Angeli

by Jody Wallace

  “We’re not after the damn…” His jaw clenched and he breathed in and out for a minute. When he spoke again, he was quieter. “Do you understand the losses we experience in our line of work? Our lives. Entire Ships. It’s always a risk. We don’t have to get involved in your problems. If the horde eats a few planets, big deal. There are millions more.”

  “Eventually the horde will eat all the planets. It’s like pollution.”

  “Not in countless lifetimes.”

  He sounded like every politician who wanted to gulp down natural resources and poison the earth. Nobody cared what would happen once they were gone. She and Gregori glowered at each other until she thought of what to say next.

  “Advanced society, my ass.” She pushed him with her forearm and a knee at the same time, hoping to unsettle him enough that he let her go. Instead he twisted her arm behind her, trapping her hand at the small of her back. Their legs remained tangled. “Why don’t you stop fighting the horde, since you don’t get anything out of it?”

  “Because saving people is the right thing to do. Because it’s code.”

  His gaze finally tore away from hers, dropping lower. Ha! She’d outstared him. It wouldn’t be long before he gave up.

  “If your people were going to die out,” she said carefully, “maybe you would sacrifice one planet among millions.”

  That brought his attention back to her face. What had he been looking at down there? “What kind of person do you think I am? Do you honestly think I’d sacrifice you—your planet?”

  “Ship isn’t a person.” She nodded her head toward the sky, where clouds scudded across the blue. “Ship is a machine.”

  “You know what?” He brought his face so close to hers their foreheads almost bumped. “I’m sick of hearing that. How about you quit saying it?”

  “Sick of the truth? Typical.” She wouldn’t allow him to intimidate her with his broad shoulders and his wings and his cleft chin and his blue eyes. His perfect lips. She tried to hold his gaze but kept glancing at his lips. “I’m…I’m going to keep telling you the truth whether you want to hear it or not, and you can’t do anything about it.”

  “I can—”

  Adelita leaned forward and kissed him. Then she pulled back, horrified. “I don’t know why I did that.”

  “Not. Helpful,” he said, his voice tight.

  “Dios.” Her blood, already hot from their argument, thrummed inside her. “I don’t suppose it was.”

  His palm slid up her arm until he held her shoulder. He neither pushed her away nor crushed her against him. “It’s not true.”

  “What isn’t true? I really don’t know why I kissed…”

  Her protest trailed off when he licked one corner of his mouth. God forgive her, she couldn’t resist. She lifted her chin until their lips were centimeters apart, hesitated, and kissed him again. She parted her lips and let her tongue taste him.

  He remained frozen except for the faint shush of his breath, the slight tightening of his fingers on her shoulder.

  When she drew back this time, she said, “That was your own fault.”

  “No.” Gregori released her shoulder, only to seize the back of her head.

  Something hot and liquid spread through her. “What are you doing?”

  He fisted his hand in her hair, pulling at her scalp. “Stopping you. We had an agreement.”

  “You’re overreacting. I barely kissed you.” She was amazed she could speak words. Inside her was a flashing whirlwind of desire and anger and fear. How did he feel? His grip anchored her in place as if her kiss were a dire threat. His expression was stern and icy, but his hips against hers told a different story.

  “Don’t do it again.”

  Oh, she did not like to be ordered around. She did not like to be restrained. She didn’t, she didn’t like this. She didn’t want him to push her onto her back and teach her not to cross his line.

  “It was an accident.” She’d fallen into his mouth. With her mouth.

  “Twice?”

  She wanted to touch his skin, but if she did… So she reached behind her head and pried one of his fingers loose. “I’d like to keep my hair.”

  “I’d like you to quit playing games.”

  She clamped her fist around his finger. “I know how to protect myself. If I twist this a certain way, it will break.”

  How far could she bend him? She rubbed his finger up and down several times, before she twisted it away from her head.

  “Go ahead. I heal quick.” He exhaled slowly. She felt the pressure on her head change, from pulling her away to neutral. She covered his hand with hers. Laced her fingers between his.

  The pressure on her head shifted from neutral to urging her toward him.

  Almost broken. Almost there.

  God, she should stop. He’d asked her not to do this. She’d agreed. She hadn’t baited him, much, in two days. If their positions were reversed, she’d kick his tail.

  Instead she drew her leg up, her knee parting his knees, and he let her. He let her press her thigh against his hard cock and vulnerable balls while he stared at her with hot blue eyes.

  “Would this heal quick, too?” she whispered.

  “Don’t.”

  “I can’t help it.” She closed her eyes against the accusation in that stare and pictured him naked. Beautifully naked and hovering between her legs, ready to slide home. “I get close to you and my imagination goes into overdrive.”

  “Try harder.” He tugged her forward until his breath sighed across her cheek. “Try very, very hard. This is not the time or place.”

  “I’m trying.”

  His fingertips trailed along her jaw, traced her bottom lip, and slipped under her chin. “I won’t pander to you.”

  “What does that even mean?” Adelita trembled. Had she decided? Was she going to have sex with Gregori here, now? Ridiculous. But to have him put his hands and mouth and cock everywhere she’d let him and a few places she wasn’t sure about…

  She wasn’t sure about anything except her yearning for him.

  His knuckles eased down her chest. So gradually she could have counted to one hundred, he spread his fingers over one full breast. Her nipple hardened in his palm.

  “Last chance.” He dropped slow kisses on her brows. Her cheek. Beside her mouth. His lips were as soft as his feathers were not. He eased her onto her back, and the sunlight turned her eyelids red. “Stop me. Tell me no. Tell me not now.”

  What if there was no later? She shook her head, unable to speak. His hand squeezed her breast, rubbing her nipple to an ache. His huge shadow blotted out the sun. His hips settled between hers, his cock in the loose shorts iron against her softness.

  She spread her legs for him gladly. Her imagination would have its way with them both.

  “By the Mother,” he groaned into her neck, “tell me not now.”

  If his head was at her neck and his wings were folded, what had blocked the sun?

  She opened her eyes.

  And screamed.

  Chapter Ten

  Gregori jumped up as fast as he could without gutting Adelita, but Nikolas had the drop on him.

  “Unhand that woman!” Nikolas declared. His sensor array glowed at full power, highlighting his striking features. His wings glistened in the sun.

  For a moment nobody twitched. Then Adelita cried out, “Holy angeli, you must save me!”

  Gregori stiffened. She didn’t call him angeli anymore, so she must be talking to—

  With a sneer, Niko shot Gregori point-blank. The beam would have dropped him if he hadn’t kept his force field around himself and Adelita while they’d been spying on base. As it was, the blast knocked him against the rocks, his wings breaking his fall and protecting his spine.

  So much for not fighting his own people. Gregori flipped up and aimed at Niko. His former lieutenant didn’t know the weapon had dead batteries.

  “What the fragging hell, Niko?”

  “I knew we
’d catch you eventually.” The other man’s dark eyes burned with something. Fanaticism? Vengeance? His wings retracted into battle stance. “You’re predictable.”

  Gregori shifted his wings to the half spread of battle stance as well—ready to leap into flight or bristle with tactanium at any moment. He’d fixed that, at least. “If that’s the case, why’d it take you three weeks to get this close?”

  Nikolas didn’t lower his weapon but didn’t shoot. “There are things in heaven more important than a blasphemer and deserter.”

  “Not to you, apparently.” Niko had been part of nearly every group of Ship-lickers who’d come after Gregori, despite the fact that handlers were supposed to be off duty during retrieval. Sometimes the son of a hole even showed up alone.

  Niko glanced at Adelita, who was climbing to her feet, and back at Gregori. His sensor array flashed as it fed him information. “Why did you seek to desecrate this poor mortal creature known as Adelita Louisa Eleanor Martinez?”

  “What do you care?” Damn Niko, anyway. He’d been one of the worst “desecrators” on Terra, and they’d argued about it many times.

  “I care about all mortals,” Nikolas said.

  Adelita clasped her hands as if praying. Her binoculars swung around her neck on a strap. In a sycophantic voice that didn’t sound like the woman Gregori had come to know in the past several days, she said, “Oh, blessed angeli, you know of me. You must have heard my prayers.”

  “I wasn’t desecrating her,” Gregori said. What the crap was Adelita playing at? She’d kissed him first.

  “The Lord sent me to reclaim you, Archangel.” Nikolas snapped out his arms so multipurp bands slid into his hands, flashing into twin silver swords. “It’s time for you to answer for your sins and be judged.”

  Blades instead of lasers? Fine by Gregori, considering the state of his fusion cell. He answered Niko’s challenge with blades of his own.

  They sprang together in a collision of force fields that flared like lightning. Gregori whirled, the impact propelling him backward through the air. His field wouldn’t last long; he had to deactivate Niko’s before he realized Gregori’s was practically fried.

  Luckily tactanium blades were one of the few things that could slice through a force field.

  Unluckily Nikolas knew that, too.

  They met again with blades extended. Again their force fields repelled the tactanium. Gregori’s field sputtered.

  He caught the smirk on Niko’s face before the other man flew straight up in the air, trying to gain leverage. Step one in how Gregori had coached members of his unit to collapse a force field.

  But he hadn’t shown his students all his tricks.

  Gregori allowed Nikolas to hover above him and then hurtle down like one of Terra’s hawks after a mouse.

  Adelita gasped.

  Gregori widened his stance and held his blades over his head in a cross as if protecting himself. Right before Nikolas struck, he used the other man’s precipitous descent against him. Gregori flicked off his force field and whipped the blades point-up, where they pierced Niko’s shield like pins into a balloon.

  Niko, startled, allowed his swords to be deflected to Gregori’s wings. His body smashed into Gregori like a wrecking ball, and the two of them tumbled across the ground.

  Gregori shortened his blades for hand-to-hand. He and Niko rolled in a fast, vicious scrabble of tactanium and curses. Head butt. Elbow to chin. Dagger to arm. Gregori felt a slice across his leg and grappled for a firmer hold on his opponent. He allowed Niko to spin him onto his back and assume he had the upper hand.

  “Surrender, traitor.” Nikolas’s eyes blazed as he held a blade to Gregori’s throat above the armor. Sweat beaded on his brow. “Your crusade is over.”

  Gregori raised an eyebrow. “You think you can take me? Better call for backup.”

  “I don’t need backup.” He dug the blade into Gregori’s skin, and Gregori felt blood trickle down his neck. In a harsh whisper Nikolas added, “You’re not so talented outside the training arena, are you?”

  Gregori wrapped his arms around his opponent. Squeezing Niko so close he could smell the other man’s last meal, Gregori slipped his thinnest blade under Niko’s arm and slashed the endo-organic connectors to his wing pack.

  Nikolas’s wings flopped halfway free of his body with an electric hiss.

  “Talented enough,” Gregori said.

  “Dammit, Gregori, that was new tech.”

  Gregori maneuvered his feet into Nikolas’s gut and kicked the man away with all his strength. Niko slammed into a rock and rebounded. His wing pack lay broken behind him.

  Now he couldn’t fly and had no force field. Would he use his array? Gregori and Adelita needed to get the hell out of here before a squad showed up.

  Gregori spun around. There. She’d backed a safe distance away from the confrontation.

  “Let’s go,” he ordered, holding out his arm to her. Niko had no hope of catching them without wings.

  She stared wildly between him and Niko. “Angeli, no!”

  Nikolas charged. Right before their swords met, he rotated his arm, triggered his laser and shot Gregori in the chest.

  Again.

  Without his force field, the laser seared Gregori’s armor and skin and tossed him end over end. Only the combination of armor and his reinforced skeletal system stopped the ray from going deep. He hit the ground and skidded across rocks and briars, pain obfuscating his vision, his motility, his hearing.

  Adrenaline pumped through him, speeding his healing process. He shook his head, trying to clear his eyesight. Agony seared his body as his chest heaved. Someone seized his shoulders and jerked him to his feet.

  A fist pounded the side of his head.

  Not Adelita, then.

  Luckily it had been a fist instead of a blade. That meant Niko didn’t want to kill him. Gregori moaned and let his body go limp. It wasn’t difficult to fake unconsciousness. As soon as Niko’s grip shifted, Gregori acted.

  Shooting into the air with powerful flaps of his wings, he hoisted Nikolas off his feet. Wrapped one hand around his throat. Used the other to yank the sensor array out of his temple.

  Niko muffled a harsh cry. Involuntary array removal hurt like a bitch, but Gregori felt zero pity. For Ship’s sake, Niko had shot him twice. His armor was split, and his chest blazed with pain. It would have killed a human not enhanced for combat.

  Trying to murder another Shipborn was so against code he was amazed Niko had tried it. As far as he knew, the only code Nikolas General-son broke involved screwing Terran women as though his life depended on it. Niko must have been counting on Gregori to turn his force field back on.

  Good idea. He chucked the struggling Niko toward the ground and activated what was left of the field. All around him was darkness. Rubbing his eyes to stimulate his vision, he flapped higher into the air.

  Bleary colors smeared the black. His eye sockets tingled as his body fought to repair itself.

  Laser blasts whooshed his shield, hot as fire, and tumbled him through the air. Gregori increased his elevation. Couldn’t tell how far away the ground was, but he could hear Adelita’s voice, a stream of words in her other language. He recognized a few items, like burro and idiota.

  He couldn’t understand much, but without the array, Nikolas wouldn’t understand any.

  In addition to whatever Adelita was saying, a barrage of laser fire whistled toward Gregori. He managed to avoid one of three shots. Should be three of three. Damn his eyes! Explosions burst him around as Niko’s aim struck true.

  With every hit, the force field sputtered.

  “Your protections are failing,” Nikolas called. Gregori oriented himself toward the voice and squinted. Blotches of red, green, and gray. “Our Lord has spoken. What will be, will be. Give up before you get hurt.”

  In response Gregori winged farther from the laser blasts. Easier to dodge with more distance. He’d never leave Adelita…but he could come back f
or her. Niko wouldn’t hurt her. Code dictated he leave her to fend for herself.

  Of course, Niko shouldn’t have been dirtside in the first place, haring off alone, chasing Gregori, so who knew what he was capable of? The Terran mission had changed his friend, not for the better.

  Gregori soared higher. Adelita’s rant sharpened in a way that left no mistake that what she was saying was not sweet and kind.

  “Would you cease that infernal chatter, woman?” Niko yelled. “The devil talks less than you do.”

  Adelita switched to English. Her words softened. “Forgive me. I’m frightened, and you’re in pain, aren’t you? Your wings.”

  Gregori’s vision cleared enough to see her creeping toward Nikolas, her posture stooped and timid. Worshipful admiration shone from her beautiful face. He’d certainly never seen that expression coming from her, not even before he’d told her the truth.

  As such, he was instantly suspicious.

  “See?” she told Nikolas, gesturing at Gregori. “The fallen one flees your holy might. I’m humbled by your presence.”

  Nikolas stared at Adelita. He didn’t seem distrustful. He only knew what his array would have told him before Gregori removed it. “Mortal, I’m here to arrest the fallen one. Nothing else. Leave in peace and pray for the rapture to take you. Out of my hearing.”

  “Why can’t you take me?” She fell to her knees in front of Niko. “I beg of you.”

  “Don’t beg.” Nikolas squeezed the bridge of his nose. “Get up.”

  “Am I not worthy?” Adelita leaned forward. Her cotton shirt clung to her breasts, revealing their generous shape.

  “I’m not the judge of worthiness.” Nikolas splayed his hand over his eyes as if he didn’t want to acknowledge Adelita’s charms. “Woman, if you don’t go now, I’m not responsible for my actions.”

  Gregori suppressed a growl. He’d seen this dance too many times with his team. His and Niko’s arguments about it had never ended amicably. Niko and the rest acted like it wasn’t their fault, what they did with the Terrans. They were too tempting to resist. Never mind that Gregori had managed.