Shades of Treason (20 page)

“It’s a long way up.”

She wiped her palms on her pants and reached up again. Again, she fell.

“Ash—”

“I’m not going to be brought down because of a broken pinky,” she said. “Trevast and the guys would…”

She stared at the wall, and even in the crevice’s shadows, he saw her go pale.

The raw pain in her expression damaged something inside him. He wanted to take her into his arms, heal her wounds, but the only thing that could make those more bearable was time. He’d lost people before. He’d lost friends who would have given him hell for not being able to climb the crevice.

“Ash.”

She met his eyes. Hers were wide and glassy. They weren’t seeing him; they were seeing the men she’d been accused of killing.

“Excuse me a moment,” she said. Then she stumbled back to the trees.

The flash grenade.

Jevan’s smile.

Other faces. Other sounds.

The cipher.

Ash held her head and rocked. Her teammates’ blood soaked the knees of her combat fatigues.

What had happened? Where had she failed?

The flash grenade.

Jevan’s smile.

The faces. The sounds. The cipher.

Kris’s plea.

Bullets.

The flash grenade.

More bullets.

Trevast.

Shit. He was dead. They were all dead. It should have been her. She was the one who’d fucked up. She was the one who’d let Jevan into her bed, into her mind. They were dead because of her.

She wasn’t getting enough oxygen. Her heart was beating too fast. It was going to kill her. It should have killed her then, but the… the…

The flash grenade.

The flash grenade. The flash grenade. The flash grenade.

“
Look at me, Ash
.”

The command wrenched her eyes open. Her fail-safe gripped her forearms. Her hands were still at her temples. She was hunched over on the ground. Her knees were wet from the forest floor, not from her teammates’ blood.

Her teammates…

“No,” Rykus said. “Stay with me, damn it. It wasn’t your fault.”

It was. If she hadn’t been such a fool…

Her throat swelled. She was going to pass out. She needed to pass out in private.

“Get away from me, Rip.”

“No.”

She jerked an arm free and swung at him. He dodged and came around behind her, hooking his arm around her neck and shoulder. He pulled her back against his chest.

She couldn’t fight him. She was too busy trying to gasp in enough oxygen to stay conscious.

“Breathe, honey. Breathe.”

She rocked back and forth, back and forth. She’d been holding Trevast and rocking when the Coalition soldiers rushed in. They’d peeled her away from her team lead. They’d taken her away from her brothers.

“Ash.” He turned her toward him, almost cradling her. With a gentle pressure on her jaw, he lifted her face toward his. “Focus, Ash.”

She tried, but his gaze was only a temporary haven. The panic, the damn weakness, crept over her again.

Rykus tensed, and there was a deep desperation in his gaze. It didn’t make sense. But very little made sense to Ash. She was lost, falling, and—

And Rykus kissed her.

The shock of his lips anchored her as efficiently as gravity anchored a ship.

She didn’t stop hurting. The pain of failing her brothers went back into containment, but the permanence of their loss, the unfairness of it, lingered even as every one of Ash’s nerve endings flared to life. Something coursed through her. She wanted to move closer, explore the feeling, the sensation, further, but this was Rip. Her fail-safe. She couldn’t have him. Couldn’t want him. Couldn’t need him.

She started to shake.

Rykus kissed her harder.

She put a hand on his shoulder, intending to push him away, but he took hold of her arms.

She fought back with her teeth, made him grunt when she bit his lower lip, but as soon as she tasted blood, she softened the violence with a stroke of her tongue. Then another. And another.

She wasn’t sure if she shook this time or if it was him, but she was certain the universe moved. She felt the great ache of it deep in her core. His next kiss sent a shiver through her, but then he put an inch of space between their lips.

“You back with me, Ash?”

“Yes,” she breathed. He didn’t take the yes as she intended it, as an acceptance, a desire, a plea. When she leaned forward, he kept them apart.

“You’re hurt,” he said, his arms locked on hers. “The soldiers… The loyalty training.”

She didn’t know if his words were a reminder for her or for him, but he wasn’t moving away, and she needed this.

She slipped under his guard and used a Balazian throw-hold to swing him to the ground.

He countered the move easily, using his weight and superior strength to end up on top. “Ash…”

“I need you.” She reached between them, unbuckled his belt, his pants. Every muscle in his body was cinched tight. She grabbed his waistband, tried to jerk it down.

His arms bracketed her body, and he gazed down at her, still straining against what he knew was right and wrong.

Giving up temporarily on his pants, she grabbed the hem of her shirt instead and pulled it over her head.

His lips parted as his gaze dropped to her breasts. An unfair attack, yes, but he’d trained his anomalies to fight dirty.

His eyes shuttered in something that was either a grimace of regret or of surrender.

She reached up, rested her hand on his shoulder, and waited for him to meet her gaze.

“I want you, Rip.”

He just shook his head on the way to capture a breast in his mouth. The warmth of him closed around her, and heat flared through her body.

She reached down to pull up the back of his shirt, letting her nails scrape along his skin as his fingertips brushed over the bruises on her ribcage. She felt his teeth, willed him to send a sharp twinge of pain into her aching breast, but he suckled instead, only separating from her long enough to let her pull his shirt over his head.

“Pants,” she whispered when his tongue swirled around her again.

He gave her breast one last kiss, then went for her stolen uniform, shimmying the pants down her hips. She gave in to the temptation to touch him, sliding her hands over the planes of his chest. He was a chiseled creation, hard everywhere a man should be hard. She wanted to trace his muscles with her tongue, taste the salt of his skin. She wanted this man inside her.

And he wanted her. She saw it in the way his gaze raked down her body. It was so intense it terrified her. It terrified her because she saw something other than lust in his eyes. Lust, she could comprehend. Lust, she could quench. This other emotion, this thing that bordered on an entirely different and incomprehensible
L
-word, she had no idea how to deal with that. And she didn’t trust herself with it.

He must have sensed something in her. His hand went still on the waistband of his pants. In her peripheral vision, she saw the corded muscles tremble in the arm bearing his weight. Not from exertion—he was too strong for that—but with a different kind of strain. He would stop if she gave him a sign.

She wouldn’t. She needed to stay lost in this oblivion.

Grabbing the back of his neck, she pulled him back down and kissed him until neither one of them was capable of complicated thoughts.

She helped him strip off his pants, gripped him as soon as he sprang free. She reveled in the way he groaned against her mouth, the way he jumped against her palm. Her fail-safe was no longer in control of her. She commanded his body more than he’d ever commanded her mind.

“Ash,” he murmured.

She shifted her hips, slid him across her entrance, back and forth, back and forth, until she felt him shake. She wanted him to plunge into her, take her hard and fast and desperate.

He placed the lightest kiss on a bruise on her shoulder.

She bucked her hips, signaling it was time. She wanted violence and mayhem. She wanted him to fuck her senseless so she wouldn’t care about the past, the present, or the consequences of what they were doing.

He kissed her with a sensuous slowness, then eased inside, a glide of friction that was more torturous than any injury she had. He didn’t want to hurt her. He was being
careful
with her.

The shock of that discovery, of what it might mean, sent a swirling, scorching heat through her body. He was strong and safe and…

She shut down those thoughts, unwilling to deal with where they would lead. This could only be a physical pairing between them. Nothing more.

Rykus’s next kiss turned unbearably tender. Before it further damaged her mental armor, she broke it off with a hiss.

“Don’t be gentle, Rip.”

Don’t be gentle, Rip
.

He nearly lost it right then. He froze, halfway inside her, willing her not to move, not to breathe. It would be over if she did.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he whispered. She was beautiful, breathtaking, brave. He had no idea when he’d fallen for her. Maybe if it hadn’t been so unthinkable, so wrong, he would have realized it sooner.

Her green eyes stared up at him, still demanding he be rough and unrelenting.

“I
won’t
hurt you.” Before she could protest again, he moved, sliding in then out, watching her face react. Just enough light leaked through the smoky sky to make the shadows from the leaves above them dance across her skin. The dark design blended with her bruises, bruises he wanted to kiss away.

Her fingers dug into the muscles of his back. He loved her touch, the feel of her beneath him, the way she made the atmosphere around them vibrate with her passion. He sank in deep, murmured her name, then slid out and in again. And again, faster each time.

Ash’s lips parted in a barely audible moan as she met his thrusts. The sensations built—the need, the desire. He saw the edge of the universe in her eyes. She tried to contain its power. So did he. They were both on the brink of giving the other what they wanted. If he lost control, he’d give in to her need for a hard, fierce fusion. If she lost control, she’d give in to his need for a deep, soul-touching connection.

Heat and pleasure escalated. When she trembled, he almost broke apart.

They separated quickly, almost desperately, rising to their knees, then to their feet, hands and mouths still touching, still kissing. A few unbearable seconds passed, then she was in his arms again, her legs wrapped around his waist.

One leg slipped off his hip, throwing him off-balance. He stumbled until he found a tree, then pressed her against it. A low limb grew just above her head. He grabbed it and used it to keep his footing as he found her entrance again. Her body bucked each time he thrust inside her. He gripped the firm muscles of her ass, lifting and dropping her onto him. She was hot and moist, and the friction nearly made his knees buckle.

He saw the pleasure building in the way her eyes hooded, saw it in her shallow breaths, and felt it when she clenched around him. He was close to his own release, but he didn’t want it yet. He wanted more of her. And he wanted to watch her come undone.

He lowered her back to the forest floor. Then he gave in. He gave her what she’d asked for. He fisted her hair in his hand and slammed into her, again and again, watching her face as the pleasure built.

She tilted her head back, exposing her throat as she let out a loud, arousing cry.

Holy shit!
He cut off her scream with a hand over her mouth, but still she came, rocking into him again and again and again. The rapture rolling through her rolled through him, and he groaned.

No way to hold off when she orgasmed like that. He released inside her, caught in her comet trail of ecstasy. It banked through him, hot and stabbing and addictive.

When the spasms at last subsided, he took her in his arms, rolling to his back so she didn’t remain pressed against the cold, hard ground. He slid his cheek alongside hers, buried his face in her dark, tangled hair. The smoke that permeated the atmosphere lingered in the long locks. It was the scent of what they’d endured, the scent of what they might be able to endure together, and beneath it was the unmistakable fragrance of her.