Chapter 26

CHAPTER

TWENTY-SIX

JESSICA

It feels like we blink and it’s already time to go back to Kimba & Drift’s outpost for the next meeting.

The car makes a cheery little sound as soon as we drive into their garage, and Trench answers the call from Richter. “We are going to see you in a few minutes. What couldn’t wait?”

Whatever Richter called to say, he says it in their language. I am going to have to start learning in earnest.

Trench looks at me, and I can feel the vague annoyance in our bond. “You can go in if you want. I don’t know how long he’s going to ramble at me.”

Richter makes an indignant sound, and Trench turns toward the speaker, “Yes, you do ramble.”

I laugh, but get out, leaving the two of them to argue with each other and slip into the warmth of what I’ve started to think of as a clubhouse.

We should have been the first ones here, but the conversation I walk into isn’t between the two people who live here.

I close the door quietly as I hear Arc make a frustrated noise.

“Look, I am the first person to admit when I’m wrong. But he didn’t give me a chance.”

“I mean…” Kimba says, arms crossed and brows pinched. “You did think he’d murdered someone and that she had asked him to.”

“What kind of woman would bond herself to Trench, of course I thought she’d do something like that.”

“Look, I know that you and the others have a hard time with scientists. But Jess isn’t the Maker. She’s not here to pull you apart and put you back together again. She’s here to help. And just because you have a problem with your brother, doesn’t mean that someone who loves him is automatically going to be some psycho killer.”

I manage not to laugh at that.

“I don’t question her sanity. After all, Drift would kill anyone you asked him to.” Arc turns to look at me, like he’s known I was here the whole time. “I question where the limit is for anyone willing to carve up creatures just to learn more about them.”

“Lucky for you, I can pull up a Sian medical textbook for anything I would need to know.” I turn away from them, going to sit on the couch to wait.

I shouldn’t be able to hear their conversation from this far away, but I can hear some of it, so maybe Kimba’s thoughts on the brotherhoods’ mutations transferring have some merit.

I need to draw more blood.

I am thinking about that when I look up, expecting it to be Kimba or Trench who has finally joined me, but it’s Arc.

He stops an easy distance from me and then sits. Neither of us say a word. Minutes pass.

“I don’t know how much longer Trench is going to be outside, so you might want to get to whatever it is you’re here to say.”

“I want to apologize.”

“You want to? Or you were told you should.”

“I want to.” He glances toward the door, glaring at it. “I would like to apologize to my brother too, but… Well, you’re not going to punch me in the face for trying.”

“You sure about that?”

He looks at me with a genuine smile. “Yeah.”

“Why did you think it was a Sian brain?”

He looks away from me. “The last time I saw someone holding one, it was a Sian brain. He enjoyed vivisecting us in the name of science.” He shakes his head as if trying to get rid of the memory. “I jumped to the wrong conclusion.”

“Sure… and how did you get into our outpost?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, Trench changed the codes and didn’t tell anyone what the new ones are.”

“Didn’t he?”

And when I’d come in, Arc had said that bonding to Trench was what made him think Trench would have killed for me. But he wouldn’t have known at that point…

“Temperature isn’t your thing , is it?”

His smile is tight when he stands. “You are smart, aren’t you?”

He walks away, making it to the other side of the room just before Trench comes in with Hazard at his side.

Hazard congratulates me until he’s pushed out of the way by Cindy and Core and then Kilo and Strike and Andrea and even the cold boys. I watch them carefully, but they seem determined not to notice that I do.

I’m surprised when Drift starts the meeting before Laurel and Richter get there, but I assume he has a schedule to keep.

He goes over the tunnels. All of them checked. Two more exits were found and closed, but clearly used.

Kilo leans forward and asks Trench, “Do you think that was what the one that didn’t attack you and Richter was doing? Distracting you while another one got through the tunnels?”

Trench shrugs. “We can check the timing, but it’s pure speculation at this point.”

Drift turns to me. “Anything new to report from your end?”

“I think they’re both smarter and less intelligent than you give them credit for.”

“How is that possible?” Kilo asks.

“This is just a hypothesis, I don’t have anything concrete right now, but I was comparing the brains of the cavrinskh that Trench has brought in for study to textbook examples of Sian brains.” I look directly at Arc when I say it. “Your brains and our brains are not that different. And cavrinskh brains are similar enough to yours that I’ve been able to figure out what is probably being obliterated by the device in their foreheads.”

There’s a small stir and I let them ask questions I don’t plan on answering tonight as I look at the front door where Richter and Laurel have finally arrived.

They don’t get to sit down before Drift has finally quieted the others down and turned to me. “Go on.”

“It was the kind of puzzle where I had to figure out what was probably missing and the most likely option is the anterior cingulate cortex.”

This time, when I go silent, everyone else does too.

They all stare at me, waiting, except Arc, who looks like he already knows, and the other two cold boys who look at him.

“If yours does what ours does, and theirs does what yours does… I think you’re dealing with remote control monsters.”

TRENCH

The way the others explode at her wording makes me want to laugh, but there’s nothing funny about the implications.

The only one who isn’t stressed over Jessica’s statement is her sister.

Laurel scoots closer to me and knocks my arm with her elbow. “Welcome to the family.”

“Thank you.”

“Has she told our mom yet?”

The way she grimaces makes me wonder if I need to show Jess where the mute button is before she makes the call. “No.”

Laurel exhales an unhappy little breath. “Believe me, it was a bad phone call for me, it’s going to be worse for her. Mom is going to be pissed that she’s gone. She was just mad at me because of how it was going to look to her friends.”

She does smile after she says that.

“Are you happy about that?”

“Oh, not that Jess is going to have to sit through a one-sided screaming match. That’s going to suck. But I won’t lie to you, having her here for good makes me feel a little better about ditching Earth. And Mom still has Chrys to pin all her Earth-specific hopes on.”

Jess leans into me from the other side. “Can we please go now?”

“Of course.”

Jess looks around me. “Hi, if you’d gotten here earlier I would have made time for you.”

“Sure, go enjoy your new home. We’ll have plenty of time for ‘I told you so’ later.”

“You didn’t tell me anything.”

Laurel rolls her eyes. “Everyone saw this coming, Jess. Even you. You might not be able to admit it, but I know you did.”

“Yeah, maybe I did.”

I don’t make a big deal of leading Jess out. I don’t pick her up and run for the door. We just get up and leave.

No one stops us.

No one questions us.

Thank the Saints.

The suns are still relatively high in the sky when we get home, and all I want to do is take her straight to bed.

But we don’t get that far.

Jess drops her keychain on the table by the door, her glasses too and starts stripping off her clothes as soon as we get inside. When we get to the kitchen, she’s completely naked. She hops up onto the island and asks, “Hungry?”

Always. “I’m practically starved.”

I go to my knees and feast.

With her thighs in my hands and my bifurcated tongue on her clit, there’s nothing on the planet that could make me stand and leave her now. Especially when she drops her head back and makes that sound.

“Careful,” she says with a smile I can feel. “Make me come too fast and I’ll think you’re showing off.”

As if I’ll ever stop trying to impress her.

Despite her warning, she grips my head with the hand that isn’t supporting her and shifts her hips, keeping me close. If I stilled, I know she’d take over. I know she’d use my tongue to bring herself to completion. But I’ll only make her work for it if she wants to.

Right now, all I want her to do is feel.

Each flicker and lap of my tongue pulses pleasure through the bond and makes my cock a little harder.

I’m on the verge of pain when her breath hitches and her head tips back. When I release her thighs, they close around my head, squeezing as a soft orgasm ripples through her, across the bond, and into me.

“It really is too bad I’m not going back to Earth,” she sighs.

I look up at her and quirk a brow ridge, wondering what she could possibly want to go back for.

“For the Agency’s sake, I mean.” She places her hand beneath my chin and encourages me to stand, helping me out of my clothes as she continues. “I would have brought back a glowing report.”

“Glowing?”

She nods. “There wouldn’t be a straight, sex-positive woman left on the planet.”

“There might be a few. And you’d have to give them the Shadow Zone disclaimer.”

Humming an agreement, she strokes my cock and turns herself, laying the same way she did the first time I set her on this island and came all over her.

She winks at me before swirling her tongue around my cockhead, and I shiver as she takes me into her mouth.

I feel the determination across the bond that tells me she’s not going to let us move on until I’ve come this way.

She’ll get no argument from me, but I’m not about to play fair.

I slip my fingers through the wetness my tongue left behind and grip her pussy the way I did before.

The moan she breathes against my cock makes my abdomen clench, and I grind the heel of my palm against her clit.

She sucks harder, and it becomes a race I’m already certain I’m going to lose.

The smile Jess gives me, lips still wrapped around my cock, tells me she knows she’s going to win.

We’re both going to win.

“If you could see what you look like right now, Jess…” I lick my lips. “You’re a perfect treat laid out for me.”

She smiles, angling her hips to fuck my fingers and the need she pushes across the bond is my undoing.

Swallowing once, twice, she pulls back with a laugh and lets the rest of my cum stripe her chest, her face, and the counter.

She licks the cum from her lips and smiles up at me. “Why did I think you’d come less by now?”

“I don’t know.”

Smiling wickedly, she turns herself, sliding in my cum as she lifts one leg to raise it over me and open herself to me.

Spreading her pussy with her fingers, she strokes herself this time. “I’m not going to gripe.”

There’s no room for complaints as I press into her and close my eyes at the sensation deep within me.

Every time our bodies are joined like this, it feels like the only place I am meant to be. With her.

I kiss her ribs as I fuck her. Long and slow strokes, teasing her toward what she wants.

I can feel the laughing frustration in her, and I know she can feel the teasing amusement in me.

“Just don’t make me wait too long, or I’ll take matters into my own hands.”

“I’m sure you will.” Chuckling, I grip her hips tighter, and she tightens on me as well.

She says my name, and I know it was meant to be scolding, but she doesn’t quite manage the right tone.

“More,” she demands. “Closer.”

The only way I can get closer is to drag her off the counter, or climb up with her. But the second I shift my weight forward, the counter beneath my hand cracks.

Jess freezes, and we both look at the shattered screen. The webbed lines darken as cum flows into them.

“Oops,” Jess says, smiling and grimacing at once. “I forgot.”

“Me too.”

I wrap my hand around the back of her neck, pulling her up to sitting so I can kiss her while I shift her away from those jagged lines.

She rocks on me and I move her closer, almost taking her off the counter entirely.

Jessica whimpers and her teeth graze my neck. “Andrea should have asked for more time. How am I supposed to get enough of you?”

“You’re not.”

I catch her mouth with mine before she can ask any more silly questions. I fuck her the way she deserves. Deep and hard, until she draws back from me on a cry, her whole body rigid.

I have to screw my eyes shut.

Through the tremors of her orgasm, her pussy pulls at my cock in a rhythm that gives me no relief, and I last mere moments before her body drags my second orgasm from me.

I shudder as my cum floods her. When I peel my eyes open again, her smile strikes straight through the heart of me.

I feel the mischief in our bond a moment before she changes the angle of her hips, sliding off of me so the last of my cum sprays across her like it did the first time we stood together like this.

She giggles and with a sigh, lays back on the messy counter and laughs some more. “It’s been a while since I’ve gone for a swim.”

I chuckle at the sheer amount of cum on the counter again, and the way it turns into a tiny wave as I slide her off of it. It makes a splattering sound as I lift her down to stand in front of me, creating a little waterfall of cum.

“We need a mop,” she says, weaving on her feet.

“The bots will deal with it.”

“Right. I forgot.” She looks at the counter and the cracked screen. “We can’t let anyone come over until we’ve fixed that. I don’t want to not-explain it to them.”

“I don’t plan on inviting anyone for at least three months.”

“Three months?”

“I think I’ll be ready to share you again after three months.” I’m probably wrong.

She lifts her hands up and lets me carry her upstairs, and when I drop her onto our bed, her laughter is broken by a snort. The sound is giddy and absurd and I love it.

But it’s stolen a moment later by the sound of a sensor trip out in the Zone.

I groan.

“Honeymoon is really over, isn’t it?” She purses her lips and I can feel how irritated she is by the sound.

We clean up. Jess gets dressed too.

“This is our life now, right?” She helps me seal up the suit. “If I don’t get work done while you’re out in the Zone, we’re never going to find anything out.”

No. Because I plan to drag her straight back into bed the moment I return.

I kiss her once more and head out.

But when I get down into the Zone, I look back and a small sense of dread washes over my skin.

Something is different.

The only thing that keeps me from turning around is that I know it’s my dread, not hers.