Outlaw, p.9
Outlaw, page 9
I stop at a work surface, and he shoves to his feet. His gaze drifts from the box in my hands, down to my legs. His lips curve in a half-smile.
He bites down on his lower lip, making my stomach clench. I try and fail to hide my own answering smile.
A noise by Quatro’s cell draws my attention.
The techs are all standing around the windows with Baldwin, Schwitters, and Bob. Dr. Caruthers is there, too, scratching his beard, brows furrowed, broad shoulders stretching his suit tight as he shifts irritably. He hasn’t come down here since I was relocated.
Vix is in Quatro’s cell, hip cocked against a wall, picking at her fingernails. They’re trying to get them to mate again.
They’re at opposite sides of the cell. Quatro’s frowning, glaring at the techs where they stand with their white coats and clipboards and screens. This is the third time one of the Foxtrots has ovulated since I’ve been here.
“Have you tried giving them privacy?” I set the box down on a lab table. It’s full of books. Several of my grandmother’s old paperback romances. Even paperbacks get heavy when there are enough of them. And I’ve been carrying it for the entire two-and-a-half miles of my commute.
No one answers.
I adjust my glasses, looking from Baldwin to Caruthers and the techs. “Would you have sex under a bright light, on the floor of a hard cell, in front of a window, with eight scientists—including the closest thing you have to a mother—staring at you?”
“With your sister?” Quatro makes a face of pure disgust, eying one of the male lab techs. “Would you fuck your fucking sister, bro?”
The lab tech mumbles and squirms like he’s trying to pick an answer that doesn’t admit that asking them to do this is gross, and also one that doesn’t mean he actually would sleep with his sister.
Quatro tips his chin up, lips twisted as he drags a tongue along his bottom like he’s trying not to be sick. “Fucking nasty.”
“Mmmhhhmmm.” Vix picks at her nails.
Schwitters flashes a bright smile my way, his eyes crinkling in the corners.
Caruthers’ suit jacket bunches around his upper arm as he wipes his hand over his mouth—I can’t tell if he’s amused or irritated.
Baldwin’s eye twitches.
I need to watch myself. Another side-effect of the untaken vitamins, is my mouth. I’m more blunt than usual.
Bob shifts on his loafers. “No.”
Three, in the cell just to the left of Quatro’s, presses his broad hand against the glass. “Come in here, little one, and I promise you won’t care who’s watching. You’ll forget they’re even there. I’ll make you scream.”
I expel a shaky breath.
Several of the Romeos are lurking in the windows. It’s not like they have much else to do. The high point of their day is their trip to the toilet at gunpoint.
Romeo-Nine, Nova, laughs. Of all of them, he’s the breeziest, golden-haired, brown-skinned, green-eyed, square-jawed. His grin is wide. And his laughter echoes in the lab, a joyous thing, at odds with our grim surroundings. “You should take him up on it. When was the last time you got laid, TJ?”
Vix cocks a hip dramatically and rolls her eyes. “Look at her. You’d break her. Destroy her. She wouldn’t walk right for a week.”
Caruthers cheeks darken.
I have to clench every female part I have against the sudden flood of heat coursing through my veins.
Vix is 5'7" and well-muscled, but compared to Quatro she’s tiny. He’s nearly a full foot taller, well over a hundred pounds heavier. She’s half a foot taller than me, and Three is two inches taller than Quatro.
I would be terrified to be alone with him uncuffed. I glance back at Three where he leans against his glass. He would tower over me.
Three’s eyes are uncharacteristically soft and warm on me. “For you, I would be gentle. At first. Though ...” He trails off like he’s thinking about the walking part, and my gaze just can’t help itself and rollicks an ab-studded path south to enormous, indeed.
“I’d go slow. You’d be able to walk,” he murmurs softly, as if for my ears alone but I’m not the only one who heard.
I clamp down on my lips and turn pointedly away from the amused puff of his laughter.
There’s a smattering of uncomfortable titters among the lab techs. Baldwin sniffs. I squeeze my thighs together to put out the fire he just lit between them and pray no one notices my blabbermouth nipples pressing against my shirt.
Three does. His eyes gleam.
“Is this how you let him speak to staff?” Caruthers glares around the room.
Three’s tongue probes a long sharp canine. “You’re welcome to come in here and stop me.”
“Ms. Jones doesn’t need you to defend her from a naked man in a cell, Caruthers. He can’t touch her.” Baldwin crosses her arms. “She’s a big girl. And she’s under my supervision.”
Vix shakes her mass of wild red hair over a shoulder and, completely unashamed of her nudity, saunters up to the glass. She wets her lips with ostentation. “For the record, I’m down for sex in public. Shimmy out of the suit, big guy. If there’s no cock like super-soldier cock, the same is true for snatch.” Her eyes gleam, roving his admittedly hard-under-the-suit body, then narrow to slits as she turns to Baldwin. “But I’m not letting my own brother lay pipe inside me.”
“Oh, please. There’s no biological connection between any of you,” says Baldwin. “Just do it. Give us a few children, and we’ll release you.”
“Lies,” Three murmurs in a voice so soft it makes my insides shiver.
Quatro, his dark hair curling down his back, prowls to his side of the cell, breathing hard. A week ago, he was on the edge, almost broken, but now, something’s different. He tried to kiss Tensy ... I saw the report. In the clip, she didn’t look resistant. If anything, there was a moment where they locked eyes, and I swear, it was she who pulled him closer.
It makes me wonder if the family bond is firmer with some than others. Maybe Quatro sees Tensy and Vix differently somehow. Vix is a sister to him, but maybe Tensy is something else.
Beyond that, something has changed for the Sierras. Their faces are different. Their bodies. Their mannerisms.
Sev who was largely unresponsive, has begun making eye contact on rare occasions. Even now, he’s on his feet, looming on his side of the glass, glaring, baleful as a cornered beast, his head lowered, his long dark hair tightly curled and wild. He sees me looking, and a truly terrifying psychopath of a smile cures the corners of his lips up.
Even Three seems more playful than usual. Hopeful. It makes me uneasy.
Nothing good is coming for the people who work at IdentityCorps if these fourteen living weapons have viable reason to hope. If they escape, they will slaughter us all. The thought bothers me less than it should.
“What’s in the box?” Nova points at it, the light glittering in his sandy hair.
Caruthers frowns and leans forward to see over the rim.
Schwitters joins him and lets out a happy squeal.
“I brought books.” I touch my hands together in front of my stomach, hoping this isn’t an overstep. Everything I do in this lab is so far outside anything I studied in school. Everything feels like a gamble. “In my opinion, their boredom is counterproductive.”
“Holy shit, TJ’s human.” Vix tilts her head back toward the ceiling and groans like she just had a mild orgasm. “I’d kill for a book.”
“I like her,” says Nova.
“Me too.” Three strokes his thumb along his lower lip. I couldn’t look away if I tried.
Sev chooses that precise moment to seal his lips against his glass window, smashing his nose up like a pig’s, brows squished flat, and blows a long loud fat juicy raspberry. The sound echoes in the lab like a prodigious fart.
I shake my head out of the Three-induced revery. They’re like wolves. A team. Everything they do is strategic. Sev is distracting us. Vix is bating Caruthers. Nova is nicknaming me. Three is flirting with me. The constant reminders of his dick. It’s not an accident. They’re working us—me most of all.
I know it.
Yet, still, all of it lights me up inside, shows me what life might be without rules and cameras and fear and blind obedience.
Settling my hand on my hip, I school my features to bland indifference. “I’ve studied their brain patterns, and, in my opinion, it permits them too much time to focus on what they perceive as their mission. Resistance.”
Sev blows a second longer, louder raspberry.
“Resistance has never been our mission,” Three murmurs.
Baldwin smirks at me. “Do you know how many different ways they could kill you with a book?”
She means readers, not real books. No one uses paper anymore.
“They’re real. Made with paper.”
Baldwin’s eyes widen, and she circles around to peer into the box. “Where did you get your hands on paperbacks?”
“They’re collectibles.” I turn to acknowledge Vix and the men in the cells. “They were my great-grandmother’s. She left them to my sister and me when she died. If you could all be careful with them, I’d appreciate it. And if you like them, I can bring in more.”
I try to ignore the smattering of doubt, the fear that they’ll tear them up out of spite.
“What kind of books?” Vix rests a casual hip against Quatro’s window.
“Romance novels from a century or so ago,” I admit. One of the few things I couldn’t bear to sell off to pay our debts. “I brought in enough for each of you to have one at a time. When you’re done, we can trade them around.”
Schwitters pulls out one with a bare-chested man on the cover. “Get ready for a one-handed read,” he quotes with an impish smile, reading the rear cover. “Warning. This novel contains graphic sexual descriptions.”
“Bondage?” Baldwin asks archly, another book in her hands. The cover shows a bound man in blindfolds.
A trio of lab techs titter over an alien romance. “A threesome.”
“Dibs on the ménage!” Vix calls.
Schwitters holds up another one of a man in a kilt, holding a sword like a phallus. “The Wanton Duchess. These look fascinating, Tierney.”
“I want that one,” Quatro says.
“Really?” Kaksi frowns. “You’re into swords and shit?”
Quatro shrugs. “I’m into anything right now.”
“Why not?” Nova taps the glass. “Girl on the cover looks hot.”
Sev blows another raspberry.
“Okay, that’s enough.” I snatch the book from Schwitters’ hands, my face burning, and then tug Baldwin’s free. She surrenders it with an arch smirk.
Caruthers stares at me intently. The book in his hands features a woman on her knees, looking up with eyes wide and pleading. The warning on the back mentions anal play.
“Have you read these books, Tierney Jones?” Three murmurs with molten leisure.
Caruthers cocks his head, eyes rapt.
“Yes,” I say through gritted teeth.
“You like to read books with sex in them?” Three grins and catches his tongue between his teeth.
More lab techs sort through the box. One of them, a woman named Sylese, snickers, already flipping through the pages.
I shrug in Baldwin’s direction, steadfastly avoiding Caruthers’ eyes. “Can’t hurt to add another layer of impetus for them to perform.”
A new gleam lights Baldwin’s eyes. “It might arouse them further. Reading erotica. I hadn’t thought of that. We could set up a projector too. Make them watch pornography all day.”
My lips part. That wasn’t at all what I meant. She snaps her fingers at a lab tech, who no doubt runs off to set up a film reel of retro porn.
“Nice work, Jones,” First says, but his tone isn’t as censorious as his words. If anything, he seems to be laughing.
Three twists his torso, and that enormous cock of his bumps against the glass. He grins my way and does it again.
I have to work really hard not to react—my face wants to laugh. My thighs remember the feel of it bumping against them, smooth hot skin stretched over hard steel.
Caruthers mutters something, sliding a broad thumb along the spine of the book in his hand.
Three flexes shamelessly. “I will enjoy reading your words of sex, and knowing you have read them too.” He speaks as if we’re alone in the room together, as if we weren’t surrounded by coworkers and bosses and other prisoners. “Did you touch yourself?”
I bite down on the insides of my cheeks.
“Ms. Jones, I need to speak with you.” Caruthers’ jaw ticks, and he glares at Baldwin. “I’ll come to your office to discuss this in a minute.”
She stiffens. “Michael, I will remind you that this is my jurisdiction, and last time I checked, your office is still in Ring 2.”
His nostrils flare, but he places his hand on my waist, his warm thumb burning through the layers of my clothes, and guides me away from the cells and out of earshot of the other scientists, though I’m sure the Sierras can still hear.
“I came to see how you were acclimating down here, Tierney.”
It’s the first time he’s said my first name, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s a way to remind me he outranks me or if it’s something else. “I’m fine.”
He studies my eyes like he can read me. “Baldwin says you’re doing well. Have you made any headway?”
I step away from the warm press of his hand on my hip, and perch on the edge of a lab stool. “Some.”
I’ve watched the feed countless times, replayed interviews, medical reports, incident reports, past mission summaries. I’ve learned every single piece of information I can get my hands on about chip integration, and the fourteen soldiers in Sub-Level B.
“I’ve only just begun to understand how their brains function,” I tell Caruthers. “The struggle will be the augmentation of their existing chips. I can do it like a software upload, I think. It’s just a question of how many uploads will be required.” I loathe it, but my brain has fixated on the problem to solve, and even though I don’t want to do it, it’s writing the codes anyway. I am my father’s daughter, and there’s nothing my brain enjoys more than problem solving.
He nods distractedly, his eyes roaming along the cells to my right. “And Bob? How is he? Do you need more people?”
That’s the last thing I want. I glance over and confirm that Bob is distracted by my novels. He’s got one with a busty woman in the lap of a werewolf. The book is tiny in his meaty hand. “Bob’s great.”
Caruthers touches my elbow, the rough skin of his big thumb somehow searing through my clothes, leaning in so his voice is nothing more than a murmur. “This work can be trying emotionally.” He bends at the knee to catch my gaze, his hands closing around my biceps. “You can trust me. I promise you, Tierney, whatever else I want, whatever else I do or say ...” He leans forward, his voice no more than a breath. “My first aim is to keep you safe.”
I stare up into his warm dark eyes and even though I shouldn’t, I find myself ... trusting him, liking him. He feels real in a way few people here do. “Safe from what?”
“Whatever comes.”
I frown. What’s coming? And we only met once. Why would he care about me?
“You can always come to me. I can keep your secrets. I can keep you safe.”
“But—”
Three knocks on the glass, drawing all our attention, and the word why freezes on my tongue.
“I’ll fuck Dolce at her next ovulation.” He doesn’t look at me, just says it in a cold disinterested voice.
My stomach rollercoasters itself into a knot. I squeeze my hands together and force my gaze to stay calmly glued to Caruthers, who just for a single second, flinches at his words.
“Good boy.” Baldwin grins expansively and looks around at the techs. “When is Foxy-Ten ovulating next?”
“Three weeks.” It comes out in a whisper no one hears but Caruthers whose big black brow arches high. Of all the Foxtrots, Dolce’s is the farthest ovulation cycle away.
The lab techs are too busy bumping fists in celebration and pulling up the calendar.
Schwitters is nothing but dimples. “Three weeks,” he proclaims loudly enough for everyone to hear, like the ringmaster of a nightmare circus.
Caruthers dark eyes probe mine. He steps a little closer. “Be careful around Baldwin, I don’t know what her aim is, but I have my suspicions.”
I nod absently. My mind just keeps fixating on memories of Three. The way he smells, how his lips taste, conjuring up painful, vivid, torturous images of him on top of Dolce.
I don’t know what to say, so I’m grateful when Baldwin continues her slow clap. “What changed your mind, Romeo-Three?”
“I’ll fuck Dolce ... in exchange,” Three grates out, his face a masterpiece of harsh lines, slashing brows, clenching jaw. “For thirty minutes alone with Tierney Jones.”
CHAPTER TEN
FLOOD THIS DUNGEON WITH
BLOOD
ROMEO-THREE
There is something different about Tierney Jones today. And it isn’t just the shoes, or the lipstick, or the new clothes. It’s something inside.
It’s there in the way she looks at me. The way she stands around me. Her eyes dilate ever so slightly. Her lips part. The toes of her heels point at me, even when she’s talking to someone else.
I’m under her skin. Like me, I bet she wakes, restless in the night, reliving the heated press of our lips, the feel of my body, the rush of hot blood between her thighs. She wants me just like I want her.
Her cheeks flush, and her eyes narrow for the briefest skitter of a second. Jealous, little one?
Like hell you’re fucking me, Dolce hums across the lab.
Relax, I hum back. I have no intention of attempting to touch you.
I cock my head, studying Tierney. I wonder if she’d help us escape if I asked. Not yet. But I could probably get her to that point. She’s close. Just a few interactions away from hitting full-blown allegiance to the captive.
I’d rather have her helping us than fighting us.
