Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
DEZ
Larke stayed put behind me, one hand in the middle of my back. At this point, asking her to get dressed wasn’t viable, as Ronan would be able to see every line and curve of the body that belonged to me and me only.
“Hi,” Larke greeted. “I’m Larke, and I believe your name is…Ronan? Nice to meet you.”
I looked over my shoulder. “What are you doing?”
“Introducing myself,” she said.
“Why?”
“Southern hospitality.”
“You were raised in Wisconsin. You lived in DC.”
“And one side of my family is from Louisiana.”
“Don’t talk to him. It makes me…” I searched for a word that might help me get what I want, whether or not it was the truth. “Uncomfortable.”
“Dez, there are two blankets down here. Wrap yourself up in one, if you need comfort.”
I was a man who was used to giving orders, but I loved that she didn’t care about defying them. Then, she saw through my bullshit with laser precision, which made me want to press her face first against the wall and fuck her until pleasure turned her into a sobbing mess.
“Yes, my name is Ronan,” Ronan interrupted. “And Okoro, he has something to show you. Two of you. At the lab.” Ronan scanned the alcove. “But first, you have to…clean up?”
“I do,” Larke said, walking away. Much quieter, she added, “I’ve got two failed pull-outs ready to ooze out of me. At least, let’s hope they ooze out because the real issue begins if they stay in.”
Laughing to herself, she slipped into my shirt.
The blanket, she wrapped around her waist like a skirt, and this woman was so sweet to be fucking around with me.
While I would never hurt her, and would do everything in my power to keep her happy, there remained the issue of what would happen if she one day decided that she wanted someone else.
I might end up in the bushes outside her place, waiting for her and the guy she thought I’d let her move on with to pass by.
She walked over to where I’d tossed her dress, her panties visible on top of the pile.
It made me wonder if Ronan had seen them when he scanned our little love nest, if he’d lingered on them.
If, later, he would find himself thinking about them, thinking about her, his mind filling in the blanks of her naked body from the way the light blanket hugged her silhouette.
Plus, she was gorgeous and had the most beautiful pair of tit—
“Dez.”
My eyes met hers.
“I called your name like five times,” she said. “Can I get dressed now that we’re alone?”
Apparently, at some point, Ronan had left.
I headed for her. “Not yet.”
“I rebuke you and your Pied Piper penis.” She raised her index fingers into a cross and held them out toward me. “If Okoro needs to see us, it’s important. Plus, I have questions about why your uniformed friend was with Leigh and LaSalle. Maybe you should go check on them?”
“He’s not my friend,” I clarified. “And we don’t have time. We have to get back to Juniper, fuck, fuck again, get cleaned up, and then head to the lab. All in all, we’ll be late.”
Footsteps sounded in the passageway.
I returned to the opening to find Leigh hurrying toward us, a stuffed tote bag strewn over her shoulder. LaSalle followed, and Ronan reappeared, but he remained in the opening on the other side, arms folded.
I raised a hand.
Leigh slid to a stop.
LaSalle, distracted, bumped into her.
I waited until Larke shimmied into her dress.
When I faced Leigh again, she was scanning my bare chest. Then, she tried to glance behind me into the alcove, but my body was in the way, and she didn’t walk as far into the passageway as Ronan had.
Ronan had entered as if he wanted to verify that Larke was unharmed, and I still didn’t understand how anyone could have thought that my and Larke’s banter was anything but foreplay.
Larke joined us, stepping in front of me.
“I don’t have much time,” Leigh said. “We got all the way to the exit, but then Mr. Ronan said you were down here. I’ve been asking after you ever since Neal picked us up.
Ana said a Class One carried you out of Sanitation, and then I got snatched up shortly after, so I didn’t get a chance to do much more asking. ”
Leigh threw her arms around Larke’s neck.
Larke returned the hug with a tenderness that made blood rush to my groin. This woman was definitely too sweet to be fucking around with a maniac like me.
“I’m okay,” she reassured Leigh. “I’ve been okay. Why don’t you have much time?”
“The Woodhaven doctor, Dr. Lin, isn’t sure how much longer he’ll be able to cover the escapees with the death toll numbers. Neal’s starting to put the pieces together, he said. Plus, the head general, Cerner, they’re saying he’s missing. No one’s seen him in days.”
Larke glanced at me.
I winked.
“They’re locking everything down and tightening up security,” Leigh continued.
“Mr. Ronan, that’s the guy at the end of the hall, has been helping to smuggle people out, but Neal’s gonna find out.
Mr. Ronan says he doesn’t care, that he used to rescue people in worse situations before everything fell, but there’s no way Neal won’t find out. ”
LaSalle squeezed Leigh’s shoulder, adding, “They grabbed me, too. They told me that they got Leigh and knew that we were involved.”
“Did you tell them about Tapley?” I asked.
“No, I didn’t. I knew you wouldn’t take kindly to that. Plus, Neal left after interrogating me. Ronan was supposed to beat me up, finish me off. Instead, him and Dr. Lin explained what would happen next, how they would get me out.”
The guy was smarter than I thought. I could do worse than Neal and Ronan combined. When it came to Larke, I would do worse.
“Dez, you spent a lot of time with Cerner,” he said. “Have you talked to him? Rumor has it that he left with a team to talk trade with another community, but the team came back, and he wasn’t with them. Then they said he actually never showed up to leave with them in the first place.”
I shook my head. “No, I haven’t talked to him in days.”
It was the truth.
Dead men couldn’t speak.
“In the interim, Neal’s been implementing changes,” LaSalle went on. “It’s for the best that me and Leigh are leaving now. We’re headed for a community in Pennsylvania.”
Leigh, nodding, finally let go of Larke. “Yeah. It’ll be a fresh start for us. I’m looking forward to it.”
“Then be safe,” Larke said, smoothing Leigh’s hair. “Hopefully, I’ll be right behind you. Neal and I have history. Bad blood. He won’t let me escape this place unscathed. If we run into each other, it’ll be a problem.”
I stretched the muscles in my neck, a tic I’d picked up in the Navy.
Most of the time, it was a way to reduce anxiety.
When the shelter-in-place order first came down, and it was just me and Larke at her condo, the anxiety ramped up every single time I thought about how much I didn’t know about what was going on.
As I’d had no definitive plans to keep her safe, the uncertainty would trigger the tic.
When I could, I went to another room to regain control. The entire time, I’d hoped she didn’t take it as my discomfort over being locked up with her. That, I’d enjoyed every minute of. Had we been more honest with each other, I could have enjoyed it even more.
Right now, however, adrenaline flooded my bloodstream at the thought of Larke not leaving Totten unscathed because of Neal. I was not a well man, and I hoped Neal reconsidered attempting to cause her any harm. I didn’t want her to see me with my traumas unhidden.
Larke glanced at me again before giving LaSalle a hug.
The pair said their well wishes and hurried off.
Ronan followed.
She faced me. “So, seems like Ronan’s been helping Dr. Lin smuggle people out of Totten. That explains the inflated numbers we found.”
She was still wearing my shirt; she’d simply put the dress on underneath it.
“What do you think Leigh meant when she said Ronan used to rescue people before the outbreak?” she asked. “Then, he’s at the same level as you. Think he was some kind of Special Operations, too? Maybe in his respective country? I can’t place his accent.”
I reached for her hand and drew her closer. “You are a beautiful woman, I swear. There’s something insanely captivating about you, like a magic spell or something. I can’t stop thinking about you, and I want to touch you all the damn time. You’re going to get sick of me.”
“I doubt it,” she countered.
“We’d make beautiful kids, I think. Hopefully, they won’t get your eyes. I can see it now: ‘Daddy, will you get me a pony for my birthday?’”
“And then here you come, with a team of massive Clydesdales, for our three-year-old.” She laughed, briefly lowering her gaze. “Speaking of which, we’re going to have to raid a Totten condom stash or find some once we leave here.”
“You don’t trust me to pull out?”
“Um,” she gestured to her legs, “no.”
I laughed and kissed her forehead.
“Dez, is Cerner alive?” she asked.
“No.”
“Is my safety somehow involved?”
“Yes.”
“Do you plan to kill everyone who threatens me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you think that’s a logical response?”
“No.”
“But it doesn’t matter, does it?”
“It does not.”
She leaned back and looked up into my face. “Do you really love me that much?”
I loved her even more than “that much.” I just didn’t have the words to explain the extent of it. I was used to thinking, so a phenomenon that consisted of nothing but “feeling” was still being added to my limited emotion vocabulary.
“Yes, I do. You…complete me.”
“Man, what the hell ever.”
Grinning, she smacked my chest and pulled out of my hold. I was too busy laughing to keep her in place.
“You only know about that movie because we watched it together, so you’re welcome.
” She reached into a hidden pocket in her dress, pulled out a phone, and held it up.
“And here. It’s your old phone. I’ve been looking for it since I started in Operations because I didn’t grab mine from the condo before we left.
I wasn’t sure if it had some kind of special tech on it.
A satellite connection or something, I don’t know.
I’m not tech-savvy. But that’s not the only reason I grabbed it.
Did you ever use this phone when we were out and about? Like, to take pictures.”
I stared at the device in her hand.
She didn’t know what she’d just found for me.
“It has pictures,” I said.
“It’s not charged. I couldn’t find the right cord. But if we get it charged, and we can use it, will you let me look through the pictures?”
I slipped it from her fingers. “Of course. Some nostalgia for the way things were?”
“You could say that.” She removed my shirt and extended it toward me. “But, come on. Let’s clean up our picnic so we can head to Juniper before we go see Okoro. If we leave now, we should have enough time to get those two fucks in.”
I pulled the shirt over my head and stuck my arms in the sleeves in one motion. “We don’t have to clean up. We finished the food. The wine, we can leave for the rats.”
Her eyes widened. “There are rats down here?”
“Isn’t that what you meant by Pied Piper penis?”
“You know it’s not.”
I scooped her up.
She wrapped her arms around my neck. “I think you’re turning me into one of those women who, if we break up, will end up stalking you and hiding in the bushes outside your place to see who you’ve moved on with.”
“You won’t catch me,” I said.
“Why’s that?”
“Because I’ll be on the other side of town, hiding in your bushes.”
Laughing, she set her head on my shoulder.