Chapter Sixteen

 

Autumn in northern Asia brought chilly nights. Tonight was no exception. It didn’t help that the so-called Cheju Precinct was on the opposite end of town. And so they’d walked on through the night, the air growing damper and chillier with each passing hour. Bree had completed a number of intense survival courses as a cadet and later as a pilot, but never did she remember feeling so low. Hunger and exhaustion had allowed the cold to burrow deep inside her. By the time she and Ty reached Cheju, located on the fringes of the city proper, it was on the dawn side of midnight and shivers wracked Bree’s body.

Here, inns were few and far between. When at last Bree read the green lettering on one humble and slightly shabby edifice called the Celadon Inn, she thought her knees would give way with relief. That is, if her legs weren’t too stiff with cold to buckle.

All we have to do is get safe for the night, so we can make the rendezvous in the morning.

Ty scouted out the immediate area with keen soldier’s eyes before pushing open the door and following her inside. The place was part bar, part eatery, chaotic with noisy patrons. The air was damp, and scented thickly with garlic and white pepper. Bree tried to soak up the warmth, but her shaking wouldn’t stop. Her cold seemed to go much deeper, settling in a place where warmth couldn’t reach.

Music played, more of a synthesized throb than a melody. It was a young crowd. She couldn’t help wondering about them. Were they shadow people or regular locals? Bree’s instincts told her they were normal citizens, but then she’d been wrong about Joo-Eun.

Those patrons not eating were engaged in loud conversations; others interacted with screens flickering with a variety of 3-D images. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she noticed that the game players wore hats with glasses and headsets, and had covered their hands with thin gloves. Wireless virtual reality.

It was just another late night in New Seoul. And while she and Ty looked disheveled, no one seemed to care.

An ancient-looking woman appeared out of the crowd. Her skin was seamed and leathery. Where the flesh covered the tops of her hands and neck, it was almost transparent, revealing a network of blue, coiled veins. Life expectancies reached to the mid-100s now. Bree clocked this woman at no less than 130.

Yet the old woman’s eyes were discerning and bright as she scanned Bree and Ty’s ragged appearance. Her nostrils flared—with recognition or at the odor, Bree didn’t know, but sagging lids masked her eyes and what hints they held.

“A room if you have one,” Ty told the proprietor.

To Bree’s joy, she nodded. “You want food, too?”

“Yes,” Bree answered, maybe a little too eagerly.

“But you clean up first, or I won’t serve you. Come.” The old woman turned and walked away.

Bree and Ty followed. “How much?” he asked when she handed them something the size of a memory stick that Bree assumed was a room key.

“Twenty-five. Includes both of you.”

One hundred credits were all Bree had. Total. Twenty-five was a lot to spend the first night out, but they needed shelter. Teeth chattering, she paid for the room.

They tromped up a narrow, dark staircase. It was cold in the building, too, she was dismayed to discover. Ty unlocked the door. They spilled into the room and he locked the door behind them. The lights came on automatically.

Bree stood there, shivering. Cold had settled so deeply inside her that she wondered if she’d ever feel warm again.

Ty pulled their pistol from his pocket and laid it on the bed. “So we’ll be ready no matter who stops by to welcome you to town.”

“G-good.” She tossed her travel pack on the bed next to the pistol. “I’ve got to get warm. Wh-where’s the shower?”

In the harsh, halogen-bright light, Ty looked down at her face. At the sight of his shock, she coughed out a weak laugh. “By the expression on your face, I must look pretty bad.”

“Your lips are blue. Why didn’t you say something?”

“The chattering teeth weren’t a c-clue?”

Ignoring her, Ty crouched in front of her. “Boots,” he said. She gave him her feet, one at a time. He threw the boots in a corner. Then he shoved a chair against the door, followed by a table, wedging the furniture together. Finally, he strode to the bathroom, and then she heard the hiss of water. He came out and pointed. “Go.”

He was so serious that it was almost scary: Commander Armstrong ordering his troops into action. She hoped she’d never end up on the shooting end of his rifle. Teeth clattering, she gave him a stiff salute. “Y-yes, sir,” she said and followed him into the bathroom.

She’d learned something else about him. When he was worried, he became cold and businesslike. Strangely, she remembered the image she’d watched of his father, striding to a waiting car. Was that man’s icy demeanor due to his worry about his son? Did even the “Ax” fret about his babies?

That “baby” was a tall, dripping-wet SEAL now hunched over a bathroom sink in a third-rate inn in the wrong part of town. Ty scooped water into his mouth, rinsed, and spat, and then splashed handful after handful of soapy water onto his face, scrubbing it into his hair until he was soaked from the shoulders up.

He straightened, tossing back his head as he expelled a gust of air. Then he lifted the hem of his shirt to his face and dried off, exposing the whipcord-lean, tightly muscled body of a professional soldier.

Steam billowed in the small space. Bree’s clumsy fingers hadn’t made much progress with the buttons on her overtunic. She was shaking too severely to focus on one button at a time. Since it was her only outfit, ripping it off was out of the question. “Screw it,” she muttered, and stepped into the shower fully dressed.

Warm water gushed down onto her. She lifted her face, closed her eyes, and backed against the tiled wall. She didn’t know if it was from the relief of finally being inside and out of imminent danger, or the sheer pleasure of the water, but her legs felt like rubber, and she almost sagged to the floor.

Two strong hands grabbed her upper arms. “Don’t pass out on me.”

“I wouldn’t care.” Her speech was slurred. She sounded drunk. “I’d be warm...”

Eyes closed, she heard him tap the icon that controlled the water temperature. The spray got hotter. “Take off your clothes,” he said in a no-nonsense tone.

She opened her eyes. Ty stood under the deluge with her. Mist enveloped them in a sheltering fog, and moisture glittered on his hard, stubbly jaw. He was exactly what she needed to get her mind off everything that had happened tonight. If she were in luck, he’d feel the same about her.

“You first,” she said.

Ty’s expression softened with apology. “Hey…I didn’t mean while I was in here.”

“I did.”

It went very silent in the shower chamber. His eyes sharpened with a different kind of hunger. She pulled his hands to her sodden collar. “Help me with these buttons.”

His throat moved. For the first time, she saw his confidence waver. She’d thought he was a playboy. A bachelor stud. He didn’t act like a playboy; he acted like a choirboy. She hoped it wasn’t because he thought of her as something apart from a living, breathing woman. If so, she hoped he’d soon see how wrong he was.

But her condition forced him to comply: Borderline hypothermic, she needed hot water on her skin to get warm.

His strong hands undid her tunic, one button at a time. But his expression remained dead serious, as if she’d asked him to defuse a bomb.

When her top was undone, his hands spread the fabric wider, smoothing around to her ribs and down to her hips, where he hooked his fingers under her waistband and lowered the baggy trousers.

She let the shirt slide off her shoulders. Then, she undid her bra, letting it fall. Water ran over her face, streaming down her exposed body. Her nipples pinched tight from arousal and the cold. Between her legs, her pulse throbbed in a steady drumbeat, but her shivering wouldn’t go away. “Hold me, Ty,” she said quietly.

He drew her close to his wet body, a layer of sodden clothes between her skin and his. She burrowed closer, and a soft groan rumbled deep in his throat, his hands smoothing over her back and then cupping her butt. Her thigh grazed over a huge bulge straining his fly. So, he wasn’t immune to her after all. She wrapped her arms around his hips, her cheek pressed to his drenched shirt as she greedily absorbed his body heat.

As they stood there, clinging to each other in the shower, each for maybe very different reasons, something let go in Ty. The crook of his index finger nestled under her chin, lifting her head. She saw only his parted lips as he bent his head to kiss her.

A shock of pure pleasure shot through her when their mouths touched—and surprise. Kissing Ty Armstrong was far more powerful than she’d ever imagined.

Desire scorched through her as his fingers tangled in her hair. Water thrummed against her upturned face and the back of Ty’s head, streaming past their locked mouths. Ty slid his hand up her rib cage to cup her breast.

His rough thumb tracked back and forth over the center of her breast, and she felt the answering heat down below. The kiss turned forceful and hot, a sexy, reckless mix of growing need on her part and fading restraint on his.

Tyler Armstrong felt right in a world that felt so wrong. Period. Did she really need a better reason to make love?

She reached for his belt buckle. But he took over, throwing off his clothes with amazing speed and kicking the sodden mess out of the way. Vaguely, she wondered how they were going to make it to dinner—or even breakfast—dressed in soaking wet clothes, but she took the practical side of her and quashed it. Nothing she’d done so far since checking into this hotel had been anything close to practical.

As serious as a commando preparing to head out for a mission, he squeezed liquid soap into his hands and just as thoroughly proceeded to spread that lather over her naked body. She wasn’t as cautious. With a palm full of soap, she closed her hand around his swollen member and stroked. His breath hissed in, and his body went rigid. Then he found her mouth again, kissing her hard as she stroked him. Once, twice he pushed into her hand. Then, with what seemed like a tremendous effort, he took her by the wrist and guided her away. An instant later, his soapy hand slid between her thighs. And those fingers knew exactly where to go.

Convulsively, she grabbed his wrist, her hips jerking; but not because she wanted to stop him.

She didn’t want that hand to leave.

Ty responded with a throaty rumble of satisfaction, and she glimpsed his treasure hunter’s grin before he brought his mouth down to kiss her. But her attention was diverted far lower, where he slipped one of his fingers, thick and hot, inside her. Her inner walls contracted, squeezing him. Immediately, he withdrew his hand; he sensed how close she was, how close they both were.

He scooped her into his arms. Water battered them, hissing and spraying. Shutting off the water with his shoulder, he walked quickly to the bed and laid her on the cool sheets. That’s when she discovered she was no longer shivering.

He lay down next to her, kissing her neck as his hand tracked south. “Banzai,” he whispered in her ear.

“Bree,” she murmured back.

He lifted his head.

“Bree,” she explained breathlessly. “That’s my real name. Call me Bree.”

“Bree…” He kissed her throat. “Mmm. A feminine name. Delicate...”

“And nothing like me, right?”

“No.” His eyes were dark as he stroked her wet hair off her forehead. “Everything like you, sweetheart.”

His warm hand smoothed up her ribs to her breast. She gave in to the pleasure of his caress, her eyes half closed. Smiling, she sighed. “You really know how to make a pilot feel like a woman. It’s that playboy thing, huh?”

He groaned against her neck. “Playboy? That, Banzai, is an example of fabrication by a bored press corps. The only thing that makes me a target is my father’s position as supreme military commander. Where would I find the time for that kind of socializing, even if it were true?”

Bree lifted her leg over his hip and rubbed the back of his leg with her toes. “I like that you’re not a playboy. Though it does take away some of your mystique.”

He gave a muffled bark of laughter.

“And since we’re busting first impressions, I’m not the kind of girl who sleeps around.”

“I knew that, Banzai,” he replied low in her ear, slipping his hand between her legs to caress her.

“So, if you’re not a playboy...and I’m not a loose woman, then what are we doing in bed?”

He rose up on his knees. “You’ll see...” His voice held such carnal promise, such honest desire, that her breath caught and her toes curled.

She waited impatiently for the thrust that would carry him deep inside her. It didn’t come.

Instead, Ty pushed up on his arms and gazed down at her, his face shadowed. She went still with the raw intensity in his gaze. When she’d made eye contact with him at the dinner with Kyber, and when he refused her pleas for help in finding Cam, she’d thought there was more to his hunger than the greed of a treasure hunter or the appraising study of a collector, but she wasn’t sure. Now she was certain. What she saw was passion, pure and frank, radiating from the heart of a man who had real feelings for her as a person. As a woman. All of a sudden, she found it very hard to breathe.

Ty cupped her face in his hand, his eyes dark, his voice quiet. “I used to say that my job was too dangerous for me to get too involved with a woman. It served me well as an excuse. But the truth of it, Bree, is that I could never shake the feeling I was destined for something big...something different and wonderful.” He slid one arm under the small of her back, lifting her hips. “I think I’ve been waiting for you.”

In one firm push, he thrust all the way home.

Her fingers grasped his wet hair as he seated himself deeply inside her. Before she could decide whether to moan or sigh, his mouth found hers. Her eyes closed and her lips opened under the soft, warm pressure. As he moved inside her intimately, his tongue lovingly stroked hers, setting up two disparate erotic sensations.

She couldn’t remember anyone making love to her and it feeling like this. It was more than a matter of skill; it was the tender awe he brought to the act. She willed her body to remember it all, in case life intervened and they never got another chance to repeat this.

“I’ve wanted you since I was ten,” he whispered in her ear, bringing her thigh over his back.

“Since you were ten?” Her question sounded more like a gasp, but Ty was moving inside her even as he’d spoke. And the way he moved...well, what woman wouldn’t lose her verbal skills?

“In a different way than this, I promise you.” There was a hitch in his voice with every determined push of his hips. “I saw your biography in a war textbook. Then I found a photo on the Interweb—you, posed in front of your F-16 fighter. At Kunsan Air Base.”

“You know about Kunsan?” she asked breathlessly. “About theF-16?”

His broad hand cupped her buttocks and he lifted her toward him, deepening their contact. It was all she could do to keep her eyes from rolling back in her head.

“I know about it all.” Arousal had thickened his voice, making it deeper, sexier. “Your picture remained in a place of honor for all the years I lived at home. I went to Harvard and then to medical school for a year. When the war started, I joined up. But I never forgot you.”

It was the most amazing story. It made her feel even more displaced in time, but for once she didn’t mind. She reached up and rubbed her thumb over the outline of his lips. The bristles of his beard pricked the pad of her finger. “Why?” she dared ask.

“Why didn’t I forget you?” His mouth spread in a smile. “You’re beautiful. And you can kick ass.”

She grinned back at him. “Is that it?”

With a bark of laughter, he rolled her atop him. Balancing herself with hands flat on his stomach, she pressed her pelvis down, taking him inside her, as deep as he could go. Her inner muscles clamped down around him.

He made a deep growl in his throat, arching his body upward, his fingers sinking into her hips, grinding her against him. “But in person, you’re much, much more,” he said on a gasp of pleasure.

Bree trembled, but not from the cold. Her decision to go to bed with Ty and somehow remain unaffected had been shattered. But he wasn’t having sex with her; he was making love to her. She knew enough of the former to recognize the latter.

“I never forgot you…”

And she had never known him. But she’d been dreaming of someone like him, only that dream-lover had never taken on form until now.

“I’ve wanted you since I was ten…”

With a sudden swell of emotion, she lowered her upper body, winding her arms over his shoulders to hold him close. They undulated as one, his damp beard pressed to her cheek, her lips pressed to his jaw.

“You’re beautiful...”

Warmth pooled in her belly, deep and low. She threw her head back and moaned. “Ah, Ty...”

His strong body arched between her thighs. He seemed barely in control, and when she breathed his name, he gave a short, strained hiss that told her his willpower was on the brink of splintering. Grasping her hips, he flipped her again, onto her back this time, and pressed her into the sheets. His kiss was greedy; he demanded everything she had, even what she held in reserve, both physical and emotional.

There was no talking now. Only the expression of physical need. The sensation low in her belly intensified, turning liquid. Her breaths came faster, and a low moan began deep in her throat. The pleasure reached a heart-stopping peak...and hovered there.

At the very moment that she came apart, he slanted his mouth over hers, stealing her cry as his thrusting hips bore her down into the sheets. His entire body went rigid for one...two heartbeats. He shuddered, arching his back, and then his body went slack. But they continued to rock together, slowly, until their fatigue grew so overpowering that it swamped them both.

They collapsed like two dead people. Bree felt so lightheaded, so weak, that she wondered if in fact she was about to die. Not a bad way to go, she reasoned, dazedly running her fingers up and down Ty’s damp back.

Ty lowered the lights. “Don’t shut them off all the way,” she said sheepishly.

“Why? Are you afraid of the dark?” he teased.

She didn’t say anything as she pulled the sheet over their legs.

Leaning on his elbow, he propped his head on his hand and scrutinized her. “Incredible. You are. My kick-ass girl is—”

She shoved him. “Shut up.” She rolled onto her back. He was still watching her. Groaning, she flopped onto her side. “I don’t like it. Being in the dark.”

“The past few days that’s all we’ve been doing, running around in the dark. You should have said something.”

She sniffed. “The mission came first.”

He shook his head in amazement.

“So I dealt with it, okay?” Her eyes were adjusting to the dim light in the room. Details were coming into view. It was darker than she liked, but in Ty’s company she hoped it wouldn’t matter. “It’s...left over from something that happened to me when I was a kid. I’ll tell you about it, but not now. Not tonight.”

He drew her close. In his arms, the darkness wasn’t so bad. “We all have something,” he reasoned.

“What do you have?”

“You.”

She lifted her head and smiled down at him in disbelief. “Me.”

“Yeah. You.”

“Good or bad?”

“Good,” he assured her. “It’s very good. But complicated.”

“Hmm.” She could only imagine. One of the world’s most eligible bachelors secretly infatuated with a woman who existed in legend only, and then getting thrown in jail for finding her in the flesh.

“Hold me tight,” she whispered. And he did.

In the dimness, they cuddled. A good sign, that. Despite what he’d revealed about his feelings, they hardly knew each other; the whole “after” business could have been awkward, but there was none of that.

Ty’s fingertips wandered over the contours of her back. “In the heat of the moment, I didn’t ask if you had protection,” he said.

“You mean birth control.”

“Yes, that. I assumed...I mean, I’m used to—”

“Don’t worry about it.” But she liked that he’d asked. That he cared. “They gave me something at the palace, along with all the other meds. It’s supposed to work for six months. They said in my condition, getting pregnant wouldn’t be a good idea. I didn’t pay much attention to the whole explanation, really, because I didn’t think I’d be doing anything with anyone that would warrant me worrying about it.”

“So, you and Kyber didn’t…”

She could tell by his pained expression and the way he braced himself that he really believed she’d slept with Kyber. “No,” she said. “There was never anything between us like that.” She left out the rest. She owed Kyber that.

Ty seemed inordinately relieved. Smiling, she wound her arms around his neck and angled her mouth over his. His lips were warm, his mouth moist and hot as his tongue slipped firmly between her lips. The kiss was long, slow, and tender.

“Are you warm enough now?” he murmured when she pulled away.

“Yeah. It almost makes me want to get cold again, just so you can warm me up.”

She felt the rumble of laughter in his chest. “They say that man can’t live on sex alone. After tonight, I’m not sure. I haven’t thought about food in an hour. But if memory returns, I may have to resort to cannibalism, Banzai.” He bit her neck, pretending to devour her.

They laughed, kissing. Then he pushed off the bed. “One last thing,” he said, disappearing into the bathroom then returning a moment later. “I threw the clothes onto the DM rack along with the towels. They’ll be ready in the morning.”

“DM rack?”

“De-moisturizing rack,” he explained. “It’ll dry the clothes in about a minute.”

“Wow. A super high-tech clothes dryer. Too bad we don’t have a food maker, too.” Her grin faded as he laid his pistol between their pillows, easily reached by both of them, and climbed back into bed.

“Get some rest, Bree.” He tugged the blanket higher. “Don’t get too comfortable, though. We’re not in the UCE yet.”

“Yet?” She came up on her elbow. “‘Now that you have won your liberty, Banzai Maguire, you must win freedom for us all.’ You heard it, Tyler. You were there. This person, or group, whatever it is, is using me as inspiration to overthrow your government. And you think I’ll be safe in the UCE?”

“I do.”

“Argh.”

“Do you think you’ll be safe here?” he asked. “Do you think Kyber will allow you to saunter into that cave and just look under rocks for Cameron Tucker? After you escaped him? He’ll have his entire army waiting for you— if they’re not already camped outside this door.”

“That’s a comforting thought.”

“It’s reality, Bree.”

Pride kept her from admitting that Ty was right. She was no freer outside the palace than she’d been within its luxurious walls. Prince Kyber, acting Han emperor, still controlled her—and everyone else within the borders of his kingdom. Everyone but the people who called themselves the shadows.

Battles changed minute to minute—often second to second. She had to learn to be as adaptable on the ground as she was in the air, especially if she wanted to achieve her goal of ultimately finding out the fate of her friend. To do that, she had to shift her focus from risking all to reach the cave to doing whatever it took to make the meeting with the shadows in the morning.

Ty pulled her into his arms and kissed her to cut off any protests. Stroking her hair, he held her close. The feel of his strong, warm body was something she didn’t want to argue. “I’11 make sure you get to the rendezvous point,” he murmured into her hair.

A peace offering, she thought; he wouldn’t be biased and pig-headed about the rendezvous, at least. What happened after that, heaven only knew. “Eighth radius,” she murmured wearily. “At nine.”

She closed her eyes, trying not to dwell on the mysterious person summoning her, the driver who died before her eyes, and the terrifying dash across town to the Celadon Inn in the cold. But the images haunted her—and would, she knew, for a long time to come. She liked combat a lot more from behind the controls of an F-16.

Slowly, her mind shut down. As her energy dwindled to nothing, the deepest of sleep claimed her.

 

* * *

 

Bree started into heart-thumping alertness. No sound had jarred her awake; rather it was awareness that something had changed, the way a shift in the wind direction sometimes woke her when she slept with the windows open. Ty’s slow breaths rustled her still-damp hair. So tired... But the feeling of change wouldn’t let her close her eyes. Maybe a storm was brewing. She hoped not. Bad weather would present yet another obstacle to making the rendezvous on time.

Too weary to get out of bed, Bree peered out the window. Tall buildings blocked the sky. Then, in her peripheral vision, she glimpsed movement. To the right. Inside the room.

Something dropped silently from the ceiling and crouched down in the shadows pooling at the far wall.

Her blood ran cold. Danger, her senses cried.

Bree shoved Ty’s arm from around her waist, pushing him away. Her fingers landed on the pistol, and she swung it around to intimidate whoever had invaded the room. But a flash of light burst from the direction of the intruder. Something thumped into the mattress. A hole of scorched cotton marred the spot where Ty’s body had been seconds before.

“I owe you for that,” Ty said with wild-eyed awe. He obviously had been awakened by her shove. “Now—get down!” Snatching the pistol from her hand, he lunged off the bed on one side, and she on the other.

Ty had disarmed her, Bree thought, outraged. Now, how was she supposed to help fight?

The attacker raised his weapon to fire at Ty’s head. Bree grabbed a pillow, flinging it across the room before his silencer-equipped gun flashed again. If she didn’t have bullets, she had bedding. As she’d hoped, the man’s shot went wild. But not wild enough. Ty stumbled backward with a grunt of surprise and pain.

Ty! His name—a silent plea—pushed its way up her throat. Then he proved himself unneedful of fear, deftly shooting the weapon out of their assailant’s hand.

“Lights!” Ty shouted. Illumination revealed a man wearing a mask fleeing, hoisting himself up a rope dangling from an air vent in the ceiling.

Instantly, Bree knew this was no ordinary intruder. He had “paid assassin” written all over his muscular, black-clad body. Someone must want them dead pretty badly if they’d hired a professional to do it.