CHAPTER 38
With Brenna asleep in her arms, Grace lay watching the last of the day’s shadows slide across the walls and fade. The sun would soon submerge into the horizon and not come up for air again until tomorrow. Down the hall, she heard mewling. The babies were stirring.
She eased her arm free, pulled her shirt and pants on, then tugged at Brenna’s shirt. Her pants pooled at her ankles, Brenna was lying atop their shed clothing.
“Wha—?”
“Just sit up a minute,” she murmured. “I want to put your shirt back on.”
Brenna sat up, not fully waking.
Grace tugged her turtleneck from beneath her, then slipped it over her head, threading her arms through the sleeves. “Good. Now lie down again. I’m going to go check on the children.” Uncharacteristically oblivious, Brenna nodded and curled up to sleep more.
Let her sleep, Grace thought, enveloping her bare hips with the jacket panels, to warm her. When full darkness fell, she would wake her.
She padded into the nursery. The children, whom they’d left huddled together like a litter of puppies to stay warm, were fidgeting.
They needed to be fed again. She pulled Brenna’s backpack open and rummaged for the bottles.
She couldn’t warm them, but the babies needed the nutrition.
Unscrewing the caps from the first two bottles, she started with Heckle and Jeckle, who were the most restless.
As she sat in the stillness feeding them, she tuned her ears to the streets beyond the apartment. The sporadic bursts of gunfire sounded sharper, more defined than before.
Closer.
But night was rapidly approaching. Maybe darkness would fall before they were discovered. Maybe they’d get the chance to run.
After all the babies drank their formula and were changed, they fell asleep again. She returned to Brenna, her shoes crunching over the shards of jagged concrete spewed across the floor. If she was going to die, let it be in Brenna’s arms.
Looking at her curled on her side on the floor, Grace furrowed her brows. Brenna hadn’t heard her come into the room. That wasn’t normal for her. She was withdrawing into herself, shutting out everything else. Twice today Brenna had walked away from her camera.
Sighing, Grace lay down behind her, spooning the curve of her bare bottom.
Brenna shifted, but didn’t wake. Elbow crooked, Grace propped her head in one hand and studied her, stroking the wisps of dark hair at her temple, marveling at how fine it was.
Silken, and so delicately cut it feathered as she raked her fingers through it.
It was unexpectedly feminine for a woman who dodged gunfire for a living.
She lifted a fingertip to the curve of Brenna’s seashell ear and traced its delicate pattern. How had she missed this? When they first met, she seemed indomitable. Now all she saw was womanly vulnerability. She lowered her mouth and delicately kissed the folds and whorls of her ear.
Brenna moaned in her sleep. The sound was raw, sensual, unguarded. Grace leaned over her, heat rushing between her legs again. Some beguiling chemistry had reorganized the molecules in her body and demanded connection. She couldn’t get enough of this challenging, glorious woman.
Again? Or was it Bren, whispered in her ear?
Brenna was dreaming, curled inside a warm orange glow—the sun, warming her. The sea, rocking her, rising around her, caressing her hips, her belly, her breasts. A breeze whispered in her ear. Delight spread through her, and she chuckled sensuously. Yes. Sweep me away. Take me out to sea with you.
The path was familiar, the touch. Ari had brought her here before, taught her not to fight the tide. Give yourself to it.
“Open,” she heard whispered. She was eased forward, half on her side, half on her belly. Warm hands slid down the back of her thigh, pressing her knee forward to expose her woman’s core.
Oh, she moaned, the sweet friction. She opened herself as much as she could at this awkward angle, more vulnerable than face-to-face.
A hand came down her belly to her abdomen, onto her mound, and lightly straddled the center of her pleasure. Clever fingers circled her clit, slipping along the slick groove of her body, tugging her sensitive nub gently this way and that.
She gasped. This was the conductor, pulling the music tauter and tauter, holding the orchestra on the thin edge of a sustained note. She tightened her pelvic muscles, heightening her satisfaction. Occupy me, darling. Fill me.
She was caught, tormented with small incursions when she wanted to be fully penetrated.
“What are you doing to me,” she mumbled, writhing, lifting her bottom, as she rose through the twilight of sense memory.
Grace balanced her on the brink of orgasm, not taking her over the edge.
Her mouth came down on her ear. “Let me have you,” she said.
The fog lifted. Grace, not Ari. Brenna was wavering like a candle, flickering between past and present.
Grace pressed forward, her knuckles petitioning for admission as gently as small waves lapping to shore.
“Do you want me, Brenna?” The question reached her ear as an entreaty.
Tell me you want me. Please say so. There was no demand in her voice, just a heart laid open, and a touch so tender it took her breath away.
“Yes,” Brenna said. “I want you, Grace.” I want you I want you I want you. She closed her eyes, utterly lost, and let Grace unleash the storm.
Afterwards, as Grace lay in her arms, Brenna charted Grace’s features with her fingertips, studying her with the care of an appraiser evaluating a precious gem.
Grace’s face was lined with exhaustion, defenseless-looking with her eyeglasses set aside.
She traced the cut over her brow, trailed fingers down her cinder-pocked cheek.
This was a woman who bore the weight of years lived and life experienced.
Brenna didn’t mind the mileage. Grace had substance—a beautiful, earned, face sculpted by life.
God, she loved her.
Suddenly, Grace stiffened. “Brenna,” she whispered, putting a finger to her lips, sitting bolt upright.
Brenna heard what Grace had heard—boots scrabbling over grit, hard dry whispers, and chafing gear. Soldiers. In the building.
“They’re here.”
Heart thudding, Brenna stared at the door. Any moment now, shadowy men would surge through the apartment and systematically check the living room, the kitchen, and the nursery.
Her eyes widened in horror.
The children!
Adrenaline surged through her, sweeping the remnants of her fugue in its path. She leapt to her feet.
“Brenna!” Grace hissed.
Pulling her pants up as she went, Brenna raced toward the entrance to meet the Nationalists head-on. She had to draw attention away from the babies—or die before she saw what happened to them. After all she’d already witnessed in Kav?ak, she could be allowed one selfish act.
Grace blurred down the corridor behind her.
“Me!” Brenna cried, sideswiping the corridor walls as she ran into the living room, waving her arms to catch the soldiers’ attention. “Over here!”
Gunfire exploded.
Grace caught up to her.
A second shot ricocheted off the ceiling.
“No!” Grace caught Brenna’s waist and corkscrewed, shielding her with her body.
Brenna fought her with savage fury.
Flashlight bounced off the walls around them.
“Brenna! No! For God’s sakes!”
She dug in with her long legs, countering Grace’s unexpected strength, twisting so she could face the entrance.
She saw the Nationalist in silhouette, rifle butted against his shoulder, muzzle held high. He’d entered the doorway and stopped. Amateur, Brenna scoffed. He stops and blocks the rest of his team. She glanced over his shoulder, confused. No team. He was alone. But—
One floor below, deep male voices barked out orders.
The flashlight slipped. An errant flash illuminated the Nationalist’s face. His dark eyes stared down the barrel at them. Sweat ran down the side of his face. His breath was so ragged the muzzle of his rifle was waving all over the place. No wonder he missed his shots.
She stopped resisting Grace. “You?” She straightened incredulously. “You’re it?”
The soldier was a boy. He couldn’t be fifteen, and he was terrified.
She’d spent the day frightened of this child?
She laughed. Crazily. At herself. At the Soldier-Boy.
At Grace. They were all so bent on survival they’d imagined each other all out of proportion.
They were merely two women and a teenager, tokens in someone else’s game.
Anywhere else on earth, they’d walk past each other without remark.
The boy’s index finger tightened reflexively over the trigger. Her laughter unnerved him. Males with guns wanted respect. “Stoj!” he barked. Stop!
She laughed more. But it was a wild sound, sob-like, the sound of breaking. She sagged in Grace’s grasp. She was splintering. They were going to die at the hands of a child.
Soldier-Boy rushed at her, his face twisted with rage, and buried the muzzle of his rifle beneath her jaw. His body was quaking, warring between impulse and self control.
Grace stiffened. Terrified of making any sudden move, she held Brenna very still.
Brenna lifted her eyes and locked them on Soldier-Boy’s. A great calm came over her. “Pull it,” she said.
Grace tightened her grip around her waist. “Brenna, no.”
“Go on,” she encouraged the boy. “It’s okay. Just squeeze it.”
Grace groaned. “Oh, Jesus, Brenna. No.”
Thump. From the nursery.
Soldier-Boy’s head jerked up. The muzzle waved nervously at Brenna’s neck.
Mr. Fierce. Damaged little boy who’d had enough of adult chaos, was banging his head again.
Soldier-Boy glanced down the hallway, his eyes wide with apprehension. It hadn’t occurred to him there could be others.
“Bebe,” Brenna said, pulling free of Grace to plead for the babies. “Bebe.”
“They’re just—” Grace reached forward to place a quelling hand on the kid’s elbow.
The boy spun, youthful reflexes at their height, and rammed the rifle butt directly into her face.
Brenna saw her nose distort and gush blood.
Grace grunted, staggered backwards, and fell. The back of her head thudded onto the concrete floor.