Chapter 30

Chapter

Thirty

PATCH

" F allon," Remy said, in between terrifically sharp and biting kisses. "You're safe."

They'd been telling me that a lot. Locke had promised me. McQuade promised me. Now Remy—only he promised me before too. Falling back against the bed, I stared up at him.

It was mostly dark and the hum of wheels rolling over highway filled the space. It was kind of soothing in its way. The low lights at the top were on, a yellow-gold cast. Bright enough to see, but not so bright as to blind me.

Remy was a man of complicated shadows. I stroked my hand from his nape to his head. The faint prickles at the base of his skull and around to just over his ears belied the smoothness of his skin.

"Yes," he said in that perfectly delightful accent. "I shave part of my head."

"I don't care," I whispered. "I mean—I do, but I don't. I just love that I can touch you."

"Well, then," he said, a slow smile curving his lips. "Touch away."

Licking my lips, I studied. He really was a contradiction. So there, and present, on the surface, you didn't see the shadows. You saw the simple man who didn't bother with pretense. Yet, he wore a mask.

We all did.

"Honeysuckle," I said, exploring all the dips and divots of his skull. The head was such an odd shape and hair hid so many of its features.

"My favorite." He touched his nose ever so lightly to mine. "And yours?"

I grinned. "I don't think I ever really had a favorite…or maybe I did. But that Fallon isn't me anymore." The Fallon who believed the lies, who drank the Kool-Aid, who took the job. That Fallon had stars in her eyes and a streak to do good.

I had no idea how much bad I'd actually done and someday, I would make myself learn. I would find a way to make up for the work I did in the service of liars.

"That Fallon—she used to like sunflowers, because they were beautiful, and did you know that a sunflower will turn to look at another sunflower if the sun isn't out? They need the light so much, they will look to each other to find it."

I was rambling.

"They're quite beautiful," he agreed.

"They are—that Fallon loved the poetry of them. I thought I was like them. I looked to my fellow workers for the sunlight because I worked in the shadows." I shifted beneath him but when he would have moved, I hooked a leg over his hip. "Stay."

"You're sure?"

"That I want you? Yes. That I want you to stay right here, where I can wrap around you? Also, yes." No hesitation in me at all. We'd been on a course for this for a long time. The flirting and the playfulness had been there.

He settled himself into the cradle of my legs and let his weight rest on me more fully. Oh, I liked the way he felt. All long and lean. Where McQuade was big and brawn, Remy was lean and sharp. Locke was somewhere in between, but they were all perfectly them.

"I pretended to not notice the flirting." It wasn't so hard to admit. "I'm very good at pretend. When I walked away from Section Five or MadOg or whatever they want to call themselves… that Fallon died in a way. She had to die. She had to leave the life she'd been building, the friends, the few family relationships I still had, and just—vanish. One day I was there and the next not."

Framing his face with both of my hands, I indulged myself in exploring his features. Remy also lived in the shadows and at a distance. Contact had to be as alien to him at times as it had become for me.

"It was really easy," I admitted. "Maybe too easy. I'd already been isolating myself so much because of the work. I had few relationships that didn't include time at the office. I think I had maybe four friends who weren't online gamers too."

Grimacing, I shook my head.

"I know how I sound."

"Do you?" He raised his eyebrows.

"Kind of pathetic."

"Not the word I would use, luv."

"No?" Then I shook my head. "I'm not fishing for compliments, I'm trying to be real with you…"

"I believe you," he said, then pressed a soft kiss to the tip of my nose. "You're beautiful, dedicated, and devoted. You're also incredibly loyal. The people at fault are the ones who abused your loyalty, Fallon. The ones who put you in a corner and forced you to make the decision to excise yourself so formidably."

My mouth opened then closed again. When he put it like that…

"Choices were made. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. You made that choice to serve when you started working there. You made it again when you pulled yourself out. You did one more time when you set up to become an operator…"

He feathered a hand down my face.

"What I see is a fighter, who took them with everything she had and has been kicking their ass from the beginning. You're going to destroy them and I get to help. I know everything I need to know."

That playful smile of his returned.

"Well, everything except one thing." He gave me such a serious look, I didn't know what to do with it.

"What?"

"Your favorite flower."

"I—" I frowned at him and then laughed. It dislodged all this rubble that had been weighing me down. The memories were there. Everything that happened. Every moment of "meeting" them and then discovering that they'd come to find me.

"You?" He added another kiss to the prompt and I forgot about the question, savoring the contact as he massaged my lips with his.

"I don't know what my favorite is going to be now…" I slid my hand back down to his nape. "I barely know who I am going to be now. But I want to find out. I want to make them go away, then I want to find out."

"What do you need?" He stroked my cheek with his thumb, then pressed another kiss to my forehead.

"You," I said, tugging him back down. His mouth crashed into mine, drowning out the broken voices in my head. He blanketed me, answering every demand I made with equal fervor.

His clothes were in the way and pushing at his shirt, I had to break the kiss to get him to pull it up and over. I stopped at the criss-crossing scars over his chest. There were marks that looked like knife wounds. Puckered ones that had to be bullets.

Of course they had scars. McQuade had them too, I'd felt them but I hadn't really had a chance to explore them. There was a small cluster of bullet scars near his left shoulder. Over his heart…

"Someday—will you tell me?" I didn't want to pry but I wanted to know everything.

He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. "That was another life, but if you need to know, then yes, I'll tell you."

When he nudged up my tank top, I wiggled to pull it up and off. As though mirroring me, he explored the scars littering my chest and my arms. "I can tell you?—"

That snapped his gaze up to mind. The featherlight caress of his fingers sent goosebumps over my skin. "You remembered?"

I nodded slowly. "Yes."

"Are you all right?" Concern bled through the passion in his voice.

"I think by definition of the phrase? No? But…yes?" It didn't make sense to me and at the same time… "It's weird. I remember it and it all happened to me. I remember being afraid. I remember fighting. I remember the conversations I heard and the pain. But I wasn't giving in and I wasn't going to. I know everyone breaks eventually, but the more pain they put me in the less I could help them."

I let out a little laugh and his brow furrowed. "That's not funny, Patch. Your pain is never something to laugh at."

"Maybe not, but I won." Petty? Probably. But I didn't give a damn. "Right now? I'm still winning. I got away. They can't take back from me what I took with me and I'm not alone anymore."

"No," he said in a voice that seemed to swear an oath. "You are not alone."

This time it was his hand around my throat and his mouth devouring mine that ended the conversation. He alternated between exquisitely gentle and demandingly sensuous.

All at once, he pulled away and shoved the blankets back. A bump in the road shuddered through us and he caught himself with one hand on the wall. Laughter swelled up through me.

We were in the back of a rig, on a highway, on our way to wage war and we were making out like teenagers. When the ride smoothed again, he reached for my leggings and peeled them down.

"Thank you for not cutting those off," I murmured and that earned me a definite eyebrow.

"You sounded like you enjoyed his knife play," he teased as he undid the snaps on his slacks.

"I did. I enjoyed everything with McQuade and with Locke." I grinned. "You seemed to enjoy me with McQuade too."

"Oh, without a doubt, luv. You are absolutely perfect when you're glowing with an orgasm, all flushed and sweaty, then you scream against my mouth."

I shuddered at the description.

He paused at another bump and glanced toward the side like he could see them through the truck.

"Think they're doing it on purpose?" I rather doubted it but it was kind of funny.

"No, if they knew what we were doing, McQuade would have already pulled over and come back to watch."

What a decadent idea, I shivered.

"Give me a moment." Remy rolled off the bed and tugged his pants down, boxer briefs and all. The angle kept his cock in shadow, but when he rolled back onto the bed, there was no mistaking the erection pressed against me and the…

"Michael Remington," I said. "Are you pierced?"

"Could be," he said, giving me a little nudge back against the pillows. "Want to find out?"

Not bothering to answer him with words, I wrapped my arms around his neck and dragged him down again. His mouth feasted on mine and every time there was a bit of rough road or the faintest bump, we were both laughing.

It was ridiculous and magnetic. He took turns massaging and kissing my breasts. Then he rolled over so I could explore his chest. The heat would flare to life and threaten to consume us and then we'd lock eyes and laughter wrapped us up in its embrace.

In so many ways, I was drunk on Remy. When I finally got to play with his cock though, I took my time and I wished for more light. For now, I let my fingers do the work. There were two barbells, placed right along the ridges around the head of his cock.

The combination of warm metal and silky skin, even with the springier hair at the base— "You're not bald everywhere."

He chuckled. "No, I'm not. Finish your playing or fuck me and put me out of my misery, woman." For all his protest, he laid there, hands beneath his head and watched me as I knelt over him.

There was something deeply erotic in the way he studied me as if he didn't want to miss a single thing.

"I don't know anything about piercings," I told him and gave into the impulse I'd had since I'd first seen them. I dipped my head to wrap my lips around the tip of his cock. I explored the ridge with my tongue and teased over each piercing.

His low groan was even more enticing. Oh, I wanted to play here for hours. Each time I felt him stiffen more or when he let out a low groan, I'd repeat the strokes with my tongue. I wasn't quite giving him a blowjob but I had a very good idea of the geography of those piercings when I lifted my head.

"Done, luv?" The low-voiced question demanded an answer.

"Remy… I'm never going to be done with you." I wasn't going to be done with any of them. Maybe I hadn't been certain of much in the beginning. But they'd literally stopped their lives and come to find me.

The idea they'd found each other at my home and then come looking for me…

"Good, then I can be fine with letting you play later." He hauled me upward, flipped us over so I was below him and he had both of my thighs up and my legs over his shoulders.

"Deal," I said, but the word came out in a rush as he teased his cock over my entrance. I was already so damn wet. I never looked away from him as he cupped my breast, nor when he teased the nipple.

He threatened to drive me mad with the gliding friction that offered no real pressure. Maybe it was to get even with me for the tiny little flicks of my tongue. At the same time, I was utterly desperate for him. Dragging a hand between us, I wrapped it around his cock. He hissed out a breath before he swooped down to steal my mouth again in another toe-curling kiss.

Maybe he hadn't been determined to make me insane before, but stroking his tip and those glorious piercings up and down and teasing my own clit with them was better than a vibrator. Particularly when he alternated between laughter and gasping.

A wide variety of pleasure for both of us. But when I tilted my hips higher and angled him just right, it was both of us groaning as he filled me with one thrust. So aware of his piercings, I savored the way they teased me with each thrust.

He pulled out and another hard bump sent him thrusting deep again. Another bout of laughter filled the air between us. He cupped my face in both hands and the deep drugging kiss he gave me held me there as we set a brutal pace for each other.

Between us and the rig's motion on the road, it was a torrid little dance of ecstasy. I writhed with every strike and the scrape of his teeth against my throat or the way his tongue darted in to tease mine at each kiss just eddied me higher and higher.

The tension was a delicious spiral. The laughter only fed the languid heat, the tension so tight it threatened to snap. Then I came, sudden and abrupt. The orgasm startled me as my vision whited out. I hadn't realized how close I was. Clinging to him, I wanted to draw out more for both of us but he let out a shout as my inner muscles spasmed around him.

He fused his mouth to mine as he filled me, much like he'd kissed the gasps from my lips when McQuade had done the same. We collapsed together. Gradually, the little bumps in the road, the hum of the wheels, and the creak of the metal penetrated the haze around us.

I stroked my fingers over his scalp, as much massaging the skin there as savoring the right to touch him. We were both panting and his heart seemed to be beating as fast as mine. Even as we closed the distance toward the fight ahead.

It was more than okay. We had this interlude to be drunk on each other. There would be more.

Dammit, I wanted more. I wanted them and we were going to win for real. Then… then we could have this.