Mesmerized

  He growled, shoving his hands in his pockets. “Gods above and below, no. If there’s trouble, leave it to Julian and Vincenz to deal with any extraction.”

  “You think I can’t handle myself?”

  “I know you can. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to drag you along to a place so dangerous your simply being there would put you in danger. I can’t have my attention shifting. And if you were there, I’d be worried about you the whole time.”

  She hugged him. “From you these little statements are the most passionate of love sonnets.”

  “Stay in the house.”

  He shed her as he left, not wanting any part of her to be sullied by what he’d be dealing with. Moving silently, steadily and down toward the part of town where law and order were a long distant memory. Where murder was common, fights like communion. He moved, letting it all roll off him, slicing through the crowds, barely noticed.

  His quarry lay in an establishment full of the worst society had to offer. As such, he had the information he needed within a few minutes and headed out again.

  He climbed the exterior fire stairs to a one-room, coldwater flat above a whorehouse. Inside it was the man who’d been trading credits for Imperialist access to the Waystation.

  Andrei dropped to the floor and shook his head at the man who rose and made toward the door. The man didn’t listen, and so Andrei used his blaster on the man’s left knee.

  Then they came to an understanding.

  True to her word, she waited up for him, tucked into a chair next to a monitor, reading aerial film. She saw him and began to rise, but he held a hand out to stay her.

  Julian put a hand on her forearm. “Give him some time to clean up.”

  Andrei tossed a disk to him and went up the stairs.

  “He’s up there feeling guilty and dirty for whatever he did out there tonight. I need to go to him.”

  “Piper, being with someone who does what we do every day can’t be easy. Most of us don’t have long-term relationships.”

  “I understand what you do. Don’t you see that? We can’t all be pilots or bakers or bricklayers. There are dark characters about who mean to be the end of us. You face that every day, and thank the gods for it.”

  “Doesn’t mean we can’t wash the blood off sometimes. Doesn’t mean we don’t feel as if what we see and do taints those we love. We want to shield you from the ugliness.”

  “But sometimes, Julian, it’s better that the person you’re with faces that ugliness, too, and stands with you to fight it.” Vincenz spoke, startling Piper, who’d forgotten he was in the room.

  She stood. “I’m going to him.”

  “Good for you.” Vincenz waved her toward the stairs. “Sometimes if another person is holding the mirror up, we see ourselves more clearly.”

  A quick check of the laundry showed a shirt with blood at the collar. Panic ate at her insides for the time it took her to get to their room. Had he been hurt and hadn’t said?

  No, if that were so, Julian and Vincenz would have said so. Would have stopped him and made him get treatment. These warrior men she found herself surrounded by looked out for each other.

  No, the blood wasn’t his.

  She went to him, standing outside the door to the bathing suite, gathering her wits and removing her clothes.

  He stood under the water, head bowed, motionless.

  Moved beyond words, she stepped in with him. She hugged him tight, pressing against his back, pushing her own emotional response away because he so clearly needed it himself.

  “Baby, no. I’ll be out in a little while.”

  The way he’d whispered baby had torn at her. He wasn’t the sweetheart name sort of man. She couldn’t recall him ever calling her baby. With a voice trembling with emotion, she said what he needed to hear. What he needed to know. “I love you, Andrei. There’s no other place I should be right now.”

  “I don’t want you near me when I’m like this.”

  “Like what? Ashamed?”

  He turned and backed her against the wall. Her heart pounded, but not from fear.

  “I’m not ashamed. I do not feel bad when I kill them. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

  “You shouldn’t be ashamed unless you’ve used your power to harm someone who didn’t deserve it. Did they deserve it, Andrei? The person whose blood was on the collar of your shirt?”

  He cursed.

  “What, you didn’t think I’d look in the laundry?”

  “That I didn’t shows how much you distract me. I needed to wash the violence away before I touched you.”

  His face was suddenly very close. She was rabbit to his wolf, and it thrilled her to her toes.

  “He’s not dead. That part wasn’t my choice. He would be if it were up to me. But he’s in custody, and he gave us the information we needed.”

  “Why, then, are you trying to push me away when it’s so clear you need me?”

  “You don’t need to be exposed to blood on my clothes and my hands still sore from beating someone enough to spill the details of how he betrayed his own people.”

  “Did he tell you?”

  He nodded.

  “Good. Andrei, do you hear me? Good. Yesterday, these people engineered an attack that destroyed nearly an entire ’Verse. They murdered ten thousand and injured eighty thousand. How many are homeless now? How many families are wondering if their sons and mothers, daughters and fathers will come home? For what? Credits? Power? Do you think I could feel anger at you for doing your job?”

  “There’s a darkness in me, Piper.”

  She nodded. “I know. And I love you. Despite that darkness. Because of it. You’re who you are, darkness and all. I love the entirety of you, Andrei.”

  With an anguished sound, he kissed her, holding her tight against his body.

  She realized she’d needed him as much as he had her. His body, strong and solid, took her weight as she wrapped her legs around his waist.

  His hand at the back of her head saved her head from a nasty crack when it fell back at the sheer pleasure when he sank into her in one, hard thrust.

  Ground quakes of pleasure rolled through her as he thrust and thrust again, filling her up and retreating.

  His touch was urgent, covetous, possessive. He knew what to touch, how to touch it, how she liked it when he held her down on his cock with one hand at her hip, staying deep as he swiveled just a small amount.

  He’d given her a climax at entry and now he built her up again. Relentless as he fucked her, pushing every button he could, pushing more and more until she leaned forward with a gasp, her teeth sinking into his shoulder as she cried out against him.

  “Gods above and below,” he snarled, increasing his speed and coming as he pushed deep.

  On trembling legs, he put her down, going to his knees before her to soap her up. Her hand at his shoulder for balance was his anchor, holding him there, in the stall with her instead of in his head with his memories. She was the memory that counted.

  He wanted her to understand that, even if he didn’t have the words for it just yet. Wanted her to feel it through his touch.

  Her pussy was soft and slick, swollen from her climax, from his cock. He angled the stream of water to her cunt. But became ensnared by the beauty of it when he spread her open wider.

  She gasped softly when he pressed a kiss against her clit. Gently and, ever so slowly, he licked and kissed with featherlight touches, slowly giving her pleasure, feeding it in increments so that when her fingers dug into his shoulders and she came, she did so on the sweetest of sounds.

  He was lost to her. Lost in her and in letting go and admitting it; he realized it was far more that she’d found him and had given him something worth holding on to. She wasn’t a country or a job, but she was everything anyway.

  She didn’t speak as he bundled her in a drying cloth and rubbed the water away. She looked at him with eyes full of nothing but love. Only acceptance. She was his light. Eviden
ce that he was capable of more than just killing and fighting. She was the finest thing he’d ever had. She’d been so eleven years before, and she was right then as well.

  “Come to sleep. We’ll go exploring tomorrow.” She led him back to their room and got into the bed first, holding the blanket back for him.

  “I need to check in with them to be sure they didn’t have any trouble retrieving the data from the disk. I’ll return shortly.”

  “If you don’t”—she yawned hugely—“I’ll come hunt you down.”

  “I know.” And thank the gods for it.

  Chapter 15

  He seemed better, she noted, as they took one of the borrowed zippers, a sleek little beauty she’d have loved to own, toward the canyons to the south of the Portal city.

  Vincenz had come up with some sort of program that mapped as they flew above, taking into account mass of a type found with manufacturing.

  “I bet Ciro Fardelle rues the day he thought to simply toss his son away the way he did. Vincenz is a genius.”

  “Maybe. Not the genius part, I agree with you on that. But I met Fardelle. I’ve seen him in action and I don’t know that he’s got the capability to rue any of his mistakes.” He adjusted their path slightly.

  “One of the reasons I’m keeping you is the way you navigate.”

  “Kenner can navigate.”

  “He can. But he doesn’t like it. Taryn doesn’t like it.”

  “Doesn’t like navigating?”

  She could tell by the way he said it that he knew the answer.

  “They don’t like the cargo running. We’re good at it. Good enough to have some credits saved up. Good enough to keep everyone fed and clothed.”

  “Is that enough, Piper?”

  She shrugged, though he couldn’t see with his gaze fixed on the screen.

  “I’m good at it.”

  “You are. You’re good at flying. You’re good with people. You have a lot of skill in general for all sorts of things.”

  “You think I should stop running cargo, and then what? What else is there to do on Asphodel?”

  “I think you should do what makes you happy. Survival is good. An important instinct. But your whole life can’t be about that.”

  “That so? What were you then, before I came along?”

  “I find it hard to remember what I was before I saw you again.”

  She closed her eyes a moment.

  “You do things to me. You make me want more than I’ve wanted in a long time.”

  He adjusted again.

  “Do you think I’m wrong?”

  He snorted. “About many things like your insistence on coming with me during all this danger. But about who you are? What you might want? No. I think you’re perfect.”

  Argh! He was so wonderful without trying, and the more stoic he was, the more frowny and solitary, the more it got to her when he tossed it aside. For her.

  “If you’re trying to make me love you more, you’re succeeding.”

  He hmpfed.

  “Villain. Brigand.”

  He hmpfed again.

  Her comm hailed her to show an incoming from the pig they dealt with the night before. Andrei took over the flying while she handled it. They’d do a meet the next day in Ceres.

  “We’d better get moving immediately. Via private portal, it’s going to be close.”

  “I’ll get us there.” She took the controls and headed them back to the hangar.

  Julian was waiting for them at the house. “I took the liberty of packing you both up. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Andrei nodded his head in thanks.

  “There’s a fast private transport waiting for you at the portal. I take it Piper knows where it is.”

  “How is it on supplies?”

  “Fully loaded. Weapons behind the usual panels. It doesn’t look like much on the outside, but appearances mean nothing.”

  Piper tried not to grin, itching to give it a try.

  The private portal had been controlled by the loosely affiliated group of mercenaries out on the Edge territories. They maintained it, regulated traffic and made sure no one burned it out with too much use. The same couldn’t be said for all the private portals, but those are the ones that got burned out fast. And those were the merc groups who lost power because of it.

  Only now, two days after the horrible attack in Parron, the traffic had slowed to a trickle because of the checkpoints at the main portals. Not much general cargo running, she imagined, at least not for a few days more. But business was business and the transport was there, as promised, and the dock was still under the control of the mercenaries. Though she doubted they had any idea they were being used by the Federation Military Corps to run missions.

  The ship wasn’t much to look at, just as Julian had said, but once they’d boarded and sealed up again, she fired up the engines, and the raw power echoed through the platform her feet rested on. Andrei hopped into the nav seat and began to plot the course.

  Another Phantom Corps operative, Carey, got settled in the back. Carey had shown up just as they were making to leave for the portal. He and Andrei had nodded at each other, and Carey then pulled Andrei into a hug, laughing and patting his back. Piper had tried not to gape, but Julian had tipped his head closer and told her that Carey was one of the men Andrei had trained when Carey came into Phantom Corps.

  It was hard not to be impressed and maybe a tiny bit jealous of the way Carey looked at Andrei. Andrei, for his part, seemed to be befuddled by all the affection and respect people paid him. It mostly amused her to see him try to deal with it, but another part of her felt sad that he seemed to have no real idea of how much people saw him as a leader.

  “Andrei, being the chatty guy he is, hasn’t told me much about you.” Carey moved to the seat just behind hers once they’d gotten under way. “Clearly, the way he looks at you means you’re special. And you’re here being a civilian and all, so Ellis must also think you’re special.”

  Andrei gave a long-suffering sigh, one of her favorites.

  “We grew up together. He’s been mine since I declared it so when I was eight. He saved me from a beating.” Wasn’t the last time he had either.

  Carey looked to Andrei, who kept his focus—or pretended to keep his focus—on the nav screen.

  “Yours, huh? All right then.”

  “How did you two meet? Obviously through work and all, but what’s the story?”

  “Five years ago I ended up in lockup. Going nowhere fast. This giant of a man came to my cell and made me an offer. Knowing I was bound for permanent prisoner status if I kept it up, I took the offer, and on my first day after my six-month basic training, they told me to report to Operative Solace.”

  He laughed, and Piper did, too, imagining what it must have been like for him to have dealt with Andrei for the first time.

  “He barely spoke to me. Sent me out on these mini-missions all over the place. Made me qualify on three different weapons before he’d have a mug of kava with me. I thought he was an asshole at first. And then I found out he’d paid the medtech bills my sister had racked up.”

  Andrei looked up from the screen. “Enough. Carey, be sure those blasters are good to go. At our current pace, we’ll be arriving in Ceres in four more hours. Take a nap. Read the briefing material. Do something.”

  “Already did. Weapons are green. You know Julian would never arrange for anything but. But I checked anyway, so don’t go to step two where you explain the difference between a live operative and a dead one is not taking anyone’s word for anything. Read the briefing material on my way to Mirage. So anyway, I’m sure he didn’t tell you this, but he also underwrote her education. She wanted to be an engineer. My sister, who had nearly lost a leg in an industrial accident and thought her life was over, now has a degree and a damn fine job. My whole family thinks Andrei is theirs. But we’re willing to share.”

  Piper smiled. “He sent credits to me and my brothers for the last ele
ven years. He’s the reason we have greenhouses that can feed everyone. When he stayed with us recently, he drew up plans for two new cisterns for water, fixed the seals, taught the group how to shoot better and how to make explosives. He left us better than he found us.”

  “Seems to me, he considers you his, too.”

  “Enough.” Andrei got up and moved to the back of the transport.

  “He’s embarrassed to be seen as a good guy. You’ll find us, you know. In every few ’Verses there may be some guy or gal, once on the path to being a professional loser until Andrei came along and helped them be something better than they were before.”

  She thought of Aya and Benni and realized they were some of his people, too.

  If she hadn’t already been in love with him, seeing him through Carey’s eyes would have done it.

  Piper left him be, knowing he needed the time alone. She didn’t need to tell him he was being silly. Part of why she loved him was the way he simply did the right thing and never expected to be thanked or recognized.

  The hours passed quickly as the transport hurtled through portal space, bypassing the ’Verses in between Mirage and Ceres.

  “We should be approaching the deceleration lane soon. Here.” Andrei handed her a blast-proof tunic. “Put it on. It won’t show outside your clothes.”

  “They’re scratchy.”

  He simply stared at her until she sighed and obeyed. And it was scratchy.

  The Imperial mercs waited for them in the nearby field surrounding the portal.

  “Andrei, check it.” Piper didn’t look at him when she said it, not wanting to take her gaze from Arge. She hadn’t gotten as far as she had all in one piece without listening to her instincts, and they were very agitated.

  “It’s all here,” Andrei called out. “Get them loaded,” he said to Carey.

  Piper tossed the bag of credits to Arge, who grabbed it from the air with a leer in her direction. “Nice doing business with you. I could make it nicer.” Again with the leer. She didn’t suppress her shudder of revulsion.

  “Thank you, but no. We need to be on our way.”