Chapter Thirteen
the room. Felt him stop beside her bed.
Mira was in the shower. They had some privacy. With her eyes still closed, she reached for his hand.
“I didn’t mean to wake you,” he said, threading his fingers between hers.
“I’m going to shower before I sleep.”
“That an invitation?”
She opened her eyes then and gave him a tired smile. “You’re learning how to flirt.”
The mattress sank when he sat beside her. “I’ve always known how to flirt. Just haven’t done it with you.”
She rolled to her back and blinked up at him. “I’ve been missing out.”
He returned her smile, leaned down, and kissed her.
It was soft and gentle, just what she needed right then. She was feeling a little broken, a little fragile, now that they weren’t potentially seconds away from death.
He brushed her hair back from her face. “We need to talk.”
She turned in to his hand.
“Was it Trevast?” he asked.
She went rigid. “What?”
“When we left Meryk, you were late boarding the Kaelais because you were talking to his widow. You took something from his house, didn’t you? Something Specialist Teal helped you decrypt.”
Well, hell. She thought she had been discreet. She’d threatened Teal, made her promise not to speak a word about what she’d done for Ash or what she had learned.
Ash couldn’t have this conversation lying on her back, so she pushed herself into a sitting position. She had to remind herself to breathe when the wound on her side sent a sharp throb through her body.
When the pain passed, she said, “Teal talked to you.”
“We had a conversation. She was extremely vague but made it clear something had unsettled you.”
“I thought you were ignoring me on the Kaelais.”
“Avoiding, not ignoring. Plus Captain Furyk was keeping tabs on you. He’s not a fan of anomalies.”
She snorted. “I could tell.”
“So what does Trevast have to do with Neilan Tahn?”
It felt like three g’s of pressure pushed into her chest.
“You shouldn’t know that name.” Trevast shouldn’t have either.
“What’s the connection, Ash?”
She closed her eyes. She told herself she didn’t want to talk about it because she wanted to protect Trevast’s reputation. Really, she didn’t want to talk about it because it still hurt to believe it.
“Trevast told us telepathy existed right before Jevan boarded our shuttle.” Ash tried not to let the memory roar to life. She tried not to remember the smell of singed flesh and the sticky warmth of her teammates’ blood. “I’d assumed the information was in the files we’d stolen, but the Coalition never found a connection. They never found anything about factions either.”
Rykus placed his hand on her thigh.
“I know my mind was fucked up, but I’m certain Trevast’s last words were to fight the factions. So I went to his home, broke into his databases, and captured every blip of data that acted like it didn’t want to be seen.”
“And?”
“And it was locked up so tight I had to enlist Teal’s help,” she said. Ash was good at hack-sig. Teal was better. The only thing that lightened that sting was that Teal was also an anomaly. She hooked onto data and codes the way Ash hooked onto fighting and survival.
“She decrypted messages between Trevast and Tahn.” Ash’s throat burned when she swallowed. “Trevast was supposed to kill me because I’d been unlocked.”
“Unlocked?” Rykus said. “That’s the term War Chancellor Hagan’s assistant used, wasn’t it? After he tried to kill you on the capsule?”
Ash nodded. That was months ago, right after the Coalition recaptured her on Ephron. They’d still thought her a traitor then, and they were sending her back to Caruth to see how a loyalty-trained anomaly was able to subvert their brainwashing. Rykus had stopped Stratham from adding a lethal dose of sedative to her IV line, but before they’d gotten more information from him, Valt had contacted them. He’d found Dr. Katie Monick, Rykus’s ex-fiancée, and he’d threatened her. The only way Ash had been able to save her had been to kill Stratham. Then she’d gone to Valt in an attempt to trade her life for Katie’s.
“I think that’s the first step to making us susceptible to them,” Ash said. “Valt unlocked me somehow, then he started tampering with my mind.”
“But Trevast didn’t kill you.”
Her heart fucking hurt. “He told Tahn he couldn’t do it. Because I was family.”
Rykus didn’t say anything; he didn’t push. He kept his hand on her leg and let his thumb slide back and forth, a soothing, comforting motion.
She took a breath and continued. “Trevast was a telepath. Tahn must be too. It would explain how he was able to build his empire so quickly. If I can get to him, I can unravel this thing.”
“Tahn wanted you dead,” Rykus said. “Are you sure it’s a good idea to try to get in touch with him?”
“I have to, and that’s why I’m here. Credits and criminals flow in and out of Glory. Tahn has his hand in the pockets of the oligarchy and every precinct boss. I’ve… interfered with a few of his business interests. And I’ve made it clear I can interfere with more.”
His thumb stopped moving. “It doesn’t have to be you that does this.”
“I know the right connections to sabotage.”
He shook his head. “You’re trying to take on the universe solo again. Why didn’t you tell Tersa what you were doing?”
“Tell the minister prime that I’m running off to Glory to meet up with a crime lord who might be a telepath? She would have sent the whole fleet with me, and Tahn wouldn’t set foot in the system.”
“You could have told me.”
She lifted her brows. “What would you have done? Abandoned Javery to come help me?”
His smile reminded her of the happy, carefree grin he’d given his sister on his home world. A little playful, a little relaxed and upbeat. Definitely not the soldier’s glower she was used to.
It tugged at something inside her. Tugged on her guilt too. “You should still be on Javery.”
He wrapped his arm around her. “I’m right where I need to be.”
She leaned into him. It was a foreign feeling, this need to be close to someone. She’d spent the majority of her life keeping people at a distance, but he’d slipped past her defenses. She craved him, craved his body and his presence and his strength. She knew who she was when she was with him.
He pressed his lips to the curve of her jaw. “Can we drop the charade?”
She knew the charade he was talking about, almost told him yes when his mouth trailed kisses down her neck.
Somehow she held on to her cracking willpower. “I can’t let you be a target.”
“Has it crossed your mind that I might not need you to keep me safe?” He nipped at her ear.
“Nope.” The denial was pitched too high.
“I’m watching my back at the same time I’m watching yours.”
Another kiss, one that made her breathless.
“My back or my backside?”
He grunted, pulled her into his lap, and lowered his hands to her waist to hold her tight against him. “I almost broke his hand.”
“Emmit’s?” She laughed. “He’s a Seeker, Rip. He received my signal to back off.”
He leaned back and looked at her—really looked at her—and humor mixed with the heat in his eyes.
“What?” she asked.
“I never thought I’d miss hearing you call me Rip.”
This wasn’t their usual power balance—she did the tempting while he clung to his self-control—and she couldn’t find her equilibrium in time. She crumbled. She wrapped her hands behind his neck and didn’t hold back her hunger.
He kissed her with the same force as she kissed him. Her hands went to the hard muscles of his shoulders, his chest. He grabbed her hips and dragged her closer, letting her feel how much he wanted her. How ready he was to take her right then, right there.
Fuck. She ached for him.
He didn’t let her catch her breath. He kissed her and touched her. He made her gasp his name, and she let out a very unusual-for-her mew.
He twisted his fingers into her hair, pulled until her head tilted, giving him better access to her throat. His tongue teased and tickled while his other hand abandoned her ass for her breast.
She said his name again, a plea for more.
He bit her neck just hard enough to make an erotic shock zip through her. He splayed a hand across her back, keeping her close while he reacquainted himself with her body.
Damn, he reacquainted himself.
But when his hand slid down her right side, she sucked in a breath and tried not to stiffen. It didn’t hurt—not much anyway—but she was worried he’d feel the dampness there, worried he’d realize her shirt wasn’t just wet from the ocean.
His hand continued down to her hip, then closer to her center.
She rocked into him and dug her fingers into the corded muscles of his back. She found a rip in his shirt near his shoulder. There were scratches on his skin.
They were a mess. His earlier mention of showering together began to sound like a great idea and…
Shit. The shower. It had cut off.
Rykus looked toward the bathroom when she did. The door was still shut, but they were out of time.
She tried to slide from his lap.
He held her in place. “Sleep with me.”
“You’re sharing a room with Chace.”
“I’ll kick him out.” His hands locked on her hips, ground her against him.
“Rip,” she breathed. It hurt how much she wanted him inside her. “Rhys. Please.”
The sound he made was somewhere between a grunt and a groan. He released her, and she crawled off his lap right before Mira opened the door.
Mira froze, her hand in the middle of finger-combing her wet hair.
Ash had never felt self-conscious being caught with a man before, but she felt heat rise to her face. Maybe it was because this man meant something to her. Maybe it was because she wasn’t used to people seeing her vulnerable.
Hell. She couldn’t be vulnerable.
“Took you long enough,” Ash said.
“I had twenty layers of sweat and dust to scrape off.” Mira’s voice sounded strange, harsher than usual.
“You should get cleaned up,” Rykus said, then he stood a little stiffly.
Ash sat a little stiffly. If Mira hadn’t been one hundred percent certain there was something between them on the boat, she was now.
Rykus cleared his throat. “Ash’s side wound has opened up. She needs laser treatment, antibiotics, and a full body-stat profile.”
Oh, the deceptive SOB. His request to sleep together had been a literal one. He wouldn’t have pinned her to the mattress or thrust into her hard enough to make the bed scrape across the floor. He’d been fully aware of her injuries.
“I’ll take care of her,” Mira said. “You should go back to your room.”
His gaze hitched on Mira, undoubtedly catching the dismissal in her tone, before he looked at Ash again.
Ash glared, more than a little unhappy he hadn’t been as caught up in her as she had been with him.
A corner of his mouth tilted into a grin, and she decided she’d forgive him.
Rykus had no intention of returning to his room. Ash’s room had two bunk beds. He would take one of them.
Before he did, he tracked down clean clothes and he showered, washing away dirt and seawater and wishing he had Ash there with him. He would gently run a cloth over her skin, cleaning away the blood and grime and making sure her side wound was the only serious injury she was trying to hide. He would take care of her, then tuck her into bed.
He dried off and dressed, then hurried back to Ash’s room. He was almost to her door when Mira came out. She had a med-kit slung over one shoulder and a bag of bloodstained cloths in her hands.
“How is she?” Rykus asked.
Mira’s lips pressed together. He knew that look. He’d received it more than once from his former fiancée. Mira was pissed about something.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
She walked to the trash chute in the wall to his left, opened the hinged drawer, then shoved in the bag of cloths.
She slammed the chute shut.
“I always thought,” she said without turning, “that if I ever met “Rest in Peace” Rykus, the hero of Gaeles Minor, I’d walk up to him, shake his hand, and thank him for saving my family and home world. Now that I’m standing in front of him, all I want to do is slam my fist into your face.”
Nausea sloshed in his stomach the second she said his name. It built with each word, careening around to the point where he thought he might actually get sick. Mira had figured it out. Not only did she know who he was, she knew what Ash was. It didn’t take much effort to jump to the conclusion that he was her fail-safe.
“Ash and I have addressed the issue,” he said.
“Oh really?” She turned a blistering glare on him.
“I don’t command her.”
“You just fuck her.”
His stomach steadied out. He flattened his expression too. “We have a relationship.”
“You’re a hypocrite.” Mira took an aggressive step toward him. “You went before the senate and ripped them apart for approving a program that takes away a soldier’s free will. You pointed out the flaws in the system, the violation of rights, the very real possibility that the anomalies could be abused. And here you are, doing the abusing.”
That stung. It made it hard to keep his voice neutral. “I’ve talked to Ash about everything you just said. I tried to get her to walk away. I gave her space and time and—”
“You outrank her,” Mira said, cutting in. “Just your presence alters her behavior.”
“If you think Ash is that malleable, you don’t know her.”
Her eyes narrowed, and the press of her lips said she might agree with that statement, but she went on. “I’ve researched anomalies and the Caruth program. The Coalition acknowledges the potential for abuse. Loyalty-trained anomalies and their fail-safes aren’t supposed to work together. You aren’t supposed to be in the same star system.”
He couldn’t refute that, and he couldn’t tell her why this was an exception, not without leaking classified information.
“It’s complicated,” he said.
“I bet.”
He looked down at Mira and forced himself to soften his voice. “If I didn’t think Ash was strong enough to walk away, I’d do the walking. I love her. The last thing I want is to make her less than who she is.”
Mira didn’t respond, didn’t move. He wasn’t even sure she blinked for half a minute.
“She’s strong enough, Mira. She goes out of her way to do the opposite of what I want.”
A few more seconds passed, then the block of ice shattered, and she snorted. “That sounds like Ash.”
He let himself smile then, a small curve of the mouth.
Mira adjusted the strap to the med-kit higher on her shoulder. “You’re really gone for her, aren’t you?”
“Completely,” he admitted.
She still didn’t look like she liked the thought of them together, but her sigh said she accepted it for now.
“How is she?” he asked.
A new disapproval pulled at her expression. “According to her, she’s fine. According to my observations and the body-stat analysis, she should be put in an induced coma. She’s dehydrated, obviously, and her side wound is a mess. She has a couple of cracked ribs. I’ve given her something for the infection and glued the wound shut, then I used half a jar of med-gel patching up the rest of her. She took a beating. Anyone else would be curled into a ball in a corner. With her, I’m just hoping she stays in bed a few hours. Days would be optimal, but she’s Ash, so…” She shrugged.
“And her blood profile?” he asked.
“Her body is under stress. Her cortisol and the other expected chems are elevated, but her b-stim level seems abnormal. I don’t have access to all the anomaly research, but I believe it should be higher.”
“May I see it?” he asked.
She took off her comm-cuff and brought up the graph.
It was low. Not as bad as when the Coalition had withheld her booster on the Obsidian, but enough for any doctor to glance at the results and order the chem immediately.
He handed the cuff back. “She’s overdue for an injection.”
“I figured,” Mira said. “I asked when she last had one. She didn’t answer.”
“She’s spacing out the dosage.”
“What? Why?”
“Because she’s Ash,” he said. The Coalition had used her addiction against her before. Understandably, she now hated the dependency.
“She needs to take it,” Mira said. “I think her stress levels would come down and she’d recover more quickly. She wouldn’t listen to me though. Maybe she’ll listen to you.”
“Opposite of what I want, remember.”
Her mouth twisted, and she shook her head. “She’s infuriating sometimes.”
He smiled. “Welcome to my world.”
She sniffed, then looked at the door. “She’s not made for following orders. She’s better at designing schemes and getting people to do what she wants.”
“She does okay in the Corps,” he said. “All the anomalies have their quirks.”
Mira hmmed, then looked at him. Some thought or assessment passed through her eyes. Rykus didn’t get a chance to guess at what it was. It disappeared when she yawned, covering her mouth with her fist.
“I’m going to return the med-kit,” she said. “Then I’m sleeping for the next week.”
“I’m taking Ash’s top bunk.”
Mira paused in the middle of turning. She surveyed him again, came to a conclusion, then gave him a curt nod before she continued down the hall.
Quietly Rykus entered Ash’s room.
It was dark. He gave his eyes a few seconds to adjust before he crossed to Ash. She didn’t move when he approached. He rested his forearms on the top bunk, stretched his shoulders and back, then he listened to Ash breathe. The occasional, heavy whisper of air from her lungs indicated she was sleeping. Good. She needed it more than all of them. She needed weeks of rest without being thrown around or shot at or hurt. She needed a mental reprieve too. She still mourned her teammates, and her mind was constantly creating a web of connections between one telepathic data point and another. She pulled at the threads, deleting and reattaching them, trying to place Valt and Tahn and her other brief encounters with telepaths into an elaborate conspiracy designed to damage the Coalition.
He wanted to climb into bed with her and pull her into his arms. It took effort not to touch her, not to brush his knuckles along her jaw or slide his fingers over the small braid in her hair. He settled for a whispered, “I love you,” then he climbed into the top bunk and burrowed under the covers.