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  The sight proved too much. His balls shrinking as pleasure flooded through him and he came, shuddering and grunting as he let himself chase her over the edge. Holding her close, the scent of her and the slickness of her flesh drawing every last drop from him.

  He hadn’t felt so good in a long time. Or so sane. So…at peace.

  He needed to do it again. The instant they both recovered.

  He tightened his hold, determined to bring her around to his way of thinking. Round two right after round one could still count as the same time, right?

  “Ryker? Assassin lady?” The kid Rafi’s voice echoed from around the corner. “You back here?”

  The top of her head cracked his chin. “Let go.”

  So much for round two.

  “Coming.” He was moving to stand in front of her before the last aftershock of pleasure faded from the base of his spine.

  She was even faster, jerking her pants up before hurrying around him, knife already up and out. “Something’s wrong.”

  Her seamless return to controlled assassin shouldn’t have surprised him. “I’m right behind you.”

  They intercepted the kid before he made it around the next bend. His bruises, still swollen and red, were even more visible now that he’d had time to rest. He stopped short the instant he saw them, his gaze locked on Jade’s knife.

  “I’d never use it on you.” She tucked it out of sight. “I thought you might be hurt.”

  That seemed to give the kid renewed bravery, his color returning. “It’s not me. It’s—it’s Tyson. He took a bunch of the supplies and ran off. The others are spooked. That one girl won’t stop wailing.”

  Ryker swallowed down a curse. He’d been so damn sure the others were all too exhausted to do more than sleep. It was the only reason he’d let himself indulge—well, that and the fact that Jade Lakotesh brought out impulses in him he hadn’t entertained in a long time.

  His gaze connected with Jade’s. “We need to find him.”

  “Fast.” For once, they were on the same page.

  Tyson might have fled out of sheer panic. But it was equally possible he’d gone crawling back to 223 with their location, hoping to ingratiate himself. He hadn’t seemed like the type. Fact was, Ryker had pegged him as more of a Boy Scout, Grif kind of guy, but repeated pain and torture could twist anyone.

  “I’ll go.” Emerald eyes locked with his. “You remain here to care for the others. I’ll return with him as soon as I can.”

  “How about I go and you stay?” If he was lucky, Tyson might lead him straight to 223’s hideout.

  Her lips flatlined. “Rufus will watch over the others while we’re gone.”

  He hid a surge of triumph. “Good plan.”

  He was not idiotic enough to believe the explosive chemistry between them was enough to alter their ultimate objectives. She wanted that weapon. He intended to get it to his Commander. Their final objectives remained at odds.

  “You—you’re leaving us?” Rafi’s near squeak shook him from his thoughts.

  Ryker’s gaze connected with the kid’s terrified one, his chest tightening. A timely, brutal reminder that this kind of responsibility and caretaking was as hard as he remembered.

  He’d told himself after Saralynee and his son died that he was done.

  But a quick glance at the female who’d just rocked his world, her expression cool and blank as ever, proved he’d be the one taking the lead on this.

  Jade was a lot of things, but natural caretaker wasn’t one of them.

  Short-term, he reminded himself. All of this was just short-term. Soon enough, he’d get these people to the Commander and he’d be free to go back to the way he’d been.

  In the meantime, he might not be the best choice, but he was all they had.

  “Don’t worry,” he told the kid. “We’ll get the others settled before we go. But this is something we need to take care of in order to keep you safe.”

  “But you’ll come back, right? You’ll be here by the time the dust storm ends?”

  “Yes.” Jade cut in before he could answer. “You have my vow. I will do whatever it takes to ensure he returns to you.”

  Rafi wasn’t pacified. “You, too? You promise to both come back, right?”

  Surprise flared in his assassin’s eyes. “I…” She cocked her head, studying the kid as if he was some unknown doomsday machine that might blow up in her face any instant.

  Ryker’s chest cracked wide. The mix of surprise, suspicion, and hope in her gaze easy to see. She didn’t expect anyone to want her around. Had no clue what to do with that kind of need.

  “You might be Council, but you can fight,” added the kid. “We need you here, too. To protect us.”

  Pink shaded her cheeks as the confusion clouding her gaze vanished and ruthless determination took its place. “Yes. I will protect you. I vow it, too.”

  He wondered if Rafi heard in her voice what Ryker did. She would do anything for this kid now. All because he’d asked.

  In true Jade fashion, she wasn’t shying away from the challenge.

  His warrior might have a perfect, alabaster shell as hard as any he’d seen, but inside…inside she was turning out to be as vulnerable as the rest of them. Maybe even more so.

  He didn’t want her hurt, damn it.

  16

  “Did Tyson say anything to you before he took off?” Reining in her impatience, Jade did her best to be heard over the wailing across the room.

  “No.” Rafi, wrapped once more in his emergency blanket, winced every time Marika hit a particularly high decibel.

  She and Ryker needed to head out before the storm covered their target’s tracks for good, but if the woman clinging to his chest was an indication, the trail would be long gone before they could follow.

  This was why she worked alone.

  Though, if she had kept to her usual pattern, she would never have experienced the thrill of Ryker deep inside her one last time.

  She shoved the illogical thought aside. What was needed was focus.

  “Were you asleep when he left?” she asked the boy. A boy who’d insisted she return. Who trusted her to keep him safe. It was…an honor she’d never thought to experience. One she hadn’t even been aware she coveted until it happened.

  “No.” Small, deep scars bisected his eyebrow, chin, and thighs, suggesting his years of hardship had begun way before what had happened to him on Dragath25.

  One of the growing population of orphans, she suspected. Just like she had been.

  A deep pulse of self-disgust shot through her. She’d been asleep. Cocooned in the carefully constructed world the Council had made for her. And all the time she’d been doing her employers’ bidding and imagining she was protecting those weaker than herself, more and more kids like Rafi had ended up with scars that were all too easy to see. Because she’d failed them. Waking up wasn’t easy.

  But she had never shied from difficult.

  “How come you’re not over there, too?” The kid’s question jerked her from her thoughts.

  “I like it fine here.”

  That drew a laugh.

  Her chest puffed out.

  “Are you sure you have to go after him?” Rafi’s fearful words hit with the force of a strike. “That you can’t stay here?”

  “He could be headed to tell 223 where we are. If so, we need to stop him before he arrives.”

  A long pause. Too long. She shot Ryker’s back an impatient look. If he didn’t finish soon, she’d leave without him. Extraordinary hands, tongue, and cock aside, she couldn’t afford to go soft. He’d catch up if he could. She shifted, sliding onto the balls of her feet.

  “Aren’t you afraid to go out there?” The kid shivered. “They could be searching for us even now.”

  Was she? She was definitely rattled by what she’d learned about her ex-employers. Equally so by what had happened with Ryker.

  He shook her control during sex—and she’d liked it. Was, in fact,
coming to crave it. Not just as a curious brief excursion into a world she’d never inhabit, but something she’d like to experience over and over again.

  An addiction.

  Her trainers had drilled into her that such dependency was never good. It meant danger, weakness, death. Yet, as she scrambled to make new rules for herself, she wondered if there was a chance they were as wrong about this as they were about so much else.

  “Yes,” she answered the kid’s question at last. “I am afraid, but not of what you might think. I am confident that you and the others are safe here and that Ryker and I will return. I know it is not always easy to trust or remain with people you don’t know, but it is necessary right now.”

  “I don’t mind being with the others.” He rubbed his hands up and down his arms as if searching for warmth. “I…I prefer it.”

  Huh. She could not say the same. Being with Ryker was…nice. But too many others? She hid a shudder. “You are used to it?”

  “Yes, back at the orphan barracks on New Earth we were together all the time.”

  Just as she’d suspected. “What block?”

  “2Z3W1001.” The long number rolled off his tongue with ease.

  “I don’t know that block.” Ryker’s gaze flickered her way, his forehead wrinkling. He looked worried. Most likely about her comforting skills, or lack thereof.

  She jerked her chin toward the cave entrance. Scowling, he took a step her way, only to be checked in place as Rufus laid a hand on his forearm.

  Stifling a sigh, she resumed her conversation with the kid. “Early records indicate I was in an orphan barrack as well. 00B034.”

  “Really?” Surprised eyes swung toward her. “I doubt that. Otherwise, you’d be ancient. That’s one of the earlier barrack designations.”

  “Twenty-four.” New Earth life expectancy wasn’t what it had once been.

  His eyebrows rose to his forehead as his gaze traveled the length of her, a little of the cocky street punk he might have been before Dragath25 leaking through in his slow, masculine perusal. “Twenty-four, huh? I thought you were younger.” He tapped a thin white line at his chin. “No scars. That’s not easy to prevent.”

  “Regeneration. Regrafting.”

  His eyes went wider. “That shit’s expensive.”

  Certainly not what Council usually spent on non-Council, especially orphans. With one exception. “My employers wanted me to look a certain way so I could appeal to my targets. I would have preferred to keep my scars.”

  She watched the ease fade from the kid’s gaze and realized the reference to her profession was yet another conversation misstep.

  “I will never use my skills to hurt you, Rafi.” He might not have said it aloud, but she knew what he was thinking. “My objective is to protect you. I…I am sickened by what the Council did.”

  An angry snort. “But you’re one of them, right?” Pink flared across the kid’s cheeks as a wave of anger loosened his tongue. “I don’t know why I’m even letting myself listen to a single word you say. I know exactly what Council puppets do to people like me and it certainly isn’t save us.”

  She caught a quick glimpse of Ryker looking their way again, his worried expression even more pronounced. She ignored it.

  “What was done to you?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to know, but it was clear Rafi needed to lance the wound and let it bleed.

  “Like I’d tell you.”

  She studied him. “You tell me and I’ll tell you a secret in return.”

  “Why do you care?”

  “I don’t know,” she answered honestly. “I thought I knew what was going on around me, but the more I learn, the more I see I was given only partial truths, whitewashed explanations, and convenient excuses. I need to know the extent of the Council’s sins so I can repay them in kind.”

  “If you’re so smart, why’d you fall for their lies in the first place?”

  She almost wished he’d go back to terrified. “Looking back now, it feels as idiotic as your tone suggests. At first, I was young and had no choice. But later…I believe I allowed this because it was easier. Remaining detached. Staying disconnected. It was all I knew.”

  He turned to face her, his body leaning forward as if he’d had an epiphany. “That’s why you said before that it’s not always easy to remain together in a group. You weren’t just blowing smoke up my ass. You really feel that way.”

  “Yes,” she admitted. “The only one I can really stand is Ryker—and even he, only in small doses.”

  A choked sound. Then, the kid laughed. “You’re not supposed to say things like that.” His shoulders shook as his chuckles continued. “I thought gorgeous girls were supposed to be all smooth and cool and above everybody else, but you’re not at all.”

  She should be annoyed at his amusement at her expense, especially when she’d been deadly in earnest, but it pleased her to see the kid’s shoulders loose, his eyes lit by something other than anger or pain.

  “I don’t know the first thing about being smooth,” she admitted.

  His chuckles slowed and then died out altogether, silence filling the space.

  She didn’t push.

  “I stole.”

  She waited.

  “That’s what eventually landed me here. I’m not Resistance or some complete innocent. I was a thief,” he admitted. “Everybody’s got a talent, right? Mine was lightning-fast hands.” He held them up, turning them from side to side as if to show them off. “I could pinch anything in a flash.” His lips flattened as his gaze snagged on the broken skin at his knuckles. “Rations provided by the Council were barely enough for an adult, much less a growing kid—and those routinely got stolen by those in charge of doling them out to us.”

  She hid her fury with a brief nod.

  “So, I stole.” His hands dropped to his sides, lifeless once more. “I was good at it. Until I got caught.” He swallowed hard. “I’d been caught before, but I’d always been thrown into reeducation and then sent back to my old barrack, where it would all begin again. But this last time”—his shoulders curled inward as if the weight of his story was almost too much to bear—“this last time, they sent me to Councilman Reekers.”

  Her blood iced. She knew that name.

  “I’d heard rumors, but”—he shook his head—“it was worse than I’d imagined. I refused to let him… I fought.” His voice had flattened to a dull monotone. “He died. I ended up here. Where the same thing I’d fought against happened.” He let out a shuddered breath. “Only a hundred times more often and with several bastards instead of one. I should”—he wiped at his mouth—“I should never have fought back. Should have just let Reekers have a go…at least I’d still be on New Earth.”

  “No”—she fought to keep her voice calm—“you were right to fight. Right to kill the bastard, too. Fighting back is always worth the risk. Otherwise, they win.” Her gaze found his. “And they haven’t won, Rafi. You’re still here. Still surviving. That’s victory.”

  Rafi flung his hand outward. “Look where I ended up.”

  “Think of the other boys you saved. With Reekers dead, there’s one less monster in the world.”

  “I’m surrounded by the rest.”

  “You’re right. It’s not fair, but you’re a fighter and a survivor and for people like us—”

  “Us?”

  “You,” she corrected, understanding precisely why he wouldn’t wanted to be lumped in with her, “for people like you there’s not a lot of choice. You stand up and fight when pushed. If it hadn’t been Reekers, it would have been someone else. Ryker was Resistance before he was tortured and imprisoned in the planet’s mines, but he got free and now he’s doing what he can to help you and the others. People like you and Ryker step up and do what has to be done. Often at a brutal cost. But you do it anyway.”

  “Me and Ryker, huh?” Standing taller, the kid eyed the wide-shouldered man across the room, power, strength and decency oozing from every fiber of the Resis
tance fighter’s core. If there was ever an epitome of tough, gritty hero, it was him. Funny to think she’d once dismissed the big man as nothing more than a thick-necked, over-muscled felon.

  “You think I could learn to fight like him? Like you?” Rafi asked at last.

  “Yes.” She would have liked to offer to be the one to teach him, but she didn’t make promises she couldn’t keep.

  Another bout of silence. Ryker glanced their way once more, but this time his handsome forehead was smooth, his expression more questioning than worried. She gave him her steeliest I have this under control look. It might not be the absolute truth, but she would not tolerate being managed. Even by him.

  Let’s go, she mouthed.

  “And you?”

  The kid’s words jerked her from her stare-down. “What about me?”

  “You said you’d share your secret if I told you?” His voice had returned to sullen, as if he already expected her to reneg.

  “I keep my promises,” she insisted. “I will tell you something that only one other person on this planet knows.”

  “Right,” he scoffed.

  She ignored his doubt. “I was sent here by the Council to not only steal 223’s weapon, but use it to destroy the planet’s inhabitants.”

  “I-inhabitants? You mean us?” He gulped, his eyes wide. “But I thought…”

  “That I would not hurt you? You thought correctly. I will not be carrying out the full mission.”

  He let out a rush of breath. “Thank Janus.”

  “I am glad I have made you feel relieved.” That had been her intention all along and, despite Ryker’s doubts, she had obviously carried it off—and, perhaps, even begun to make the kid feel comfortable with her. Dare she say, foster a connection between them.

  It was nice, and not as hard as expected.

  Ryker and his doubts could fly to Jupiter. Perhaps Rafi and the others would soon feel comfortable enough to tell her everything they might know about 223’s hideout without her having to scare it out them?

  “But I have not finished,” she added. “I am confident you can trust Ryker and me, but keep a watchful eye on the others while we are hunting Tyson. Because, and this is the most critical part of the secret, I am likely not the only one the Council sent to carry out this mission. And whoever they sent is somewhere nearby, determined to do what I no longer will. Especially since, if he does not, the nano-bomb inside him, the same as the one in me, will detonate and he will die.”