Chapter 21 #2
I contemplated whether I should tell her I might be able to get through the force field even when it was up.
In the end, I held my tongue, simply because I didn’t want to leave her alone, unprotected in this cell—especially with the entity on the other side of the hole in the wall.
She seemed focused on a panel in the cell, so perhaps she knew of a way to deactivate it from here.
It was probably tamper-proof, but that wouldn’t stop her.
I crouched next to her where she worked, the laser rifle cradled in my lap and my back to the wall.
Her long braid kept tempting me to reach out, tug on the end decorated with black wooden beads.
At the very tip, her hair was a very light blue, but it grew much darker at the roots.
I was fascinated by how long her hair grew, and how she kept that braid neatly out of her way by looping it around her slender waist. It was a very typical thing to do for a Ulinial.
Since she was the only one I’d met of her kind, I didn’t know if it was her braid in particular that turned me on, or if blue braids around slender waists did it, whoever they belonged to.
I was pretty sure I knew the answer, because Ysa was the only one I wanted.
“Damn it,” she swore as something fizzled and fried inside the panel.
A small waft of noxious odor filled the air but quickly dissipated—the scent of wire coatings and burning metal.
“I know you hate it, Thatch, but talk to me, please. I need a distraction to calm my nerves.” She gave me a look with her huge blue eyes; they glittered like sapphires and barely masked her panic.
I hated talking about anything, but most of all I hated making small talk.
My brain just didn’t know what to say, going blank as soon as I was expected to be social.
For her, though, I’d bare my fucking soul if it helped.
My tongue felt thick, stuck to the roof of my mouth, all moisture gone until I roughly swallowed.
When I started talking, it became easier with each word.
It was the strangest discovery in the heat of a crisis to realize talking to Ysa was easy, natural. And she did not judge me for my past.
“I had a sister,” I said. That was the hardest admission; everything that followed was a piece of cake.
I had loved my big sister so much that it had torn me to pieces when she was killed.
“She was ten years older, and she raised me from the time I was little. Our parents died in a factory accident, and then she did too, when I was sixteen.” I had not been old enough to sign up for the military when that happened, but a few fake papers later, and a recruitment officer who cared only about filing his quota, and off to basic training I went.
“I joined the military, thinking I’d do good, back when I still knew what that was, believed in it.
Then I fought year after year on one desolate world after another.
” My mind flashed with images of the rebellions we were ordered to squash, and the deaths I’d caused.
Sometimes, I woke up at night and remembered what it had felt like to follow those orders: a slow tainting of my soul until I had none.
It was easy to pull the trigger now, but it hadn’t been at first.
Ysa didn’t say a word, just kept working on the panel and disabling the force field.
She was growing a deeper furrow between her brows, so it probably wasn’t going her way yet.
I shifted a little closer, made sure everything was still safe, and then reached out to grab hold of the tip of her braid.
My fingers ran over the wooden beads, and they clicked together in a pleasing manner.
Her hair was so soft; it soothed a bit of the rawness inside me.
I might be a dark, morally tainted mess inside, but I still knew what was worth protecting: her.
“I was recruited for the Shadow Unit after I was mortally wounded, after ten years of service,” I said next.
Recruited was a loose term for it; I’d simply woken up altered, drafted into the unit without much of a choice.
At that point, being stronger, faster, and healing better seemed like a great idea, and I had been so numb inside I didn’t care about anything but survival.
I did as ordered, killed whoever they wanted me to kill, and either drank or fucked until I found oblivion in my downtime.
Ysa made a little growling noise, which I thought was purely to express her frustration with the force field.
Except she put her multi-tool down with a clang, then turned to look at me.
“From what I heard of the UAR, I’m willing to bet you had very little choice in any of it.
I’m glad you’re here with me now, Thatcher.
” She reached out to pat my knee, her expression filled with empathy.
The kind of empathy they’d burned right out of me during my years as a soldier and assassin.
“I don’t know much, Ysa,” I said in response, and I tugged a little on her braid.
“But I do know this: you are my light, my compass. Ysathea, you hold my heart, what little is left of it.” Her smile was a little sad, like she didn’t believe me.
The moment had gotten heavy far too quickly; this was exactly why I didn’t do the whole talking thing.
Yanking her close, I pulled her between my thighs and crushed my mouth to hers.
She yelped, and I swept my tongue into her mouth, tasting her sweetness, her warmth.
Her moan followed, and I drank it in, soaked it up.
I had tried and failed to stay away, and now I’d never let her go.
I still couldn’t believe that Ysa didn’t want to get away.
She was mine. Her rear pressed against my groin, soft and warm, and my cock was eager for another taste of her heat.
To sink into her core, where I belonged.
I rose with her in my arms, her curves pressed to each inch of my hardness—my cock, my armor—and the laser rifle trapped between our bellies. “I’ll fix this, Ysa,” I said. Then I put her on her feet, turned toward the force field, and strode through it.