Chapter Twenty-One
Jax
S oft puffs of breath tickled my chest and a round, warm body was tight against me. I grinned sleepily and cuddled Thanh closer. She’d insisted that she was not a cuddler last night when she’d fallen asleep with space between us. And yet here she was, adorably curled up next to me, her delicate hand on my chest.
Her hair smelled like my shampoo from our shower last night where I’d fucked her against the wall. The only time I was away from her was when I slipped out to get us some fresh food for dinner. Otherwise, we were hiding away in my rooms, and I could pretend that there wasn’t an end point to this.
I shouldn’t have been inside of her, but I just couldn’t stop myself. So I’ll have to deal with the consequences.
Denying the mating bond between us was pointless, I knew that when she’d been injured. I was lost to the need for her in every way, and there was no use in trying to bury that impulse any longer. The Ancestors had never seemed to be on my side for anything in my life, so why should this be any different? Maybe it was because I had no family mark, and the Ancestors weren’t sure who I belonged to. All I knew was that my life had never been easy, but letting her go when the time came would be the hardest thing of all.
Soon, Narrou would wake us and we’d start the day. We weren’t moving anymore and I assumed we’d docked at the market. We’d meet Oontash today and get the other ship. Then, on to Daedalus Five. A few days was all that remained, maybe a week when all was said and done. And then she’d be gone.
But right now, in this tiny pocket of time, I had her in my bed, in my arms. She was real and warm against me. This tiny person that took up all the space in any room she walked into now owned me. It was frightening and wonderful. It felt right in a way nothing had since I had been adopted by Mother, Da and Narrou.
Even that had been missing something though.
I didn’t get the chance to think too hard about all of that because Thanh was stirring. Her fingers dug into my skin, then her mouth skated across my pecs and I took in a sharp breath as my dick stirred in its sheath.
But just as her hand started to drift over my stomach and to the top of my pelvis, Thanh’s entire body went still, tense. Her eyes popped open and she jerked her head up, staring at me with wide, worried eyes.
That look hit me like a blaster bolt right to the heart. But instead of showing her that, which I knew would make her run, I put on my usual shit eating smile and stretched my arms overhead. Every instinct inside of me screamed to not let her go, to claim her again, make her stay in this bed until she admitted that she was mine. But I knew Thanh, and that was not the right approach.
She wasn’t just independent, she was skittish when it came to relationships. We might not have been friends until now, but I’d been around her enough to know that she was like me in that respect. We were both loved our freedom, and were terrified of committing ourselves. The difference now was that I did want to commit myself, and I couldn’t.
Maybe that’s what the Ancestors are doing. Pay back for all the partners since Sherrod that I’ve hurt.
“Morning, princess,” I said.
She popped up, drawing the sheet to her chest. Her thick, dark hair was an absolute mess, and there was a love bite on her shoulder, with faint scratches from my teeth and whiskers still visible on her neck and top of her chest. Thanh had never been more beautiful than she did waking up in my bed looking like she’d been thoroughly fucked.
I let myself drink her in, even daring to put my hand on the top of her thigh to try and calm her down.
“I…I usually don’t spend the night,” she stuttered, her voice a little hoarse.
Yeah, because she’s a screamer when she comes. And I made her scream a lot last night.
My grin widened at the thought and so did her eyes. She had the look of an animal ready to bolt so I squeezed her thigh and sat up.
“Well, there really wasn’t another option, was there?”
She swallowed, took a breath and shook her head.
“And,” I forced my voice to be steady, to betray nothing, “I know the rules. You were very clear. This is a friends with benefits agreement for the duration of the job. You don’t need to worry, Thanh.”
“Okay,” she breathed. “Okay, that’s…okay.”
“Good. Now, someone made me work up an appetite last night, so I’m going to get dressed and go get some food. Want to join me?”
A red flush lit up her cheeks and she bit her full bottom lip. I’d sucked and bit and kissed that mouth a lot last night but I was ravenous for it this morning. I wanted to kiss her slow and work my way up to making her breathless. We didn’t get to play much with the Dom-sub dynamic, and that was next on my mental list. I wanted to know what that would be like before she left me.
My smile slipped a little at the thought of waking up and finding my bed empty, but I covered it by getting up. I had to be very careful not to show how much I wanted to keep her, not yet anyway. I had to handle this carefully.
And, I still don’t know what I’d done to make her hate me. Although, do I really want to open that wound now that I have this side of Thanh?
It wasn’t an easy question to answer. On one hand, I knew this would eventually fester between us. But if this short period of time was really all I had, I didn’t want to waste it on fighting about the past.
I slipped on a pair of pants and a shirt, waiting for Thanh to move. When I was done and she hadn’t, I glanced back, trying my best to be nonchalant.
“You coming?” I asked.
“Yeah, let me…I just want to shower.”
I’d seen her entire body last night, had touched every inch, and yet this morning she was clutching the sheet as if she didn’t want me to see her naked again. I wanted to push, to be angry, to tell her to grow up. But I didn’t do any of that. Instead I gave her what I hoped was an encouraging smile and turned to leave.
“Jax, wait.”
I stopped in my tracks, holding my breath in fearful expectation of what was coming next. Slowly I turned around and saw her walking toward me, wearing my shirt from last night, which was torn at the neck and hanging precariously off one of her shoulders. A growl of pure, undiluted ownership coursed out of me, my chest vibrating with it.
“Don’t shower…” My voice was rough.
Her smart mouth twisted into a knowing grin.
“Sorry, snookums, but I’m not going out there smelling like six hours of sex.”
“Why not? We’re supposed to be mates, remember? What else should you smell like?”
“Pulling the ‘but it’s our cover’ card?”
I crowded her as she backed up, her legs hitting the bed.
“Yes.”
I was out of my fucking mind. This was supposed to be casual, a dalliance, a bit of fun. But I couldn’t stop this craving for her to be covered in my scent, my marks. I’d meant what I’d said in the elevator, I wanted to be imprinted on her fucking DNA.
And it was scaring her.
Her smile may have looked confident on the surface, but I saw the tension in it. The worry lines around her eyes, the clench of her fist.
So I backed off, each muscle tensing as I fought myself. If I couldn’t correct this, then she might shut me out, keep me at arm’s length for the rest of the mission.
She relaxed when I gave her control last night, she needed to feel safe.
“I have a request,” I said.
“Oh?” her voice a little too sharp.
“Would you be open to playing tonight? We never got to explore it before and I…well, I haven’t in a long time, but I think I’d like to try it with you.”
Her fist uncurled, and her smile became more relaxed, natural.
“I would like that, very much,” she said. “I saw some interesting toys in your room. We could play with one of those.”
I leaned in close to her mouth.
“I look forward to it…Mistress.”
“Then be a good boy and let me get cleaned up.”
She nipped at my bottom lip and swayed her hips as she walked past me to the bathroom.
If she ever finds out how much control she really has over me, I’m fucked.
My good mood was nearly ruined the moment I saw Sherrod sitting at the table in the galley. Mother and Father were there too, and I got the feeling this was more than a casual breakfast from the way they were frowning.
“Well, look who finally arrived,” Sherrod sneered.
I ignored him and went to get some food. My father had made Navorian spiced bread today, as well as some kind of egg dish. I heaped a generous portion onto my plate and poured some shashim into a mug before sitting down, as far from Sherrod as possible.
“So what’s going on?” I asked around a mouthful of eggs and veggies.
“We’re orbiting the market,” Mother said, sitting next to me. “Oontash said that the best time to steal the Dragon is in a few hours.”
I nodded.
“Okay, but why do you look so serious?”
“Because the Thalanites are here too,” Father said.
“Well, that puts a kink in things.”
“To say the least.”
“I will try to distract them,” Mother said, "According to Sherrod, their previous chrono-lock should have expired. But if they do it again, you’ll have to abandon the plan here.”
“No. This is our only shot to get a ship that will get us onto the planet.”
“Then avoid detection,” Sherrod said. “And oh yeah, I’m coming with you.”
“Like hell you are,” I bit out, shooting daggers at him.
“He can help,” my father said, “though I’ll have a tracker on him so we know where he is at all times.”
“And he knows that if anything happens to you or Thanh, it won’t end well for him, don’t you?” Mother asked, flashing a smile at Sherrod that was anything but friendly.
Mother had several ‘interrogators’ on her payroll that were known for how vicious they could be while keeping someone alive, sometimes for weeks. I was sure that, when Sherrod’s face went pale, he was thinking of those members of the Titus Federation.
I had to admit, the thought pleased me.
Thanh strode in wearing a blue and gold sweater with a pair of flowing black pants, her hair braided loosely behind her. The sweater had a wide neck and the mark I’d left on her shoulder was on full display. It stirred a primal delight inside of me and I gave her a predatory grin.
She smirked like she knew why I was grinning at her and gave me a quick kiss before getting her breakfast.
Mother updated her as Thanh shoved a piece of the spiced bread into her mouth and chased it with a gulp of shashim. I hadn’t seen her this voracious with her food since we arrived on Narrou and it made even more delighted than seeing the mark. I had somehow made her comfortable enough to nourish herself, I was taking care of her. That thrilled me so much that I got lost staring at her and Sherrod threw a piece of bread at me to get my attention.
“If you get that easily distracted by your mate, it’s going to be a problem,” he said.
There was something in the way he said ‘mate’ that had my hackles rising. He didn’t believe it was true, and I wanted to beat him to a pulp until he admitted that it was.
Mother must’ve seen my temper rising because her hand landed heavy on my shoulder, her rings glinting in the light of the room.
“That’s enough out of you,” she pointed at Sherrod. “Now, let’s get down to business. This isn’t a smash and grab job. The security around the Dragon is extreme, as I’d expect.”
A 3D hologram was projected by Narrou from overhead as she talked.
“Oontash sent us this. It’s a layout of the holding pen and surrounding buildings where the Dragon is being kept. Oontash has the biometric locks under control. But there are two dozen armed guards between you and the ship, as well as drones monitoring the area.”
The holding pen was in the center of three large warehouses and sunken below ground level. Green dots indicated guards while the red ones indicated drones. They moved as we watched and my eyebrows winged up.
“This is a real time projection?”
“Yes, Oontash has apparently hacked the owner’s security feed. He usually deals in weapons, so we have to assume the warehouses have explosives, blasters and other such things.”
“And that his guards will have state of the art weapons,” Thanh said, “legal and illegal.”
“According to Oontash,” Father said, “the arms dealer is having a party to celebrate those coming to the auction. The security won’t be lax, but she’s going to figure out how you can impersonate some of the staff working the party and get in that way.”
“I can hack the drones,” Sherrod said. “They’re a similar model to the ones on Daedalus Five, I should have the access codes in my CPU.”
“Unless they were scrubbed because they’re stolen,” I pointed out.
“Even so, there’s a backdoor code that they all come with, even these older models. Most people don’t bother scrubbing those, whether it’s because they don’t know about them or they don’t think it’s important. I can get into them that way.”
“Can you control them?” Thanh asked.
“Yeah, that’s the idea, sweet cheeks,” Sherrod said.
I picked up the knife by my plate and threw it at Sherrod. He caught it right before it hit his cyber eye.
“Boys,” Thanh said with an annoyed tone, “you can kill each other after the job. Let’s focus.”
Mother gave her an approving smile, which Thanh returned, and I shot Sherrod a warning glare before returning to examining the layout of the holding pen.
“We could use the drones to create a distraction,” Thanh said, leaning on the table and pointing to the warehouse to the left. “The drones could attack the warehouse where the party is being held, cause chaos and draw the guards from these other two locations. Then we’d only have to worry about the guards in the pen.”
I wondered as I peered up at her, what it would be like to always have her by my side, planning a job, seeing the way her mind worked without the tension of our history between us. I’d always paid minimal attention to Thanh while we served on the Intrepid, never wanting to cause problems for either of us, trying to keep it professional. Now, with my guard down and the boundaries shifting between us, I could let myself admire her fully, and what I saw made me want her all the more.
I must’ve been staring longer than I thought because Thanh frowned at me in confusion. It snapped me out of my thoughts and I cleared my throat.
“Will Oontash have any of her people helping us?” I ask, trying to refocus.
“No, she’ll be shifted to hide her true identity,” Mother said. “She doesn’t want this blowing back on her.”
“How are they keeping the Dragon from simply flying away?” Thanh asked.
“There’s a static net over the top of the pen,” my father answered. “It hurts when the Dragon flies into it.”
Narrou’s lights flared angrily around us.
“I agree,” Thanh said, bending down to run her hand on the floor.
I almost missed the moment until I saw Mother and Father looking at Thanh strangely. Then I realized: she understood Narrou, when she never had before.
It could be the healing pod but no one has ever had that side effect before. Maybe it’s the repair to Tohm-Tohm.
“That’s got to be pulling a lot of power,” Sherrod said, “and knowing the restrictions on power for each business on the Hole, there must be an external generator.”
“Here,” Mother pointed to a hot spot on the second level of some scaffolding around the pen, “is a heat signature that he’s tried to cloak. From what she can tell, Oontash thinks it’s powering all the extra security in the pen. Narrou has analyzed the power and radiation signature and thinks it’s a Macran Five model.”
“Thanh and I will handle that,” I said. “I’ve disabled those before and I’ll need someone to cover me while I take care of it.”
“You can’t just shoot it?” Thanh asked.
“No, it’s not exactly a safe device. They were discontinued about five years ago for being unstable. If the exterior shielding is compromised, it will explode and take half this area with it.”
“Great,” she murmured under her breath.
“That could trip counter measures,” my father interjected, “so be careful.”
We worked out a few more details of the plan over more spiced bread and shashim . When we were done, we had a half an hour to get our gear and fly down to the surface. I didn’t like the idea of Sherrod coming along and being that close to Thanh after what happened last time, but his hacking skills were a key part of the plan. And after Father reassured me that Sherrod understood the consequences of fucking with us again, I relaxed a little.
“What are you going to do about the Thalanites?” I asked Mother before I followed Thanh out of the galley.
“Don’t worry about it. Just focus on getting that Dragon.”
I didn’t like not knowing her plan, or putting her at the mercy of unknown assailants. But my Mother was skilled and brutally efficient. She’d survived for a hell of a long time, and with any luck, she would live much longer.
“Be careful,” I said, drawing her in for a hug.
“You too, my darling,” she said, bringing my head down so she could kiss my forehead and both my cheeks.
It was a Mishvaian blessing of good luck and protection. I returned it to her and pretended I didn’t see the tears in her white eyes before she turned away.
I followed Thanh back to our quarters and that same tension came to life the moment the doors closed. We both started talking at the same time and I rubbed the back of my neck as I chuckled nervously.
“Um…you go ahead,” I said.
She took in a big breath, running her palm against her pants one moment and then fidgeting with the end of her braid the next. Inside, I braced for her to tell me she regretted last night. Outside, I attempted to keep my expression relaxed though I was sure I failed spectacularly when she snorted at me and shook her head.
“You look like you’re ready for me to punch you,” she said.
“Well…I guess I kinda am. This is different for us.”
“Yeah, it is.”
“And I don’t want you to be afraid of me, or saying whatever is on your mind.”
Her eyes drifted down to her hands.
“Even if it’s difficult, or might hurt you?”
I took her hands, nerves ricocheting like comets in my stomach.
“Even then.”
“Okay,” she blew out her breath, “I was going to tell you all this yesterday but…well, we got distracted.”
“That’s one way to put it.”
We chuckled and it was so damn easy and natural that I ran my thumbs across her knuckles before threading my fingers between hers.
“When Narrou was healing me,” she continued, “they showed me some things from my past. Memories that I’d shut out, that Tohm-Tohm and I both did. Soon after the facility attached Tohm-Tohm to my spine, we were attacked by another patient and both of us were badly injured. That’s why I had the plating. It had nothing to do with Tohm-Tohm not bonding correctly and everything to do with…with my father demanding they fix me so he could show me off.”
A hot lash of anger hit me and a low growl rumbled my chest.
“Easy there, big guy,” she said with a giggle, “I get first punch if we see him again.”
“Deal."
She hesitated and pulled her hands out of mine, pacing away from me. Giving her the space she needed to process, to think of what to say next, was the hardest thing I’d ever done. I wanted to bundle her up in my arms and protect her from everything. But Thanh wasn’t that kind of woman and that wasn’t what she needed from me. She needed me to listen and that’s what I’d do, no matter what.
“Narrou also spoke with me about something that you’ve been asking me about.”
There was only one thing I’d been wanting to know, and I swallowed as sudden nerves assaulted me.
“And,” she said, “I think I’m ready to talk about why I’ve hated you this whole time.”
“Okay,” I breathed, nodding fast.
“It’s not going to be pleasant.”
“I didn’t expect it to be.”
“I…I know it might sound strange, but I don’t want to hurt you. Not anymore.”
“I’d call that growth,” I said with a nervous laugh.
“Yeah…I guess you’re right.”
“Go ahead.”
Thanh took another deep breath, her shoulders straightening, before she looked me square in the eyes and shattered my world.
“Did you sabotage my shuttle the day of my crash?”
I was frozen as the words hit me over and over.
Did I sabotage her shuttle?
Did I sabotage…
“What?” I gasped, stepping back in horror.
“I know you were there that morning, and that my father and brother threw you out. I saw you being taken away. My brother said he fixed what you did and when I asked about it afterward, my father just told me that he must not have fixed it properly. But you…you were there, and you were angry at me because of the grade and I thought…I just thought that you’d wanted me to fail and so you sabotaged the shuttle.”
The words poured out of her mouth, as if that one question was the last blow to the dam that had been holding them back. But I was having trouble processing this. Of all the things that could’ve caused her to despise me all these years, this hadn’t even been on the list.
“Jax, talk to me?” she whispered, her fingers tangling and untangling with each other.
“You think so little of me?” It was hard to get the words past the ache of anger in my chest. “You think that I could ever hurt you like that?”
“You were there that day, you were caught by the shuttle.”
“Because I knew someone had been trying to prevent your launch!”
She frowned in confusion at me.
“What are you talking about? It was a student project for —”
“No, it wasn’t! Come on, Thanh, you’re smarter than that! It was an incredible innovation, it would’ve changed the way small craft engines were designed, and there were people with a vested interest in making sure that didn’t happen.”
I saw the moment she made the connections, and I knew that as betrayed as I felt, she would feel that just as much.
“You were there to keep an eye on me?” she breathed. “You worked for GIB even then?”
“I’d forged my academy acceptance letter and identity. When Zephyr found out, she offered me a deal to work for her. You were my first assignment.”
“Your…assignment.”
I cringed.
“That came out wrong, sort of. Look, at the beginning I was trying to get close to you because I was ordered to keep an eye on you. GIB was thinking of recruiting you but then you started that engine design and they realized you’d be ten times more valuable as part of Gex-Corps. Zephyr had gotten word that someone by the code name of Cypher had taken an interest in your designs. At first we thought he wanted to steal it, but then we found out that he wanted it sabotaged. That's when I found a way to work with you on the project. I wanted to protect you, to keep your designs safe. I didn't like you at first but then we had that night in the workshop. And I realized that I wanted to know you, that you were so much more than just an assignment. You were…incredible and out of my fucking league.”
My voice shook as I forced those words out. I’d barely admitted this to myself, but saying them to Thanh was one of the most terrifying things I’d ever done. Rejection was something I worked very hard to avoid, that’s why it was so much easier to just be the charming guy that no one could pin down. There was no risk, no pain.
Until this moment, I hadn’t realized how damn empty that kind of life was. Because in the short time she’d invaded my life, Thanh had moved into the blank spaces and made them bright, full. I wasn’t sure what I’d do if she started hating me again.
“It wasn't until the morning of your test flight that Zephyr and I found out that…that your brother was the one Cypher had recruited to sabotage the shuttle," I continued. "I tried to fix what was damaged but I didn't have time before I was discovered. I tried to tell your father about it but your brother had the guards beat the shit out of me. By the time Zephyr got me out of custody, you’d already crashed. I can’t tell you what it did to me, knowing I could’ve stopped you from experiencing that.”
"My…my brother did this…"
"Yes. I'm so sorry, I thought you knew."
She slowly licked her lips, her fingers twitching at her side.
"I think I always suspected. He was angry that father was going to make me head of R&D at Nguyen Industries. But when the shuttle crashed due to 'engine failure', father said he couldn't have someone who had failed so spectacularly be in charge of that department. My brother took over before I was out of the hospital."
I'd known her own brother had done this, but hearing the likely reason why had fury igniting inside my chest. My fingers curled into tight fists as I imagined her brothers' neck in my hands. I'd tear him limb from limb if I ever saw him again.
"So you knew I was in danger and that's why you were so…persistent. It wasn't because you wanted to date me? I mean,” she shook her head, as if she couldn’t believe she’d said that, “I was nothing more to you than —”
I advanced on her fast and took her face between my hands.
“Don’t you dare finish that sentence. Don’t you dare think that you were nothing to me.”
Her dark eyes were so large and round, like a frightened animal about to bolt. I had to dial it back, take this to a place where I wasn’t about to tell her that she was everything to me.
“At first,” I willed my voice to be steady and my hands to rest on her shoulders, “you were a frustrating, stuck up society princess that I was forced to try and make friends with. And then I feel like I saw you, and I saw a fascinating, mesmerizing woman, with a mind I wanted to know, a soul I wanted to protect. I wanted to be…”
Your mate.
“…your friend. But I couldn’t save you, and I’ve never forgiven myself for it.”
She took my hands off her face, forehead creased as she took in my words. I was regretting the big breakfast I’d had because it was currently curdling in my stomach as I waited to see if she believed me.
“If you cared about me, at all,” she said slowly, “why didn’t you ever come see me? I thought it was because you were guilty, that you didn’t give a damn, but…why?”
“I wasn’t allowed around you after that day.”
“What do you mean? Zephyr didn’t want you to see me?”
“Your brother raised a stink, probably to keep me from exposing him. He accused me of being obsessed with you, a threat to your safety. Your father believed him and put a legal order in place, I couldn’t get within fifty feet of you. At first, I thought you put him up to it because you were angry that I didn’t stop the crash."
“But we served on the same ship….”
“It expired by then. But what your family had done impacted my career. I was almost thrown out of the Gex-Corps, Zephyr was nearly court martialed. So by the time I joined the Intrepid, I’d had all those years to be bitter about the whole thing. And then the way you acted toward me…”
“It was a perfect storm,” she said with an empty laugh. “We just believed what was easiest and never bothered to see if we were right.”
I was relieved that it was ‘we’ and not just directed at me, even if she did look miserable about it.
Narrou chimed around us moments before Mother’s voice came over coms.
“We’ve got clearance for you to dock at the market in fifteen minutes,” she said.
I let out a heavy sigh and yanked on one of my horns.
“Fuck,” I muttered under my breath before acknowledging her message.
Thanh and I glanced at each other, and the chasm between us had never felt larger. I had no idea what would happen now. The fragile hopes I’d carried that maybe I could convince her to stay, to at least trust me while she was on the mission with me, were evaporating. How could I ask this of her after hearing that she’d believed me capable of hurting her so badly?
“We can finish after,” she offered, “I just…I need time to think about what you’ve said.”
“So you don’t believe me.”
It slipped out before I could stop myself.
“I do but there are years of history between us. That's not just going away in a moment."
Even though I knew she was right, it was a kick in the gut and I turned away from her.
“Jax, a lot has happened in the last few days. You can't blame me if I'm having a hard time switching everything around in my head. I've believed one thing for a long time, and now everything is different. It's just going to take me a minute."
It made sense that she'd need a bit of time to absorb it all, it wasn't an out of bounds request by any means to ask for it. And yet I couldn't smother the tide of worry and hurt that rushed to the surface. I wanted her to accept it, tell me that she couldn't believe she'd ever thought I could do that to her. I wanted forgiveness for failing to save her and a promise of a future.
It was pure emotion, over riding good sense and any restraint I might've had.
"Fine, take all the time you need to decide whether or not I'm cold blooded bastard," it came out biting and hard.
Her eyes widened, surprised by my reaction and then they turned hard as flint.
“Hey, where are you guys?” Sherrod’s voice came over coms. “Are you fucking? You better not be fucking before a job.”
“Shut up, Sherrod, before I rip your fucking tongue out!” I shouted.
“He’s right,” Thanh said, voice distant. “We’ve got a job to do. This can wait.”
I guess I should be glad that there’s a chance she'll come round in the end.
But I couldn’t help feeling like this had been my chance to have her and I fucked it up.