Chapter 5
“Now?”
Fairchild stared hard at Lennox, who was still standing at the end of the table, her body outlined by the glow of the holoscreen behind her.
Surely the woman couldn’t be suggesting what she seemed to be suggesting.
Yet when Fairchild looked into her dimly lit face, she saw no hint of irony. None at all.
Fairchild glanced at Barnes. The colonel nodded his scarred head.
“You’re a killer,” he said. “A damn good one. Nobody here doubts that. But this mission requires a different skill set.”
“A skill set I’m not convinced you possess,” Lennox interrupted. “This isn’t just about spreading your legs and taking it, Fairchild. You have to make it look believable, like you’re actually enjoying it. I’m giving you one chance, right here, right now, to convince me you can do that.”
The briefing room suddenly felt like a sauna.
Sweat was breaking out along Fairchild’s hairline and deep within all the warm crevices of her body.
She was acutely aware of the three Mercs standing behind her, their presences hulking and supremely masculine.
Normally, she wouldn’t feel the least bit intimidated by that.
She’d gone toe-to-toe with male fighters on battlefields all across the galaxy.
She had no fear of suffering death or pain at the hands of such men.
But pleasure? That was a different matter. If she wanted this mission, it wouldn’t be enough to simply let these men share her and use her. She would have to let them dominate her as well.
And she would have to let Lennox watch.
Fairchild was about to tell the bitch to go fuck herself, but then, all of a sudden, she thought about Dane.
She thought about the look in his eyes just before the geothermal facility had gone up in flames.
She thought about Bryce too, fighting on in spite of his wounds, fighting until the bitter end.
She thought about Rook, face-down in a pool of half-frozen blood, her back riddled with bullets.
And then she thought about the man responsible for that carnage. She saw Slayn’s face, tanned and sneering. She saw her fingers around his throat.
“Fuck it,” she said. “I’ll do it.”
Lennox nodded, and Col. Barnes dropped his eyes to the floor, clearly unhappy about the situation. He swiped at the holoscreen again, and the image disappeared, revealing a two-way mirror on the wall behind it.
“We’ll be, uh, monitoring you from the other side,” he said. “That will give you at least some semblance of privacy.”
“Which is more than you’ll get at Calyxia,” Lennox added. “Oh, and gentlemen? Please try not to finish inside her. We don’t want our primary asset getting knocked up before the mission even begins.”
Fairchild bit back a flurry of choice words. She waited for Barnes and Lennox to exit the room before turning to face the three Mercs who were about to share her.
Her eyes fell first on her old friend, Corbyn Reece.
God, how many cycles had it been since they’d seen each other last?
He’d been like a big brother to her during their training, and after he’d graduated she’d watched his name steadily rise through the kill lists.
Rumor had it he’d racked up an equally impressive body count in bed.
He looked older now, touches of silver about his temples, a dusting of gray in the stubble lining his chin. And scars. Lots of scars. Yet underneath it all was that same boyish charm she remembered from the old days.
And now they were going to—
Fairchild banished that thought and turned her attention to the second man.
Nash. The talker. He was obviously the youngest of the group, and Fairchild guessed he was probably even younger than herself.
His arms were sleeved with street tats, suggesting a gang affiliation before joining the Mercs.
The smirk suggested he was a prick. Fairchild would make it a point to put him in his place once the mission was over.
As for the third man, Dutton, he was harder to read.
Beneath the brim of his weathered cap, his face was covered by a dense beard, and it had a quiet stillness usually reserved for statues.
Yet there was a fire behind those blue eyes that suggested a bomb ready to go off at a moment’s notice.
It sent a chilly shiver racing up Fairchild’s spine.
You had to be careful with the quiet ones. They were always the most dangerous.
Fairchild folded her arms and stared the men down, affecting an air of confidence she didn’t truly feel. When she spoke, it took every ounce of will to keep her voice from shaking.
“Well,” she said. “What are you waiting for?”
The words were tough and taunting, yet the emotion behind them was anything but. She felt helpless, vulnerable, desperately outnumbered.
Reece stepped forward until his body was mere inches from her own, and she could feel the heat emanating from his massive form.
God, had he always been this tall? He stared down at her for a long moment, looking deep into her eyes.
When he finally spoke, his voice was pitched low, so only she could hear.
“You understand what we have to do,” he said. “We can’t hold anything back.”
Fairchild answered with a short nod.
“Are you sure you really want this?” he asked.
“I want revenge.”
Reece studied her face for a moment, as if searching for any sign of weakness in her resolve.
Then he gave a little nod of his own, and his expression shifted subtly.
It was only a slight rearrangement of the muscles around his eyes, but it made all the difference in the world.
The good-natured friend was gone, and in his place stood a predator, hungry and mean.
“Men,” he said, “I think we’ve got ourselves a live one here. I think it’s gonna take all three of us to give this little nympho what she needs.”
The other two Mercs stepped into position beside her, surrounding her with three of the biggest, hardest bodies she had ever encountered. She wasn’t used to being hemmed in like this, and it took a conscious effort to keep from fighting them.
“Sexy little thing,” the one called Nash said beside her. “Gonna enjoy giving her what she needs.”
Before Fairchild had a chance to turn and glare at him, Reece seized her and dragged her against his body, claiming her mouth in a dominating kiss.
Fairchild tensed. This man was her friend, not her lover. Hell, she’d practically viewed him as a brother back during their training days. What he was doing to her now felt so dirty, so wrong. But she reminded herself that Lennox was watching, and they were supposed to be putting on a show.
She willed her muscles to relax, and parted her lips, letting him inside. His tongue slid against her own, hungry and wet. His arousal pressed against her through the front of his pants, long and rigid and hot.
That part, at least, was not an act.
Neither was the sudden stiffness in her nipples, nor the wet warmth forming down between her legs. Those things were beyond her control.
Reece released her with a growl and spun her a hundred and twenty degrees, bringing her face to face with Nash and his handsome, infuriating smirk. She wanted to throat-punch him, knee him in the groin, bite.
She kissed him instead, every bit as hard and deep as she had just kissed Reece. His lips were wet and slippery against her own, and his tongue knew exactly what it was doing. It was a kiss she felt all the way down between her legs, and it pissed her off just how good it was—how good he was.
She leaned into the emotion, letting fury fuel her performance.
“A live one indeed,” Nash said when his lips finally separated from hers. “She tastes even better than she looks.”
Before she could claw his eyes out, he spun her again, and she was facing Dutton.
The quiet one. Quiet, but apparently not shy.
His powerful arms gathered her against him, and he kissed her the hardest of all, rumbling as he did it, a penetratingly low sound that Fairchild could feel vibrating deep down inside her core.
“Let’s get her out of those clothes,” Reece’s voice said from behind.
The Mercs continued to spin her and kiss her as they slowly stripped her bare.
Her cap was the first to go, plucked from her head and discarded carelessly onto the table beside them.
The band holding her ponytail was next, and strong fingers shook free her hair, which was already damp with perspiration.
After that, her top came off over her head.
Fairchild didn’t have a bra on underneath, and her erect nipples tingled as they touched the open air.
She knew her breasts were probably smaller than what the Mercs were used to, but they didn’t seem to mind.
Dutton fondled the left one with his huge, callused paw while Nash dipped his face to her chest and suckled the right.
Fairchild gasped, a breathy feminine sound that was totally unlike her.
Reece was behind her, crotch pressed to her butt, hands wrapped around her front. His fingers unbuckled her belt as skillfully as if they had been her own. They worked the button of her shorts, then the zipper. He kissed his way down her bare back as he dragged the shorts down her trembling thighs.
Fairchild moaned, an involuntary sound that brought a rush of heat into her face.
Behind her, Reece stood up, and she could feel that his own pants were halfway down as well. The compression shorts he was wearing beneath did a poor job of holding down his erection. It prodded against her ass.
Big was the thought that streaked across her mind. Too big.
In front of her, Nash released her nipple and stitched a trail of kisses down her front. Then he knelt in front of her and pressed his face between her legs, licking her through the moist fabric of her panties. Her clitoris throbbed like a miniature heart.
“Oh God,” Fairchild murmured. “Oh my God.”
Reece pressed his lips to her ear, and when he spoke, his breath lifted goosebumps all over her body.