by Godwin, Pam
He tilted his head and pressed a kiss into my captured palm. “Missed ye more.”
Michio shifted his weight and crossed his arms. “It’s important you tell me if anything hurts. You had a seizure.”
“I’ll feel better if you tell me where Jesse is.”
Another shift of hips. “He went after Aiman.”
When I opened my mouth, Roark pressed a finger over it. “He’s got a pilot with him. He’ll meet us in Italy.”
If he survived the Drone and his aphid infested island. “That’s his Plan B?”
His knuckle tapped my chin. “He’ll catch up.”
Michio shoved medical instruments in his bag with impatient and uncharacteristic jerks. “Your vitals are normal, but your body underwent a lot of shock last night.”
“I feel fine.”
That turned his head to look at me over his shoulder. “You did good, Evie.”
Roark’s hand squeezed mine. “Ye redirected hundreds of aphids before ye couped. If ye hadn’t held them a’ the end—”
“Don’t.” I sat up. “Not till we know Jesse’s safe.”
The bedding gathered around my waist, the remains of my chemise gone. The puckered pink C on my chest gleamed against my pale complexion. I shoved the sheets out of my lap. Neat stitches crossed the cut that started at the apex of my inner thigh and stretched as long as the length of my hand.
“You’re a much better tailor than I am,” I said to Michio.
He straightened, watching me. “It’ll scar.”
I shrugged. “No worries. I’m collecting scars like Roark collects sins. All in the name of greater good.”
Roark sprinkled kisses on my back. “Scars, sins and”—his lips hovered—“spots.”
Michio’s frown deepened, his agitation impossible to ignore.
Maybe I should’ve squashed Roark’s open affection. But I had no shame when it came to either of them. I put a hand on Roark’s arm. “I need to tell you something.” I let him read my face while those gorgeous pools of jade melted things inside me. I cleared my throat and steeled my spine. “I slept with Michio.”
A smile split his face, but it wasn’t his easy smile. It seemed forced, tight in the corners, and didn’t sparkle his eyes. “I did too. He hogged the feckin’ covers all night.”
That surprised me. They both slept in that tiny bed with me? “You know what I mean.”
His mouth slacked and his arm left my waist. “I know.”
“I told him.” Michio’s careful tone.
“Oh.” I plucked at the sheets. “Now what?” Would they make me choose? Would it be a slow buildup of insecurity, jealously, rivalry?
Roark blew out a breath and slid from the bed, donned only in a pair of cutoff sweats. “Doc and I agree on this: we love ye, we’ll protect ye, but we will not possess ye. And seeing how you’re hauling yourself into danger all the time, I’ll be resting easier knowing you’re wearing a doctor a’ your side.” He glanced at the other man. “But we’ll have to do something about the swot’s bealin’ lack of humor.”
I was still stuck on we love ye. Thinking it was one thing. But hearing it…it was balm to my damaged soul. I just hoped there was enough left to love.
Michio turned to open a cabinet, distracting me with the way his cotton pants hugged the swell of his backside. “All your personal things are here.”
Darwin’s collar, my music player, Joel’s letter. It didn’t pass my notice that my bullet wasn’t among the collection.
“And here.” He crossed the room and unlatched a tall cabinet. Soft light splashed over my carbine, pistol and arm sheaths hanging from the racks. “These are your Lakota’s doing.”
A ridiculous rush of relief swelled inside me. “I love that man.”
Roark and Michio froze. Shit. “I didn’t mean…slight figure of speech.” I stared at the space between their rigid bodies, waiting for someone to say something.
The air in the small room thickened and swirled, stirring up the tension I’d been trying to ignore. I cleared my throat. “All right. Let’s hash it out.”
Roark turned to leave. Heat surged in my cheeks. “Oh no, you don’t.” I squared my shoulders. “Toss me that shirt.”
He yanked a man’s tee off the hanger, wadded it, and sent it flying at my bare chest.
I grabbed the closest thing in reach, a pillow, and hurled it at his head. Direct hit.
His hands went to his hips. “Real mature.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Enough.” Michio didn’t move, his face stoic as always. “What’s on your mind, Evie?”
“Same thing on yours. What to do about jealous, possessive—”
“Guardians.” He dropped his voice. “There’s a lot more to worry about out there”—he jabbed a finger at the door—“than the soap opera about to play out in this room.”
“Bullshit.” I dragged on the shirt. “Because if we don’t square our shit away here”—I pointed a circling finger at the mattress—“then we won’t be united to fight the shit out there.” I looked at Roark. “And you. You flirted your way into my pants and my heart. The moment you gained access, you didn’t want it anymore. That forfeits your rights to jealousy.”
Michio’s fist clenched. Mid-swing, I jumped, tackling him to the floor.
Red splotched Michio’s golden complexion. “Get back in bed, Evie.”
Roark jerked me to my feet and took my place, legs straddling Michio’s, arms outstretched. “Go ahead. Lamp me, ye sod.”
Oh, for fuck’s sake. “You gonna pound your chest, too? Get off him, you big ape.” I grabbed a wayward curl and yanked. Hard.
“Ow.” Roark twisted a finger into my fist and released his hair. Then he stumbled to his feet. “Feck aff. I’m outta here.”
I beat him to the door, met his angry eyes. “Me or the vow. Decide now.”
His teeth ground so loud, he could’ve spit enamel. “The vow. It’s always been the vow.” He moved around me and slammed the door.
I leaned against it. “Well, that sucked. Out walked my heart all over again.”
Michio remained on the floor, arm dangling over a bent knee. His features were soft, sympathetic.
Picking fights wasn’t his style, which meant, “You didn’t know I slept with him.”
He lowered his head, pushed a hand through his tousled hair. “No. But it explains a lot.”
“Rest assured it’ll never happen again.”
“I’d peg you as a lot of things, Evie, but naive isn’t one of them.”
I threw my hands in the air and paced. “Are you serious? You had a front row seat to that.” I jerked my thumb at the door. “He made his decision.”
“Maybe so. But you”—he gritted his teeth—“have not.”
I sucked in a sharp breath. I endured two months without Roark. Two agonizing, lonely months without his affection and companionship. I’d fight to the death to avoid suffering that again.
He stood and moved to the door. “But you’re right. He’s not going anywhere and, regardless whether we get along or not, we’re on the same side. And Evie”—he paused at the threshold, gripped the doorframe, eyes on me—“I’m not going anywhere either. Not the sharpest blade, not the fastest arrow, not even the fate of man could take my love from you.”
His words solidified as his retreating back faded in the darkness of the galley beyond.
My feet were moving before my brain was. I ran through the door, slid around him and jumped, wrapping him in a hug with arms and legs.
He stumbled back, hands on my ass, and spun. When my back hit the wall, I looked up at him and fell into the bottomless black of his eyes. He gave me a smile so rare and beautiful I touched it, tried to hold it in my hand.
“I love you, too,” he whispered through my fingers.
Then his mouth claimed mine. It was a New World exploration full of ventures and dreams, and I was right there with him, meeting the thrust of his tongue with the whole of my heart.
Our hips moved in sync with our lips, and my hands slid through the thick locks of his hair, glided down his ribs, and found the flex in his backside. I wanted more. I wanted—
“Dr. Nealy,” Tallis shouted from the top of the stairs.
He pressed his face into my neck and groaned.
“Ignore him.” I turned my head, seeking his lips.
His long fingers framed my face. “They’re waiting.” He sighed. “Get dressed. Drink the water I left by the bed. I’ll meet you up top.”
When he slipped away, I returned to the room in search of my weapons, my clothes, and my game face.
The yacht was longer than a school bus and twice as wide. I leaned into the V railing at the bow and waited for the men to gather. Sandy ridges rose from the crystalline waters along the eastern horizon. Boxy white-washed buildings scattered the closest island and overlooked sailboats toppled in the ghost port.
A hand settled next to mine on the railing. “The Egadi Islands.” Michio’s voice was as guarded as the day I met him. “We’re heading into the Tyrrhenian Sea.” He pointed at the frosted waves sloshing to the left of the morning sun.”Ready to meet the crew?”
I searched his blank face and found what I was looking for. His mask. Worn to disguise his weaknesses from those he didn’t trust. But, slow as I was, I finally recognized what was beneath that mask. A whisper of love to match his words in the galley. It made me want to sing to the vast openness of the sea and sky. Instead, I rearranged my face into one that might mirror the seriousness in his and nodded.
He led me across the teak-laid deck. Roark and two others talked over maps in the cockpit, encircled by deep couches. The man nearest Roark stood a few inches over him. Streaks of gold weaved through his headful of bushy brown hair.
I stopped before him and raised my chin to hold his steel blue stare. His swarthy face froze as he looked at me agape.
“What?” I asked.
“I’m sorry. It’s just…Beckett said you were breathtaking, but that was an understatement.” An Australian accent. “I’m still trying to catch my breath.”
Jesse Beckett and I were going to have words. “What else did Beckett say?”
The other man replied, “If we touch you without your consent, our balls will hang like baubles from his Humvee’s rearview mirror”—he eyed my outstretched hand and looked away—“ma’am.”
The Australian gripped my palm. “Tallis Reynolds. Nice to meet you, Ms. Delina.”
“Call me Evie.”
He turned to the other man. “My mate here is Cliff Dilman.”
Cliff tipped up his baseball cap and gave me a demure smile made for charming small town girls. “Nice to meet you, ma’am.”
“Same. Did you say Jesse has a Humvee?”
“Yes, ma’am. It’s yours. Said he brought it over on the very ship you were hiding on.”
“No shit.” Sneaky bastard.
“He’s got your MT 350E army bike, too,” Tallis said.
“Son of a bitch,” Roark huffed. “Where?”
“He left it in Genoa,” Tallis replied, “where we’ll be docking.”
“So you both work for Jesse?” I asked.
Tallis rocked on his heels. “On and off the past seven years.”
I refrained from rubbing my palms together, anxious to dig. “Doing what?”
“Bodyguard, muscle, hired gun, whatever you want to call it.”
Michio folded his arms over his chest. “What does Beckett do exactly?”
Cliff shrugged. Tallis said, “Some kind of underground international humanitarian, perhaps? That’s my guess given the secret nature of his activities and the types of services he requires.”
“Humanitarian,” Roark prompted Tallis, avoiding my stare.
“His methods may be questionable, but he seems to always be on the right side.”
Whatever his job was, he wasn’t doing it anymore considering he spent the prior eighteen months at my heels. “What types of services are we talking about?”
Tallis grinned. “Let’s see, a week before the outbreak, I helped him shovel through innards on a blown up Afghani sidewalk looking for”—he rubbed his nape—“this and that. That same night—”
“I escorted him to Tibet,” Cliff said, “to have tea with the Dalai Lama.”
Michio’s brows shot to his hairline. “Bull.”
Cliff shared a smile with Tallis and lifted a shoulder. “The man has more connections than anyone I know.”
“Had,” Tallis said. “Most of them suck blood now.”
“Who does he work for?” Roark asked.
“No one knows.” Tallis plopped onto the couch. “Beckett carries himself like a military attaché, yet he lives like a spy. Every assignment is flawlessly planned, heavily clouded, and approached with zero emotion.” He darted his eyes at me. “Until this one.”
“What’s that mean?” I asked.
“When he sought me out a month ago, he wasn’t his usual cryptic self. He was fidgety, short-tempered, running around like some obsessed person. He kept going on about this beautiful kidnapped woman.” He paused, held my eyes. “He’d even traded in his rifle for arrows and a tomahawk. His behavior made me nervous and the shit about saving a woman when I knew none had survived…I turned down the assignment.” He exhaled. “In the end, he was very persuasive. And I get it now. In the matters of humanity, this billet makes all the others negligible.”
“It’s not just that,” Cliff said. “He’s made this one personal.”
Personal. I decided to analyze that later. “So what was your assignment from Beckett?”
“Get a yacht, pick you up from Manoel Island and meet him in Genoa—if he wasn’t with you in Malta.”
“And above all,” Cliff said, “guard you with our lives.”
Michio watched them with the same scrutiny he watched me. “What happens in Genoa?”
Tallis leaned into his knees. “Doesn’t work that way, mate. Beckett never shows all his cards.”
Lines formed on Roark’s brow. “When the wanker dragged me from the fortress, he had a pilot with him. A French bloke.” He looked at me for the first time. “He said he’d fly ye to Iceland.”
To see the Shard. Michio knew them, trusted them. Still, my stomach churned. Did I want to know if I carried the cure? And if we did find it, what would keep us from repeating our failures, pandering our human-centric gods and destroying ourselves all over again?
If the Drone hadn’t killed the last of the nymphs, what would they endure to test the cure? Even if we found and cured twenty nymphs, I knew all too well the hardships each would suffer as rare human women.
Bile simmered in my throat. I braced my hands on my knees. Roark took a step toward me then seemed to think better of it.
“And if Jesse failed to kill the Drone?” I asked to no one particular.
Cliff’s voice whipped with the ocean breeze. “Beckett never fails.”
I wasn’t convinced.
Several hours after retiring to bed, I lay curled around Michio’s back, seeking comfort in his steady breaths.
Sleep hadn’t taken me and I knew why. I was waiting, hoping.
Wooden boards creaked. The room lolled with the rock of the tide. My eyelids drooped. Just as I was about to give in, the reason for my wait slipped into bed behind me.
I shut my eyes as his hands sought a place to settle, a place against my bare skin but far enough away from Michio’s. The back of my thigh. The dip of my waist.
I fell asleep loathing my guilt of wanting more from Roark, but content with having him there. It would have to be enough.
We left the steep mountains of Corsica and sailed around Capraia. I stood opposite Michio on the yacht’s port quarter and narrowed my eyes at him. The combination of the open sea and the perspiration beading on his hulking frame made me dizzy and restless.
Two days on the boat, rife with sexual tension. All three of us felt it. I didn’t have a clue how to approach
it. So, I did what I always did and escaped to the bathroom. The loss of my bullet only fueled my frustration.
“Evie. It’s important that you press your free hand into your opponent’s throat when you’re locking the arm. Try again.”
I’d asked Michio to teach me the arm bar he used against my flower technique. The one that put my hand so temptingly close to his groin and my submission to the head. After forty-five minutes, however, I regretted the request. I couldn’t drag my thoughts away from the ache between my legs or the brooding priest polishing his sword a few feet away.
His honey curls glinted red in the sun and lifted in the breeze. Each time I stole a glance, the corner of his mouth pinched, but his eyes remained on his sword. Damn, damn, damn the stubborn bastard.
I lunged. My forearm slid over Michio’s chest. I swept my leg behind his. The mountain didn’t move. The momentum sent me hurtling past and head first over the side.
His arm stopped my legs from following and hauled me to his chest. I slumped in his embrace and squeezed my thighs together. Time for that bathroom break.
“Evie.” Michio’s rasp tickled my ear. “Go talk to him.”
I cocked my hip and tilted my head. “You go talk to him.”
His lips twitched. “I’m the problem, Evie. And as long as I’m in his face, this standoff isn’t going anywhere. And you need to work it out while on the boat, safe from danger. Rekindle whatever you had, do whatever you do with a celibate priest, down in the stateroom where I don’t have to watch.”
I leaned back, brows arched.
He brushed his lips over my gaping mouth. His heady, exotic taste overrode the salty air. “That’s a heavy emphasis on celibate, Evie. Bold, italicized, and underlined.”
“Michio—”
“Go before I pound my chest.”
I would’ve kissed him again if I wasn’t already moving. I skidded past Roark and met his eyes. Then I ran to the stateroom.
The door crashed behind me. Roark leaned against it and dragged in a breath that shuddered the naked muscles in his chest, his neck drawn in an iron sinew.
He uncurled his massive body, jade eyes blazing through fallen curls, and stalked toward me. “I’m sorry”—his palms captured my face—“for this.”