by Pam Godwin
Roark jumped up and put his hands on his hips, breathing heavy as he stared down at Link. “All bleeding and having a laugh like. Maybe ye need another come-to-Jesus meeting with me fists?”
Link sat up, knees bent, blood dripping from his nose and the cuts around his mouth and eyes. He flashed a red-stained smile and raised his cigarette, still pinched between his fingers. It was bent to hell but still smoldering.
A heavy exhale hissed past Roark’s clamped teeth. “Bloody hell, your face looks like me dead uncle’s ball sac.”
With his elbows on his knees, Link straightened the cigarette and perched the end between his bloody lips. “Saw the scars on your knuckles, Father Molony. Wanted to see if they were what I thought they were.”
Seriously? He couldn’t have just asked?
Roark flexed a hand, eyeing his knuckles. “I was a street boxer in Northern Ireland, ye fecking muckshit fuck.”
Link choked on a drag of his cigarette, nodding and grinning. “Got some dirty fucking power in those fists, my friend. And the sword? They teach you how to use that in the seminary?”
Roark’s sword leaned against the couch beside me. He told me once he preferred it because there weren’t many guns in Ireland.
He closed his eyes, opened them. “I dragged the church youth group to SCA armored combat activities, before…” He pushed a loose dreadlock out of his face. “The sword fighting was all for sport. Gave the young lads something to do.” He shrugged. “I took a liking to medieval weapons and made a hobby out of it.”
Link watched him for a long moment, puffing on his cigarette and bleeding all over the place. “You’re the strangest priest I’ve ever met.”
“And you’re a clatty prick. Now clean the floor there, will ye? Your ugly focking head is leaking all over it.”
Bursting with laughter, Link pulled his shirt over his head and wiped his face with it. The swollen, broken bridge of his nose was painful to look at, but he didn’t show a hint of discomfort. He climbed to his feet, his musculature playing and bunching beneath darkly-tanned skin as he dropped the shirt and used his boot to wipe the fabric over the blood.
Flicking the finished cigarette onto the shirt, he kicked it to one of his guys and strode toward Jesse. “So you’re the quiet one.”
Jesse perused all six-foot-and-imposing-inches of Link’s frame with a disinterested expression. A thin patch of dark hair dusted Link’s chest and abs, and a few faint scars drew lines over his ribs. He looked like a younger, meaner, broken-nosed version of Vin Diesel.
“I’ve met guys like you.” Link cocked his bald head, his nostrils ringed with crimson. “You’re the kind that slices throats in dark alleys and slips away into the night before the first drop of blood hits the pavement.”
Jesse stared back, the bored look on his face giving nothing away. When we’d shared our stories, we hadn’t touched on our lives before the plague. Link didn’t know about Jesse’s CIA background, yet his assessment was uncannily accurate.
“What about you?” I raised my chin. “What’s your kind?”
He hooked his thumbs in the pockets of his jeans. “I headed the security detail on the Mississippi Queen.”
“Why would a steamboat need security?” I arched a brow. “Saw a lot of action, did you?”
“Liliana”—he nodded at the ceiling, indicating the nymph upstairs—“is my boss. She is the Mississippi Queen. Or was. She was a celebrity in our parts. Had a voice on her that hardened every cock on that cruise ship, and a body that men would sell their souls just to touch. You get me?”
Loud and clear. “You were a bodyguard, a bouncer…”
“All of it, and not just for her. The nymphs upstairs were singers, dancers, entertainers on the boat. Not those kinds of entertainers. Get your minds out of the gutter.” He grinned and licked the cut on his lip. “They were stunning women. Men wanted them. Creepy, obsessive men. So I protected them, and some of these guys…” He glanced around the room. “They worked for me then in the same capacity they do now.”
A team of bodyguards? We’d landed the fucking lottery. That was, if they kept their hands and their cocks to themselves.
The men loitering in the room were still sneaking glances at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. I could handle a heated look, liked it even, but I didn’t know them. Didn’t know what they were capable of.
I tried to keep my face blank, but my efforts felt debilitated by the pound of my heart. “Were there only twelve nymphs all along? Or did you lose some?”
The rugged planes of his face softened. “Thirty women in the beginning. We lost more than half in those first days and months. And just as many crew members. Took us awhile to figure out how to contain them without getting bit.”
“What about before? Did you and your security guys have sex with your stunning women?”
“Yes. Some of us had relations.” Link crouched before me. “I’m aware of your concerns. We’re a risk to keep around. Twenty-one hard risks, right?” He pointed a look at his groin. “But I can offer you something in exchange for that risk.”
The couch groaned as Roark sat beside me and rested a hand on my lap, his knuckles scratched and glowing red but cleaned of blood.
Link glanced at Roark’s hand and returned to my eyes. “I need your special aphid-controlling skills to keep the bugs away and your experience with the nymph transformations to help me through it. You mentioned the memory gaps and healing process. I don’t have the emotional know-how or energy to deal with that hormonal shit. I fuck, and I fight.”
He was a straight-shooter, a trait I greatly appreciated. And frankly, he didn’t have to offer me shit. We were outnumbered. If he wanted my help, he could take it by force. The thing was, I intended to see the women through their recovery. That was always the plan.
If there was a catch, it was hidden in the details.
I chewed the inside of my cheek. “You want us to help them heal, then you’ll take it from there?” To do the fucking and the fighting.
He nodded. “I just want my girls whole and healthy again. We’ve got a species to save, am I right?”
I envisioned a lot of baby Link’s in the future.
He sniffed, a wet bloody sound. “In return, you’ll have my protection and services.”
Services? Was he seriously offering to fuck me right here in front of the man who just broke his nose?
He flashed me a wolfish smile full of straight, white teeth. “I’d love nothing more than to offer you those services, sweetheart, but if his angry looks don’t kill me…” He glanced at Jesse, then pointed at Roark. “His fists will.”
“Jesus fuck.” Roark braced an elbow on his knee, leaning forward. “Explain the services, ye long-winded cunt.”
Link laughed and rose to his feet, rubbing his knuckles beneath his nose. “You need ammo? I got a guy who makes shells, arrows, and blades.” He pointed at a dark-haired man across the room.
I’d left my guns in the mountains, along with the ultrasound and other cumbersome supplies, like spare boots and clothes. At the time, nothing had been more important than shedding the weight of my load and getting the hell out of those mountains.
“You have a toothache? He’s a dentist.” Link’s finger moved through the crowd of men as he spoke. “You want another ultrasound machine? Need a generator? Batteries? Fuel? Fucking hemorrhoid cream? I’ve got a gatherer. This guy right here can find anything. Need a hunter, a farmer, a mechanic, a cook? I’ve got those guys, too. Sewing, soap and candle making, masonry, alternative medicine, you name it, every man on this property has a skill. You know why?”
I stared at him in stunned disbelief.
He paced through the room, eying each man he passed with a critical expression. “I spent the last two years hand-selecting my crew. I required three things. First and foremost, he had to be a damned-good soldier. Two, he needed to bring a specialized skill. And three, his moral compass couldn’t, under no circumstances, deviate from mine. Why
, do you think, would I go through all this trouble? Why would I care?”
As he walked a circuit around his men, they looked at him with reverence and respect. I felt a little of that awe, too, though the skeptic in me wondered if he was blowing smoke up my ass.
Darwin lay in a curled-up ball by the door, his head on his leg, his hackles at rest. Not a care in the world.
Then it dawned on me. Link was interviewing us. He’d goaded Roark to see how well the priest could fight. And he’d called Jesse a dark-alley killer to test our reactions. What did he do to the men who didn’t pass his tests?
I leaned back and wrapped my hand around Roark’s on my lap. He and Jesse sat so silently and motionless I couldn’t read them. If their hearts were racing as fast as mine, they were keeping that shit locked down.
Link painted a fantastical picture. His crew was small but highly valuable. Sharing those resources with us in exchange for something I would’ve done anyway was hardly a fair trade. I didn’t want to be indebted to anyone, especially someone I didn’t know.
“Farmers, trackers, cooks, and soldiers.” Link strode toward me, his eyes hard with conviction. “All twenty-one of us and our nymphs lived on a steamboat large enough to accommodate a hundred people, but I knew…I knew one day there would be something more. I didn’t know that something would have blond hair, yellow eyes, and perky tits, but the moment our nymphs jumped ship, I knew they’d found that something. You.”
Shit, that was heavy. I was just a woman, surviving like everyone else, who got the luck of the genetic draw. Or the unlucky draw, depending on how I looked at it. And Link was just a man, taking a colossal risk.
I met his eyes. “I get that the women upstairs were your women before it all went down and you feel protective of them. But you’re saying they weren’t your wives or girlfriends or sisters.”
He watched me wordlessly, giving me time to frame my thoughts.
“I mean, nymphs look like women, but they’re dangerously not. So why keep them on the boat? In your company? It seems an enormous risk to take.”
“Because nymphs are rare,” Link said. “Because if I set them loose, they might’ve died. And because I believed there was cure. I just had to be patient.”
Patient or crazy.
I let out a slow breath. “What happened to the two nymphs you lost?”
Link stared at the floor, his eyes frozen and unblinking. “They stumbled upon a camp of aggressive men in Alabama. We tried to corral them away, but Cora and Penny bit the men in self-defense.”
Fatal bites. My chest squeezed.
Jesse shifted beside me. “You didn’t lose any men out there tonight, did you?
Hands in his pockets, Link rocked on his heels. “Nope.”
I followed Jesse’s train of thought, which hurtled into the future, beyond the recovery of the women and establishing a safe place for them to live, whether it be in a fortified mansion or on a steamboat.
He was thinking about the protection we needed. Protection against threats that still awaited us. The cliff I’d yet to fall from. The pregnancy. The continual evolution of the aphids. The Drone.
Despite Link’s prolific speech about me being the answer to his something more, it was possible he thought I was helpless, that he could manipulate me with words and cut me while I slept. He didn’t know that behind my blond hair, yellow eyes, and perky tits, I held the greatest power in the world. The kind of power that drove me to fight just as viciously as every man left on this hateful planet.
I held the love of three men.
One of which needed my help. I could feel it like a stabbing blade in my soul.
For Michio, I would gladly put myself in debt.
I grabbed Jesse’s hand and pulled it into my lap beside Roark’s. Squeezing their fingers, I looked at Link. “We need to move the women to a safer, bigger place. When you’re satisfied with their recovery—and you will be satisfied—you’ll give me a mechanic, a hunter, a tracker, whatever I need to find the Drone.”
Link crossed his arms over his barrel chest and narrowed his swollen eyes. “You’re going after your missing guardian.”
Of course I fucking was. “Will you do it?”
His mouth slanted in a lop-sided smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”
Daylight spilled through the window of the upstairs bathroom, illuminating the thick surface of grime and dust that clung to the non-working toilet, vanity, and tiled walls. I dropped my bow, quiver, and backpack in the tub as Roark checked the locks on the window.
My muscles and joints ached, a cramp spasmed in my back, and I couldn’t stop rubbing my gritty eyes. It must’ve been eight or nine in the morning, and the only sleep we’d gotten in two days had been the hour or so before the nymphs began scratching.
Jesse strode in, taking up too much room in the small space, and closed the door behind him. He carried multiple packs, bedrolls, and a hammer, all of which bumped and scraped the walls as he turned to face me.
“Shea wants to sleep beside her patients,” he said. “Darwin’s with her.”
Maybe it wasn’t the safest decision, but I reminded myself that we’d cured her and trained her and she was more than ready for us to set her free. And if Link and his crew hid a sinister agenda, they wouldn’t act on it right now, not while Shea was caring for their women.
Besides, Shea would be more comfortable sleeping out there. I took in the bathroom’s floor space, its width barely wide enough for three bodies. Would the length of the room even accommodate Roark’s six-foot-four height?
Jesse dropped the packs, the bow, and his tomahawk in the tub. Then, with a handful of nails from his pocket, he hammered the door shut.
When the pounding racket quieted, I rubbed my aching head. “Guess that means you don’t trust our houseguests?”
He tossed the hammer on top of our supplies and rested his tired gaze on mine. “The only people I trust are standing in this room.”
I gave him a confused look. I knew he trusted Roark, and Michio was a big if. But… “What about Shea?”
He lifted a shoulder.
Roark leaned against the window sill, grinning. “Oh, Jesse, ye make me clackers feel all tingly.”
His smile was as arresting as always, though fatigue drew it a little flat, pulling at the edges of his mouth and eyes.
“Speaking of tingles…” Jesse looked around the bathroom, his voice so low it hummed through my blood. “I told you I’d find a place.”
I looked around the room. The space was small and uncomfortable and the opposite of sexy, yet his promise from earlier rolled over me with enough heat to make me dizzy.
He toed off his boots and unfastened his jeans, dragging them down his muscular legs. My pulse swished through my veins, quickening and heating as I openly stared at six feet of sun-soaked brawn.
Standing there in his tight black boxer briefs was a sight that would make any woman tingle. All that taut skin, stretched over ridges of muscles on his abs and chest, begged for my fingers, my lips… Hell, I’d straddle his chest and grind against it if he let me.
I jerked my gaze upward, colliding with his. Caught. Yep, I was checking him out, which didn’t help with the tingly feeling. I drew a slow breath through my nose and sucked on my tongue. I really wanted to suck on his. Not just his tongue. His lips. His fingers. His cock. I wanted… Fuck, I wanted to eat him.
No. I rubbed my palms on my shorts, wiping away the building heat with urgent strokes. Jesse had locked the three of us in here to sleep in privacy, right?
So why was he just standing there and not rolling out the bedrolls?
The turquoise stone I’d loaned him lay against his chest, its purpose realized. He’d let me in, accepted my love, and returned it a thousand times over. We hadn’t had sex, but our bond transcended the limits of physical connection. We didn’t need to fuck to solidify what we meant to one another.
Just keep telling yourself that.
The rasp of Roark’s cloth
es falling to the floor sounded behind me, and I turned, backing up until my ass hit the vanity.
Roark sat on the edge of the tub, elbows on his knees, wearing a thin pair of white boxers that were frayed and unraveling at the seams. His eyes glowed in the sunny glare of the window as he watched me through his lashes. Watching me as a man, not as a priest.
Ugh, these guys…these hot-blooded, fiercely loyal, overprotective men, with their brutally-honed physiques and flirtatiously attentive eyes, had already stolen my heart. Now they were just playing with it, along with every nerve-ending and pleasure zone attached to it. I could only endure so much teasing before I internally combusted.
I pulled at the frayed hem of my jean shorts, fingers sweating, and voice quiet. “What are we doing?”
I couldn’t let myself hope. I was too damned tired to deal with the disappointment.
Roark laced his hands between his knees, his thumbs rolling together. “Ye ready to sleep, Jesse?”
Crossing his arms over his chest, Jesse leaned against the door and shook his head. The heat in his eyes sent a wave of shivers sprinting around my body and landing with a jolt between my legs.
“I’m just gonna say what everyone’s thinking.” Roark didn’t move, his head tilted down, his eyes up and fastened on mine. “We haven’t had privacy in months. Long, chubbed-up months.”
My heart jumped, sparking quivers down my legs. I swear on all that was holy, I had to dig my fingers against the counter behind me to stop myself from coming at the implication of his words.
He hissed through his teeth. “Me knob’s wanting out, love. If I den’ get it in ye soon, it could well fall off.”
In me? He meant in my mouth, right? My chest hitched, my toes curled, and my clit flared with throbbing need. Maybe instead of puddling into a quivery mess, I should’ve been worrying about what they would think of me, themselves, and each other in the morning?
Jesse regarded me, his eyes hot and smoldering, fire on fire, stoked with intensity.
Fuck. I stood on the corner of Gravelly Brogue Street and Burning Glare Boulevard. It was a dangerous place for a woman to venture, alone and unarmed. Yet I’d never felt safer or more excited.