In His Sights (Don't Tell) (3 page)

Fuck off? Yeah, I had and I intend to do it again.

“You’re always so fighting fit. I didn’t think you needed my help.”

“Needing help and not wanting to die tonight are two different things.”

“I followed a threat,” I said.

She peered up at me. “Did you take it down?”

“Yes.” It wasn’t technically a lie, although I still wanted to take Hawke down, down my throat.

Lieutenant Grant interrupted our tete
–
a
–
tete. She pressed her palms to the table that hummed with three wide D-Ps broadcasting news of the big-ass fuck-up from all around the InterNations. She beckoned me and the other Alpha Elite Tactical team members forward.

“Commander Cannon’s been ordered to escort a Company executive to the Outpost.” If I wasn’t mistaken, her eyes appeared a little damp. Grant and Cannon were tight. They reigned terror over us on a daily basis—fuck it, on an hourly basis—but were often seen shooting the shit together.

“We have evac orders.”

A round of rebellious curses silenced when Grant flipped the safeties off her famed twin Desert Eagles—said to have killed more Nomads than could be counted and shut up even more loudmouth recruits. She lay her cap on the table, running fingers through her short black hair. “We’re to round up citizens and deliver them to Beta Territory. You are
my
troopers now.” Brown eyes blazed with the fire of righteousness. “The water is contaminated. We will not let our people die here. Getting to Beta’s gonna be a long, hard slog. I know we can do it.”

“Ma’am, yes, ma’am!”

The shout others sounded off didn’t leave my lips. No way was I about to leave this city. After my mom hit the kill-switch on herself and I’d flown through both basic and advanced training, I’d been shipped directly to Alpha. It felt more like home than any other place I’d lived. Not to mention, I had a rendezvous
with Hawke.

I remained behind as the others left to prepare for their journey north. Hell, I’d already committed treason. Why not get myself sent for a severe strafing while I was at it by provoking the lieutenant’s wrath?

Grant arched an eyebrow at me. “Did you miss my dismissal or do you just need a bullet at your heels to get you moving?”

Maintaining perfectly ramrod posture, I met her gaze without flinching. “I prefer to stay behind, ma’am.” And seemingly give up everything I’d ever worked for.

I couldn’t get the Nomad’s silver-green eyes out of my mind. Or his scent—the wholly male combination of clean perspiration and a new smell, something woodsy. The feel of his hard muscles against mine wasn’t anything I’d ever copped to wanting before. Now I was left needing more. Homosexuals weren’t right, so we’d been indoctrinated time and again. But no woman had ever made me hotter than the one man, Hawke, and I’d give my left nut to have my hands on him again.

Screw the Corps and fuck the CO.

That thought I kept sealed behind my closed lips.

“You want to round up Nomads?” Lieutenant Grant cracked each of her knuckles, staring me down from beneath the cap lowered over her eyes.

“Yes, ma’am!”
She has no idea how much.

Her grin turned sinister. Never was there a woman, a soldier, more formidable than her. “Do you know what you fight for, Corporal Mayce?”

“Regeneration. Veneration. Salvation.” I peered above her head as she ranged closer.

“Fine. Handpick three others to remain with you as a skeleton crew to help the other regiments get a handle on the situation.” Her next whisper hit my ear like a fast warm breeze with a warning of a different sort. “Keep a tight lid on yourself and start thinking about what freedom really means to you, Mayce.”

* * * *

Grant’s unusual advice confused me. Two days later, I was still repeating it in my head. Everyone knew she had a big beef with the Nomads, her father meeting a violent death at their hands. I didn’t have a goddamn clue why she’d said that to me. Thankfully there was little time to ponder the whys and wherefores and what-the-fuck-evers too much during the intervening days.

The pollution of the water supply, which had started this entire uprising, turned out to be a hoax. The problem of sewage waste and fresh water solved, it left a hotbed of other issues to deal with. The insurgents still uncontained and a large portion of Corps departed for Beta Territory, few of us were left to control the increasingly daring rebel activity. The citizens who remained instead of emigrating were no longer meek people bound by the CO’s rigid rules and regulations. They showed more backbone than ever before, aiming their discontent at us, the troopers in the streets.

Over the course of forty-eight hours, I’d jailed over a hundred homegrown renegades. I’d fought in battles from rooftops to the roadside for hours, until my eyes stayed open simply because they were too dry to shut. In all that time, I’d remanded prisoners instead of giving into the rip-shit instinct that usually compelled me to get trigger-happy.

Every time my finger tensed to fire off my weapon, I saw that goddamn Nomad’s face. Haunting the few minutes of shut-eye I allowed myself, Hawke went one better and began threading a conscience into my appointed duty to rid the city of the unfriendlies.

Fucking great.

Back in the barracks two days after my run-in with Hawke had started turning me into a freethinking sissy pants, I pounded to the locker room. My latest sortie had not been pretty, and I didn’t want to think about what would become of the prisoners I put in lockdown. I deserved a long hot shower to clear my mind. I soaped up under the beating spray, spending a long time cleaning my shaft, my balls, and behind all the way to my hole. My fingers lingering where no man had ever touched, I wondered if Hawke would tonight.

When the skintight stretch of arousal thumped in my cock and curled my toes, I dried off. This need for release with Hawke was so erotic, dirty; I wanted to keep clinging to the edge of it. But I absolutely was not getting dressed up for the man even though I put on a clean uniform, minus my briefs.

I left Corps Command and the Quad, briskly marching toward the abandoned warehouse. I nodded to soldiers on patrol. This night was quieter than the most recent ones. Maybe we’d have more than a twenty-minute dry hump. Or maybe we’d end up with weapons at each other’s throats. Even that idea was provocative—mixing lethal danger with illicit lust.

Maybe he wouldn’t show at all, and I’d have left my post for a fucked-up fantasy of a man I should in no way want. I hastened my stride, eating pavement beneath my boots. Reaching the first alley where I’d cornered him and his boy, I heard my name called from behind.

Instead of turning into the passageway—I had no intentions of giving away the location of my hideout—I spun on my heel. Darwin approached. She was one of my handpicked crew, and it was just my shitty luck she seemed to be out on the carouse just like me. Minus her cap, her red-blond ponytail shined beneath the street-lit halos powered by generators.

“I’ve got eight hours off-duty. Come drink with us.” She gestured behind her to more of the unit we’d folded into after the Elite left Alpha.

My former fuck-buddy turned best friend, Darwin was a proud trooper coming from a long line of Corps officers. In the past, we’d screwed on more than one occasion, intending no attachment to form. We moved onto others to get our needs met but had remained close as comrades and companions. Right now I wanted to knock her out with a nightstick and gag her behind a building.

“Fine.” My fists balled. I refused to glance down the alley to the side of me, searching for sight of Hawke. I railed silently inside my head instead. I’d been so close to seeing him again.

Tagging along beside Darwin and the others to the mess where free drinks had been on offer since the start of the Revolution—
to keep morale up
—I gritted my molars until they turned to dust. Then I drank myself into a stupor because I would never know if Hawke made it to our meet up.

* * * *

The following days merged together. We learned a CO insider masterminded the water scam. It worked. The government was shredded in two, at least in Alpha. I spent the days doing my best to nullify increasing threats and looking after the citizens. I didn’t give a shit if they took up arms against the CO at this point. I wasn’t about to let my people starve in the streets while the city fell to ruins, even if it meant they spit on me and flipped me off with one hand while accepting the MREs we passed out with the other.

When I had time, I left notes at the secret place, written in code, detailing times and dates. Hawke never returned. Anxiety twisted through me as I began to think of him as a Freelander as the old man had said, not a vicious Nomad out for a bloodbath. Not an animal but a man I wanted. I searched the prison cells for him, my heart racing, my palms sweating, fearing I’d find him beaten and bloody or, worse, dead. I paid close attention to the RACE trials. There wasn’t a single blip on him and definitely no one I could ask for intel.

I spent the few measly minutes meant for sleep lying wide-awake. He was in my mind, on my body. No matter how many times I jagged off, the ache for more multiplied. He never left my thoughts. How he’d created so many cracks in my armor from one short tryst was a mystery better left unexplored. On the nights I got so severely pissed off at him for tying me in knots, I drank to assuage the onslaught of dreams that bedeviled me with the image of him biting my neck when he came against me.

One more lonely night I left base where the guards keenly watched my comings and goings. Like I gave a fuck. I just wanted Hawke again, alive, and in my arms at this point. I returned to our spot exactly one week to the day, deciding this was it. If Hawke wasn’t here, he was gone, and I’d go on, somehow.

I’d come back to set up a little trap a few days ago, to make sure our hideout wasn’t breached without our knowledge the next time we met. It was defiantly hopeful thinking that started to sink to the pit of my belly. The ankle-high wires intact as I stepped soundlessly across the threshold, I aimed my Beretta in a steady beam throughout the open room. Nothing…no one…again. My shoulders dropped.

My prissy moment devolved into instant panic when a thin wire looped around my neck from behind. Pulled twice over, it cut my oxygen and curdled my brain. My fingers rose automatically, reaching behind to my assailant’s face, wrists, hands, anything before short bursts of light dimmed my life.

“Mayce?”

I choked at the sound of my name.

“Fuck.”

I recognized Hawke’s voice. He scrambled to release the wire he’d nearly garroted me with. The pressure relieved, he forced his mouth to mine as I gasped for air. Breaking away with an audible suck, he turned me to him.

Hands on the sides of my face, he caressed the stricture marks on my throat. “Had to make sure it was you.”

Jesus.
I had not seen that coming. Now I was close to coming in my pants. Hawke’s strength and stealth aroused me more than I’d ever admit. So I grabbed him in a headlock and threw him to the floor beneath me. Knees restraining his legs and hands circling his wrists, I grinned. “Got any more tricks up your sleeves?”

“Not up my sleeves. Just the one in my pants.”

So damn relieved to see him alive, I laughed. I let him buck me off of him. Squatting on my heels, I asked, “Disarm?”

“Probably safest, if we don’t wanna accidentally get our junk blown off, in a way that won’t be to our liking.” The curve of his lips when he smiled, his large hands capably shedding weapons reminded me this was a man, a fighter, someone I wanted to have so much I’d all but made a fool of myself trying to get him here.

I didn’t give a shit. If this was feeling, I was all in.

I placed my Beretta beside his handgun, my Ka-Bar and then a smaller pistol tucked inside my boot followed. His grin widened.

“I didn’t know if you’d get the note or understand it.”

“Could’ve sent a pigeon. And by the way, I can read, like I told ya before. I also know how to work out a code.” Hawke lay back, crossing his arms behind his head.

“I could’ve sent a what?”

“A bird. You know, chirp-chirp. A messenger pigeon.” He smirked.

Goddamn Nomad with his Mother Nature nurture messages. If he wasn’t so damn delicious, if he hadn’t fueled my fantasies and fucked with my head for the past week while I jerked off, I’d have been tempted to wrap that wire of his around his throat until his face turned purple.

As it was, I stowed that idea and simply stared for a moment. He reclined before me in a shirt stretched across his torso with his goatee and long dreads and the wide V of his upper body narrowing to lean hips and powerful legs. A tableau of every distinctly male desire I’d always relegated to the farthest reaches of my mind. This time there was no shutting it down.

“Yeah. I’m not that into birds.” I winked.

“Me either,” he drawled in a husky tone.

Temptation tapped into my veins, thickening the air around us. Distrust morphed into undisciplined want but we pretended we were just buddies hanging out, unlikely as it was and probably the stupidest move either of us had ever pulled. In the middle of a Revolution, heat coming down on all sides of us in a city under siege, arousal grew with awareness as we watched one another.

He licked his lips and reached for his pack. A moment of guardedness descended over me, worry that he might seek retribution against me for shaking him down last time. It wasn’t enough to make me wish I had my Beretta on me though.

“I brought some fruit.” Hawke opened his bag, spilling a harvest of red and orange globes between us.

I’d started carrying shit around for him, too, just on the off chance. My finds had begun to feel fucking ridiculous, but now I was glad I had something to offer him.

Standing up, I dragged my rucksack over. “I brought a blanket.” I unfurled it, sitting in the middle.

Hawke moved onto it, leaning on his side. “How romantic.”

As soon as the words left his mouth, a quick jet of fear scuttled across his sharp features. He gnawed his lip, looking down at his hands.