Chapter 8
CIPHER
The airship hummed beneath my feet as we approached the Tower, its crystalline structure catching the sunset in a way that made the whole thing look like it was on fire.
“Sir, we’re two minutes out,” Number Three announced from the helm.
I nodded. My henchmen had never seen me like this, fidgeting with the components of my suit, pacing the command deck. My suit felt both too tight and too loose. I’d calibrated each system to perfection. Tonight mattered.
The League Season Opener was the most anticipated event on the League’s social calendar. For the first four hours, we played nice for the media and wealthy donors. We were a glittering, sanitized facade of unified villainy. Then came midnight. “Lights out.”
The civilians were purged from our midst and the real networking began: territorial claims, black market deals, and dominance displays that occasionally left someone’s brains painted on the floor. It helped dictate the hierarchy for the entire four-month cycle of the Season.
Except it wasn’t the Opener making me antsy, it was Havoc.
To claim my fake date, I would personally encounter Havoc, the man himself, after all these years.
“Approaching final descent vector,” Number Three announced.
I rolled my shoulders.
I wondered what the League stylists had dressed Annie in tonight. Would she be in something skimpy and modern? Or perhaps classic elegance, hair swept up to expose that vulnerable neck I’d fantasized sinking my teeth into?
The loading ramp descended with a hiss, revealing the private landing pad atop the Tower.
I didn’t even make it to the bottom before a blur of white and blue slammed into me.
The impact was tectonic. One second, the air before the ramp was empty, the next I was pinned against the hull of my own aircraft with a forearm crushing my windpipe.
“Well, hello to you too,” I choked out.
Havoc’s face was inches from mine. The cameras loved his blue eyes, but they never captured the terrifying reality of them up close. Blue energy crackled around his irises, raw and unstable.
My vision swam at the edges as he pressed against my throat harder.
It was fucking magnificent.
The chaos energy radiating off him licked at me with a heat that made the sensors in my suit scream warnings. He was a natural disaster wrapped in the skin of a man.
“Listen carefully, Cipher,” he growled. “Annie might think this arrangement is necessary. But I know what you are. You hurt her, you touch her without her explicit permission, and I will unmake you.”
He pressed harder and my trachea creaked. “They won’t find anything of you to bury.”
My brain was firing on all cylinders, analyzing the pressure, the angle, the uncontrolled power. I could break his grip. I had the strength. But I preferred the thrill of letting him think he had me.
I forced a smile. “I promise I won’t do anything she doesn’t beg me for.”
Havoc’s eyes narrowed as the blue energy around him flared. He slammed me harder against the hull, the metal buckling slightly behind my head.
I wheezed, delighted. The probability of Annie requesting physical contact was high. The probability of Havoc murdering me for pointing that out was rapidly approaching one hundred percent.
“You will keep her fucking safe,” he hissed.
“I know what happens after midnight. I helped make the unwritten rules.” His eyes burned with a memory of violence I could only guess at.
“The lights go out. The predators come out to feed. Annie isn’t built for that filth.
She thinks she’s fearless, but she hasn’t seen what the League does when they think no one is watching. ”
He was right. The Opener was a meat market where the currency was fear and flesh. Exactly where I thrived.
“She’s with me,” I rasped, letting the humor bleed out of my voice. “Which means anyone who looks at her wrong ends up on a slab. I don’t share.”
I leaned into his grip, testing the limits.
“And I certainly don’t let my property get damaged by the rabble.”
The pressure on my neck turned agonizing.
“She’s not property.”
“Tonight she is,” I countered, staring straight into that crackling blue fire. “It’s the only way she survives.”
“Havoc, let him go.”
I couldn’t see Annie, but her voice cut through the testosterone-fueled standoff.
“I need him functional. I can’t blend in at the Opener if my escort is choking on his own blood. Drop him.”
The pressure on my throat increased one last time, a warning shot, before he released me. “This isn’t over.”
“I sincerely hope not,” I replied, straightening.
He stepped back, the blue fire in his eyes dimming but not extinguishing.
I’d spent my childhood watching this man tear through Heroes on television, pressing my small hands against the screen and wondering what that power felt like.
Now I knew. It felt like barely controlled murder wrapped in a Hero’s uniform.
He moved aside, clearing my line of sight.
Fuck me.
I had severely miscalculated how the League stylists would handle Annie. They had wrapped her up like a gift for the wolves.
She wore a black gown that seemed to be made of shadow and sin.
The smattering of sequins caught the dying light, shifting to a midnight blue that matched the lights on my suit perfectly.
But it was the cut that was going to kill me.
The skirt was slashed high, exposing a devastating length of leg.
The bodice was sheer, an illusion of modesty that vanished the second the light hit it right.
I could see the shadow of her curves, the pale skin beneath the dark fabric.
Her hair was styled in tighter curls than it naturally hung, framing her face in a way that made her look just a little wild. Her mouth, Christ, her mouth looked delicious, painted a deep red that made me think of biting into ripe fruit.
I’d seen Annie in her Keeper uniform hundreds of times. I’d seen her in casual clothes a handful of times. This was Annie weaponized and I wasn’t prepared for the impact.
She turned to say something to Havoc, and I saw how low the dress dipped in the back, exposing her spine. I traced the line of her vertebrae with my eyes, imagining how she would shiver if I ran my knuckles down that path.
She turned her attention to me.
“My ship awaits, Keeper Bishop.” I noticed then what she was holding, some cheap, generic mask the stylists had provided. Plain black with minimal detailing. Utterly forgettable, which I supposed was the point.
Annie hesitated, glancing one last time at Havoc, then walked past me. I caught her scent as she passed, that same vanilla sweet scent she’d worn before.
Once the hatch sealed us in, I signaled Number Three to fly.
“Let me see what they gave you.” I held out a hand and indicated the mask.
She frowned but handed it over. I turned the flimsy plastic in my hands. It was safe. It was boring. It was everything Annie pretended to be which made it unacceptable.
I squeezed and the plastic snapped with a sharp crack.
“What the hell?” Annie lunged, trying to grab the shards. “I need that! I have to remain incognito!”
“The League has shit taste.” I dropped the pieces onto the deck. “And I don’t do generic.”
“You don’t do—“ She sputtered, her cheeks flushing. “I am not part of your brand, Cipher!”
“Tonight, you are.” I stepped into her space, forcing her to tilt her head back as I reached for the case I’d left on the console and flipped the lid. Inside lay the mask I’d crafted. It was matte black and it’s shape was meant to mimic my own mask.
“May I?” I lifted it.
“I can do it myself,” she snapped, reaching for it.
I pulled it back, my grin sharp. “Are you sure? It requires a delicate touch and I happen to be very good with my hands.”
Her eyes narrowed, but I saw the pulse jump in the hollow of her throat. She snatched it from my hand, her fingers brushing against mine.
I watched, transfixed, as she lifted it to her face and it slid into place.
It was perfect. I had mapped every millimeter of her bone structure while she slept, while she worked, while she lived her life completely unaware that I was memorizing her geometry.
Unlike my own mask, I’d constructed hers so that her eyes were visible.
The mask framed them, concealing her identity but highlighting the one thing I couldn’t stop looking at.
“How does it feel?” I asked.
“It fits,” she admitted, her fingers tracing the edge where the material met her skin. “Though I have a feeling you made sure it would.”
“One problem,” I murmured, staring into those depths I’d spent too many nights analyzing while my hand worked my cock. “Anyone who’s ever looked at you, would know your eyes instantly. They’re a liability.”
I tapped the haptic interface on the side of her mask. The chromatic filter instantly washed over her irises and the brilliant, defiance-filled blue vanished, swallowed by a nondescript brown.
It was a desecration, like taking a knife to a masterpiece, but there was a twisted satisfaction in it, too. I was hiding her true nature from the world so that only I knew what lay beneath.
The heat in her eyes remained despite the color change, that spark of rebellion that made me want to bend her over the console and fuck the attitude right out of her.
“Brown?” she asked, blinking as she checked her reflection in the dark glass of the viewport. “I suppose that’s practical.”
“Sir,” Number Three’s voice called out. “We’ll reach the destination in fifteen minutes.”
I nodded but I didn’t look away from her. I couldn’t. “So, are you going to tell me what you’re hunting for tonight, or am I just your ticket in?”
She tilted her head, the brown making her look like a stranger. “I’ll know it when I see it.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” she replied, smoothing down her dress. The movement drew my eye to the curve of her hips, the way the black fabric clung to her body. “Your only job is to make our cover believable.”
“I’ll make it believable,” I said, my voice dropping to a rough whisper.