Each conversation they’d had brought him more of her.
She was by turns tenacious, beautiful, stubborn, sexy, vexing, funny. She was inherently provocative without meaning to be. There was something about her that caught the eye. Snagged the attention. The kind of person who listened more than she talked. She looked right at all his dark parts, all the secrets and blood, and she didn’t care.
And by the time he figured out that because his defenses had been down with her, she’d gotten under his skin and into his heart, it was too late to do anything but admit his need for her. She lodged herself into all his jagged, empty spots as she gave herself to him and things had just clicked into place.
He sighed and tried to push away the worry. What would happen would happen, and there wasn’t anything to do about it other than walk away. And he knew he wasn’t strong enough, or foolish enough, to do that.
And what he had was more than that kid who didn’t own a brand-new pair of shoes until he was old enough to lift one could have imagined. They had something special. Magical to be with two people who fit him so well.
He’d ride this crazy thing because there was nothing more in all the universes he wanted more. And he’d find a way to ignore his discomfort at feeling want. Because it was having them or not having them, and he knew which he preferred.
When he got back it was to find her sitting on a rock, her back against a nearby tree, her face tipped to the breeze, eyes closed. He didn’t want to startle her, but he paused to just look for long moments before he made enough noise to get her attention.
“Vincenz has shown me how to set the security beacons.” She grinned as she said it.
“Some women,” he said as he dropped his pack and moved to her, “would get that look over a bauble. Not so this one.” He bent to kiss her quickly.
She laughed. “So says the man who teased me for getting excited about his presents.”
“I think it may be the case that Vincenz is just as pleased with you opening the presents as you are.”
“Oh.” Her brows flew up and she smirked. “So Vincenz is the one who likes that, hm?”
He kissed her again because he wanted to and because she tasted like sunshine. “Perhaps I may as well.”
“You make me smile. I like to smile. It feels so new and wonderful.”
He had no words for how that made him feel. No words for the depth of feeling she evoked.
Vincenz came back to their spot and sat to kick off his boots and socks. “Hot as hells out there. Beacons are set. Everything okay?” He indicated the spot where Julian had just been.
“Yes. We have about three quarters of an hour before we need to move again.” He pulled his weapons off, placing them at the edge of the water.
“Swimming!” Her nude form dashed by them and into the water where she disappeared before resurfacing again a ways from shore. “It’s cold, but not too much. Come in.”
Julian stripped off completely and ran to join her, laughing as he did. Funny how a serious moment can still give way to laughter at times. He swam out to her. “Who knew you’d like swimming so much?” he teased.
“Oh, I do. It’s one of my favorite things and I haven’t done it since before they took me.” A shadow flitted over her face and was gone. “And out in a lake for even longer. Did you ever visit the landsea back home?”
It was easy sometimes to forget they’d grown up in the same ’Verse.
“During the warm season, sometimes they’d take groups of us out of the city to the shore.” It had been miraculous to him, the massive size, the roaring sound of the waves hitting the shore. He’d never seen anything like it before.
“We didn’t vacation much and my mother frowned on frivolous activities as a waste of my potential. It’s why I developed my love of vids. They were so taboo I’d sneak off to see them when I should have been in school.” She blushed as she caught herself getting lost in a memory. “But it was so hot and the water was her weakness. So she’d take me all warm season long. My father would be working longer hours so we’d go. Spend the whole day in the sun just the two of us.” She smiled but sadness edged it.
“When this is over, we’ll go to Sanctu. For your family. And then we’ll swim in the sea.”
She brushed her fingertips over his lips. “I’d like that very much. You’re good to me.”
“No more than you and Vincenz are to me.”
“What did he say to you? Whe
n Ellis came back to the lockup?”
Julian smiled, moving behind her as he swam, resting her on his chest as he did. Vincenz was doing laps. of course. Like a creature of the water, his man was.
Julian remembered exactly what Ellis had said. “You’re an insufferable young prick who thinks he knows way more than he does. It’s a dangerous quality. But it can be honed into a weapon. A weapon for something important. If you want to be important instead of yet another kid without a home who goes to lockup most of his life until he finally dies some silent, ignoble death, stay here. But if you can admit you’re wrong and you want to learn”—he was quiet a long time—“if you want to be better than what you are now, grab your gear and let’s go.”
She didn’t speak for a while as they lazily swam. She ducked under and came up close to him. Close enough to kiss him quickly. “And you went. He gave you a second chance and so I like him even more. He seems so frightening. But he’s rather extraordinary at seeing people. He doesn’t get caught up in appearances at all.”
“Yes. He’s got insight like I’ve never seen in anyone else.”
“It must make you very proud that he chose you. Of all the people in all the ’Verses, he chose you because he knew you had potential.”
He turned her, kissing her hard and fast. It hurt to be seen without any varnish. But it was a clean sort of necessary pain, being known by this woman.
Vincenz swam over slowly until he kissed Julian’s shoulder and then his neck. “This was a good idea.”
“It was.” He leaned his head back against Vincenz for a time and they watched Hannah swim and dive.
“Who knew?” Vincenz spoke into his ear. “She’s a fish.”
“Clearly we need to make sure she has access to a pool at the very least.”
“She seems relaxed. I should have guessed given how much time she spent in the bathtub.” Vincenz snorted.
She surfaced, grinning. “I’m hungry.”
The muscles in her legs burned as they kept up their brutal pace along the ridge. She hummed to herself as she tore apart the code in her head. Reorganizing it. Taking it apart again.
It made the time move faster and helped her ignore the way the two of them seemed to not even be sweating in the heat and she, on the other hand, was a sweaty mess. Of course Vincenz looked like a vid star, still so handsome with his hat and sunshades. He filled his trousers out just perfectly as he jogged.
Jogged.
She withheld a sigh. She’d agreed to come on this operation and there was no way she’d complain. Outside of her head.
They’d notice anyway. They seemed so in tune with each other they picked up on her moods. And pushed. Which was a novelty. She’d never been involved with a pushy man before. And now she had two.
It confounded her. And since she was already generally confounded, she’d decided not to poke at it because it didn’t matter why they were with her. She knew enough, felt enough to be secure in the knowledge that they truly cared about her. That was all she could handle just then.
She needed to buck up and handle it. So she dragged another breath into her lungs and kept moving.
They watched her, sometimes covertly, but usually openly. It made her smile, even as it frustrated her. Protecting. Shepherding. She knew they wanted to talk to her, wanted to call out to see how she was doing, but they’d been on radio silence, which had made her slightly nauseated at first. But it wasn’t then, Hannah knew that. So she got past those memories.
They continued on for what seemed like an eternity. So long she wondered if her legs would turn into jelly after she stopped moving. But finally they began to slow and Vincenz held his fist up to stay them.
Julian moved to a crouch, took out his field glasses and took a long look out over the valley below and up ahead.
Vincenz came over to where she leaned against a big boulder, muscles jumping. “You all right?” he asked her in a low voice, his gaze roving over her body to verify the answer himself.
“Yes, of course,” she lied valiantly.
He cracked a smile and leaned in to kiss her quickly. “Liar.”
“My legs won’t fall off.” Even if she wanted them to just so she wouldn’t have to feel them anymore.
“We’ll be setting up a camp soon. Kip for several hours and then we’ll hit the lab once the moon sets.”
Julian joined them. “We’re clear. There are a lot of what looks to be soldiers several klicks to the east. Shouldn’t be an issue here though.”
“I’m going to scout the plant. Let’s move up ahead a little. Andrei and Piper should meet us soon.” Vincenz put his hat into his back pocket.
Julian took her pack as though she’d asked him to, but she was too tired to argue. He put an arm around her waist and she leaned into his body, so warm and solid.
“I feel better now too,” he murmured as he kissed the top of her head.
They walked some ways further and came up over a rise.
And there, in the middle of a hollowed-out niche in the valley on the other side, lay the plant. It looked a lot like the one back on Parron and her breath caught as fear clawed through her memory. She balked, her knees locking and Julian turned to face her.
“It’s all right to be scared. But you need to understand that what happened to you on Parron won’t happen again. Vin and I will protect you with our lives. We’re better than they are, they can’t win and we’re not going to let them have you. Because you’re ours.”
He gripped her upper arms and she let herself find the comfort in that. Let herself wade through the fear and the pain and find a way to breathe again.
In her head, she chanted, My name is Hannah Black. My parents are Shelby and Bertram Black. My name day is in midsummer as the grain is above my head. Over and over until the haze of panic edged back enough to unlock her knees.
“There you are.” Julian kissed her nose and took her hat off. “Sit down on that rock there.” He pointed to a nearby rock overhang with a hollowed-out shelter. “I’m going to get a camp set up and you’ll be able to rest a while.”
“I can help.” The fact that her teeth chattered a little didn’t do much to bolster that claim.
He hugged her. “I know you can. But I’ve done this so many times it’s easier for me to do it alone.” He shrugged like he wasn’t giving her a reason to get off her feet and she was just defeated enough to let him.
Vincenz had moved away from their little camp to do some scouting, but he came back some minutes later as Julian had handed her a wet cloth to clean up with.
He crouched to speak to Julian, putting a hand on Hannah’s knee. “Intel was good. Looks like a full crew working security. We’ll need to get into their system to shut down the automated weapons on the fences. I’ll work with Andrei to get the charges mapped. Set a cascade that’ll send their systems into crash and then we can take out the soldiers. Two dozen. None of them looked to be Skorpios.”
Which was a relief given how terrifying Fardelle’s shock troops were.
“Were you trained like them?”
Startled, Vincenz turned his attention to her. “Yes. My father felt it was necessary for me to have the military training they receive.” He said it with his chin jutted out, as if he expected her to be repulsed.
As if she would be. “Good. It means you’re well trained, right?”
He smiled and his spine relaxed. “So I’m told.”
“Best of both worlds. I keep telling him that.” Julian slid a hand through Vincenz’s hair and grinned.
“You two are going to give me a swelled head.” Vincenz shook his head, smiling.
“Gods, I hope so.” Julian kissed Hannah’s hand and moved back to where he’d been working nearby.
As they ate their meal, Hannah read the map over Vincenz’s shoulder and thought about the security programming on the fences. Finally, she spoke. “I think I might know how to turn the weapons against them, instead of us.”
Chapter 15
Vincenz was aware she worked on the comm, unraveling code as quickly as it appeared on her display. She appeared to intuit it. To look at it and see it as more than just characters and numbers, but as commands and actions created by that code.
He’d only known one or two other people over his life who saw it that way. He was fascinated by how her brain worked. He got the feeling she saw herself as odd and flawed, but she wasn’t at all. She was unique. No one he knew thought in the way she did. It was beautiful and clever.
They clicked as they worked together. She would come in, batter a program and slide into a space she’d made to another, deeper level and he’d take the frayed edges she created and rewrite, unlocking levels in his wake and taking over.
All while Julian handled the munitions with Andrei and Piper, who’d arrived only minutes earlier.
She continued on, her face a mask of concentration, brow furrowed, that luscious bottom lip caught between her teeth. Every so often she’d make one of her frustrated snarls that perversely made his cock hard.
Finally, she gave a satisfied grunt and looked up. “Got it.”
He followed her path, rewriting, tightening and yes, getting to the spot where she had indeed unlocked the automatic weapons at three layers of fencing around the plant.
He wanted to kiss her so bad he already tasted her on his tongue. “Genius. The way you’ve tweaked this here to create a command door for us on those guns is going to make things a lot easier.”
She smiled at him, embarrassed, but her face flushed with pleasure.
“We’re in.” He looked back to Julian. “I’ve got the command now for the fences.”
“Nice work.”
“Are we ready then?” Piper winced when Andrei tightened her vest, but Vincenz noted she squeezed his hand in thanks.
“Let me get the cameras set in your caps.” Julian moved quickly to do it as Vincenz followed her around the shelter.
“You took the vest off earlier. You need it.”