Darius’s stride didn’t so much as slow down or falter. “That’s not what we’re out here for. Keep walking.”
With no choice but to follow or try to find his way back as twilight drew nearer, Rhys did as he was told.
“Where are we going?” he finally asked, as Darius’s route took them south of the Clean Zone, closer to where the original survivor settlements outside Cheyenne Mountain had been.
“Nowhere but here, least for tonight.” By now, the sun was behind the mountains to the west, the sky a dusky blue-gray and getting darker all the time. “We won’t get where we’re going until tomorrow afternoon.”
He gave Darius a quizzical half-smile as Darius eased Rhys’s pack off his shoulders before shrugging off his own. “So our destination is top secret? You could tell me, but then you’d have to kill me?”
Darius grinned and grabbed a handful of Rhys’s ass, pulling him closer for a kiss full of tongue and teeth. “You’ll find out when we get there. Just lay out our bedrolls, boy, while I get a fire going.”
No amount of pestering could convince Darius to tell Rhys where they were going. Nor did sexual favors, which Rhys was only too happy to attempt. Afterward, when he lay draped over Darius’s chest, aching in all sorts of pleasant ways and trying to remember how to breathe steadily, he tried another tack.
“Can I at least know why we’re going off by ourselves?”
Darius made a grumbling sound, and his entire torso shifted beneath Rhys’s as he shrugged. “Guess I figured you might like some time away from camp. Never got to see much of the world, did you?”
Rhys bit his lip against the rush of questions trying to bubble up as he lifted his head to stare. Was Darius trying to be romantic?
That . . . was a very uncomfortable thought.
“Got something to say?” Darius’s expression was neutral as he caught Rhys’s gaze. It was a studiously blank look that Rhys knew well, the sort Darius gave the people he commanded when he was waiting for them to figure something out on their own, or at least ask the right questions.
Rhys turned away so Darius wouldn’t see him frown. It felt like Darius was waiting for something from him, expecting Rhys to say . . . He didn’t even know what. Two years they’d been together and it had never been about overused words or easy sentimentality. Emotion, yes. God, yes, there was emotion to spare, but none of it would ever fit under the neat little labels people used to categorize their attachments to one another.
Rhys made himself smile and lifted his head. “I guess I can handle being alone with you for a couple days,” he teased, trying to shake off the feeling that his nonanswer might disappoint Darius. He nipped Darius’s pec, instead, and made him twitch. “No one around to hear when you make me scream.”
“You’ll be doing plenty of that, boy,” Darius growled, flipping them so that he had Rhys pinned beneath him. Rhys squirmed and shifted until his thighs bracketed Darius’s hips, their stiffening cocks lining up alongside one another. He gripped Darius’s shoulders and whimpered as a firm bite on his neck threatened to raise a bruise. “I’ll see to it.”
The sign at the entrance to the park identified the place as Seven Falls. Or, more accurately, SciDoc Seven Falls. Darius grunted when he saw it, and Rhys gave him a questioning look.
“I was a kid when they started selling off the state and national parks to corporate ‘sponsors.’ The ones they hadn’t already sold for oil and mineral rights, that is,” he explained, gesturing for Rhys to precede him along the overgrown road leading into the park. “Pissed my daddy right off. Said it would mean the few places we could afford to visit would get more expensive. He was right. By the time I was out of school, we couldn’t go to a lake, or camping, or anywhere to get away from home for a few days. Not that my daddy shut his shop down often, anyway.”
Rhys found himself smiling, the way he always did when Darius shared bits of his life before the plague. He fell back a step to walk alongside Darius. “So what is this place?”
Darius shrugged. “Just what it says. Seven Falls. It’s kinda pretty. Thought you might like to see it.”
They emerged from the treelined drive, and Rhys looked up at the cliff face revealed in the clearing. A series of waterfalls tumbled down, one after the other, split by outcroppings of rock, until the water ran away into a river below a man-made vantage point.
Nature was aggressively working to reclaim what SciDoc and the rest of humanity had done to the landscape. Signs that had once flashed advertisements were being consumed by undergrowth, and pavement was being eaten by weeds tirelessly forcing their way up between cracks formed by the summer and winter extremes. The stairs that had been built alongside the falls were crumbling.
It was pretty, or it would have been if the hand of man wasn’t still so obvious everywhere. “I think it’ll look better once nature has a few more years to go at it,” Rhys said with a wry smirk.
Darius huffed a soft laugh. “Guess that’s true.”
“Is this what you brought me to see?”
“Nah.” Darius stared up at the falls. His jaw was set in the way that meant he was uncomfortable but too stalwart to squirm. “I mean, I guess I brought you to look around, not at this really, but just—something to get away. Take a break from everything for a few days. Like a vacation.”
“Oh. Thank you.” The silence between them felt laden with something Rhys wasn’t sure he wanted to identify. More and more, this sort of tension crept up between them, like there were things that needed to be said that neither of them had words for. At least not words they were comfortable speaking.
Rhys turned back to watch the falls, trying for a more neutral topic. “I can’t remember where we went for vacation before the plague—if we did. I remember my mom always being busy with grading papers and tests. What did my dad do?” He paused a beat. “Shit. I can’t remember.” He stopped in his tracks and gave Darius a searching gaze. “I can’t remember what my dad did.”
Darius’s eyes were gentle. Understanding. Full of that unguarded look Rhys had been getting from him with increasing frequency. “It was a long time ago. You were just a kid when it all went to hell.”
“Went to hell” was a good way to put it. That had been the reality of life immediately after the plague. Everything worth having had been looted, revenants were everywhere, and if the revs or the Rot didn’t kill you, other survivors might, just to keep you from poaching their supplies or possibly infecting them.
“I was old enough that I should remember more than that,” Rhys grumbled. He tried to remember what his dad had looked like, that moment when he’d told Rhys’s mother and him to take Cady and run, but his face was a blur. Darius caught Rhys by the arm and tugged him closer.
“Some of us have pasts worth hangin’ on to.” He cupped the back of Rhys’s neck, squeezing. “Makes it easier to face each day, remembering how things used to be. The rest of us block it out, shut it down. ’Cause we could lose ourselves in it.”
“Which one are you?” He thought he knew, given how rarely Darius spoke of his past, but something compelled him to ask anyway.
Darius sighed. “My life wasn’t bad, and it wasn’t so great that I can’t stand to think about it now. But it’s past, and I never found that a good place to live. Until lately, I got through the days by doin’ what needed to be done to keep my people alive.”
“Until lately?” Drawn by the need to examine the weight of those two words, the question slipped out before Rhys could filter it. Life under the tender mercies of Father Maurice and Jacob had taught him better than that. When you found a fragile bit of peace, you trod carefully around it. You didn’t poke at it. You didn’t goad Fate into taking it away from you. You accepted that things were okay for now and tried to enjoy it before they got bad again.
Darius lifted his eyes to look up at the falls again, pulling away from Rhys to stuff his hands in his pockets. The expression on his face was . . . unlike anything Rhys had ever expected to see, even in their
most tender moments. Wistfulness. Happiness. Even, maybe, vulnerability? Rhys stared, transfixed.
“Now I get through the days thinking about my boy. How to keep him safe. How to make him happy.” It was a long moment before Darius glanced over at Rhys again, and the look in his eyes was so raw and intent that Rhys wanted to hide from it. “How to give him a life.”
“Darius—” How could he even begin to respond to that? It didn’t feel like he could get enough air to speak.
“I want you to promise me something.” The naked expression on Darius’s face shut down like a portcullis falling. Even his posture changed, and he moved away from Rhys the slightest bit, stiffening. Becoming like the stern, uncompromising man who had first rescued him from that rev attack two years ago. “I want you to consider—really consider—staying here. With the civvies.”
“No. I won’t. I don’t belong here.” I belong with you were the words Rhys wanted to speak, to give Darius something back for what he’d shared, but they were locked on his tongue. That miserable sense of failure was churning in his gut the way it had the night before. Darius was offering him something, and he couldn’t offer anything back.
“You could, if you tried. You’re not a danger to anyone.” Darius swallowed hard and looked away. “In a few years, we’ll be moving on from Lewis-McChord. And a couple years after that, we’ll be moving on again. Fact is, Rhys, I’ll probably be an old man before the Jugs can settle down anywhere we could call home. That’s the way it has to be for us. But it doesn’t have to be that way for you. You could have a home.”
Rhys’s throat felt too tight and thick to speak for a moment, but then he shook his head. “I don’t need to be here for that.”
Darius’s shoulders slumped. “Never having a place to settle down? What kind of life is that?”
“Fort Vancouver wasn’t home because it was a place.”
“Just promise me you’ll give it some thought.”
Rhys shook his head once, firmly. “I can’t. I’d be lying if I made that promise. I’m with you, and that’s the way it is.”
Darius chuckled, a wry, resigned sound. “Stubborn little shit. One of these days I’ll win an argument with you.”
Rhys smiled and shrugged. “You don’t want to win this one.”
“No. Guess I don’t.” There was a small pause, heavy, as if Darius was tempted to say more. His gaze—and his shoulders—dropped. Just for a split second. In that almost imperceptible instant, he seemed burdened, uncertain. But then he turned and looked around, and the straight, proud, sure man Rhys was used to was back. “Come on. Let’s head north around the old city. We’ll go see the Garden of the Gods. Maybe the corporations didn’t do as much damage there.”
Darius took his time leading Rhys to the scenic points surrounding Colorado Springs. He wasn’t sure why the impromptu walkabout seemed like a good idea. He’d just wanted Rhys away from camp, away from Schuyler and the Clean Zone and the DPRP’s tests and prodding. Except for the trip to Colorado Springs, he and Rhys hadn’t left Fort Vancouver together since hunting down Jacob Houtman. And they had never been anywhere together when Darius wasn’t leading his squadron.
Being alone, truly alone, with Rhys was different. Darius’s attention was fixed on his boy, undivided by the requirements of a patrol or manhunt. He wasn’t being called away to confer with Luis. Rhys wasn’t spending most of his days in the warehouses. The truth was, though they’d been together for two years, they’d spent more time apart than they had with each other.
Was Rhys as content with that life as he seemed to be? His assurances that he wanted to stay always seemed to be missing something. He spoke of being where he belonged, but he never spoke of being happy or wanting to be there. Was his life with Darius and Delta Company simply such an improvement from the way he’d lived before, under Houtman and his father, that he’d rather settle than rock the boat?
Fuck. Darius wanted more for Rhys than that. He wanted to be more for Rhys than that, but even if he couldn’t, he wanted Rhys to have what would make him happy.
On their own, they talked in a way they didn’t usually, sharing details they’d never gotten around to discussing about their pasts and their families. Even when they were at Fort Vancouver, they hadn’t talked like this. When Darius was on base, being together was urgent. Darius was often gone for weeks or months on patrol, and he only came back for a few days to deliver civilians to the quarantine or reprovision his squad before heading out again. What time he and Rhys managed to steal always passed in a frenzy to touch and taste and fuck as much as possible.
They still fucked now, but they could take their time with it. They could be slow and easy, and there was no one for miles to hear their cries and shouts and groans. Darius could stop them in the middle of the day to back Rhys against a tree and kneel at his feet, leisurely sucking Rhys’s dick while the afternoon moved on without them.
And he could rise afterward and gently press Rhys to his knees to return the favor, staring down into those hazel eyes while Rhys licked his balls and pulled them into his mouth. Rhys’s eyes crinkled at the corners before they drifted shut, the expression on his face sublime as he brought Darius to the brink and then sucked him over the edge.
Other times, he would shove Rhys, chest-first, against a stone outcropping, strip his pants down in a few rough movements, and slam into him in little more time than it took to dig the lube out of his pocket. And when that happened, the sounds Rhys made would echo off rock walls and send clusters of birds flapping out of the trees, squawking indignantly.
They spent three days at the Garden of the Gods, taking in the beauty of the towering rock formations and ignoring the crumbling remnants of human intrusion. It took three days because Darius couldn’t bring himself to make them move along.
“Won’t we need to return to camp soon?” Rhys asked as Darius removed a hot towel from around Rhys’s face and dropped it in the pot of simmering water near the campfire. His head was tipped back as he reclined against a boulder. His lips were still puffy, and his breath carried the scent of Darius’s spunk in the early-morning chill.
Darius shook his head. “I told Xolani that if the Science Committee scheduled her address, to go ahead and give it and then take everyone and head to Seattle. We can catch up. We’re in no rush.”
Rhys frowned but kept his head still as Darius began to brush foam around his cheeks and jaw. “What about the DPRP tests?”
“I meant what I said before. Once Xolani says her piece, we’re leaving. You gave them all the help they should need. It’s time to go. Be still, now.”
An intense awareness arced between them whenever he shaved Rhys. It was enough to make Darius’s pulse race a little faster, though his hand was steady. He lifted the meticulously honed straight razor to Rhys’s face and began to draw it through the stubble there. The thump of Rhys’s heart was visible beneath the lean muscles of his naked chest, and his breath came quick and shallow. The closer Darius came to Rhys’s throat, to the thin skin covering the vulnerable arteries, the more powerful the building charge became. It had been there from the very first time Darius had shaved Rhys, and it had never faded.
He held Rhys’s life in his hands. He always had, since they’d first met. He’d held it in his hands when he’d fucked Rhys, trying to infect him with the Alpha strain to counteract his exposure to Beta or Gamma. He’d held it in his hands when he’d made Rhys accept the sexual attentions of the rest of the men in his squad to maximize his chance of exposure.
He’d definitely held it in his hands the morning he woke to find himself with a knife at Rhys’s throat as Rhys screamed himself awake from a nightmare. He’d cut Rhys then. Not intentionally, but Rhys’s response hadn’t been fear at how close he’d come to death. It had been arousal. He’d kissed Darius that morning, inhaling him as if Darius were the air he needed to live.
That was the day Darius realized just how intimate Rhys’s connection to his own mortality was. He’d been living on
borrowed time since he was a kid, and in those seconds when his life hung in the balance, he finally let go of everything he’d been holding back whenever Darius touched him. He’d given in, given everything.
Rhys no longer relied on Darius for his survival the way he had then, when he’d been terrorized and half-starved and so damned fragile Darius had been afraid of breaking him. But there was still something heady in the moments like this, when the blood rushed beneath the dangerous edge of Darius’s blade. Rhys was hard, the swell of his dick inching the zipper of his fatigues down, which he hadn’t bothered to button when Darius told him to sit for his shave. His eyes were closed, his lashes fluttering, and a soft moan vibrated his larynx against Darius’s knuckles.
Even after two years of security and stability, Rhys sometimes needed to feel close to death. He needed the prospect of his own mortality to be something he could embrace rather than fear.
“Want me to bleed you?” Darius asked, forcing the words out through a throat that felt too thick. He could already taste the copper tang, the carnal instinct that Rhys brought out in him roaring to life. He was hungry for it, hungry enough that he might have pulled back and tried to rein it in, but the need in Rhys’s eyes made him set it loose, instead. It was that hungry, feral thing in Darius that Rhys craved now.
“You know I do,” he whispered.
Of course he did. They didn’t do this often—truthfully, Darius was afraid of how far they might go if they made a frequent habit of it—but it was always the same. When the last of the stubble was gone, his blade slipped, made just the tiniest nick, more symbolic than anything. But then that sweet, primal iron flavor was on Darius’s tongue, and Rhys was rutting against him. His fingers clawed at Darius’s shoulders and back when their mouths found each other, sharing the faint taste.
Darius was so intent on getting to Rhys’s cock that he didn’t notice that Rhys had taken up the straight razor he had set aside. At least not until Rhys pushed him back ever so slightly. His hazel eyes were feverish, his pupils huge. His chest and cheeks were flushed, sweat trickling down his temples, and his eyes weren’t on Darius’s, but on the skin of his throat.
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