“She thinks so.” Daniel sipped his kava, searching for calm, finding little.
“She does,” Andrei interrupted. “He feels the same. Now, how do we get the hells out of here?”
Grateful for his friend’s words, Daniel pushed away from the counter and headed into the common area and sat at the large table. He drew out his pocket comm. “Let’s get started.”
“We got word you’d been unable to break through. Looked into the pattern of Skorpios and other military on the watch. They’re out this way now because you were sighted by some mercs who sold you out. One turned up dead; imagine that.” Julian shrugged.
“I expect them all to turn up dead before the end of this standard year. Every. Last. One.”
Andrei nodded at Daniel. Such betrayal couldn’t go unanswered, or they’d all do it for the highest bidder. If they had no honor, fear would do just as well. In his seventeen standard years doing this, he’d always found the threat of death, underlined when it had to be, was an effective tool against a coward.
“We’ve got a private transpo at the portal. Top-of-the-line. If we can get to it, it’ll be approved to leave immediately.” Marame had her own comm out, projecting several routes from their bolt-hole to the portal.
“Then let’s be sure to get to it.”
“What we face is two full columns of Skorpios.” Julian looked at his comm. “Data just popped up. They know we’re here.”
It wasn’t so much that Daniel doubted he could get Carina out of there, but he feared what she might have to see to make it happen.
There would be death in great, heaping servings, and his aim was to be sure he served it rather than became it.
“We need heavy weapons. Full magazines. This will not be a stealthy trip, so we need to be able to get through.”
Marame did her job well, outlining the two best routes and setting multiple contingencies should those not work. Their biggest point of exposure would be once they hit the inner core of the portal city. No vehicles were allowed, so they’d have to be on the streets, far less protected, far slower than they’d be in a conveyance.
Daniel did his job to keep his focus off whatever they were discussing downstairs. Her life was paramount, getting her out and to a place where the data could be extracted. If he had to move mountains to make that so, he would. For her.
She came up sometime later, and the look Vincenz gave him told him her brother had mixed feelings about whatever she’d said.
She moved to him, touching his shoulders and squeezing herself onto the bench where Daniel sat so she could be next to him.
It was then she saw the data about the people who’d been caught in the roundup to capture them. The people her father had executed. She looked at it, saw the faces, the files, the names.
“Is there a place to clean up and rest?” Daniel heard the strain in her voice, the emotion. His gaze slid to Vincenz a moment, and the two men shared their concern.
“We should stay low for the next day or so. There are rooms here.” Marame stood and pointed to a door at the end of a hall. “Sleep chambers with a bathing suite located in between. There’s food. Our host may be a smuggler, but he has many fine things to eat in his larder. Enough to forgive many transgressions.” Marame winked.
Daniel grabbed their packs. “Let’s get you settled. There are facilities here for us to wash clothing, I’ve been told. I’m sure those around me would be happy about that.”
Her smile was there but tense around the edges.
“Would you like me to sleep in another room?” he asked once they were in the bedchamber with the door closed.
She looked up, startled. “No! Why would you do that?” She grabbed his hands, and he slid his thumbs over her skin.
“I just want you to be comfortable. With your brother here, I—I didn’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”
She sighed, shaking her head. “Trust you to make me feel better, even when you don’t know it and are acting like you have fluff for brains. I would feel uncomfortable with you elsewhere. I’d be wondering if you were trying to distance yourself or if you were angry. I like you near me, haven’t you figured that out yet?”
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, but I’m just fine in here with you.” He looked through drawers until he found some soft, warm clothing that would serve until theirs was clean. He handed it her way. “Why don’t you give me your clothes, and I’ll set them to wash with mine?”
When she did, handing it all over and retreating into the bathing room, he knew she was deeply bothered by that data. He left the room, put the clothes to wash and returned.
She’d escaped into the bathing suite to work out her emotions. But once she turned the bathwater on, Daniel strode into the room like he’d been invited. She opened her mouth to order him out, but he began to strip off his clothes, and who was she to deny herself the glory of his body?
The smile playing on his lips told her he’d done it on purpose.
“You’re distracting me with your nakedness and your penis.” She slid into the water, dunking herself and surfacing to find him in the water with her.
“It’s not on you.”
She considered making a joke, but then decided not. “Do you have a chip in my head? Do you know how I feel?” she snapped.
“I’ve been doing this long enough to have had innocents get caught up in the mission. But Hartley Alem was not an innocent, Carina. He hurt tens of thousands of people. He would have used you, broken you and not cared. That cannot stand. Just knowing someone existed who wanted to harm you made me crazy. Now that I know he’s not a threat, I feel better, and so should you. I’d rather have him and your father’s pet Skorpios die than you or your mother.”
“It’s not him. I don’t care about him. It’s the others. All those people who got caught up in something they had no part of. I brought that into their lives.”
“Your father brought this all on, not you. It is not necessary to kill the numbers he does, but we both know he does it for his own pleasure, to keep people so afraid he can keep them down. For no other reason than to show them all he can. He has no plan. Even your grandfather’s version of leadership had a point. Those deaths are not yours; it lies with him. All of it.”
She sighed. He was right, but it hurt nonetheless. Seeing how many people had died because she’d run. It wasn’t her intention, not what she’d wanted. “I hate it when you’re wise, Daniel.” She settled against him as he began to lather her hair.
“Sorry, sweet. I’ll dumb it up just for you.”
Eyes still closed as he rinsed, she smiled and rested against him more fully. “And while we’re discussing your attributes, I need to add a few things. You have honor, true honor, and you have no idea how rare a quality that is. You’re also very handsome and strong, and you have kept me alive this entire time when the weight of the Imperium is trying to hunt me down and kill me.”
“Were we discussing my attributes?”
“You’re messing up this moment,” she said, trying pinch his thigh, finding nothing but muscle.
“Thank you,” he murmured quietly into her ear before straightening. “As for the saving? It’s my job. And, admittedly, I like it that you’re alive. That way I can have sex with you and make you laugh. The difference between that cool, regal voice and your very fine lusty laugh is enough to make a man hard as iron.”
“You’re a flatterer.” She thought back on something that she’d wondered since the first moment he touched her. “Have there been others?”
“I’m not a virgin.”
She snorted and dunked under again, coming back up and pushing on his shoulder so he’d turn around so she could return the favor and wash his hair. “You know what I’m asking. I don’t know why you’re being so silly and making me work hard for it.”
“Ouch! I think my scalp is just fine without the hair pulling, sweet. Ask me what you want to ask me. I don’t want to play games with you.” He froze a moment, obli
ging and tipping his head back so she could rinse his hair.
“Do you do this on your missions? Ever? You know, having a woman?”
He sighed and stood. She watched quite happily as he soaped up and rinsed. He took the drying cloth she handed him as he stepped out.
“I’ve had women on missions. As in I’ve had sex with women when I was on a job. I’ve never had sex with a woman who was my job. But to answer the question you’re afraid to ask me, no, I don’t use women on my missions for sex and then dump them without a word when I get them home.”
She narrowed her eyes at him as he got dressed and then moved to her. He buttoned the back of the simple but very warm winter dress he’d given her earlier, all without waiting to be asked. She liked that. A lot.
She sensed he wanted to say more, so she remained quiet while she brushed her hair out.
“I don’t normally have anyone with me on missions who isn’t already on my team, anyway, much less romantic or sexual liaisons. I have a job to do, and there’s usually nothing to be done afterward but be sure I’m not connected with the body.”
“If you’re expecting me to wince because your job is different than other men’s jobs, you’re going to wait a long time. You don’t shock me.”
“I know.” He shrugged and leaned back against the counter. “It’s one of the many reasons you get to me in ways no one else ever has. You, Carina. No one else has ever come close to meaning to me what you do.”
“You love me.” It wasn’t a question, and he didn’t answer. Stubborn man. “You love me, but you have this barmy idea that you shouldn’t say it out here where this silly female can’t really know her mind.”
He rubbed a cloth over his hair to dry it, eyes on her, mouth closed.
“I love you, too. Are you scared?”
He leaned back, wearing only loose pants hanging dangerously low on his hips. His feet were bare, a sight that she couldn’t quite puzzle out the appeal of, but she felt it full force.
“You scare me on many levels.” He grinned, and she socked him in the belly, which was rock hard and impervious to her little jab. Taking her fist, he brought it to his lips for a kiss, and she was undone again.
“I should not be saying this or doing this, but I can’t seem to stop breaking rules where you’re concerned. Loving you doesn’t scare me. I’m nearly forty years old; I’ve waited long enough to know what I feel and to accept it. But you are not my age, and you don’t have my experience. People will try to tell you you’re wrong and need to see other men. That worries me to a certain extent, because I can’t be with you every moment when we return. I have this job, and I don’t plan to give it up. I go away, and I can’t tell you where. Sometimes I’m gone for a while, others I return in a day or so. I’m afraid I’m selfish for not encouraging you to see other people first.”
She studied him for a while. Men were odd creatures, she realized. But his fear, that he’d voiced it, meant a lot to her. Almost as much as the admission, at last, that he loved her.
“I knew you loved me.” She kissed his chest and then snuggled into him, hugging her arms around him. “I know people will say I’m too young, or that it’s only the danger of this mission that made me mistake lust for love. I know I will be told to see others because I can’t possibly know my own mind.”
She tipped back enough to look at his face. She wanted him to see her eyes when she told him the rest. “I come from a world where I was traded to a man I neither consented to marry nor wanted to marry. My entire life has been about people telling me what to do, what to think and believe. I have had little space to express my own wishes. I must tell you I choose you. Choose, Daniel. It’s important to me that people understand that. I haven’t had a lot of opportunity to choose things in my life. I stand here before you, naked in body and soul, and I tell you, I love you. I don’t need another man’s cock in my body to know that. I don’t need to go to meals and be wooed by men who I know right now will not measure up to the one I want: you.”
He nodded once. “All right then.”
“I must confess I’m dubious about how quickly you’ve assented.” She eyed him warily, and he laughed.
His grin was sneaky at the edges, but so sexy and handsome, it disarmed her.
“The raw fact is, I want you. I want you, and if you want me, too, I’m not going to advocate you doing anything else but being with me.” He shrugged, kissed her forehead and left the room, leaving her amused and weak kneed.
Her brother was alive and helping the Federation. She wouldn’t be alone. And she had Daniel, really, truly. After wishing for someone to love, he’d shoved his way into her world and set it on end. Despite all the bad, good lived in her life, too.
Daniel, smiling, pulled on a shirt before striding out into the common room where Vincenz had joined them all at the table. He met Vincenz’s eyes straight on. “Good to see you. You’ve made your sister very happy at a time when she needed to know she had someone on the other side. And I suppose your skills and connections will come in damned handy, too.”
Vincenz thought for a moment and finally nodded, raising a glass his way. “It’s good to see you, too. My sister is in love with you.”
Daniel noticed he said it with finality. Not my sister thinks she loves you, but that she did. That was a good step.
“I know.”
“I’m just going to go check on the meat in the oven.” Julian stood, dragging Marame along with him.
Andrei didn’t bother with an excuse; he just got up and left the room, leaving Daniel and Vincenz alone.
“If you have a problem, let’s hear it.” Daniel leaned forward, took one of Andrei’s smokes and lit it. He rarely if ever smoked at home when we wasn’t working, but one of these days Andrei was going to present him a bill for all the ones Daniel had pinched off him over the years.
“My sister knows her own mind.”
That surprised Daniel. Not that Carina had her own mind—he knew that quite well—but that Vincenz would admit it so easily.
“Among many fine attributes, yes, your sister does indeed know her own mind.” Daniel snorted, thinking of her.
Vincenz looked to his hands and then back to Daniel. “Do you love her? I’d never assume you would take advantage of a woman, any woman, but especially one as vulnerable as Carina.”
The words came after an internal struggle. He was not a man prone to talking about his emotions, much less with brothers of his women, but he owed it to this man who’d just found his sister again.
“I could tell you it’s none of your business, but it is. I’ve been where you are, so I’ll be clear. I’ve never met anyone like your sister.” Both men paused to snort. “She fascinates me, impresses me, she’s beautiful, intelligent and brave. Of all the women in the Known Universes, she’s that one for me. I love your sister.”
“Any fool could see.” Carina swept into the room and put the bread out on the table. “He positively moons over me, Vincenz.”
Startled, Daniel laughed. “She does tend to listen to conversations she was not invited into.”
Vincenz rolled his eyes. “She was like that as a kid, too. Always in everyone’s business.” He ducked when Carina flicked the towel that had been over the bread at his head.
The two men gave each other one last considering look, and understanding passed between them. She was theirs to protect, and they expected the other to always keep that foremost in mind.
Once the all clear had been declared by Carina and the delivery of the bread, everyone else came out, bringing food and ale with them.
Carina laughed with them, passed out plates, told them funny stories about things Vincenz did as a child, all while she’d ensconced herself in Daniel’s lap like nothing at all was wrong with that.
Marame just stared, openmouthed, for long moments before smiling and shaking her head. Daniel felt a bit uncomfortable with it, this crossing of business and professional lines. He’d never had this experience before. It intoxica
ted and confused him. Much like everything about falling in love with Carina did.
He’d had work, and then he’d had his personal life. But this was different. He’d never quite imagined the sort of glory of this connection he had with her, with the feeling that he could do anything because of her. Until he’d met her, it hadn’t been something he’d understood, or perhaps nothing he’d even wanted for fear of losing himself so entirely.
And there he was, his life in a warm, sexy bundle perched on his lap, her fingers intertwined with his. There was no loss of himself, though. Just a sense of union.
“Now that we’ve gotten all that silly boy stuff between my brother and Daniel out of the way, how are we getting off this ’Verse?”
“It’s going to take some work.” Julian pointed at the maps again. “A lot of ammunition, too.”
“Good thing everyone has enough weaponry to run their own security force, then, eh?” Carina sat back. “Just make sure I have a few blasters and plenty of charges. Point me, and I’ll go.”
“Here’s what we’re going to do.” And they began to plan how they’d make their way to the portal.
Chapter 17
A hand shoved her to the ground. Shouts rang out, wrapped in the pop, pop, pop of weapons fire. She stayed, her arms clutched around his ankle. He changed his stance so that she rested between his legs, changed his stance to protect her better. And he did it all automatically.
She did not look at the men in the trees, did not look at the men crouched at the next corner shooting round after round, all set to kill her. They would not harm her; she knew that instinctively. Knew Daniel Haws would kill a thousand men to save her, knew he’d give his life for her. This last bit scared her more than the men trying to kill her. This last bit was a bigger threat than any, because he was her everything, and she would not survive losing him.
So she looked up at Daniel, into his face, and held on to her certainty that no one was better than he.
Spent shells showered around her head, glittering in the sunlight with a sick sort of beauty. The ones that touched her bare skin burned as they bounced, hitting the ground, still smoking. Their metallic ping sounded over and around the other sounds, all chaos. The stench of the powder within the shells hung in the air, stinging her nose, making her eyes water.