Destiny's Shift (18 page)

He went to the door, hoping his t-shirt would hide what he had going on in his

pants.

Chapter 34

Jovan opened the door just enough to slip through and met Rayner’s eyes.

Rayner narrowed his eyes as he studied Jovan. “What’s up with you?”

Jovan tried not to concentrate on his cock that was so up it might never go down

again. “Nothing, man. Just not having a good day.”

Wasn’t that the truth. They fell in step down the hallway.

“No, it’s something else.”

Jovan shrugged.

Rayner stopped, and Jovan took a few steps and stopped as well. Rayner stared at

Jovan, looking him up and down. Then he smiled. “You better pull that shirt down a little

farther if you want to hide that hard-on.”

Jovan cursed and tugged at his shirt, and Rayner started walking again. Jovan

quickened his pace to catch up.

“So got yourself a little Liberty, huh?”

“Not really.”

“Judging by the bulge in your pants, you should say ‘not enough.’”

“Fuck off, Rayner.”

They hit the stairs.

“And you better not say anything to Noah.”

“He’s not going to hear jack from me, Jovan, but he’ll hear it somehow. Someone

will say something and the cat will be out of the bag.”

“If that happens you know it means my ass gets sent into next Thursday by

Noah’s fists.”

“Oh, I’m sure. But it’ll probably be Friday or Saturday, my friend.”

Jovan stopped at the top of the stairs and looked around the kitchen to make sure

no one was there to listen.

“That female drives me nuts,” Jovan whispered, running his hand through his hair.

Rayner smiled and put his hand on Jovan’s shoulder. “I told you, man, little

package, big trouble.”

Jovan sighed.

“Let’s put females on the back burner for now. I want our plan to be solid, and

then let’s figure out what’s for dinner. After that, I want to light that fireplace out on the

deck, have a cocktail or two, and turn in early.”

Jovan nodded. He needed to get his head out from between Liberty’s legs and

back in the game, both literally and figuratively.

Chapter 35

Liberty lay on Jovan’s bed, listening to the low male tones of Rayner and Jovan

talking outside the door. As the voices drifted down the hallway, she rolled to her side and

pulled her legs up to her chest.

My goodness, what an amazing feeling Jovan had given her. She felt as though

she was going to explode from the inside out as wave after wave of gratification rolled

from her center. Beverly, Faith, and Abby hadn’t told her anything about a male putting

his mouth on her sex and being able to give her pleasure. Smiling, she wondered what

enjoyment his body would bring her.

Thinking back to their conversation before that, she had used her gift to see what

Jovan’s true feelings were when he said he didn’t want to mate her. When she touched

him, she was able to mask her own emotions, but she got a read on his. She detected

frustration, worry, and mistruths. Jovan did care about her deeply, but he was either

fighting it or wasn’t aware of the depth of his emotions toward her.

This made her smile, and when she had laughed it was from joy, not because she

found what he said terribly funny. Her feelings for Jovan ran deep, but she knew she

wasn’t in love with him.

Not yet, anyway. Perhaps that would come in time.

Sitting up she reached for her underwear, then remembered Jovan had ripped

them. She had liked the pretty, purple silk, but heat had exploded within her when he did

that. She had heard on SR44 that some males could be very aggressive, and she had to

admit she liked it. It showed his true being: an SR44 male with a need to mate.

With her.

She giggled again and scooped her clothes off the floor, then headed to the

bathroom and back into her room.

Just a few short weeks ago she never would have imagined someone wanting to

give her gratification, someone wanting to do something for her. And she never would

have imagined that she would be joining with one of the Six Saviors. To think that a

Warrior of his stature wanted to be with her, a female born into servitude, was an

astonishing thought. If she were still on SR44, her only hope of getting close to a Warrior

of his magnitude would be to serve him, but here she was, actually wanted by the

Warrior.

She slipped on another pair of underwear, a silky black pair that Faith had insisted

they buy on the their shopping trip a few days ago. She hoped Jovan would take them off

in a similar fashion to the purple.

Thinking back to that shopping trip, she remembered how overwhelmed she had

been with all the choices for clothing. Faith was patient and kind, explaining to her the

way the sizing worked and what the basic needs were. She had loved shopping for the . . .

what had Faith called it? Lingerie. Yes, that was it. The silky fabrics felt so nice on her

skin, and she adored the way they shimmered slightly in the lights.

Liberty had remembered the soft seats in the plane, and the makings of the

couches in the silo, and how she liked the feel of it. She had asked Faith if they made

lingerie in the leather fabric.

Faith’s eyes narrowed, and a slight devilish grin played on her lips. “Oh, yes,

Liberty. They do. But we have to go to a different store for them.”

They never made it to the store.

Focusing back on the present, Liberty was dressed and ready to head up to the

meeting. She couldn’t wait to see Annis, and to apologize for leaving her the way she

had.

If Annis was still alive.

When Liberty was first introduced to Annis, who was a trooper, she had seemed

so hard and unyielding, but Annis did have a little bit of a softer side to her as well, and

there weren’t many who got to see it.

On the trip to Earth, saying Liberty was frightened would have been an

understatement. The males were all given huge bodies that were comparable to the Six

Saviors. When they had talked of killing Noah, her fear had doubled. It was Annis who

reminded her that they did not know who she was, and they wouldn’t find out unless she

told them. So Liberty had kept her words few and clung to Annis.

The landing was a fiery mess, and Annis had been hurt, her leg badly wounded. At

that point, the tables turned and Liberty tended to Annis, trying to clean the wound as best

she could and helping Annis drink water. When the FBI descended upon them, Annis had

encouraged her to run. Liberty remembered how she had tried to help Annis up, but the

trooper stood at six feet and her human body was very muscular and fit. Liberty, who was

of average height and thin, couldn’t help her.

But she could run, and Annis had yelled at her until she did so.

Liberty went up the stairs and followed the rumbles of the deep male voices. She

took a chair next to Blake and smiled at Faith and Rayner.

“Hey, Liberty,” Blake said. “We’re just going over our plans for tomorrow.”

The layout of Area 2 stretched along the table. Liberty listened as Blake described

everything.

“Here’s where they keep your kind,” Blake said, pointing at an area that had six

small rooms. “Surprisingly, security is pretty light around the whole area.”

“Why is that?” Rayner asked. “I would think there would be a lot of guards

around.”

Blake shook his head. “Nope. They learned their lesson from Area 51. They had

that place so pumped up with security it got noticed. For Area 2, they went the other way.

Kind of like hiding in plain sight.”

Liberty watched as Blake described the way they would get in and where they

might run into trouble, his hands tracing over the plans on the table. Rayner and Jovan

listened intently.

“So, we go in with guns blazing,” Jovan said with a little smile, cracking his

knuckles, and Liberty flinched at the thought of guns. However, she could see that it

would be a necessity.

“Negative,” Blake said. “I’ve given this a lot of thought, and I think the best

approach is going to be something a little less obvious.”

“But we are taking guns,” Rayner said.

“Hell yes, but we’ll only use them if necessary.”

“So what’s the plan?”

Liberty listened as Blake explained that most of the personnel there were in the

medical field. “Honestly, if we throw on a couple of white jackets and walk in there like

we belong, I think we’ll get pretty far.”

There was silence at the table for a minute.

“What about high-tech security? If they’re low on physical personnel, there has to

be a lot of that.”

Blake nodded. “Noah’s supposed to roll Talin out of bed again today and get him

working on hacking in.”

“Poor fucker,” Rayner muttered, shaking his head and putting his arm protectively

around Faith.

“Who did he lose?” Blake asked.

“His mate.”

More silence.

“Well, I guess we need to go shopping for some doctor coats then,” Jovan said.

Chapter 36

Jovan lay in bed staring at the ceiling. After the meeting, they had eaten dinner

and sat out on the patio for a little bit. The talk was quiet and restrained, and everyone

had turned in early. He had been staring at the ceiling for two hours and couldn’t shake

the strong feeling that things were going to go tits-up tomorrow; it was gnawing at him.

He had gone into some dangerous situations before while hunting Colonists.

There was the time when he and Hudson had tracked a guy in Mexico to his house after

hearing about a series of murders in the small, Mexican town. They watched the house

for two days and didn’t see anyone else coming or going. They had decided the house had

two, maybe three bedrooms, and based on the man’s movements in the house, they

thought they had a pretty good idea of the layout.

When they went in that night, the house thick with the stench of death, and what

was supposed to be a quick in and out turned into a battle. The layout was nothing like

they had thought. It seemed as though there were fake walls built, and that guess was

confirmed when the Colonist’s twenty-something son, who was bad news just like his

father, literally came out of a wall with a knife and caught Hudson in the shoulder with

the weapon.

While the injured Hudson went toe-to-toe with the son, Jovan had gone at it with

the father. After a trading a few fists, one that landed Jovan on the floor, the Colonist ran

down the hall and disappeared. As Jovan counted the doors, he realized that what they

had thought to be a two-or three-bedroom house had been made into six smaller rooms.

Jovan hadn’t seen which door the Colonist went into, so he was walking in blind.

He carefully made his way down the dark hallway, his boots echoing off the old, wooden

floor.

Retrieving his gun from its holster, he slowly opened door number one. The six-

by-six-foot room held nothing but a bloody mattress. He moved to door number two and

cringed when the thing squeaked loudly.

Door number two housed some sort of torture chamber, complete with a stainless

steel table and a set of knives that were plunged into the wall. The wooden floor below

the table was stained a dark red, and Jovan remembered wondering how many people had

died on that table.

He heard the fight in the living room continuing, which was good. Hudson must

not have been hurt too badly.

With four more doors to go, Jovan decided he was done pussyfooting around and

slammed the next three doors open with his foot to find more bloodstained mattresses.

The last door was obviously where the bastard was hiding, and who knew what

was in there. Jovan guessed some heavy artillery.

Stepping to the side, he took a deep breath and kicked the door. A second later, the

door splintered apart and the
tap-tap-tap
of rapid gunfire met his ears. As wood flew

through the air like tiny torpedoes, he turned his face away and covered his eyes. When

the sound finally stopped, Jovan swung around the doorjamb and put a bullet in between

the Colonist’s eyes.

He had turned and walked back down the hall when he heard a loud snap. Raising

his gun as he rounded the corner, he saw Hudson standing over the son whose neck was

twisted at an odd angle.

“That fucker came out of nowhere,” Hudson had said, breathing heavily. Hudson

brought his hand up to his shoulder. “I hate being stabbed.”

Jovan had plenty of stories where things didn’t go as planned, but he hadn’t felt

this uncertain before stepping into those situations.

The bathroom door opening interrupted Jovan’s thoughts. He glanced over and

saw Liberty.

“I have not come for the sex, Jovan,” she said in a quiet voice.

“Okay.” He was too distracted by the bad feeling in his gut anyway. “What do you

need?”

“I–I am seeking comfort.”

At first he recoiled at the thought, but then imagined holding her soft, warm body,

and not hearing her thoughts or feeling her emotions. He liked the sound of that and

supposed he could use a little comfort as well.

He moved over to the other side of the bed and patted the spot he had just been.

“Come on.”

Liberty came to him wearing a black t-shirt with a skull and crossbones on it that