by Megan Hart
“I don’t hate you,” she said. “I want to, but I can’t. I love you, and I don’t want to do that, either, but I can’t seem to stop.”
He was on his feet in the moment after that, scooping her into his arms so suddenly that she clung to his neck and let out a squawk of surprise. He was taller than she was, but she had so much muscle that she thought he would stagger beneath her weight. He didn’t, not for a moment, as he carried her through the doorway and down the hall to the living room, where he settled her on the couch and covered her with his body as he kissed her. Long, slow, and deliberate swipes of his tongue soon had her desperate for more. When he moved down her body though, to push at the hem of her nightshirt, Nina stopped him.
“No. The last time you did this, we never finished,” she breathed.
Ewan shook his head, eyes aglow and his mouth glistening from their kisses. “You did.”
“I want you inside me,” Nina told him. “Now.”
Still, he hesitated, until with a small growl, she reached between them to stroke his thickening cock through the soft material of his pajama bottoms. When she pushed the waistband over his hips, Ewan gave in, helping her get him naked as she shucked off her panties. He slid his length inside her within a matter of seconds.
“Oh, yes. That, right there,” Nina murmured as he filled her. She arched, tipping her hips to take him deeper, offering him her throat so he could nibble.
She ran her hands up his sides, letting herself finally give in to the impulses to touch him that she’d been trying so hard to resist. Over his back, the muscles working as he thrust inside her. Down to his fit, firm ass. She grabbed a double handful of that sweetness, then let her nails scratch upward to the dimples at the base of his spine. Then up Ewan’s sides, pinching inch by inch until he shuddered and his movements became ragged.
“I love that,” he said into her ear. “More, please.”
Nina lost herself in the joy of this. It bubbled out of her in laughing gasps as she moved beneath him. She pinched harder and took his groan into her mouth with a kiss. She sucked his tongue, drawing it gently between her teeth and nipping at the last second. His cock got rock hard inside her, and all of this sent a surge of desire spiraling through her so tight, so deep, that she tipped over into climax with a startled cry.
Ewan joined her a moment after that, their bodies moving frantically together until he eased the pace and dipped his face into the hollow of her shoulder. He rested his weight on her for a moment before pushing up on his hands. Their bodies were still joined. He leaned to kiss her lightly.
“I love you, Nina. And I swear to you, I’m going to do whatever I can to make everything right between us. I promise you that. No more hiding things from you,” Ewan said. “I know you deserve better than that. I should never have tried to decide what was best for you. Clearly, I’m a hyper chump.”
In the aftermath of the sex, she ought to have felt languid and replete, at ease. And she did . . . to an extent. She also felt scourged and barren and emptied, as though the surge of entangled passions had cleaned her out.
This wasn’t the time to say “I told you so,” and Nina allowed her kiss to answer him, instead. She toyed with his tongue for a few seconds, her fingers threading once more through his thicket of dark hair. She pulled him down on top of her again, wriggling until they both settled into a tangled, if slightly uncomfortable, pile on the couch. She didn’t want to speak. She wanted to sleep.
“Nina . . .”
“Hush,” she told him with a kiss to his temple, her eyes closed. Her arms around him. Holding him close. She snuggled against him, ignoring the awkwardness of their position.
This was where she belonged.
* * *
Ewan woke alone again, this time on the couch with an indent from the cushion on his cheek. He stretched, thinking of the night before, then sat up abruptly. Nina wasn’t in the living room, nor could he hear her clattering in the kitchen. He tried to judge what time it was by the light slanting through the front windows, but wasn’t able to.
Scratching his head and rubbing at the sleep in his eyes, he went upstairs to the master bathroom to run the shower hot, hoping to ease the stiffness from his muscles. It helped a little, and by the time he got out, his head was clearer, too. He dressed quickly in sweatpants, thinking he’d get in a workout. His comm pinged as he tugged on a T-shirt, and, thinking it might be Nina, Ewan lifted it. Katrinka had sent him a series of messages Ewan wasn’t sure he wanted to answer, but he lifted the comm to thumb the screen awake. As he did, the comm pinged again, this time with a viddycall.
“Katrinka,” he said before she could say a word. “Listen. About last night . . .”
Katrinka shook her head to silence him. “Last night was a debacle, Ewan.”
“I can’t quite deny that.” He yawned broadly and scratched at his head again. “I can’t apologize for her, Katrinka, that’s not my place.”
“I’m not asking you to apologize for her. Far be it from me to wax caustic about my own offspring,” Katrinka said lightly, “but my son has not been the easiest child to raise. Whatever she did to him, I’m sure he did something to deserve it. He’s so deep into the candy that he’s become an obnoxious little twit, and he wasn’t a prize to deal with before that.”
“He’s got a brilliance to him that will take him far, if he can get it under control,” Ewan countered, not wanting to agree with her on the subject of her child’s annoying personality.
Katrinka rolled her eyes and waved a hand. She set down her comm so she could walk as she spoke, her hands waving and the fringed edges of her tunic fluttering as she paced. “The facts are, if you want to get anyone behind you on this issue, we can’t have your girlfriend punching people out in the middle of the fundraisers. It’s bad for business.”
“I also can’t deny that,” Ewan said.
“The initial approval reports were fantastic. I mean, listen, everyone at that party last night was there because they’d supported the original act, of course, but also because they were the ones I figured would have the easiest opinions to change.” Katrinka paused, then started pacing again. “Let’s face it, the enhanced soldiers have fallen out of the public eye, even with the dustup you experienced recently. Nobody’s been thinking much about them at all. Of course, punching my kid is going to turn some gazes back that way, and they won’t be the kindly sort.”
“Dustup?” Ewan gave a rueful chuckle. “Is that what you call repeated attempts on my life over a course of months?”
Katrinka twirled to face the comm screen. “Ewan, darling, you know as well as I, perhaps even better, how quickly public trends change. How easy it is to lose favor and attention. I’m not saying that the entire situation regarding the enhanced isn’t still viable, of course—”
“Good,” Ewan interrupted. “Because I intend to fully get behind the support of repealing that act as well as forwarding the integration and implementation of upgrades to the tech for those thirteen who are left. That’s going to require a huge change in public perceptions.”
“Well,” Katrinka said, “we can start with your girlfriend.”
* * *
Nina had paused outside Ewan’s bedroom doorway when she heard the sound of voices, one of them female. She wasn’t the sort to hover in doorways, but she did hear the term “girlfriend.” It gave her mixed feelings. One, a still giddy joy lingering from the night before. Two, another burst of pride and pleasure that someone other than Ewan was referring to her that way, that someone else had seen them as a couple. Finally, third, a slight wince at the term itself, which seemed somewhat ridiculous, all things considered, and a final small grimace at her taking pleasure at any of it in the first place.
Talk about a complicated mess of feelings.
She didn’t need to use enhanced hearing to notice when Ewan came to the door. She didn’t jump or look startled, but instead gave him a dry grin as he gestured for her to come inside. He held up the comm so she cou
ld see who he was talking to.
“Hi,” Nina said, conscious that she still wore her thin nightshirt and her hair was a mess. “Katrinka, I’m sorry about Jordie—”
“There are other things to worry about,” Katrinka said. Her face loomed in the screen as she frowned. “You need a total makeover.”
Nina gave Ewan a glance, but he shrugged with a grin and waved toward the comm. Nina looked at Katrinka. “For . . . what?”
“If you’re going to be the spokesperson for this movement, you certainly need to put on a pretty face. People like pretty things, Nina. Hyper fetching, as they say.”
Ewan said softly, “She’s more than pretty, Katrinka. Nina is beautiful.”
“How sweet, you’re so in love, it’s making me nauseous—thank goodness I haven’t bothered with breakfast yet,” Katrinka said with another wave of her hand. “But nobody else is in love with her. To most of them, Nina Bronson is a soldier, and that’s about the best thing you can say about her, which I don’t need to tell you, is not really the greatest thing.”
Nina frowned, with a glance at Ewan, who looked delicious in his workout gear, his hair still damp from the shower. “I am not ashamed that I was a soldier. I was never ashamed. I’m not a soldier anymore, though. You know that. I’m not allowed to be.”
“Of course you’re not. But you still are, to them,” Katrinka said. “So we’re going to make you something completely different.”
Nina didn’t answer her at first, then raised her brows. “What, exactly, are you going to make me?”
“A star,” Katrinka said.
Nina burst into laughter. Ewan put his arm around her waist, pulling her close to his side, and she leaned into him as naturally as if they’d never fallen away from each other. She shook her head.
“I don’t need to be a star, Katrinka.”
The other woman waved a finger. “Do you want to help Ewan overturn the Enhancement Repeal Act?”
“Of course.”
“Then we have to get public opinion behind you. Make people see that you’re more than a soldier or a bodyguard. We spent a long time convincing them that the tech inside your head was a curse. If you want the world to change its mind and think it’s a blessing, you’re going to have to make them want to change.” Katrinka looked at something offscreen. “I have to go. Ewan, I’ll ping you later.”
With that, she was gone. Ewan’s comm went dark. He set it on the nightstand and turned to Nina with his hands and his expression both open.
“No idea,” he said before she could comment.
Nina pressed her lips together for a moment, thinking about what Katrinka had been saying. “How did she know we were together?”
“Lucky guess?”
They stared at each other until she motioned for him to come toward her. He put his arms around her. She kissed him lightly, pulling away when he tried to deepen the embrace. She pressed her forehead to his, eyes closed.
“Are we doing this?” she asked him.
Ewan’s breath tickled her face before he moved to nuzzle the side of her neck. He spoke without hesitation. Solid, in a way she hadn’t known she needed him to be until she let out a sigh of relief.
“Yes. Absolutely. We are doing this. Together,” he said. “I wouldn’t have it any other way. Oh, but wait. First I have to do something.”
She laughed, trying to grab him as he walked away from her. “No, no . . . come back here.”
“In a minute.” He tapped something into his comm, looking up at her for a second with a secretive smile on his face.
Her comm pinged from down the hall. Nina’s eyebrows raised. “Did you just ping me?”
“Yes.”
“Something you couldn’t just . . . tell me?”
“Go see,” Ewan said.
With a backward glance at him, Nina went to her room to read the message. Taking the comm, she went back to his room to find him waiting for her stretched out on his bed, hands linked behind his head. He wore a giant grin and nothing else.
“You fired me?” she asked, incredulous.
“Yep.”
Nina put her comm on the nightstand and pulled off her nightshirt. She straddled him. “You. Fired. Me.”
“Yes. Conflict of interest,” Ewan told her, his words trailing into a shivery sigh when she gripped his sides. “Didn’t want you to be . . . compromised . . .”
“I love you,” Nina said, and set about devouring him.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Ewan hadn’t grown up with money, and neither had Nina. Somehow it had never occurred to him that wealth affected men and women differently. Or at least it affected the expectations made of men and women in different ways. He had a single closet of clothes and never thought much about what he was going to wear, not even before a big meeting or a fundraising party.
Nina, on the other hand . . .
“I have no idea where we’re going to put all this stuff.” Nina kicked at a box full of clothes and accessories Katrinka had sent over that morning. There’d been at least half a dozen similar boxes.
Ewan studied the piles of fabric and boxes of coordinating jewelry and footwear. “Look over what you want and send the rest back.”
“I don’t think I want any of this.” Nina lifted a flowy kind of tunic-thing patterned in bold stripes. She held it up against her, then shook her head. “Not my style.”
Ewan took her in his arms and kissed her lightly. “Send it all back. We’ll go shopping . . .”
“Ugh.” She shook her head.
He kissed her again. “You can do it all online, if you want.”
“She sent me a list of required outfits,” Nina said against his mouth. Her body molded to his. At the moment, she wore a pair of sleek leggings and matching shirt, and while he always preferred her naked, this was the next best thing.
Ewan let his hands rest on the swell of her hips. “Wear what you want.”
“Of course, I will. But I do realize that what Katrinka said was true. If I want to get any of them to change their minds, I’ll need to get them to want it. I’m aware I can be intimidating . . .” She broke off with a laugh at his expression and kissed him on the mouth with a smack. “Hush, you. You’re supposed to tell me I’m charming.”
Seriously, he pulled away so he could study her face. “You are beyond charming. But Nina, if this isn’t something you want to do . . .”
“I don’t have a choice.”
Ewan shook his head. “Of course you have a choice.”
“Not if I want this to happen. How could I stay silent or in the background when this is so important to me? How could I expect anyone to speak on my own behalf if I’m not willing to get up there in front of all of them and share my truth?” Nina stepped away from him to kick again at the box of clothes on the floor. “If dressing up and going to parties is going to make a difference, I’ll do it. If marching in the streets works, I’ll that, too. But I think we both know which is going to work better.”
Ewan eyed a few items from the box, then bent down to hold up a particularly sheer-looking . . . dress? “How about this? I bet this would look fantastic on.”
“On fire, maybe,” Nina said and snagged it from him. “Also, you’re holding it upside down and backward.”
“I could turn it inside out, maybe that would help?”
She held it up to herself, feeling the fabric. She closed her eyes for a second, and he half-thought she was going to explode into another volcanic display, but she only sighed. “We should talk about what happened. What I did to the kid.”
“You don’t need to—”
She held up a finger to shush him. “I do. Because it wasn’t a normal reaction, Ewan.”
“Nina, baby, none of your reactions are normal. That’s kind of the thing about you.”
She laughed, faintly.
Ewan inched closer and put his hands on her upper arms. “I’ve watched you take down a man twice your size. I’ve seen you fight. What you did to the ki
d . . .”
“It was not professional. It was out of control.”
That sobered him.
“Since the cabin, since my ability to feel came back, it hasn’t been right. It’s been all over the place. Too much. Too strong. At first, I thought it was because it had been so long, I was just reveling in the fact I could do it at all. But last night, that kid . . . he barely even pushed me, Ewan. I should have been able to deal with him, without almost putting him in the hospital.” She drew in a slow breath. “I think it’s related to the glitches.”
He didn’t say anything at first. “I’ll help you pack this all up and ship it back to her. We’ll find you something you like. You’re not in this by yourself, Nina. I’m with you, every step. Fancy parties or marches, whatever it takes. I’m with you, baby.”
Ewan’s kiss tickled and sent a shiver through her. Nina let herself melt into his embrace, grateful for it. The dress he’d tossed her crumpled between them.
“I know you are. I think part of what’s so annoying about all this is the idea that Katrinka thinks I can’t dress myself.”
“I’m annoyed with the idea you have to be dressed at all,” Ewan said, voice serious but eyes twinkling.
“Oh, really?” She wiggled against him, grateful that he’d defused the tension with that simple bit of flirting. “You think I should just go naked? Is that it?”
He nodded, expression solemn but mouth quirking the tiniest bit in the corners. “Yep. Definitely.”
“What if I caught a chill?” she demanded, turning them both so she could walk him back toward the bed. They had to navigate the maze of boxes, so by the time they got there, Ewan had already started tugging at the hem of his shirt to lift it over his head.
“I’ll nurse you back to health.”
She pushed him, gently but with intent, and he fell back onto her bed. “Let me guess. You have a special . . . injection.”
“Oh, yeah. It’ll fix you right up,” Ewan said with the grin she loved so much. His hands skimmed up her body and tugged her closer.