Nova (The Renegades #2)

by Rebecca Yarros

  “Not when I’ve got you. You can let go any time you like; I’ll never let you fall.”

  A quick flash in her eyes told me more than her lips ever could have—you did once—but she quickly forced it back. She was struggling, and I couldn’t blame her, couldn’t get angry, couldn’t expect her to open her arms wide and trust me. I had to repair every crack I’d put into her and pray her faith in me would return.

  “You’ve got me?” she whispered, leaning slightly backward.

  I swallowed the urge to yell at her not to do that, and instead moved my hands slightly to slip my thumbs through her belt loops and gain a more secure grip on her ass. “You always have to push that line, don’t you?” I asked, throwing her earlier words back at her.

  “I learned from the best,” she said with a smirk.

  Damn it, I wanted her. There was a sharp edge to Rachel that I’d searched the world over for, just to realize it only existed in her. That edge turned me on, pushed me further, held me tighter, drove me insane with the need to tame the one woman I’d never been able to fully claim.

  If she needed to dangle over the edge of danger, I was more than happy to hold her there. She stretched her arms above her head and smiled, but kept her ankles locked around the railing. I’d take semitrust any day.

  She slowly lowered her arms until her hands ran through my hair, her nails gently scraping my scalp in the way she knew I loved. Then her gaze dropped to my lips and hers parted.

  Make the move, Rachel. It’s your turn.

  She stared at me so long, so hot, that I was ready to combust, but I wasn’t going to cross the line—not when she thought sex was all I wanted.

  Then she pounced.

  Thank God.

  Her mouth slanted over mine, and I was done for. The rest of the world could have been on fire and I wouldn’t have noticed, not when I had Rachel in my arms.

  I let her control it, gave her the power I knew she wanted as she gently sucked my lower lip between hers. Her hair fell around us, hiding us from the world and enveloping us in the scent I knew would always trigger me for sex.

  She slipped her tongue into my mouth, rubbing against mine, and that was the end of her control. A sound like a growl erupted from me, and I pulled her down off the railing just so I could press her against it. One of my hands tunneled in her hair while the other flexed on her hip. She was so damn tiny, but my body curled around hers as if it remembered exactly what to do—exactly how she needed to be kissed.

  She opened fully under me, and I sank into her, stroking the roof of her mouth, savoring every tiny sound she made and returning to whatever would have her make it again.

  She kissed me back as if she’d been just as starved for it as I was, arching against me, pressing her soft breasts against my chest, and I was instantly as hard as the railing behind her. I kissed her like she was the oxygen I’d been missing, breathing in everything about her until my heartbeat finally steadied, then slammed.

  The world didn’t tilt off its axis—it finally came back to normal, as if everything had been out of whack until this very moment.

  I didn’t hold myself back like I did with those small kisses in Nepal. I let her know exactly how badly I wanted her. She gasped when my hand slid north, skimming the soft skin under her halter top. Her stomach quivered with her shaky inhale of breath, but she never stopped, only tightened her grip in my hair.

  Fuck, I could kiss this woman every minute for the rest of my life. Kissing her didn’t only involve my mouth; she awakened every nerve in my body, not just the ones she touched.

  My thumb stroked higher, coming just under her bra, and she pushed forward. I rode the line between absolute pleasure and supreme need, my body remembering all too well how perfect it felt to be inside her, the way she came apart under my hands and dragged me with her.

  “Landon,” she whispered, straining against me to stand taller.

  I grasped her ass with both my hands and lifted her until her legs wrapped around my waist, and then I moved us to lean her against the partition so the railing didn’t dig into her back.

  She rocked against me, and I groaned, realizing how close she was and how very little fabric separated us. Our kiss deepened, and it took every ounce of concentration I had not to take her farther, to move my hands the few inches it would take to slip my finger under her shorts.

  So instead, I kissed her like there was nothing beyond that, relearned every curve of her mouth, and breathed every gasp, tasted every sigh.

  “Rach? You in here?” Leah’s voice hit me like a bucket of ice water, and I broke our kiss.

  “Yeah?” Rachel asked, resting her forehead against mine as her heartbeat hammered, echoing mine.

  “Oh. Oh!” Leah said as she walked onto the deck. “Okay. Well, your mom is on Skype.” The last sentence sounded farther away. She must have gone back inside after catching us.

  “Shit,” Rachel swore.

  At her first wiggle, I let her down, every inch of her body scalding its imprint into my hands before she hit the ground. I couldn’t speak—too tied into knots that I knew only she could undo.

  “We’ll talk later?” Rachel asked, and a surge of pride went through me that she was a little wobbly on her feet.

  “Yeah,” I said, my voice gravelly and almost unrecognizable.

  She nodded and ran out to the take her mother’s call.

  I turned and grasped the railing, looking out over the skyline of Jakarta. One fucking kiss and I was damn near destroyed. It had taught me two things: the first was that our chemistry was still powerful enough to destroy all reason.

  The second: one crook of her finger and I would still go running. She owned me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Rachel

  Jakarta

  “I don’t understand why it took you this long, or why I had to call you,” Mom said, her blue eyes wide with hurt.

  For that moment, I wished our connection was a little shittier.

  “Mom, I told you. We only have good internet in port, and I’ve been a little busy. Our port days are our busiest because we have shore excursions, and I still have to study and stuff.” I tried my best to appease her.

  She sighed, her shoulders brushing her dark brown hair that was streaked with silver. “I just worry.”

  “I know,” I said softly. “But I’m okay. I’m better than okay. I’ve already done so many amazing things.”

  Her eyes lit up as I told her about the safer things: the hang gliding in Sri Lanka, the elephants I’d seen there, the majesty of the Taj Mahal, and the trek through Nepal.

  Her eyebrows furrowed. “I didn’t realize you were going into Nepal.”

  “It was a last-minute trip I couldn’t say no to. Seriously, Mom, I can’t believe half the things I’m seeing. In a couple of days we’re headed to see a tribe in New Guinea.”

  She smiled. “It all sounds amazing.”

  “It really is.” In that moment, I wished my heart could reach through the screen. She was always overprotective—they both were—but I knew how hard it had been for them to adopt me, how tedious the process had been, and how badly they’d wanted a child of their own.

  Of course she was going to worry.

  “How is Leah?”

  “She’s…” In love with someone you despise. “She’s great.”

  “Well, she looked great when she popped in. Who was the blonde who answered?”

  “Penna. She’s my roommate, too.”

  “Oh, I thought it was just you and Leah…” The door opened behind her, and she clapped her hands. “Stan! Look who’s online.”

  At least that saved me from telling her that Leah had moved in with Pax. I wasn’t sure what she’d hate more—the implication of premarital sex or that I was on a ship with Wilder.

  My father dropped his briefcase in the hall and ran over to the computer, hunching down next to Mom. “There’s my girl! How are you, sweet pea?”

  “I’m good,” I promised. “Ho
w is everything there?”

  They didn’t even look at each other, which struck me as odd.

  “Good,” Dad answered.

  “Fine,” Mom added in.

  “Uh, okay,” I said, my eyes narrowing as I leaned my elbows on our dining room table. “Did something happen?”

  “No, not at all,” Dad promised, loosening his tie. “We just miss you. When do you get home for Christmas?”

  “I fly in the fifteenth, and then I have about two weeks.”

  “Good. We can’t wait to see you,” Mom said.

  “Oh, I need a favor, if you guys get a second?”

  “Absolutely, what’s up?” Dad asked.

  “Will you peek through my records? I’m looking for my adoption stuff for a class paper.”

  He stiffened, and Mom’s eyes widened. “Why would you want those? What kind of class paper is this?” Mom asked.

  I took a deep breath and kept my voice off the defensive. My adoption was such a sore spot for them, like they were ashamed that they couldn’t conceive on their own—ashamed that they’d needed a baby to solve the problems in their marriage back then.

  Maybe they didn’t realize I knew that, but my aunts had big mouths.

  But hey, they were still together, so I guess I did my job well.

  “I’m taking this Cultures of the Pacific class, and we’re doing research papers. I want to do mine on adoptions in Korea. I figured since that’s the country with the second highest number of adoptions, it would be good.”

  “Why not do China?” Mom asked.

  I blinked. “Because I wasn’t adopted from China.”

  “Right. Of course,” Dad said. “The papers should be filed in storage. We haven’t had them out since the year of your adoption. I’ll dig around.”

  “Thanks, Dad,” I said, my heart panging with missing them. I loved being here and would never second-guess that choice, but I missed my parents, too. It was one thing to be across the country from them and another to be across the world.

  “No problem,” he said as the sliding glass door opened behind me.

  “Hey, is Leah in here?” Pax asked. “Oh, you’re—”

  I cringed. “Talking to my parents.”

  He nodded slowly, and then gave them the wave, clearly in their line of sight. “Mr. Dawson. Mrs. Dawson,” he said with a tight smile. “I’ll…uh…just look for her somewhere else. Anywhere else.”

  I rubbed my forehead. “I think she said she was going up top with Penna to watch the departure.”

  “Yeah. Okay. Thanks. You good?” Wilder asked, knowing the shit was about to hit the fan.

  “Yep,” I answered, offering him a smile.

  “I’ll make sure you have some privacy…” he said, backing out of the door and shutting it.

  “Rachel Christine Dawson,” my mother snapped.

  “Mom.” I turned in my chair with a false smile. “What’s up?”

  “Who was that?”

  “Leah’s boyfriend,” I said, hoping they hadn’t seen him clearly.

  “That was Paxton Wilder,” Dad said. “Damn it. I knew they were off making a documentary, but I didn’t realize it was on your ship.”

  “It is on our ship, and he’s dating Leah.”

  “After what happened with you?” Mom exclaimed.

  “Mom, I hurt Wilder, not the other way around. They’re really good together, and she’s happy. It’s not complicating things at all. They were together before I even got here.”

  “And what about the other one?” Dad growled.

  I swallowed. “Landon is here, too.”

  Mom’s indrawn breath was the shot heard around the world.

  “He’d better not come near you,” Dad hissed.

  Too late.

  “Landon is fine. Don’t worry about me. A lot has changed in the last two years.”

  “That boy wrecked you!” Dad was turning a mottled shade of red, something that only arguing over Landon had ever accomplished.

  “And I rebuilt. Dad, I know you’re worried, but I’m fine. Landon is…” I sighed.

  Dad cursed.

  “I’m fine,” I promised. “He’s not getting in the way of my academics, and everything is fine. Sure, it was awkward at first”—like when he stole my clothes out of the bathroom—“but we’re both older now, more mature. Less likely to pull stupid stunts.”

  “Like leaving you high and dry and breaking your heart?” Dad asked.

  “Yeah, like that,” I said weakly, mostly because I didn’t know. Like Skype had a sense of mercy, I got the poor-signal warning as we pulled out of port. “Look, we’re about to lose signal. We’ll be in New Guinea in a couple days and I’ll try to call again, okay?”

  Mom nodded, her face tight. “Just…just be careful, Rachel. You only have one heart.”

  And Landon already owns it.

  “I know, Mom. I love you guys, and I’ll see you soon, okay?”

  Our good-byes were tense but over quickly, and my shoulders sagged in relief as I closed my laptop.

  Dad’s job—handling sponsorships at Gremlin—had made it possible for him to make the Renegades’ life way more than difficult after Landon left me, but he’d taken the high road and let them keep their funding. Besides, this trip was fully sponsored by Wilder Enterprises, so it wasn’t like he could hurt them.

  I scoffed and rested my head in my hands. A few weeks around Landon and I was already defending him to Dad, who had basically fixed my life when Landon had walked away.

  The two sides of me warred, my heart telling me that Landon was the only one I could ever willingly give it to, and my brain warning that there was too much pain in our past for us to ever really work.

  I told them both to shut up and concentrated on my stomach. It wanted ice cream, which was the safest of all the options.

  …

  “Now this is really quite a privilege,” Dr. Messina told us as we lined up against the back of a dark hut in the middle of Papua New Guinea three days later. “This isn’t something average tourists see, so be quiet, be invisible, and be respectful.”

  “She sounds like my mother,” Hugo said from next to me.

  I smothered a laugh.

  Landon rubbed against my right shoulder, no doubt to remind me that he was here. Not that I needed any reminding. He was everywhere—class, Renegade stuff, my suite. Trying to give myself a little space was nearly impossible.

  “You’ve been quiet all day. For the last couple days, really,” Landon noted quietly as Dr. Messina walked away.

  “I’m speaking to you,” I said without looking up at him.

  “If you had tried to get any farther away, you would have had to go to the moon,” he responded.

  I shrugged. “I’m fine.” My parents just served me up a hot reminder of what you cost me the first time, and I’m wondering if I’ve lost my mind. Like I was ever going to say that to him.

  “You’re not fine. I’m not sure if it was the kiss or talking to your mother—”

  “Shh!” I hissed. “That’s not something we’re talking about in…you know…public,” I said, pointing to the camera that had surprisingly been let in.

  “Well, if you’d talk to me alone, I wouldn’t have to try in public.”

  I finally looked over at where he sat next to me, his elbows casually braced on his knees. The small fire in the middle of the hut threw shadows across his face. He was hot as hell, like bottled sex, and I was the one with the cap.

  “I’m not avoiding you or anything.”

  “Going to class, minimal conversations revolving around only stunts and homework, and showing up for the excursion doesn’t count. Your mom spooked you,” he guessed.

  “My dad made some memorable comments,” I answered. “They didn’t change anything, I just…needed a few minutes.”

  “You had a few days,” he retorted. “I’m not in a rush. I’ll wait forever for you to figure out that I’m in this, but I’d rather you come to me when you’re spoo
ked. I can’t stop that little mental fight you’re already in with me if I don’t know it’s going on—if you can’t let me in your head.”

  He was completely right. It chafed me to admit it, but he really was. “Okay. You’re right.”

  His mouth dropped open.

  “What?” I asked.

  “I’m just watching hell freeze over.”

  “Shut up,” I said, leaning into him. “Talking to my parents was hard. They put me back together when you…” I trailed off. It wasn’t fair to keep shoving our past at him. If I was going to actually be with him, then I couldn’t drag him through that mud over and over.

  “When I left you,” he finished. “Look, I fucked that up. It changed us both, and we have to be able to talk about it. Your parents rightfully hate me because they saw the aftermath. If I saw that, I’m sure I’d hate myself a hell of a lot more than I already do.”

  I blinked at him, trying to organize my thoughts. “In a million years, I never imagined you saying that. You hate my dad.”

  “I hate that he hated me, and then I went and gave him a damn good reason to.” He shrugged. “When we get back to L.A., I’m going to grovel, and I’m really not looking forward to it, but I’m honestly just hoping that I’ve at least won you over by that point—”

  “What?” I asked a little too loudly. Dr. Messina shushed me from her seat across the hut.

  “—because I can’t fight a war on two fronts. What do you mean, what?”

  “When we get back to L.A.?” I asked. “You mean…you’ve thought about that?” About what would happen once you actually caught me.

  “Well, yeah. We’re not going to be on this ship forever, right? Unless you have some lifelong plans that I’m not aware of?”

  He’d thought about more than the chase, the pursuit. He’d looked ahead to when real life was going to hit us again. God, I hated the damn cameras, because I wanted to kiss him, to show him what I couldn’t find the words to say. Instead I leaned my forehead against his shoulder and breathed in, knowing he’d just knocked loose one of the last bricks in my defense against him.

  He pressed his lips to my hair and rested there for a second.

  It wasn’t enough for a moment like this, and yet it meant everything.