Chapter 22 #2
“We tried so hard to find where Theia put you. Looked through prisoner records, deployments, intel, anything for even a trace, and we came up with nothing for weeks. Finally, we got an encrypted message from someone at HQ telling us you were in New York. Delilah practically had to handcuff me to keep me from getting on a copter and going back. Instead, she found another way to distract me.” She sighs and crosses her arms over her chest. This part of her story frustrates her and I smile.
I would’ve felt the same. “Which brings me to why I’m here. ”
“Right, with the rebels.” The distaste creeps into my voice, but I can’t help it. They killed Faith, maimed Mason, hurt Cassie, and have tried to kill me twice.
“I know you think this is a betrayal, but I assure you it is not.”
“I don’t think I have yet earned the right to take the moral high road on deception,” I reply.
“Oh, right. Like when you charmed me at a masquerade ball and got me so worked up I nearly debauched myself in front of the entire ballroom?” She grins at the blush heating my cheeks. “Glad I can still create that classic Taylor blush.”
I clear my throat. “Lucy, how are we both here? It’s been months and suddenly…we’re in this place at the same time?”
“By complete accident. It took us a while, but we tracked down the person who shot you and Mason in Michigan. As you suspected, she is in the rebel group. She’s actually their leader. We didn’t know much about her, and I got the okay from Delilah to come down here and find her.”
A small smile creeps on my face. Lucy out here doing recon by herself, as I used to do. Using skills I taught her and her own excellent intuition. I’m proud, but I don’t want to sound patronizing, so I ask, “And you did, presumably?”
“I captured Captain Finley and demanded to see who she answered to.” I full-on smile and Lucy laughs at me. “I knew you wouldn’t like her. The minute we met I thought, ‘Taylor would hate this person so much.’”
“She talks a lot,” I reply, frowning. “And she is arrogant.”
“True. She’s not that bad, though.” Unimpressed, I cross my arms and gesture for her to continue. “Met the leader, Roxana, a couple days ago in exchange for bringing Captain Finley back.”
I raise an eyebrow. “And they just so happened to attack the UR train we were in?”
“I had no idea they were going to attack a train,” Lucy replies, exasperated. “I had not been made privy to their plans. Fin radioed while I was talking to Roxana and described you…accurately.”
“What does that mean?”
“She said, ‘Ran into Greens. One is a hot blonde, wicked sharpshooter, and a real asshole. Made me think about switching sides.’ I knew immediately. They don’t normally take prisoners, but I explained who you were and that you’d have valuable information.
Information you’d only agree to share if they also saved your fellow soldiers. ”
I’m extremely impressed with her and it almost eclipses my hatred for these people. “That is not an accurate description of me.”
“It really is, though.”
Perhaps it’s because I took a blow to the head and got rocked in that train explosion, but I am still struggling to understand how we ended up together.
It seems too good to be true. Another trick of Theia’s to lure me into treason.
“You walked into their compound with one of their soldiers in your custody, and now you are walking out with one of their prisoners? How did you manage that?”
“I told you I can be very persuasive,” Lucy remarks with a grin. “We got caught in a skirmish on our way here and I saved Fin’s life. She’s a good soldier, but she didn’t train with the best. It won me her favor and, in turn, at least an audience with their leader.”
“So, you and I ending up at the same place at the same time is actually a coincidence.”
Lucy steps toward me and her posture relaxes. Her shoulders slump, her lungs expel a long breath. She softens, becoming more like the Lucy I remember. My Lucy. “Wouldn’t say coincidence. This is more like fate.”
I wrap my arms around her waist and hold her lightly. “Yeah, it is.”
“And…maybe this is selfish of me, but I don’t care about the how.
The only thing I care about is that you are alive and right here and I could be touching you, but, for some very stupid reason, I’m not.
” She cups my chin to lift my gaze and her eyes, brown and green like the very essence of autumn, soften and sparkle at me.
Her thumb traces the scar over my eye and down my face. “Let’s talk more in the morning.”
“Okay.”
Leaning into her, every anxiety melts, and I let relief flood my veins.
She’s not dead. She’s here, she’s with me, and she is safe.
She is alive. I place my ear on her chest near her heart to hear its rapid thump again.
Her arms circle my back. It stings, but I wouldn’t trade that pain for anything.
When I look up, her glistening eyes shed a few tears.
With the pads of my thumbs I wipe away the teardrops on her cheeks.
The lump in my throat grows as Lucy runs her fingers through my hair, and I close my eyes at the touch.
Words fail gracelessly for me. I rely on my other senses—the touch of her skin beneath my fingertips, the smell of the outdoors in her hair, the sound of her breath growing shallow.
We kiss and the world explodes into embers.
It falls on us, through us, around us. Her lips move against mine, slow and heavy.
Outside of that blip in our cabin in the Northwest, I’ve never surrendered to my passions before.
Brought up on “no compromise, no surrender,” passions were not considered.
However, at current, an apocalyptically large asteroid heading straight for this trailer couldn’t stop me from surrendering.
By some instinct I was unaware I possessed, I sit on the table and lock her between my knees.
One hand on the table and the other firmly in my hair, she kisses me breathless.
I have never known want or desire like this before.
I want to consume her, or to be consumed, like the sun at the end of time.
Leave nothing behind but energy and space.
It isn’t long before I’m light-headed. I break from her to inhale air.
If it wouldn’t kill me, I’d spend eternity within her breath.
Instead of stopping, she continues kissing me, but on my cheeks and down my neck.
My hands white-knuckle the table so hard I’m surprised it doesn’t snap within my grip.
“We should go to bed,” I finally breathe out. She smiles against the sensitive skin beneath my ear.
“Is that so, Lieutenant General?” Her words are practically purred on my neck. She is not playing fair.
“Must you make everything sound like a scandal?”
“This is a scandal, babe. I’m supposed to be dead, and you’re a lieutenant desperately trying to get into the pants of the enemy.”
I gape at her. “I am not.”
“Aren’t you, though? I definitely am.” The insinuation, the smugness, makes me indignant.
She places a chaste kiss on my lips, and when we part, pure affection stares back at me.
“Would you like to go to bed? I can mean that in both the scandalous way and in the literal way. I’m flexible.
And I mean that in the scandalous and literal way as well. ”
“Lucy.”
“I’m serious.” She smiles at me and it’s gentler this time. “I’ve been thinking about this for a long time.”
“Not as long as I have,” I correct with a grin.
“Oh, right. I forgot about that time you were my stalker.”
“For the last time, I was not your stalker.” Despite my best efforts, my objection falls flat. “I was doing my job.”
“Uh-huh, sure thing.”
I roll my eyes. “You are impossible.”
“Oh, babe, I am fully possible if you want me to be.”
“I do. I do want…I want you.”
In looking up, I silently beg her to have mercy on me.
I’ve never been good at translating my feelings and these are too insurmountable for me to communicate.
But she knows. Lucy cradles my face with both hands and pulls me in for another kiss.
It’s different than before. It’s hungrier, more urgent.
I can barely breathe, only getting a lungful of air when she shucks off her shirt.
Without missing a beat, she kisses me again, bodily shoving me toward what I assume, and hope, is her bedroom.
Once we enter the bedroom, I’m overcome with an angsty, primal feeling beginning deep in my stomach and pulsing through my veins.
Possession is like an itch I can’t scratch.
No matter how close I get, how much of her body I touch, it’ll never convey the magnitude to which this person belongs to me.
I pin her against the door and tangle my fingers in her wonderfully soft, red hair.
“Finally,” she moans between crushing, soul-lifting kisses. “Fuck. Finally.”
We part and I stare into her wild eyes. “Are you sure?”
She laughs breathlessly at my expense. “Yeah, I’m sure. Are you?”
“Very sure. I have never wanted anyone else.”
Lucy smiles softly. “That can’t possibly be true.”
“Lucy, I have only ever felt desire with you. My heart, my body, my soul—if such a thing exists—wants you and only you.”
Lucy’s eyes go dark, her chest panting. The sensation it stirs in me is unholy. “Get on the bed.”
I raise a single eyebrow at her, feeling daring and bold. She must be rubbing off on me, figuratively and literally. “Make me.”