Chapter 18
Chapter Eighteen
Four hours later…
Rhett
Issues…
The SUV is only a few paces away. Old, battered, the kind of vehicle that won’t look out of place in the non-dynamic slums.
“We need to get them both out without detection,” Woodrow had said back in Lucian’s office.
“Not a problem,” Lucian had replied. “You think this is the first time I’ve smuggled people in and out of this building?”
And bodies. Sometimes in his line of business, you needed to move bodies.
Points to Woodrow, he took it all in his stride, along with my ‘issue’ and unwavering determination to overcome it. But now it’s time for action, and my ‘issue’ is doing what it does best. Incapacitating me.
The memory of my last failed attempt rears up, monstrous and full of judgment.
Fuck, why is this so hard? I can see the open door. The problem is that getting in will lead me into daylight, real daylight, not the filtered stuff that comes through the windows of my apartment.
Sky, so much sky, too heavy, endless, and beyond the sky, space.
I start hyperventilating.
“Rhett, you don’t have to—”
“I’ve got this,” I cut Larissa off. She means well, but shit, this is hard enough. For fuck’s sake, Rhett, get a grip.
Two other SUVs are waiting, one ahead and one behind. Zeb is standing at the open door of the one I need to get into, pointedly not looking at me, relaxed like we have all fucking day, which we clearly don’t.
The instant my boot hits the concrete, panic slams into me. My chest locks up like it’s been clamped in a vise. Sweat trickles down my spine, and my vision starts warping.
“Rhett!” Larissa’s voice is high and anxious.
Words are beyond me. My pulse is jackhammering against the base of my skull.
It’s just walking. I walk all the fucking time.
I stumble in the direction of the SUV and pitch into the seat. The door slams shut.
Sweet relief. I’m inside. No sky beating down. Larissa is kneeling on the backseat next to me, her hands on my cheeks, her anxious face looking at mine.
“Good to go?” Zeb asks from the front passenger seat.
“Yes,” I croak out.
The SUV rumbles ahead, peeling out of the shadowy alley and into the road.
My tension skyrockets, and everything starts spinning. The sky presses down even inside the SUV, smothering me. I’m seconds from blacking out.
Then Larissa crawls across the seat and straddles me, her warmth pressing into me, her scent penetrating my lungs.
I blink, focusing on her pretty face, hating the worry in her eyes.
The panic shudders, caught between fear and something hotter, sharper.
Lust slams into me. It slices through the panic and grips me.
My heart is doing some crazy shit. My fingers sink into her hair, angling her head just right, and I drag her lips down to meet mine.
Her sweet, eager purr vibrates against my lips. Then she nips my bottom lip hard enough to make it sting.
Hell yeah. My dick strains against my zipper.
Someone mutters a rough curse in the front of the SUV.
Fuck them. Don’t care.
Her hand cups me hard through my jeans, and she drags her nails down my length. Panic and arousal collide, a violent storm in my chest. The sky still presses at the edges of my mind, but she bites my throat and the fear cracks, replaced by fire.
“I’m here, Rhett. Whatever you need,” she breathes against my throat.
Her hips rock as she grinds her pussy over me—my hands are on her ass, driving her closer.
Too much, not nearly enough. I tug the button on her pants undone, then drag her zipper down. My fingers shove past her panties and into slick, wet heat. “Fuck,” I whisper against her temple. “You’re soaking, baby.”
I hope they don’t have monitoring in this fucking SUV.
Voices come over the radio, jumbled with static.
They fade away.
Clothes are shoved aside in a blur. She guides me in, dropping onto my length. Stars explode behind my eyes as her heat swallows me whole.
“God,” she gasps, her small teeth finding my throat.
My head drops back against the headrest and my eyes clamp shut. My hands grasp her hips, bouncing her on my length. Our lips meet and my tongue shoves into her mouth.
Her fate is sealed, tied to mine forever. She’s seen the worst of me and still chooses to stay.
Connection. Beating hearts. Pleasure.
A desperate coupling that drives me toward completion.
She moves with me, rising and falling, her inner walls caressing my cock.
Her fingers are in my hair again, nails scraping over my skull. My knot was already swelling, growing. The pressure is building, the desperate need to lock us together.
“Jesus,” somebody mutters in the front. I couldn’t give a fuck.
“Bite me,” she says, wet lips against my ear before she nips down on the lobe. “Please.”
My knot reaches the point of no return.
Advisable? Definitely not.
Is that going to stop me? Not a chance.
My fingers tighten on her ass, pushing her down, forcing her pussy to yield. My teeth find fresh unclaimed territory on the other side of her throat, breaking the skin again, tasting blood.
She cries out, the sound muffled against my temple, her pussy milking me.
All I hear is our heartbeats as I empty into her with a groan. Mine. I growl against her skin as I pulse cum into her. I grind her deeper, rocking her against me, prolonging the pleasure, claiming every drop as she shakes and spasms around me.
“I hope to fuck you two are done,” Zeb mutters in the front. “We’re here, and we are not going around the block again.”
My chest is still tight, but the edge of panic is banked for now. The respite won’t last. Outside this SUV, a showdown is waiting.
Larissa
I come back to reality with an unpleasant jolt. Mortification arrests me. I’ve just been intimate in the back of an SUV, while Zeb and another soldier, whose name I don’t even know, are sitting right there in the front.
I giggle.
Rhett cuts me a glare that says What the fuck is wrong with you? But then his frown disappears, and he chuckles too.
“As distractions go, baby, that was something else.”
I blush. Despite the awkward situation of our crazy escapade and being knotted, this all feels so natural: a little taste of what life might have been like for us if we had met in the usual omega-controller pairings that happen all the time.
Only I’m not an ordinary omega.
And he is not an ordinary alpha, not even a controller.
To me, he is something far better. Danger awaits us, along with an uncertain future.
So, no, I’m not going to lose sleep over rerouting an important military operation around a city block.
And I don’t even care that my trousers are around my knees and they’re cutting off the circulation to the lower half of my legs, nor that we’ve made a mess.
Not even that the two soldiers in the front are aware of what we did.
His fingers tighten around my waist, but before I can even begin a protest, he’s lifting me off. I hiss, but it’s already done, and a gush of our collective cum saturates the top of my thighs.
He drops me onto the seat beside him. “Are you alright?”
“Yes.” No! I bat his fingers away when he tries to help me.
He chuckles again and shoves himself back into his pants as I wrestle to drag my pants and panties up.
“Affirmative,” Zeb says into his communicator. “We’ve arrived.”
The words—and sudden deceleration as the SUV comes to a stop—slice through the bubble.
“Fuck,” Rhett mutters raggedly, and that fast, I know agoraphobia has taken command.
His bravery astounds me, even as my heart breaks for the circumstances that made him who he is: a hacker, a criminal, working with the government only when it suits him.
I love him.
This fast?
Rhett’s eyes meet mine—he just read my thoughts. The wall he usually maintains between us opens and all I feel is reflected back at me. His hand closes the distance to mine, warm and large, offering comfort.
I know nothing of tomorrow. Nor even of what awaits us today. Only the here and now.
“Ready?” Zeb swings his head to glance back at us.
“Yeah,” Rhett says, his jaw locking. He reaches over to push my hair behind my ear, then pulls my hood forward, shielding my face. “Let’s take this motherfucker down.”
Rhett
The other two SUVs peeled off earlier in the trip, their occupants set to rejoin us later if all goes well. For now, Larissa’s only protection is Zeb, a second soldier, and me, all of us in worn, casual clothes meant to blend in.
The streets outside the window hold a familiar vibe, and memories rise of the time when Lucian was still military and I was just a hacker in a one-room apartment, scratching out a living through illegal means. Whatever it took to survive.
I need to keep it together, focus on the end game where Larrisa is finally free and safe.
I step out, Larissa’s hand in mine. The brief stretch of sidewalk is not as bad this time, or more likely, I’m distracted, though I still break out in a cold sweat before we reach the building that looks like it went through an apocalypse and lost. The front door is busted out glass, and the foyer is littered with broken glass, an overturned couch and litter.
This might not be my safe place, but at least there’s no sky pressing down. Here I’m closed in. Contained.
Able to breathe.
Zeb takes point, leading us through a fire escape door, down two flights of stairs and through a graffitied up, surprisingly high-tech security door, and into a corridor beyond.
It’s like stepping into an alternative world, a warren of concrete corridors with the occasional door or room leading off, where only half the lights work, leaving mostly shadows, crumbling brick, and graffiti tags of various gangs and loyalties.
The tunnels span the whole non-dynamic sector, exits hidden in old buildings across the district. Easy to get lost. Easier still to end up dead if you stumble into the wrong kind. Down here they play by different rules.
Zeb moves with the ease of someone who’s walked this domain before. He probably has. I’ve read some of his files. Zeb Thorne is a black operative, the kind of man the government calls in when they want results and no questions asked.
Ahead, two men meet at a corner. Cash changes hands. One starts to size us up, but a sharp word from Zeb and he drops his gaze to the floor.
Yeah, I wouldn’t fuck with Zeb either.
Zeb pushes a rust-stained door open, leaving his partner on guard outside. Inside, a bare bulb flickers to life, casting shadows across gray concrete and dust. A desk. A jack in the wall.
He tosses me a pack. I pull out a small device and connect it to the port. “I’m in.”
“Good,” Zeb says.
Time to leave a breadcrumb. Subtle enough not to draw speculation of a trap, obvious enough that they don’t miss it.
I feel Larissa’s presence beside me, her awareness centered on me, even as she maintains a distance, letting me work.
“We’ve got interest…” I watch them probe my breadcrumbs. Slow. Careful. Testing the edges.
Then, bam!
“They’ve taken the bait…” I yank the cable out of the wall, drop the device on the concrete floor where I grind it under the heel of my boot. Can’t risk them tracing this back to me.
“That was fast,” Zeb says, tapping his communicator and yanking open the door. “Going mobile,” he says into the comms.