22
Ash picked up a new comm-cuff first. As expected, it wasn’t ready and waiting for her. But once she’d convinced the officer in charge that she was, indeed, part of Trident Team and would be escorting the prime to Ysbar Station, the tech specialist sped things up. He linked her profile and made the requested software tweaks and upgrades. Within twenty minutes, Ash had the cuff fastened around her wrist. Most of her gear was ready to go by the forty-minute mark. She just needed a few minutes to herself in the armory before she met the guys in the docking bay.
The security officer cleared her and let her into the chamber. The heavy door silently glided shut, sealing her into the long rectangular room. It was split down the middle by racks of rifles. Ash’s fingers itched to pick up one of the Kinetic A88’s, but that was much too conspicuous. There was no way Tersa would let her on the transport with it.
She walked past the standard-issue pistols, the shelves of ammo and battery packs. The pulse weapon she wanted was at the rear of the armory. She picked it up, wrapping her fingers tight around the grip. Without a battery inserted beneath the barrel, the thing felt fragile, like a toy gun.
Shaking her head, she tapped on her cuff and sent her info to the Kaelais’s weaponry database to check the pistol out. Then she grabbed three battery packs and discreetly checked for the armory’s security lenses. They were positioned to cover the main aisles, but one of them hung down from the ceiling and provided a 360 view. The armory workbench was on the far wall. Ash could make her modifications with her back to the camera, obscuring exactly what it was she was doing, but any halfway intelligent spacer who watched the vid would notice her working on something. Modifying weapons required permission from a high-ranked officer. Ash didn’t have that.
But she wasn’t modifying the weapon itself, just the battery packs.
Let’s hope the vid is being monitored by an idiot.
Ash grabbed pliers, a metal file, a coil of mydrix wire, and—
“You’re supposed to be in the docking bay.”
She hid her supplies behind her back and spun.
Rykus stood barely two paces behind her. “You’re supposed to be in the docking bay.”
“I’m running late.” He reached past her, grabbed a pulse-pistol and a single battery pack. When Ash eyed the latter, he hesitated by her ear. “Others are already modified.”
His voice was low even though no one could hear them. There was very little visual privacy on Coalition warships outside of bunk rooms and toilets, but auditory feeds weren’t monitored or recorded without preapproval.
“Enough to share?” Ash asked.
He looked at the supplies on the workbench behind her and shook his head. “I want extras for the others. Just in case things really go to hell.”
He moved a few steps away. “You’re doing it here?” he asked.
“Unless you want to delay the op long enough for me to go find a hidey-hole somewhere, yeah.” She faced the workbench. Blocking the lens’s view of what she was doing would make the modifications more difficult. This wasn’t going to work. Security would likely be watching more closely now that Rykus had entered. A man and a woman in an armory was a lot more interesting than a routine equipment grab, and her fail-safe was the “Rest in Peace” Rykus. He drew eyes everywhere he…
Ash looked at the wall of pistols, tactical knives, and weapons belts to her left and the shelves of lubricants, cleansers, and equipment to her right. A grin spread across her face.
“Something funny?” Rykus asked.
She shoved her tools out of sight behind the square base of an adjustable light. “Take your shirt off.”
“What?” His voice didn’t exactly squeak, but it sounded higher than usual.
Ash’s heart rate kicked up, beating out its agreement with her idea. She stepped up to her fail-safe and yanked his shirttail out of his pants.
“Shirt. Off,” she said. This time her voice was heated. She unfastened the top button, then the next. When he said her name and covered her hands with his, she stood on her tiptoes and kissed him.
It wasn’t a soft, gentle kiss. It was a sharp-edged demand that he get involved in the mission.
He was still only for a moment before his lips parted and let her in.
“The vids,” he murmured. The protest was ruined by the teeth that nipped her lower lip.
She gripped his shirt in her hands and yanked it open. The rest of the buttons gave way.
“Lift me up.”
He didn’t hesitate. He gripped her hips and raised her toward the ceiling. Swinging his shirt overhead, she wrapped it around the lens.
Rykus’s face pressed against her stomach, then against the cleavage beneath her uniform as he lowered her back to the ground. “They’ll know what we’re doing.”
“That’s the point. This is a cover-up.”
“A cover-up.” A tendril of sanity slid into his dark brown eyes. Ash wanted to obliterate it, especially when his jaw clenched and his lashes lowered. She could almost hear the protest gathering on his tongue.
“Seeker’s God, Ash. Your timing.” He shook his head.
Ash reached up to knock his hands from her shoulders but stopped when his gaze locked on her. He was smiling. It wasn’t quite the same easygoing grin she’d glimpsed on Javery, but it was just as disarming.
Her mouth worked to form words, a tease or a quip to regain control of her senses and the situation, but he didn’t allow it. He kissed her. His tongue delved into her mouth, seeking hers. Finding hers.
She dug her nails into his back. He wore an undershirt, but it was tight. It showed off the definition in his shoulders, the bulky muscles of his biceps. God, he was magnificent.
He pulled her tight against him before lifting her again. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he gripped her ass. Effortlessly he lowered her so she rubbed down over the bulge in his pants, then he raised her back up and lowered her again.
She groaned against his mouth. She wasn’t light or wispy; he was just that strong. She felt his muscles working, easily overcoming the ship’s gravity.
“Uniform.” Her voice was a raspy whisper.
He nodded and set her down. Her elbow knocked into the rifles in the center aisle. Ash cursed, tried to keep them from clattering to the floor.
“Unloaded,” Rykus said. He pulled off his undershirt, unbuckled his belt.
Ash stepped back enough to remove her own clothes, but when Rykus freed himself from his combat pants, her progress stopped. He was big everywhere. She knew that, but she’d been without him for a month and she had no way of knowing the next time they would be together. She could spare a moment to memorize his body silhouetted by the background of weapons and ammo.
“Get naked, Ash,” he ordered.
Her eyes shot to his. He didn’t give her time to get out of her clothes herself. His hands tugged and pulled at her shirt and pants. His teeth bit and teased her mouth. Then nothing but air touched her skin. He tossed her clothes aside and stepped back, raw need in his eyes as his gaze raked down her body.
“You’re fucking beautiful.” He reached out. His knuckles skated over the not-quite-healed knife wound in her side. “Okay?”
“More than okay, Rip. I need you.”
“You have me, Ash.”
She had all of him.
He lost his mind when he entered her.
Ash was made of fire and passion. She didn’t do slow, careful lovemaking. She took what she wanted and met his aggressive movements with an unrivaled fierceness. He loved it, loved her, loved that he didn’t have to be careful.
They knocked into the rifle rack again. Ash gasped and arched when something dug into her back.
He moved her away, plunging into her harder and deeper. She bit his shoulder, and his hand slipped off her ass. Unbalanced, they stumbled. Cartons of ammo fell and scattered. It was loud and messy. He didn’t care. He swiped his hand across the surface of the workbench. Tools and oils went flying.
<
br /> Rykus separated from Ash only long enough to spin her around and press her, face forward, over the bench. He gripped her hips with both hands, leaned close to her ear. “More?”
“More,” she moaned. “Now, Rip—”
His name ended in a strangled cry when he entered her again.
Seeker’s God, she was perfect. The sounds she made, the way she clenched around him. He was insane to think he could keep himself away from this. He was insane to even try. Ash was his. For as long as she wanted to be, she was his.
He felt his climax coming. He slowed his thrusts, squeezed his eyes shut. He didn’t want this to end yet. Didn’t want to face reality and ramifications.
Ash ground back against him. He tightened his grip on her hips to keep her still. If she kept moving…
Breathe, he ordered. Breathe and get control.
Ash slipped out of his grasp and turned. Vixen-green eyes met his. She put a hand on his sweat-dampened chest, pushed him backward.
Her hand slid to his shoulder. “Down.”
He obeyed, still clinging to his control, and knelt among the fallen rifles and bullets. His lips were just above her navel. He leaned forward and tasted the salt of her skin.
Her stomach clenched. He ran his tongue over her lean abdomen, let his hand glide up between her thighs. He felt her tremble.
He rubbed and kissed, making her muscles twitch.
I love you, he wanted to say. He wanted to say it and hear the echoing words on her lips.
“Ash—”
Whether her knees buckled or she chose to drop down level with him, he didn’t know. But she was in front of him, mouth on his mouth, hands pushing him to his back as she straddled him with her long legs.
He ignored the debris beneath him, all his attention riveted to the feel of Ash sliding down on him. She took control, rising and sinking in an increasingly urgent rhythm. Her muscles gripped him tight. Tight. Tight.
He watched her face as the pleasure built. The way her lips parted, the way she closed her eyes and tilted her head back as she moved, all were signs that she was on the precipice.
He was on the precipice too, but he didn’t want to go over yet. Didn’t want to stop.
He thrust his hips into her.
“Rip, yes. Like that. I’m almost—”
He thrust up again, then fisted her hair in his hand. “Look at me.”
Her eyes hooded open. In her expression, he saw the fast approaching, unstoppable plummet that would pulse through her and then through him.
“Not yet,” he grated out.
Her eyes widened. She gasped then moaned then gasped again while she rode him. Fuck, she worked him hard, but she didn’t break, and he kept his body under control. Barely.
“Rip.” Her nails dug into his chest.
“Not yet,” he said again.
“God, I’m… I’m… so close. Still so close.” Her voice shook, with pain or pleasure or both, he didn’t know. He couldn’t think. He could only feel. Could only touch and see.
“Please,” she begged. Her thighs spread more, inviting him in deeper. Her face, beautiful and vulnerable, tilted back. She trembled. He felt the vibration where he connected with her. She needed to come undone, would have already if he hadn’t ordered her to hold back.
He needed the release too. Couldn’t wait anymore.
“Now.”
She bucked and thrashed as she came, crying out his name and contracting around him. He pumped into her, riding wave after wave of pleasure. The aftershocks went on forever, the liquid heat burning through his body. His vision blurred and sparked until he and Ash both were spent.
She collapsed on top of him. He wrapped her in his arms and held her still-shaking body. He breathed in the scent of her heated skin, the clean smell of her shampoo. Seeker’s God, she was his heaven.
“That…” Ash’s voice caught, and Rykus froze.
Slowly, rational thought reformed in his mind. He realized what he’d done, what he’d triggered in his maddened desire to keep the pleasure going. He’d commanded her, used compulsion to hold her on the edge of release.
“Again,” she said.
“Ash, I’m so… What?”
She rose off him enough to look into his eyes. “Let’s do that again.”
He’d shattered all her shields. Her expression was open to him, no masks, no teasing subterfuge.
“You’re not mad?” he asked carefully, afraid to lose the woman in his arms.
The corner of Ash’s mouth lifted in a grin. “I didn’t know you could do that, hold me there until… God, Rip. That was awesome. You have permission to command anything of me in bed.”
He felt a mirroring grin spread across his face. “We’re not in bed, Ash.”
She laughed and kissed him. He kissed her back, drinking in everything she was willing to offer. She shifted her body, maybe to get in a more comfortable position, maybe to feel if he would be ready again soon.
His cock twitched. Hardened. Maybe…
An alarm rang from an intercom. Two pulses and a beep. The ten-minute warning for the exit from the time-bend.
“Shit,” he said. “We’re late.”
“I don’t think I can stand, Rip.”
The sultry contentedness in her voice made him want to stay exactly where he was, but then his comm-cuff vibrated. He didn’t need to look to know who was calling.
Gently he rolled Ash off him and stood. He missed the heat of her body immediately. “The modifications, Ash. Do you need help?”
“No,” she said languidly. “I’ve got it. If you leave your shirt.”
He glanced up at the covered lens, shook his head. “You go. I’ll do the mods.”
She tucked her knees underneath her, rose until she was sitting up straight, level with his—
He grabbed his combat pants. “Get your ass to the transport, Lieutenant.”
Ash laughed as she pulled on her clothes.
23
Rykus gripped the safety bar over his head and peered out the transport’s window. Ysbar Station had been a tiny dot when they capsuled into the system, but now it engulfed nearly all the black canvas of space. It was a half-hour ride back to the Kaelais, which waited apart from the rest of the Fleet, hovering behind them like one cool, kick-ass vanguard. The Sariceans had only brought one capsule as well. How much that mattered now that they’d developed a tachyon drive, Rykus didn’t know. I-Com said the enemy only had one prototype built, but he trusted that about as much as he trusted that this meeting would end peacefully.
“Any sign of the prize?” His words were quiet and transmitted directly to Furyk.
“No,” the captain replied, his disappointment coming through across the voice-link. Furyk hungered to pit the Kaelais against the Sariceans’ new technology. “We’ll alert you if that changes.”
“Affirmative,” Rykus said. His comm-cuff vibrated a five-minute warning to the station’s docking tube. He turned to the team. “Final equipment check.”
The others rose from their seats. Rykus followed his normal op-prep routine, starting at his tactical boots and securing his laces. He’d sharpened the knife in his boot sheath before dressing. He made sure it could be pulled free without snagging, then he confirmed his pulse-pistol was in good working condition. The extra battery packs were safe in pockets on his combat vest. They were modified. So were the four he’d given to Ash. He wished they could carry more, but too much backup power would draw Tersa’s attention.
He continued his equipment check, making sure the extra weight was distributed evenly and that he could move easily and quietly. After more than a decade of missions and training, every piece of equipment had its purpose and its place. He was ready for war.
When he’d finished, he turned to Ash. Her compression suit hugged every curve of her body, a body he’d explored a mere two hours ago. No sign of their time together showed on her face. He kept it from his expression too, but something in his chest felt out of place.
/> Every soldier had their pre-op restlessness, but this was different. Ops were dangerous—hell, so was day-to-day training—and Rykus had long ago accepted he might lose his life fighting for those who couldn’t fight for themselves. The problem now was that he wanted to put Ash into the category of people he defended.
Stupid, he told himself. She’s more than capable of defending herself.
Ash must have felt his gaze. She returned her pulse-pistol to its holster and looked at him.
“Side wound doing okay still?” He used the question and his role as commander of the op to move closer and check her equipment.
“Still good.”
He hadn’t expected a different answer. She wouldn’t admit to pain or injury even if she’d been standing there bleeding out on the floor.
“Your helm is loose.”
She shrugged. “It’s the best I could do.”
He gave her a look that said her best wasn’t good enough, then moved behind her to tighten the fasteners. The helm was standard issue, just like everything else she was wearing. The compression suit fit her well, but the C12 Life Helmet was a piece of crap. It collapsed to half its size to make it less clumsy to carry, but it still took up a good amount of room across her shoulders.
“You disabled the auto-sensor,” he said.
“Yeah.”
“And if the Sariceans vent the atmosphere on us?”
“Then I better be fast with the clasp. I’m not risking a malfunction in the middle of our friendly conversation with the enemy.”
That was the worst problem with the C12s. The latching mechanism was faulty. The helms were designed to expand and swing over the wearer’s head in half a millisecond if it sensed an O2 drop or a significant change in air pressure. That tended to startle—or in the wrong situations—embarrass soldiers. It always happened at the worst possible times.
Rykus wanted to give her his expensive Garner8 helm, but he knew he wouldn’t win that argument without directly ordering her to switch.
“When we get back to Coalition space, you’re upgrading.”
Shades of Honor (An Anomaly Novel Book 2) Page 22