Dominant Predator (11 page)

I broke away from the kiss, gasping for breath. “Off. Everything. Now,” I ordered.

His silver eyes went black, the pupils swallowing the shifting irises. Armise stood, dropped his pants to the floor and swiped the balm off the counter. I stripped off my pants and stroked myself. Armise tossed the container down to me and I slathered my cock. He dropped to his knees, straddling my hips. I gripped the base of my cock and teased the tip against his hole, lubing him, already beginning to drive inside him. Armise eased himself onto my cock, taking me deeper with each roll of his hips.

His movement was slow, torturous, and I tried to slam into him, but he gave a wicked grin and lifted himself off me every time I tried to force my way inside.

“Fucking now,” I ground out, dragging my lip piercing between my teeth. I pushed at his shoulders, but his knees were locked, keeping him hovered above me. He put his hands behind him and gripped my thighs in a painful grasp. I hissed and wrapped my arms around his, yanking his wrists together and into an iron grip. I lifted my hips and thrust inside him. Armise threw his head back and pushed back against me, driving me deeper inside him. I could no longer feel the cold—only fire remained as he rode me, using his powerful thighs to lift himself then slam down on my aching cock.

I kissed his neck, curled my face into the curve of his shoulder and let him take over. His cock rubbed against the ridges of my stomach and while that would never have been enough for me, for Armise I knew it would be. Even though I held his hands back, Armise controlled the pace, riding me harshly, his tight heat dragging me under, his sweat-slick chest sliding against mine. He increased his pace, arched his back and buried my cock in his ass to the hilt, his body shaking, releasing, his hot cum spilling over my stomach. I thrust into him, the waves of his release tightening his hole and ripping the orgasm from me.

I let go of his wrists and collapsed to the floor, the weight of Armise an unwelcome sensation on my overly sensitive skin. I slapped at his ribs, urging him to get off me, and he obeyed with a chuckle, ending up in a sitting position against the wall. I threw an arm over my eyes and listened to my heartbeat still thundering in my ears.

His words from earlier intruded into my consciousness.

I don’t want to be anywhere else
.

My eyes snapped open.

Maybe I was wrong. Maybe it wasn’t that Armise and I had nowhere else to go.

Maybe this—us—was the only stability either of us had anymore. And I could be okay with that or I could fight it. Embrace it or shut him out. He was leaving the decision up to me.

I heard Armise get up and start the shower, the humid heat of the water billowing out in clouds around him.

“Come on, Merq,” he coaxed me with an outstretched hand. “Shower then sleep.”

I took his hand and allowed him to lift me from the floor. I clutched his hand, held onto it a beat longer than I normally would have and waited for that familiar unease to spread through me. But nothing came.

“Okay,” I responded and stepped under the spray, Armise climbing in behind me.

Okay
, I repeated in my head.

Chapter Seven

“Come on, Chen. You have to give me something on this,” I hissed at her in a whisper.

“You want this one to be your freebie?”

“Just when I begin to forget you’re a child.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. “You sure about your strategy here?”

“One thing,” I begged, holding up a single finger. “I don’t even need all the intel and details. Just a hint of what I’m walking into. You owe me.”

Chen glared. “
That
is a mutual debt.”

I waited.

“Fine,” she relented. “I’m picking up a third signal from the building that’s definitely Revolution.”

“So the Opposition is holding someone else.”

“Definitely. But I’m not sure who it is. This signal is an old chip. At least a decade, maybe more. And I can’t find any matches to it in the database.”

I sat back. Anyone who was active with the Revolution would have had their chips updated numerous times in the last ten years. “You think this person is important?”

She shrugged. “I’m not the one making that call.”

It definitely wouldn’t have been her making that decision. It would either have to be Neveed or the President giving her the command to keep this third person a secret. Regardless of who was giving the order, the presence of a third person, an associate of the Revolution in some way, was something that I should have been informed about. That I wasn’t being provided that detail, that I wasn’t being ordered to extract this person as well, meant that whoever was giving the order was unsure about whether this unknown person was viable for the cause anymore. At least I now had confirmation that my instincts about this mission were for a good reason.

I clapped her on the back in appreciation and stood.

“I see you and Armise are ready,” Neveed observed as he came up next to me, taking in my Revolution uniform.

I pointed across the control room and made sure to speak up above the clamour when I said, “Exley is coming with us, too.”

The room went silent. Analysts’ heads popping above their computer screens, Simion freezing in mid-conversation next to Chen.

“Fuck, no.” Exley shook his head adamantly, his braids swinging. “Nope. No. I’m not walking into a trap. They know we’re coming.”

“They can’t track our systems,” Chen replied, not taking her eyes off the screens in front of her as the lie slipped through her lips without hesitation.

“Bullshit,” I spat out. “That lie is a waste of breath. It doesn’t matter that they have access to our systems, though. They won’t see us coming.”

Chen spared me a glance, her eyebrow lifted.

“My tracker chip is coming out.”

“What?” Chen and Simion said at the same time.

“The transport and communication chips as well. I want them all removed.” I laid my palms on Chen’s desk and stared her down, ignoring Simion. “Everything.”

“Everything?” Simion’s voice came from the other side of Chen, his tone questioning the possibility there would be more than the standard three every soldier had implanted in their wrists.

“Even the ones I don’t know about,” I insisted.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Chen lied again.

I had to give credit to Chen. She was young but had the coolness of decades of deceit. Even though I had no proof there was more, I was going with my intuition on this one. I was a high-value asset. The Revolution had spent years training me, and the President counted on me to accomplish the impossible. I wasn’t fool enough to think that they wouldn’t be protecting their investment with additional monitoring.

And as sure as I was that Armise was genetmod, I wondered just how much my own DNA had been played with. Just what else did they have inside me?

I smirked. “I’ll say this one more time. Even the ones I don’t know about. I want them all out.”

“Me too,” Armise’s voice came from behind me.

My head snapped around to face Armise. He had known I was going to demand the removal of my chips, but hadn’t said anything about removing his own. The thought of him being as untrackable as me made me nervous, and I wasn’t sure why.

“We won’t be able to transport you out if you get into trouble,” Simion noted.

I held my ground.

Chen shook her head. “I can’t do it.”

Neveed stepped into our conversation. “Do it.”

Chen glared at him. “You don’t have the authority to order that.”

“He does,” the President interjected, appearing at my side. Dr Feliu Casas, the head doctor for the President and the Revolution, stood behind him. The President spoke over his shoulder to Feliu. “Take the chips out of Merq and Armise. All of them.”

“All? You sure about that?” Chen asked again. Beneath her stone-faced exterior I could see the faintest of tells—a twitch to her fingers where they hovered over her screen—and realised she was just as nervous about the prospect of having me untrackable as I was about Armise.

“Put him under for it,” the President instructed to Feliu. Then he put his full attention back on me. “I need you to trust me on this.”

I nodded in agreement. Despite the President keeping me in the dark about certain aspects of this mission, I could trust him. He’d hidden information from me, but never without reason, and never in any way to violate the trust I put in him. I didn’t know what they were removing from my body, why it had been put there in the first place or why I would need to be sedated to have it removed. Was it the location of the chips? Or that they didn’t want me to see what they were pulling out of me? But if that was the way the President wanted it then I wouldn’t fight him on it.

“Exley’s too,” the President added.

Exley put his head in his hands and huffed out a long breath, seemingly resigning himself to the fact that he would be going with us whether he wanted to or not. “Shit. Fine,” he conceded.

“There’s no guarantee with the Singaporean,” Chen pointed out, waving towards Armise. “We don’t know what he’s carrying.”

“Then I’ll only remove the obvious ones,” Feliu replied, joining our already too-crowded discussion.

“So it’s just going to be the three of you on this op?” Simion asked.

“Yeah.”

I didn’t offer any other information on what Armise and I had planned. Simion didn’t need to know. None of them did. Armise and I were going to have to use unconventional tactics for this mission. Making sure they couldn’t track us wasn’t just to evade the Opposition. And Exley’s participation wasn’t just to get us through the Underground without a hassle.

I looked around the room, scanning the faces.

“Where is Jegs?” I asked, realising she wasn’t in the control room with us.

Simion crossed his arms and frowned. “She hasn’t come back yet.”

That was not a positive development. Hopefully she was tying those loose ends up definitively enough that her personal issues wouldn’t impact what we were trying to do.

I mirrored Simion’s pose, drawing myself up to my full height. “How long are we going to leave her out there?”

“She’s on her own with this one, Colonel,” Simion answered snidely. His reply was clearly an opinion, and one that I shared with him.

“Agreed. But if we get any intel that her side job is fucking up our long-term agenda then we need to pull her back in. Regardless of whether or not her business is concluded.”

Chen looked to the President for verification of this directive. He gave a clipped nod in agreement.

She lifted another screen from her desk and typed in a series of commands. Apparently whatever method they used to monitor us was something that Chen controlled.

Neveed handed me a box. “Take this. It’s an in-ear. Old technology using radio waves. If we can’t communicate through the chip this will be your last-ditch way to reach us.”

I opened the box, surveying the heavy black plastic pack with a thin black cord connected to it and a circle on the end that was just the right size to fit into my ear. “Infochip discovery?”

“Something like that,” Chen murmured.

I frowned again, took the device out of the box, snapped it closed and handed it back to Neveed. “Let’s get this over with.”

* * * *

“You want surge?” Feliu asked as he bent over my body slipping an IV port into my vein.

We were in a procedure room much like the one I’d been placed in to recover after the DCR standoff. Armise and Exley had been taken to other rooms, the three of us splitting off into separate directions as we’d left the control room.

“No. I need to be clear-headed. And I don’t intend on getting injured.”

“Stubborn and stupid,” Feliu chided me.

I couldn’t argue with him on that point.

Feliu took the needle in hand and went to inject the sedative. I put my hand over his, stopping him.

“I need the room cleared first,” I insisted.

Although it had appeared as if the medical staff was ignoring our conversation, they vacated the room immediately with my request.

When the door clicked shut behind them, I asked the question the President had suggested I delve into with the doctor, “How genetmod is he?”

Feliu took a step back and slid a stool to the side of the bed, sitting down before he answered. “The President told you.”

“Just answer me,” I gritted out.

“His base DNA is heavily modified. There appear to be forced improvements to the genes controlling strength, sight, hearing and touch. His body temp when he transported into the bunker was just over ninety degrees. I thought I was going to have to treat him until all his other vitals came back normal.”

“He told me his temperature fluctuates to match his surroundings.”

“It’s an impressive modification. Our scientists haven’t figured out how to do that.”

“What else?”

There was nothing the doctor had told me yet that surprised me. Armise had already admitted as much to me. And all the changes Feliu mentioned would be necessary to improve Armise’s sniper ability. But there had to be something else if the President was bringing it to my attention.

“I would have assumed to also see rapid healing but that seems to be missing. It’s a mod we’re only starting to master, so maybe they’re just not there yet.”

I could hear more of what the doctor wasn’t telling me, what he was avoiding, than what he was. “Fuck, doc. But?”

“Singapore may have found a way to shield without a chip. And for protecting something other than the sonicbullets.”

I scowled. “What the hell does that mean?”

“That’s just it. I don’t know. We can read a whole lot about him, but I don’t trust the data. There’s a glitch. A blip. Something inside him we can’t see and is being actively hidden from us.”

“How do you know that?”

“Part intuition, part experience. I’ve done a lot of scans. His vitals take a moment to register. The mechanical hesitation is so fast it could be written off to equipment fluctuations, but I just… I think it’s more.”