In His Sights (Don't Tell) (2 page)

I spread open his thin armor shirt, dragging it down his arms. The layer underneath was tossed away. Muscles rippled on his lean frame, a goddamn sleek torso with sharply flexed abs I smacked my palms against. He jerked when I touched him. He shouted when I sucked a tight tan nipple into my mouth, rolling it with my tongue, teasing it with my teeth.

Clasping the back of my head, he held me against him and I moved to the other nub on his chest. “God, yeah. Fuck, man,
fuck
.”

Covered in a colorful array of tattoos, his upper arms and shoulders—bunched with corded muscles—called to me. I tasted those too, rasping him all over with my goatee until his skin wore a rash of my making.

When his hands worked into the back of my pants and grabbed my ass, I drove my cock against his. Gut-deep, hard-hitting attraction made me return every rough touch and deep thrust. Soon we grunted against each other instead of kissing, our mouths close enough to touch but not enough air to be had. Sweat slickened between our bare chests. It trailed the fine lines where I clenched him, pulling him against me until not a single space separated us.

Bodies locked together, my erection strained in my pants, throbbing with such intense arousal it held me just on the edge of pain. His harsh breaths billowed against my ear. His cock ground into mine. He rotated his hips, picking up the fast and furious pace.

“You got a name?” I bit out. “’Cause I need to know what to shout when I come.”

His hooded eyes opened halfway. “Mayce.”

His voice, his name, and the way he slid one finger down the crease of my ass blasted heat to my nuts. My hips snapped erratically. My fingers dug into his back. My mouth landed on his shoulder as I came with a muffled shout of his name, vision going blistering white as semen shot hot and thick inside my pants.

I was vaguely aware of his orgasm when he bowed against me, lifting me almost off my feet and into him by his grasp on my ass.

“Hawke,” he moaned, long and low.

I panted against him. His fingers dug beneath my waistband eliciting a sharp hiss from me. His hand wrapping around the base of my cock, Mayce fisted me, pumping out more come. His palm smearing it around my aching shaft, he then slid his hand over the muscles of my groin. Slick with seed, he lifted his fingertips to his mouth. His nostrils flared at the scent. Sucking warm cream into his mouth, his eyes rolled back, hips punching forward. He covered my lips with his. Our mouths filled with my release, and the feel of his saturated salty tongue massaging mine tore another groan from my throat.

“Fuck.
Fuck
.” His rough voice, his moist mouth pressed against my ear.

For a moment while we held each other, muscles still straining, hands still wandering, it felt intimate. That scared me more than anything this man could do to me with a gun. My body didn’t seem to give a fuck though. I was aroused again, or still, desperate for more.

Pulling his head back, Mayce gave me an arrogant all-over look. “You’re a hot fucking piece of tail.”

He planted another wild wet kiss on my lips, twisting fingers into my dreadlocked hair, holding me by my scalp. My hands chased down his chest to the warm wet spot on his camos.

Surrounded by our scent it was hard to focus, but I squeezed his testicles none too gently and said, “You’ll do, for a soldier.”

His laugh was breathless. His hands trailed down my body one last time before he separated from me. The air felt cool on my chest. I wondered if this was when he would kill me, or if he’d take me in for questioning. I could probably make a run for it. I should’ve thought of that while he was all sweet and horny and fucking against me.

His eyes shaded when his Data-Pak went off with a blaring sound, announcing a transmission. Tugging the handheld CO-communications device from his pocket, he cocked a finger at me. “Stay.”

Just to make sure, he leaned over to grab his gun, keeping it casually in his hand.

“Commander Cannon,” he spoke into the D-P. “No, sir.” Squinting at me, Mayce thrust my shirt into my hands.

So I’m to be detained and killed at a later date.

He holstered his weapon, rearranging his pants. I smirked when he swiped at the wet spot on the crotch. Listening to the D-P, he answered in a crisp voice, “Yes, sir. ASAP, I got it.”

The D-P pocketed, Mayce kept his gaze on me as he dressed with concise motions. The alarming sounds of the Revolution outside were drawing closer. Shots sounded, not too far from our little hole in the wall.

Mayce pondered me as he scratched across the smooth sexy skull-cut. He found my gun, my ammo, my blades, handing them to me one by one.

Finally he exhaled. “You better stay alive, Nomad.”

I nearly dropped my gear. “What?”

“You heard me.” His back stiffened before he took up a casual at-ease stance. “This isn’t advisable in any way what-so-fucking-ever, but I want to see you again. Same time, two days from now, here. If not here—if the place has been overrun or locked down—I’ll…” He tapped his boot on the floor and frowned. “I’ll locate you.”

Hell no, it wasn’t advisable. It was goddamn foolhardy, and I’d be a straight-up idiot to even consider a second run-in with Mayce, my enemy, just because he granted me mercy, then made me come so frigging hard I almost passed out.

“Is this a stay of execution?”

“Actually it was my first try at seduction.” He shot me a lopsided smile. “How’d I do?”

Shit.
I tried not to grin. “Maybe don’t a shove a gun in my face next time?”

I turned to leave—knowing turning my back on this soldier was an asinine move—and he clasped my wrist. His breath traced along my neck. “You’ll come then? Next time?”

This was stupid. A death sentence. I couldn’t stop myself from responding. “I came the first time, didn’t I?”

His low chuckle followed me into the night.

C
HAPTER
T
WO

M
AYCE

I bugged out of the building shortly after Hawke. I only took an extra minute to check my ammo and slow my supersonic heart rate. Outside, the fighting was getting ugly. Coming up on S-1 where I could see the looming wall surrounding the Quad, an anarchical scene confronted me. Nomads and rebels went at it with Corps troopers. They spilled across the streets, threw each other against buildings. Another round of bombs razed the earth from Predator planes above, yet the screaming alarm of imminent detonation had no effect.

My Beretta drawn, I hunched down, battling through the masses, knocking anyone aside who got in my path. Scanning left and right, I detailed all threats, my senses more alive than ever. I tried to keep my head screwed on tight, too, but that was a losing battle. My mission now was to return to Corps Command for an update from Commander Cannon, not to tie my stomach in knots about a nobody Nomad I should’ve shot in the head or turned into the RACE tribunal for Repopulation and Civilization Enforcement, aka
therapy
that usually ended in death.

I’d always been a cool hand in combat, collected and calm in training, a hardliner soldier my commander and lieutenant counted on. I was also the first among my comrades to find a woman to fuck on our nights off. The CO had one rule for their citizens—toe the line, bow to monogamy, breed a brand new population after the Purge in the 2020s had laid waste to pretty much all the world—and another for its Corps military. We elite were encouraged to have as many of the opposite sex as we wanted, needed, to stave off the memories of warfare that clung to our skin like bloody battle wounds and to our psyche like evil-stained nightmares. Excess sex to erase the feeling we were cruel killing machines. I threw myself into it as I did all my missions, with determination. I didn’t dislike a warm wet pussy. I’d never had anything else. Until tonight. The difference was fucking earth-shattering.

Hate for the Nomads had been ingrained from childhood in each Territorian’s life. They were savage; stupid, shaggy, and had shit-for-brains instead of superior cerebral functioning. That was the story. One I’d made myself believe for the better of our people.

But I couldn’t hate a man like Hawke—a warrior of his nation—who’d kissed me like his life depended on it, could I? Or maybe he’d thought his life
had
depended on it. I did hold all the weapons, after all.

Shit.

My perpetual read on the FUBAR scenario around me suddenly came up with an immediate tango. A Nomad raised a sharp glinting ax, blocking my path. My finger twitched on the trigger as I lifted my sidearm.
Kill shot, clean and simple, no pain, no suffering.
It would be swift, easy, and nothing I hadn’t done hundreds of times before. There was no alarm from my conscience to stop me, which was a little distressing, but I didn’t have time to pick that little piece of totally-fucked-up apart because the grizzle-faced fuckwit gave an almighty roar before charging.

I ducked his oncoming rush, escaping with a scrape on my arm. Good thing I was nimble. He returned for a second attack, the big bull of a man nearly taking me off my feet with the brush of his shoulders alone, and that wouldn’t do. The third time around, I smashed the butt of my Beretta into his nose and the sole of my boot against the side of his knee, taking him to the ground where he writhed in agony.

I stood over him, my finger still tickling the trigger. Alert brown eyes found mine. They were filled with so much revulsion I almost dropped back. Leaning down, I pressed the muzzle to his forehead. “I don’t know what you fight for.”

“For freedom. For truth. For all people.” He swallowed hard, no doubt shoving down screams from the pain of a disjointed kneecap. Blood welled from the fragmented tissue of his nose. “You can kill me. You can’t kill the spirit of the Freelanders.”

Freelanders.
In spite of having second thoughts about my CO beliefs, I wasn’t above a little cat and mouse with my prey. I kicked his leg, listening to his harsh growl. “I could kill you, but I’d rather watch you squirm away, worm.”

I left him wriggling on the roadside, wondering if he’d get stampeded. I nearly turned back. Stopping for a second, I glared up at the rising structures inside the Quad, my feelings beginning to fracture.

Enough, prima-fuckin’-donna of doom.

I was admitted through the Quad gates and into Corps Command after a retinal and thumb scan, my steps faltering as memories of my mom flooded back to me. At my most levelheaded moments, I thought of her as a dossier to be processed rather than a mother to be mourned:

Anna Mayce

Single mother

DOD: 2052

Cause: Suicide

At rare times, I remembered her as she’d been. Bright and worryingly fun on her good days, worrying because she was so pretty and her laugh so infectious she always attracted too much attention from the gray and glum populace surrounding us. On her worst days, she’d kept to her bed, curtains drawn, unable to face the world, let alone our neighbors or the prospect of putting a meal on the table.

Pregnant at eighteen, she claimed my father was a famed soldier who couldn’t be tied down. He left her to bear the brunt of shame as a fallen woman among the perfect family nuclei the CO treasured. Continually ostracized, she’d given in to the worst of her nature, the dark depressive side, killing herself when I was eight.

My years after from bereft son to brilliant soldier caused my chest to tighten. I wasn’t given a choice in my path. I wasn’t allowed to explore career options. I wasn’t given the room to express what I truly wanted. No one was. The CO foster care I was
adopted
into had one goal. We children were reared to become hardened soldiers.

My harsh upbringing made me a prime candidate for Corps training.

“Don’t become a killer, my boy.” My mom had stroked the hair from my forehead and looked deeply into my eyes, asking me not to become like my father on more than one occasion.

And because she’d left me alone, I’d done just that.

One memory bled to the next. The most recent from tonight hit me even harder than those of the past. Separated from my troops, I’d fallen on the Nomad and the scraggly kid busy puking up his lunch in the alley.

Visceral remembrances of Hawke assaulted me as I stomped down the black marble corridor of Command. His piercing eyes, that dark blond hair twisted in long thin dreads coming loose from a low ponytail which only added to his exotic appeal. He was slightly bigger than me, a body used to hard work granting him rugged muscles and skin burnished to a healthy glow. His goatee had brushed against my mouth and sent goddamn shivers down my spine when he lowered his lips to suck on my neck.

I was sure my mouth was bruised from our kisses. I probably smelled like him too—a little rough, a little wild, a lot earthy—and semen, both of ours I’d pushed into my mouth and licked from his lips. I’d never acted on my needs before, not for a man. Something about Hawke had wrenched so deep inside me, I’d had no choice.

Holy fuck
. I had to stop thinking about him or I’d have guilt written all over my face as well as my soiled pants. I had just enough time to clean up in my barracks before facing the scariest bastard I knew, Commander Cannon. There was no room in a hard-edged life like mine for a wife or family or kids. There sure as hell wasn’t any room for indulging fantasies or tendencies about being with a man, because then I wouldn’t have a life at all.

I’d be dead, care of the slick kill-and-clean-up operation performed by the RACE Tribunal that had an InterNations-wide hard-on and death warrant for all homosexuals.

* * * *

I saluted Lieutenant Liz Grant as I entered the war room fifteen minutes later. She barely glanced at me. She was one of the tightest officers I’d ever worked for, from her crisp appearance to her sniper skills, and she did not bother with inefficient words.

Darwin tracked my arrival, slim reddish-blond eyebrows rising beneath her cap. “Way to fuck off during a fight, Mayce.”