“Now is not the time to play sweet and innocent,” she hissed right back. “He obviously feels comfortable with you, and has fucking heart eyes for you. He barely looked at me.”
I clenched my teeth and Tater dropped his fork to his half-eaten plate.
“Please eat,” I told him. Then to Linette, “So what if he’s comfortable with me? I am never alone with him. Guards are always around, and his second in command hates me.”
Linette took another bite and chewed, her whole body appearing tense as a guard rounded our table. Tater continued eating until the guard was out of ear shot.
“Find a way to seduce him, Remy. Don’t act like you can’t.”
“So, that’s the only thing I could possibly be good for, huh? Being a whore?”
“Is that what you think I am?” she asked.
I shook my head. No. That’s not what I thought of her, but her situation with the Baelese prisoner in Utah had been different than this. Fear clawed at my belly. “They’ll shoot me if I accidentally brush against him.”
“If you care about saving humanity, find a way,” she reiterated before taking her last bite and standing to leave.
I trembled, appetite completely lost. Tater had gone still again.
“What does she want me to find out?” I whispered. And what could she possibly do with the information? “I wouldn’t even know where to begin! I can’t get him alone, Tater—there’s no way.” The weight of it was like carrying a boulder, the pressure enough to crush me.
“Don’t let that motherfucker touch you, Remy.” He shoveled the last bites into his mouth, his forearms flexed with tension as he chewed and swallowed. “Linette is wrong. You hear me?”
“Yes,” I breathed.
I was still shaking, staring down at my macabre-looking plate as Tater stalked away.
Amber
The entire underground bunker was on high alert with full energy as we prepared for tomorrow’s mission. We were to be ready to leave at 0300. The atmosphere at dinner was loud and excited. I guess the soldiers who were normally broody about being sexually deprived were now going to get the next best thing: a fight. We were advised to try and get some sleep until at least midnight, but I doubted I’d be able to rest.
I was even being strapped with a gun this time. If Daddy could see me now, he’d be so proud.
Our group was hyper after dinner as we made our way down the narrow hall toward the sleeping quarters. Mark had Matt in a headlock, and Tex was telling stories from boot camp that had the others rolling with laughter. Rylen and I hung back from the others.
“So . . .” Rylen cleared his throat. “I talked to Top.”
I tensed a little. “About what?”
“About the need to have a medic in the middle of battle. He’ll be coming to talk with you tonight.”
I stopped and turned to him, but we were blocking other people, so I pulled him to the wall as they passed. He crossed his arms, making his sexy biceps bulge. Damn him.
“What are you doing, Ry?”
“It doesn’t make sense. He even said it himself, that you’re to be protected, so your presence could be a distraction.”
“That’s bullshit.” I crossed my arms, too.
“You haven’t been trained for combat, Pepper.”
In truth, I was scared as shit about tonight. But this was our new reality. If I had to point and shoot at an alien, that’s what I’d do. To have Rylen try to hold me back from helping felt really annoying. Especially when he was going to be one of the first charging into battle.
“I’m going to be in the last wave of soldiers coming up the rear,” I told him. “You guys will have it under control by then. You’ll outnumber them, and I’ll just be focused on those who got hurt.”
Rylen’s jaw clenched and he looked away. “Top will be over in about an hour—”
“This is fucked up, Ry! I need to be in there!”
“No, you don’t need to be in the fight.”
Ugh! I turned from him, pissed off, and stomped down the hall toward my room with the other girls. I was so on edge, I just wanted to cry and scream.
“Pepper!” he called from behind me.
Nope. He was risking the other soldiers by not wanting me to be there to help them immediately. I kept walking.
“Damn it, Amber, stop.”
His fingers grasped my wrist and tugged me to a stop, but I yanked it back. “Leave me alone!”
I tried to stomp away again, but felt his hands on my waist, pulling me, and then in a moment of confusion I was being stuffed into darkness with Rylen behind me. The door clicked shut and I heard a lock, then both of our loud breathing from being pissed off. It was pitch dark except a sliver of light coming in from under the door. Rylen’s body was completely flush against my back.
Oh my God . . . we’re in the closet.
Rylen’s mouth touched the shell of my ear. “There is no fucking way we’re going on this mission mad at each other.”
Emotion welled inside of me as I felt his hands on my waist, sliding down over my hips and slowly back up, making me shiver all over.
I whispered, “I just want you to have faith in me.”
“I do, Amber. God, I do. But I can’t lose you to those fuckers.”
I covered the tops of his hands with mine and pulled them under my shirt and forward to cover my breasts. We both gasped as he worked me. “I can’t lose you either, but I know it would be wrong to keep you from your job.” I lifted up onto my toes and pressed my ass toward his crotch, which was fully at attention. All of the pent-up desire I’d been tamping down came flooding to the surface, and I could barely breathe.
Outside the door, footsteps and voices sounded, but they seemed miles away.
“I’m a selfish asshole,” Ry murmured into my hair, reaching around to unbutton my pants and rip the zipper down. I shoved them until they were mid-thigh, and reached back to feel Rylen doing the same. I took him into my hand and felt his breath quicken as I stroked him. It only took a second to align our bodies.
I reached forward, shoving aside a broom handle, and leaned my palms against the wall just as Ry pushed into me. The sound I let out was unlike anything I’d ever heard—needy, greedy, overwhelmed. Rylen cupped a hand over my mouth to muffle the moans as he thrust into me over and over, his mouth still at my ear. I was so swollen around him. He cursed and muttered, driving me crazy in every way.
“God, you feel so good, Pepper.”
All I could do was moan and press my body hard against him, craving the connection. I grinded back, circling my hips and feeling my entire core condensing into a small bomb of ecstasy. It’s a really, really good thing Rylen’s hand was securely over my mouth when that bomb went off, because everyone in the compound probably would’ve heard. His hand clamped harder as my entire body quivered with pleasure, and his manly grunts that went along with each fast thrust only added to it. I felt him throb inside of me, and he finally lowered his hand from my mouth. We both breathed hard and he stayed inside me.
Rylen pushed my hair aside and kissed up the side of my neck, his hands roaming to feel me all over again, all the places he’d missed when we were in a hurry.
“I love you,” he whispered. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
All of my anger was gone. Only bliss remained. “I love you too.” I would talk to Top and see what he thought.
Someone outside jangled the handle, and Rylen pulled out, making us both curse and fumble to get dressed again. Then I giggled and he laughed. He turned me and put my back against the door, then kissed me long and deep.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered. “I want you again.”
Feeling evil, I reached down and felt him hard again through his jeans. He groaned. Someone tried the handle again, and Rylen growled.
“How about this?” I whispered. “We take over the base and make it out of there safely, and then we make sure not a day goes by that we don’t make time for this.”
“Deal.”
His voice was guttural, sending a bolt of arousal to my core.
When he opened the door and we spilled out, I had to squint at the bright overhead lights. And who was standing there, rushing us? Texas Harry and Carmen. Her eyes widened, and then she grinned.
Tex outright laughed. “You two look like you need a fucking cigarette!”
Rylen shoved him, grinning sexily.
“Be careful of his arm,” I said to Carmen.
She snorted. “Yes, Doc.”
As Tex was holding the closet door open like a gentleman to let Carmen in, Top was coming down the hall, looking very official. I stood up straighter, feeling guilty, though I knew that was just silly. We were all adults here.
“Miss Tate,” he said, nodding. “Sergeant Fite. Can we talk a moment?”
“Sure,” I said. “Let me just run to the restroom, and then—”
Tex’s muffled voice filled the hall. “Aw, hell, yeah, little lady! Woo!”
Both Rylen and I went as still as statues as Top’s face swung toward the closet door and he muttered, “Jesus Christ, Harris.”
I cleared my throat and said, “’Scuse me,” dipping away into the restroom, where I leaned against the wall and laughed silently for the next minute, trying to pull it together.
Ah, yes. We had so much to fight for tonight. Whether I was in the battle or just outside, I would be on site, and I would help however I could. As scared as I was, we had so much to live for. We had to win.
Remy
When I got into the women’s bunk room that evening, I caught everyone sneaking peeks at me. I smiled when I made eye contact, wondering what they were all thinking. Ultimately, it was one of the children, ten-year-old Macy, who was brave enough to whisper to me.
“Are you friends with Bahntan?”
Linette sent me a snarly look of disgust, which I ignored.
“No,” I said gently. “He’s sort of my boss. He talks to me, and he wants to know how things are going here.”
“What’s it like over there?” asked another one of the girls.
“It’s . . .” I rifled through my dirty clothes. “Nice. But I don’t get to enjoy the nice stuff. I just work and come back.”
“Yeah?” piped up one of the older women. “And what do you do for him?”
I felt myself stiffen a little with guilt. “I teach their kids.”
Everyone went quiet, looking at me. I steeled myself against their judgment, and took my dress off, laying it over the edge of the top bunk. I yanked my faded University of Vegas T-shirt over my head and climbed up into my bunk.
“What do you teach them?” asked Macy. She and the other girl were still standing next to my bed, looking up at me.
“The normal things,” I answered. “Reading, math, science.”
To my surprise, they actually looked . . . sad. Oh, how things had changed. I glanced toward the doorway, but no guards were near.
I whispered, “Do you want me to teach you some stuff?”
The girls nodded, and two other girls got up to come over. Linette jumped out of her bed and glared at me.
“Are you crazy?”
I put a finger to my lips. “I’ll be quiet.”
“They don’t need to learn that shit right now.”
“Yeah, but they want to.” It would help their morale.
“You’ll get them killed, and yourself.”
I bristled at that, and looked at the girls. I expected them to cower at the words, but they were still watching me with hope in their eyes.
“Technically, nobody said it’s not allowed,” I told her.
Linette glared harder and crossed her arms. “I don’t want anything to do with this.” She grabbed all of her things and made a big, dramatic deal of moving to a bunk across the way, sending punishing looks my direction. I had to admit, my insides were jumpy with nervousness. I looked at the woman in the lower bunk next to me, silently asking permission. Without a word, she got up and moved, switching bunks with one of the girls. Within five minutes, I was surrounded by the young girls. Two on either side of me, and one in the lower bunk. Five pupils.
We all shoved ourselves under the thin blankets when we heard the clop of footsteps coming to patrol the room. My heart pounded as they marched through the rooms, checking every nook and cranny for who knows what. Then the female guard shouted, “Lights off!” and it went dark as they left us.
Three long minutes of silence passed before I worked up the nerve to whisper, “What are your names?”
“Macy.”
“Mei.”
“Gaby.”
“Tasheka.”
“Savani.”
I thought about each of these girls who the Baelese had chosen to keep alive. They were all American, of course, but of different races: White, Asian, Hispanic, black, and Middle Eastern. Now that I thought of it, the younger boys in Primo Town were all of different heritages too. I put that thought aside to ponder later.
“Okay, I’m Ms. Remy. We have to stay in our bunks, and we won’t be able to see anything, so we’ll have to do this by talking. What were you learning last in math or science?”
“Multiplying,” said Macy.
“I was learning cell stuff in science,” Gaby said.
I smiled to myself in the darkness. As a kid, I prided myself on the multiplication tables, and as a college student I loved cellular biology.
I got started by going through the basic multiplication rules, then focused on twos. This was tough without being able to write or show anything. I would have to verbally quiz them, like spoken notecards. We did that for fifteen minutes. I didn’t want to keep them up too late.
“We’re going to focus on a different subject each night,” I explained. “And we’ll end with vocabulary. I’m going to tell you a story. If I say a word you don’t know, interrupt me and I’ll give the definition.”
I tried to think of a middle grade or young adult book I really loved that they might not have read yet, and I decided on Cinder by Marissa Meyer—a neat, futuristic sci-fi take on different fairy tales. Each night I’d tell a little of the story, trying to throw in as many big words as possible, until it was time to sleep.
After about fifteen minutes of storytelling, it was so quiet I thought for sure they’d fallen asleep. “Girls?”
“You’re not stopping, are you?” Savani asked.
“Yes, we need to get to sleep,” I whispered.
“Aw!” The moment a few of the girls uttered this sound of disappointment, the door flew open, and several of us gasped.
“What is going on in here?” the female guard asked, shining a bright flashlight.
I covered my eyes. “One of the girls was having a bad dream.”
“I-I’m sorry, Miss,” Gaby stuttered. Wow, well played.
“Go back to sleep,” the woman ordered. Her words washed over me with a calming sensation that made me snuggle down into the thin mattress and close my eyes. When the guard turned and left us, an unnerving sensation of spiders crawled over my skin and I cracked my eyes again. She had just mind-controlled us.
The space around me filled with stifled fear and nervousness, and I wondered if everyone else realized what had happened too. I waited a long time before saying, “We have to be super quiet and careful from now on.”
“Okay,” the girls whispered.
“Good night.”
“Night, Ms. Remy,” they muttered sleepily.
I didn’t relax until I heard them all shuffling around to get comfortable, then going still and breathing regularly. Then I smiled to myself as I turned onto my side. It wasn’t much, and it was far more reckless than I’d normally be, but for the first time since the Baelese attacked our world, I felt like I was making a difference.
Amber
I wasn’t going to lie—I was scared.
Rylen sat tall next to me in the back of the pickup truck where we were crammed in with six others. A nearly-full moon blazed through the treetops. Only civilian cars were
in our convoy, because the military vehicles were all at Elmendorf base. My hair was tied back in a ponytail that whipped my shoulders in the chilly air. I wore a camouflaged combat helmet secured tightly under my chin, with an all-black outfit. Like the others, I had on a heavy bulletproof vest. Most of them carried M14 rifles or whatever other big guns were on hand. I had an M9 pistol, which I wasn’t afraid to use. My medic bag was at my side, filled with scissors, tourniquets, gauze, medical tape, rubbing alcohol, iodine swabs, morphine syringes, and tons of muslin bandages.
I felt Rylen peering at me every so often. I stared straight out at the passing trees in the darkness, because I didn’t want him to see the worry in my face. I wished it was lighter outside so I could take in all the beauty we’d been denied underground, but just breathing in the fresh, crisp air made me feel twice as alive as I had an hour ago. I reached out and took his hand, which he gladly took in return, holding tight.
The guys driving wore night-vision goggles, and the headlights were kept off. Though they drove slow to keep our advancement as quiet as possible, the twenty-mile trek went by too quickly. A bout of nausea rolled over me when we stopped, my palm suddenly sweaty against Rylen’s. He squeezed my fingers and released them. Nobody spoke. I stayed very still, my heart pounding erratically, while everyone climbed out like ninjas. Rylen grabbed my waist to steady me as I jumped out, grabbing my heavy bag. The plan was for me to stay in the treeline, watching and waiting.
Everyone had their orders. Top was in the lead, carrying a walkie-talkie that connected him with Colonel Latham back at the bunker. The Colonel was watching the silent feed inside the primary tech building on base and would let us know when all was clear. By “clear” he didn’t mean no Baelese—there were always Baelese patrolling—but there was a time during the night when less guards were on duty, and that’s when we would strike.
I let out a deep breath as I followed the pack, everyone alert. And for such a large group, they were shockingly stealthy. I had to pay close attention to my footsteps, squinting at the dark ground to avoid twigs. Rylen had to grab my arm to stop me when the troop halted. My heart was steadily drumming. How did soldiers do this on a normal basis? Did they ever get used to it, or were they as nervous as me every time? Not that they looked nervous . . .