Chapter 29
Fairchild had noticed something over the past few weeks.
Each of her three teammates was a bit different when it came to their “equipment.” Dutton was the thickest of the three.
His girth always stretched her with a pleasure that bordered on pain.
Reece, on the other hand, was a bit longer.
His tip always tested her depth in ways that made her tingle.
And Nash?
Perhaps it was because he was the youngest of the crew, younger even than Fairchild herself, or maybe it was just something in his genes. Whatever it was, the fact was undeniable.
Nash came the hardest.
Fairchild had learned about that the first day aboard the Allura, when Nash had shot his load clear across the octagon. It probably would have gone even farther if not for the side of the cage.
But now, in the breeding room, it wasn’t a piece of chain-link that caught Nash’s cum.
It was Rook’s face.
The first spurt landed directly in the traitor’s left eye, half blinding her. The second landed in her right, blinding her completely. The third went straight into her mouth, which had gasped open in surprise. It hit the back of her throat, and she started to gag.
Fairchild didn’t bother to see where the rest of it landed. She was already on the move, lunging for Rook’s gun-hand, which had shifted out of alignment with Nash’s head.
The gunshot was painfully loud in the enclosed space. The round sparked off the metal floor.
The next shot might not be so harmless. Fairchild needed to disarm Rook.
Now.
Wrenching the pistol out of her fingers would be nearly impossible. The two women were almost an equal match for strength, and Rook already had a strong grip on the handle of the gun.
But maybe there was another way.
As they both crashed into the wall at the back of the enclosure, Fairchild’s thumb found the magazine release on the side of the gun. She pressed it, and the ammo mag dropped from the bottom of the grip. She kicked it across the room.
That left one in the chamber.
Get rid of it.
Fairchild had gotten her body partway round behind Rook’s. She yanked the woman’s gun hand around toward the far side of the room. Toward where Slayn was standing. Maybe she could—
Rook was blind, but a Merc didn’t need eyes to see.
She knew what Fairchild was doing, and she stopped it, pulling the trigger before the muzzle was pointed at her boss.
The round punched a dent into the steel wall a few inches shy of Slayn’s head.
Close enough he probably heard the bullet whistle past. He bleated in fear and darted for the door.
Shit.
If Slayn got away, it would mean alarms. It would mean guards. It would mean a whole lot of extra problems Fairchild didn’t want to deal with.
She broke away from Rook and started after him, but Rook managed to hook her ankle, and she hit the floor hard. The impact knocked the air from Fairchild’s lungs. She was dazed.
Slayn slapped the button to open the door.
A second later, he was out of the room.
Fairchild had to make a choice. Her blood told her to go after Slayn, but her brain told her freeing her teammates was a better option.
She went with her brain.
One heartbeat got her back on her feet. Another got her to the control panel on the wall. She’d seen the button Slayn had pushed to free her from the examination chair. That meant the other buttons were for the guys. She had just enough time to push one at random before Rook was on her from behind.
From across the room came the sound of latches unlocking. Reece’s slab. He shouted her name as he sprang to his feet.
Rook’s right arm was around Fairchild’s neck. She was trying for a chokehold. Fairchild tucked her chin and pushed off from the wall. They tumbled backward, slamming into the floor. This time, Rook took the brunt of the impact.
“Free the others!” Fairchild shouted. “I’ll handle Rook!”
Something soared through the air above her, naked and huge, all smooth skin and rippling muscle. Reece. Even locked in deadly combat, Fairchild’s body responded to that sight with a surge of arousal.
Focus!
The fall had loosened Rook’s grip on Fairchild’s throat. She flung her head back hard, smacking the back of her skull into Rook’s face. The hold loosened more. Enough for Fairchild to twist and drive her elbow into her opponent’s ribs, one, two, three times.
Rook let go.
Alarms were wailing in the corridor outside. Slayn’s footsteps were lost beneath the sound of other, heavier footsteps. Dozens of guards were headed this way.
As Fairchild rolled away from Rook, she glanced briefly across the room.
Reece was at the control panel, rapidly pressing the remaining buttons.
He freed Dutton first, followed a split second later by Nash.
Whether that ordering was intentional or just blind luck, Fairchild couldn’t say, but it worked in their favor.
Dutton’s slab was positioned nearest the entrance to the room.
As soon as the clamps were off, he bolted up and met the first guard in the doorway, which was too narrow to admit more than one person at a time.
Dutton forced the guard’s rifle up toward the ceiling just as a spray of bullets erupted from the muzzle.
The rounds tore through the overhead lighting, raining sparks and shards of broken glass.
Then Nash was there. In one quick motion, he snatched the rifle out of the guard’s hands. Dutton stepped aside as the younger Merc opened fire into the doorway.
The Mercs had a gun now.
“Fairchild, look out!”
Reece’s warning came just in time. Fairchild turned her head, and Rook’s blade skewered the empty air where her face had been a nanosecond before. Bootknife. Should have known. Fairchild spun once, then crouched in a fighting stance, facing her adversary.
Rook was standing with the blade in her right hand.
Her face was still stained with Nash’s cum, but she had already managed to clear the fluid from her right eye.
Now, with the back of her free hand, she wiped the other side clean as well.
There was blood too, from where Fairchild had butted her.
It drew a red streak from the corner of her mouth.
“I’m going to enjoy gutting you,” she snarled.
Fairchild kept her attention focused on the woman, but she could see Reece out of the corner of her eye, watching.
“Help the others,” she said. “This bitch is mine.”
She could tell he didn’t like it, but he didn’t argue.
It was the right move. Nash was still mowing down guards in the corridor, and Dutton had retrieved a rifle of his own, but they would both be out of ammo soon, and there were still lots of guards left to kill.
They needed Reece’s help more than she did.
Besides, revenge was the whole reason Fairchild had taken this mission in the first place.
At the time, she’d thought that meant killing Slayn—and it still did—but now she had an even bigger target to contend with.
Slayn may have been responsible for killing her teammates, but Rook had betrayed them. And for a Merc, that was even worse.
Reece headed for the door.
The two women started to circle, keeping one of the metal slabs between them as they sized each other up. Rook had several advantages. Clothes, for one thing. A weapon for another. But Fairchild had practice fighting with her clothes off, and her anger was sharp as any blade.
Rook stabbed across the table, a flicker of steel in the half-light. Fairchild dodged out of the way and continued to circle.
A slash. Fairchild ducked beneath the gleaming blade, spun, and came up with a spinning kick. Her leg was just long enough to reach across the width of the slab. Her heel slammed into Rook’s jaw like a hammer.
Fairchild vaulted over the slab, going for the knife, but Rook recovered from the kick and rolled underneath, putting them on opposite sides again.
Rook wiped the blood from her mouth.
“You always did hit hard,” she said.
“And you were always quick,” Fairchild replied. “But you’re slowing down. This life of luxury has made you soft.”
Rook snarled, and attacked, but it was only a feint. A second thrust came an instant later, and this time the edge of the blade nicked Fairchild’s cheek just below her left eye.
Slash. Dodge. Thrust. Block. Feint.
Circle.
“You know,” Rook said, starting to breathe heavy. “When I told Slayn about you, he wanted to try and bring you over to our side. I told him it would never work. You’re too committed to the Guild. And Bryce. And Daddy Dane.”
The mention of her dead teammates sent a surge of energy through Fairchild’s body. Rook must have mistaken it for a lack of focus, because she chose that moment to make her move, pouncing across the table, blade thrusting like a fang.
But Fairchild’s focus was sharper than ever.
She twisted out of the way at the last moment, catching Rook’s arm and swinging her own body up and around to trap the woman’s head between her thighs.
It was the same move she had used against Nash in the octagon, and it worked even better now.
The momentum sent them tumbling onto the next slab over, and Fairchild landed on top, straddling her enemy’s neck and chest. Her bare thighs were slick with sweat, and the last of Dutton’s seed was still leaking out of her, dripping onto her opponent’s skin. She squeezed her legs together hard.
Rook’s face darkened. She tried to stab Fairchild from behind, but Fairchild caught her wrist. That left one hand free to pummel Rook’s face, but she didn’t know if she’d be able to beat her unconscious before she broke free. Already the woman was starting to arch and buck.
“Fairchild!”
It was Reece, shouting from the doorway. He had a rifle in one hand, confiscated from a fallen guard. In the other, he held a pistol. As soon as Fairchild looked in his direction, he pitched the smaller weapon in her direction.
She caught it, jammed the barrel against Rook’s forehead, and fired.
In the Guild, she’d been taught to double-tap her enemies whenever possible. Two rounds to the dome, just to make sure. She gave Rook three for good measure.
One for Bryce. One for Dane.
And one for herself.
Rook’s head came apart like a burst melon, staining Fairchild’s crotch with gore. The woman’s body went limp beneath her. Dead.
Fairchild didn’t waste any time gloating. She dismounted the corpse and rushed to the door where Reece was waiting with a second pistol for her. She took it.
“Good work,” he said.
“Where’s Slayn?”
“Don’t know. Let’s find him.”
* * *
It took all of ten minutes to clear the ship.
Dutton and Nash did the bulk of the killing, cutting down Slayn’s men with their own weapons, looting guns off the dead whenever they ran out of ammo.
Reece and Fairchild performed cleanup duty, finishing off the wounded and murdering the occasional hider.
When it was all over, the four Mercs regrouped on the ship’s bridge.
There was no sign of Slayn.
Nash shoved the bloody remains of the pilot aside and dropped his own perfect ass into the seat. A few taps on the control board brought up a scanner image.
“There,” he said, pointing.
Fairchild saw it. A tiny speck shooting away from the ship at high speed.
“Escape pod,” she said.
Nash started to swing the ship around to give chase, but it was already too late. A second later, the speck disappeared.
Slayn had made the jump to hyperspace.
“Shit!” Nash growled, and he punched the control panel.
Reece placed a bloody hand against Fairchild’s back.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
She stared at the scanner for a moment, her mind churning with frustration. The bastard had been so close, so close, but he’d gotten away. She took a breath, then another, and the frustration started to fade.
“Doesn’t matter,” she said, and she meant it. “All that matters is that you guys are alive.”
Reece chuckled. “Funny,” he said. “I was just thinking the same thing about you.”
Dutton and Nash both nodded in agreement.
They were alive. The whole team was alive.
That was the only thing that mattered. Fairchild embraced each of them in turn, and each of them kissed her hard and deep, letting her know exactly how much she meant to them.
Dutton was the last to kiss her, and when their lips finally separated, he looked her straight in the eye.
“Fairchild,” he said. “About what happened back there—”
She cut him off with a finger to his lips. She knew what he was talking about. He had come inside her—a lot—and she had not been on her birth control.
“It’s alright,” she said.
And it was. Very, very alright.
She took a step back and looked at her three teammates. They were naked and wet, covered in the blood of their enemies. They had never looked better. And they had the whole damn ship to themselves.
“You know what I think?” she said.
Reece lifted a brow. His cock lifted too, as if he already knew what she was about to say.
“I think we’d better finish what we started.”