Bone Deep (28 page)

“I don’t know how to love, Dmitry, but I want to learn because if anyone deserves to be loved, it is you.”

He pulled her closer to him, smoothing a kiss over her brow and pushing her hair from her face. “I think you are my savior, Bone. Before you, I was empty, searching for a past even as I ran from it.”

“I am not sorry I killed your father or your mother.”

He kissed her lips this time. “I am not either.”

“But I am sorry we could not save Ninka,” she whispered. The pain of that morning in Arequipa was fresh. She feared it always would be.

“My sister. If I could have found her in time enough to save her, perhaps I wouldn’t have you now. There are steps we take,
Etzem
, that lead us to our lives. My life is you so I will no longer regret the steps I’ve taken because of where I am now.”

“I do not know that I can be what you need,” she told him baldly. Better he know now than hope for something else.

“We have already discussed change. I cannot change you, Bone Breaker. To try would make you something different from the woman I’ve given myself to. That would destroy me as surely as it would destroy you.”

“You have changed me though,” she admitted. “I still have secrets, Dmitry. There are things I cannot tell you, not yet.”

He nodded, hands moving up and down her back, soothing. “I understand your loyalty and I would not change that either. But I will demand that you keep me in the loop. I would go crazy not knowing where you are. Do not ask that of me. I will not ask for specifics and I would be a complete fucking dumbass to think you need me to protect you, but it will not stop me from trying. To me you are fragile glass and I would give my last breath to keep you safe whether you can do that on your own or not.”

“You ask for things that are foreign to me,” she whispered.

He glanced at her, worry lining his brow. “How about this,” he said, pressing his hips forward and groaning as her hand stroked his hard cock. “I ask you for nothing but this emotion between us that grows hot when I look at you and turns molten when I feel your hands on my body. How about I ask you for nothing but the pleasure that we create when our bodies touch?”

“
Vsegda
,” she said at his lips.

His eyes lowered, the blue burning and being answered by the fire inside her belly for this man. “You would promise me that?”

“Right here, right now, I would promise you forever.”

Once she gave the words life they expanded between them becoming something more than she’d ever known. But they were also bitter because she knew she was leaving once again.

He tangled her hair in his hands and came over her, his lips at hers. She opened her legs to him, the length of his cock on her thigh hot as she was consumed by want. He did not kiss her, simply held her there until he sank slowly inside her body, pushing in so deeply she felt possessed, owned.

“
Moye
,” he said, lips grazing hers as they moved.

“I will remember this,” she promised, more to herself than to Dmitry.

“Yes,” he ground out as she angled her hips, taking him even deeper and using her internal muscles to clench on him.

He stroked her then, retreating to her precipice to slide in again slowly. He built the heat in her body, and they shared sweat and breath. He stared at her, holding her hair and not allowing anything but her hips to move.

She met each thrust, giving herself to him, cementing him in her mind and heart. She did not think about tomorrow. She did not think about her sisters.

All she knew was Dmitry.

How long he made love to her she did not know. It seemed forever but not long enough. Her body craved and he answered her call, giving everything he was to her and abolishing her fear and pain. The heat called to her, the completion of what he wrought inside her demanding as he pushed in harder, deeper, faster.

His hips pumped and she relished the sweat that fell from him as a benediction, burning her skin in the most delightful ways.

“Take me,” he demanded. “Take all of me.”

She did not answer simply gave herself over to him, allowing his body to carry hers up the shimmering cliffs of desire so that they both peaked and exploded at the same time.

He rode her through her orgasm, building the heat once more, pushing her body until she thought she’d go mad.

“I will have all of you,” he said at her ear.

She acceded and he took it—her heart, her soul, her mind, they were his. Bone was his.

And when the darkness began to lighten in the eastern sky, Bone slid from the sheets and the warmth of his body, kissed his lips and left.

The cabin had not changed much. A broken spot in the landscape of the forest, it was a sad reminder of a past Bone could no longer run from. Warped, twisted boards hung haphazardly across the opening and moss clung to the rotting wood. The trees of the rainforest had formed a shroud of sorts above the roof, as if protecting the events that occurred there.

The light was falling and Bone lifted her gaze to the western sky, noting the deep oranges and brilliant reds of the setting sun. The blue of the day was being chased by the threat of the darkness and the darkness was winning as it always did.

Jungle cats screamed in the distance but the night birds were silent.
She
was here, close, but Bone was lost to the history they shared.

Bullet had stood guard fourteen years ago and Arrow had entered with Bone and Blade.

We must help her, sisters.
Blade had been so persistent and the desperation in her voice brought chills to Bone’s skin in the present. They had gotten out of bed, dressed in tanks and shorts, no shoes, and run through the night to a cabin they’d not known existed. They’d followed their sister without question.

Who is she, Blade?
Arrow had asked. Bone had been mute with terror. The scent of blood, urine, and feces had been strong. It was as if death stalked them all that night.

She is mine.
Blade’s answer had been enough.

Bone had never had an easy time seeing in the dark. Arrow and Blade were the best with the darkness, but she’d walked in, drawn by the pain she heard in the girl’s mewls.

What is wrong with her?
The question rang down through time and Bone remembered her fear at the unknown.

Blade had moaned, as if the pain was her own
. I don’t know.

We should not be here.
Death is here.
Arrow warned them and in hindsight Bone realized it would have been better for them all if they’d simply left.

But they hadn’t.

You are the strongest, Bone. Help her.

Blade’s demands, combined with the girl’s keening cries had prompted Bone’s feet to move.

It is so dark in here. I cannot see,
she had told Blade
.

We cannot risk any light. He will know then.

Bone scraped her foot, hissed out a breath at the small hurt and walked to the girl. Bone placed her hands on the girl’s body then. The tiny thing was contorted in agony, her breathing shallow.
Help me.

Her belly had been huge and distended. Wetness coated the floor at Bone’s feet and the copper stench of blood was vicious.

I must push.

The snap of a twig broke the silence of the mountains around her and Bone found herself wholly in the present, standing inside the cabin, staring at the corner where she’d both taken and saved life.

“I do not remember much about that night, but I remember the pain,” her voice pressed on Bone’s eardrums, filled with ghosts and hate.

“I remember it all,” Bone said, turning to confront the woman who had been on First Team’s heels for well over a year, maybe longer.

The falling sun highlighted her tall form. Willowy and rail thin, she didn’t present much of a threat. Her long, wavy, wheat-blond hair reminded her of another time.
Like the yellow crayon in my crayon box, that’s what Ninka’s hair reminds me of,
Bullet had always said.

Bone blinked her eyes, the transposition of the past on the present throwing her for a second.

She inhaled slowly, deeply, letting the orchid-scented air soothe the wildness in her soul. “You were much smaller then, though your face and form remained in darkness. You smelled of blood and death. It was abhorrent to me.”

The setting sun haloed her, keeping her features in darkness but giving Bone an impression of frailty.

“And now, Bone Breaker, what do I smell of?”

The woman’s husky tones rang through the forest, ricocheting off the trees and seeking to stoke Bone’s rage.

“I do not know, Nameless,” Bone said softly. “Why don’t you step closer so I can be sure?”

The woman threw her head back and laughed. “I will not dance with you, killer.”

“‘
We should consider every day lost on which we have not danced at least once,’
” Bone mused aloud.

“Nietzsche. Impressive. I wondered if you were all nothing more than brute force and a need to kill,” the woman responded.

Bone shrugged. “I am what I have always had to be. But in this you have no choice,” Bone told her. “We will dance. I didn’t come here to chat. I didn’t come here to discuss the monsters of our past. I came to here to put you down should there be need.”

The woman sighed and nodded. “It is something you excel at. ‘
He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you.’
”

Bone’s skin rippled with awareness. Someone else was headed their way. “Nietzsche becomes you as well, Nameless.”

“You have your fists, Blade her knife’s edge, Bullet her rifle, and Arrow her bow. My weapon is my mind and he almost took that from me,” Nameless imparted.

“You did not break and that is good, but you are not as we are.” Bone shifted, sliding to her right preparing herself. The woman’s body had coiled, muscles tightening. Blade was correct—she wasn’t trained. Whatever she’d learned hadn’t been at Joseph’s hands. “And I am not your abyss.”

The woman remained in shadow though it mattered not to Bone. She had fought shadows her entire life.

“You are all a product of my abyss. It is the truth I don’t whether to destroy you all or seat you a table of royalty and worship you. Perhaps I owe each of you something different. But you, Bone, you I owe more than the others,” Nameless whispered.

She’s having a child
, Arrow had whispered so long ago, the demons she carried inside her swirling and reaching for Bone even then.

More screams and then a plea from the girl to get whatever was inside of her out. Bone had reached for her, seeing the darker shadow of her body lying on a cot of some short, legs bent, body heaving.

Help her, Bone!
It was if Blade was there and Bone actually looked around, seeing the cobwebs and the dirty walls of the present.

“You do remember,” Nameless said with a small laugh. “That’s good. I had hoped it haunted your every waking moment but you remembering here, where I can watch your face, is enough.”

Take it out of me!
The girl labored. Bone checked her pulse, finding it weak and thready and knowing she didn’t have much time left. She had only known death but she remembered a time when her mother had dragged her to the heart of Jericho. A fellow Zionist was giving birth and Bone’s mother had been a midwife.

Bone had remembered her mother reaching between the girls legs and pulling a baby out.

Get it out, please!

Her screams were weaker and with Blade’s fear scenting the air, Bone had done what her mother had done. She’d reached between the girl’s legs and pulled.

She remembered the wet feel of a rounded head, so tiny and fragile and she remembered grasping that head and tugging. She remembered the snap of tiny bones and a feeling that she had done something wrong—that this was not how it was supposed to go.

Push
, she had said to the girl softly after begging Blade to shut her up.

The girl had pushed and the child had fallen into Bone’s hands, unmoving. Its head flopped to the side and Bone’s heart had shattered.
It isn’t breathing.

Her own words echoed through from the past to the present.

She had broken its neck with her clumsy attempts. She had taken an innocent life and it had ripped her soul in two.

“You killed the first one,” Nameless said, her body shifting sinuously as she prepared to strike. “I have always wondered if it was intentional.”

Bone could not answer her because it was a truth she did not know and it tortured her unlike anything Joseph or Minton had ever done. Had she? Had her rage and fear been so great that maybe in the grips of it she had succumbed to the only thing she’d ever known?
Death
bringer
.

“After all, you were created and honed to kill,” Nameless finished bitterly.

She struck then and Bone took the fist to the side, right over the area where she’d been shot and she staggered back doubling over.

Nameless followed it with another kick to the abdomen and Bone absorbed the blow. The pain spread like poison through her veins, wracking and demanding she fight this woman who thought she could take Bone down.

Another kick and a shot to the side of Bone’s head and she spit out blood, stood tall and said, “Enough!”

“It could never be enough,” Nameless spit out.

Bone took her measure and spun to meet the next kick, catching the other woman’s leg and twisting until Nameless spun and fell to the ground. She was up almost immediately but Bone was ready.

“I allowed you those strikes because a part of me feels as I deserve them. But you will get no more,” Bone promised in a deadly voice.

“Where is the other boy?” Nameless asked.

Bone closed her eyes and simply listened. A shift of boot over dirt and gasp of pain. Fighting was ninety-nine percent awareness. The other one percent was training and motivation. Bone was at one hundred percent right now. “The boy is ours.”