Stormes match, p.12
Storme's Match, page 12
part #1 of Grim Reapers Series
She pondered this small luxury for a moment, tempted, then decided against it. She brought up the cover higher against her body. “No, I … I might sleep a bit more.”
He didn’t reply but went to the bathroom. Through the open door, she saw him pick up two towels. He brought them to his face and sniffed them for an instant, looking satisfied enough. He moved further into the bathroom. When he came out into the bedroom, he was carrying something in his hands.
She looked at him, vaguely curious. She wasn’t scared of him. It was nice not to be scared.
“Take the shirt off, Eva.” She looked at him uncomprehendingly.
“It’s wet. From your nightmare. Come on, I’ll make it worth your while.” He showed her the steaming pan and the towels.
Suddenly, she really wanted that sponge bath. She forced herself to move and shimmied out of her shirt. It was his shirt, actually, long enough on her that she could comfortably use it as a nightdress.
He looked at her guardedly, his jaw clenched tight. She wondered if he was mad at her.
“Are you angry at me?” she asked, surprised to hear she had spoken the words out loud.
“At you? No.” His voice was gruff. “I’m angry at the stunt you pulled off at the forest. I’ve been in a lot of … hairy situations. But I’ve never been so scared in my life as I was at that moment. And every moment from then on until I found you.”
She smiled softly, brought up her hand to his cheek. “I would do it again in a heartbeat, you know?”
He sighed. “I know …”
“Thank you for getting Bobbi to safety and not throwing it all away.”
A muscle ticked behind his jaw.
“I will not lie to you, Eva, ever. So you need to know this. I’m angry you risked your life like that. I’m angry you were taken. But I’m thankful we were able to get you back, and I’m also very much enjoying looking at your naked body.”
“You don’t look like you’re enjoying yourself much.”
“I couldn’t be this close to you and not enjoy it. May I?” He pointed at the water.
She nodded and, in that moment, realized she trusted him completely. She closed her eyes again. He put the corner of a towel in the warm water, and they both watched the liquid soak up into the fabric. He lifted one of her arms in his huge hand and slowly moved the towel from her shoulder, all the way down to her fingertips.
The pleasure was so violent, she had to bite her lip to keep herself from moaning.
She watched, hypnotized, as he continued the downward motion, along one arm. He then dried it carefully and tucked that arm under the sheet before he picked up the other arm and did the same. When he lifted both arms and reached around her neck, under her arm pits, the gesture was so intimate, it made her shiver.
“Shh … it’s okay.”
His warm touch cleaned and soothed her.
He kept going, slowly wiping along her breasts. Her nipples puckered at his touch, but he did not stop there for long. Water pooled inside her bellybutton, and he looked at it intently, his head coming closer. For a moment, she thought he might lap it up with his tongue and shivered in anticipation, but at the last moment he raised his head and used the towel again.
She longed for him to drop the towel and touch her more intimately. She arched into his next touch and grabbed his thick wrist. His pupils were dilated with lust, the gray almost invisible.
“Please, Storme …”
He shook his head. “Believe me, I would like nothing more than to have sex with you right now.”
“I feel a but coming.”
He nodded. “But we’re not going to risk your recovery. When we have sex, it’ll be mind-blowing. It’s not going to be about forgetting.”
He helped her put her arms and head through a clean shirt, and she sat up in bed, propped up by a couple pillows, feeling more like herself than she had in a long time.
She was pondering how she could change his mind, when she heard a noise outside. They both froze for an instant. He squeezed her hand, silently asking her to stay still, then made his way to the door, a cold, predatory look on his face. His expression relaxed as the person on the other side knocked in the agreed pattern. He opened the door quickly.
Zander strolled in, ducking slightly to get past the doorframe, calm as anything, as if he hadn’t just braved multiple Remur patrols to get to them.
“Morning, Storme. Morning, Eva,” he said, nodding in her direction.
“It’s morning already?” she asked. The windows in the hideout were boarded up, so it was hard to tell the time.”
“It sure is. I was up late with Dr. Lee. Clever woman.”
“Stop fucking with us, Zander, did you bring back the mobile lab?” growled Storme.
“Relax, Storme, I’ve got it here.” He patted his backpack. “We’ll test it right now, but Dr. Lee has seen that green shit before, she thinks it’s just an anesthetic and muscle relaxant. If you’d been hit with the whole thing, Dr. Lee thinks you could have slept for 24 hours or more. During that time, your muscles would have been particularly relaxed for … anything they wanted to do to you.”
Storme’s jaw clenched.
“The doctor asked me to tell you, your pee might be a surprising color today, but chances are you’re going to be fine.” He set up the lab equipment on the dining table with sure hands. “We just need to put a couple drops here, put it through the biocorrector, and wait for a short beep.”
Eva held her breath until the sound came.
“And… it’s a blue light. You’re okay,” Zander said, smiling faintly.
“You’re okay,” Storme repeated. He reached over, looking for her hand, relief evident in his eyes.
Zander coughed politely. “There’s something else we need to talk about, though.”
“Is everyone okay at the Residence? Please, just tell me,” she begged. Even to her own ears, her voice sounded desperate.
“The cameras around the Residence have been seeing more Remur action. Even during the day, when the Remur aren’t active, there are Remur slaves sniffing around our area of the city. We don’t have enough cameras or guards to be sure, but it almost looks like they’re out hunting for someone. It’s possible they’re angry you got away and looking to get you back.”
She pondered that for a second, thought back to her interactions with the Grim Reaper. It didn’t make any sense.
Why would they care about me specifically?
Suddenly, something clicked in her mind. Her hand went to her flat belly.
“Are you okay, Eva?”
“They’re not angry … They’re not angry!” She stood up, fairly buzzing with excitement.
“Eva, what’s wrong?” Storme made a move as if to grab her.
She waved him aside. “The Grim Reaper left me with his medic. The same one you killed on your way in. He never had a chance to report back, so the Grim Reaper doesn’t know whether the medic impregnated me or not. They think I might be carrying their young. That’s why they’re out hunting for me!”
Both men thought about that for a second.
“You might be right,” Zander conceded
“Of course I’m right. I saw them with their baby, the way they cared about him. They’ll do anything to stop one of their young from falling into our hands.”
“If this is true, and I’m not saying it is, then this is—” Storme began.
Eva finished his thought. “A game changer.”
Storme’s voice went cold. “We’ve been trying to get our hands on a Grim Reaper for months.”
She took her hand in his. “They think we have something of theirs. We can use that to find and kill the Grim Reaper.”
Chapter 15
Eva
“I don’t like it,” Storme said, standing beside her. She could feel the tension in his body. Judging by the black circles under his eyes, he had not slept a wink. It made the slate gray color in his eyes stand out.
“Of course you don’t like it, Major Storme.” The Maire’s short, buffed nails tapped regularly on her desk. It was a beautiful dark mahogany surface. Eva wondered who’d originally moved it to this basement office. It must have happened before she arrived at the Residence.
“We only just rescued her from the clutches of the Grim Reaper, and you want to use her as bait?”
“And what would you propose instead, Major Storme?” the Maire asked calmly.
“We find another way,” he said, stubborn.
Eva pushed herself off the wall. “Shouldn’t I have a say in this?”
A couple male voices chuckled behind her. She whipped her head back to see who it was, ready to flip them off, but all five men were looking elsewhere. She only just stopped herself from smiling.
A knock at the door brought her attention back where it should be.
Storme tensed and inched closer towards her. His unconscious protectiveness of her made her heart beat faster, though she was quite sure she didn’t need any protection.
“Relax, it’s Saoirse,” she told everyone. “I asked her to be here for this.”
Saoirse came into the room gingerly. The fiery redhead seemed subdued. She had not yet fully recovered yet from being held captive by the Remur.
Eva noticed the way Sawyer moved closer to Saoirse, his expression unusually intense. She filed that information away.
“There’s something I haven’t told you,” Eva said. “The reason I wanted Saoirse to be here for this is … at first I thought it might be a dream, but it isn’t. It really happened. The Remur soldier spoke to me.”
“What the fuck? And you didn’t think of mentioning this?” Storme said.
“I’m mentioning it now,” she hissed.
“How? Are you sure?” various voices asked.
Looks around the room varied from skepticism to horror.
“Silence,” Storme ordered. “Eva, please explain. What do you mean, he spoke?”
“Yes, I am sure, and before anyone asks, no, I wasn’t dreaming. He was wearing a small box around his neck.” She roughly demonstrated the size of the box with her hands. “It was acting as some kind of a translator. When he grunted, the box translated his grunts back to English. Real time.”
Saoirse’s bright blue eyes looked like they were going to pop out of her head.
“Did you have one as well? Were you able to communicate with him?” she asked.
Her eyes clouded at the memory, and she clenched her fist. “It was a one-way system. He was … let’s just say he didn’t seem interested in what I might have to say.”
“Did they all have it?” Storme asked her.
“No, just him, the Grim Reaper. I only saw one other Remur, a technician, but he didn’t have it.”
“What did he say? What did he say exactly, Eva? What words did he use? Did he use verbs? Adjectives?”
She turned her attention to her friend. “I don’t remember … I was scared …” Storme’s hand on the small of her back steadied her, lending her the strength she needed. “But it was English. He told me my people had been looking for me. But there were some words … he wanted to say thirsty but the electronic voice said thirst instead.”
Saoirse looked thoughtful and excited at the same time. “That could be because thirst is not a word in their vocabulary. Or it might be that they don’t have adjectives and don’t know how to translate them. There’s no reason to think an alien language would follow the same rules most of our languages share.”
“What do you mean by our languages? Earth languages are all very different,” Kopf argued. He was clearly thinking of his native German tongue.
Saoirse shook her head patiently. She was fully in her element now. “Different, yes, but they still tend to fall into certain patterns. For example, all our languages share the same basic building blocks: nouns, verbs, objects, adjectives … and they all have ways of talking about the past and about the future. The Remur clearly have a language too. They understand each other and can communicate complex behaviors. But that doesn’t mean they have the same needs as we do. We just don’t know enough because none of us have been able to get close enough to understand them. Until now, that is, Eva.”
Saoirse’s bright blue eyes glittered with excitement. It was the most words she had said since she’d been captured.
Storme nodded. “What you say makes sense, Saoirse. I remember right at the start of everything, some so-called experts argued on TV that beings who had managed to cross galaxies would be too advanced for us to be able to communicate with them.” His expression became hard. “I think that’s bullshit. The Remur may have crossed galaxies, but, as a civilization, they don’t seem very advanced. They’re just out here looking to increase their control over their physical world, doing just the same thing we humans did to each other for centuries. The Remur are natural-born aggressors. They don’t want to communicate with us. They want to use us and end us, but if we could learn to understand them, we might finally have a chance to end this war.”
“If we can get you this translation box, Saoirse, do you think you might be able to crack it?”
Saoirse thought for a minute. “It depends. I’m a linguist. My knowledge of computer programming is limited, but I have been playing with a computer program in my lab that I think might help us. It’s worth a try.” She rubbed her palms excitedly. “We could learn to understand them and communicate with them.”
“It shouldn’t be hard. We know the Grim Reaper is out there looking for me. We can set a trap for him,” Eva said.
“It’s a good idea, Storme,” Sawyer interceded. She shot him a grateful look.
“Let’s say I went along with this idea. Which is not to say I do. How can we ensure we control the meeting place?” Storme said.
“We need to make him think it’ll be easy to capture me again.” She could see the feelings warring in his expression; he wanted to keep her safe, but he knew it might be their only chance of getting their hands on the box.
Finally, he nodded.
“We leave tomorrow morning at 06:00. Everybody, get some rest.”
She watched until everyone left the room, until only she and Storme were left.
He held the door open for her. When she walked by him, he leaned down and whispered in her ear. “You win, Eva. You get to be bait. But know this, I’ll be with you every second.”
His voice ignited something inside her. She stood up on tiptoes and raised her head to get close to his ear.
“I’m counting on it,” she whispered softly. “Starting right now, I hope.”
#
Gabriel
He followed Eva downstairs to her room. Damn, at that very second he would have followed her into the mouth of Hell. He still had a lot of work to do to plan tomorrow’s mission, but he couldn’t bring himself to let go of her. Whatever tomorrow might bring, he needed to be with her tonight, needed to know if she felt the same way he did.
At the door to her room, she fumbled slightly with the lock. He smiled inwardly. Perhaps she was not as calm as she seemed.
He slammed the door shut behind them and went up to her. She was tall enough that they could comfortably make out while standing, and he loved that. He cupped her face in both his hands to bring her closer, and she moaned softly. His cock felt hard enough that he thought he might explode before she even touched him.
Her lips opened, and he took his time exploring her mouth, reveling in her softness and strength. They kissed, and kissed, until they both had to come up for air. She grabbed him by his shirt and tugged on it.
“This time around, you’re not going to stop.”
“I’m not going to stop,” he agreed.
He let her pull him towards her bed. She pushed him until he was lying down, his legs hanging off the side. Storme reached over to grab her and pull her to him, but she was too quick. She stepped back with a smile.
“Don’t move until I say so,” she said.
“I promise,” he said, breathless with desire. She lost the shirt and bra first. Her breasts were a handful, but he had big hands; they’d fit perfectly in his palms. He itched to touch her but understood her need to be fully in control. To avoid his traitorous body betraying him, he laced his fingers behind his head. Her eyes went wide.
She sat up to straddle him. He groaned as she rubbed herself against him. His cock pushed almost painfully against the zipper.
“Maybe you can move a bit,” she whispered in his ear. He brought his hands around her body to help balance her, keeping his hold on her very light.
“Mmm … I could come against you like this,” she moaned, shifting her hips slowly. “But I’d rather have you naked.”
“Your wish is my command.” He lifted her body off him and took off his pants and briefs in record time, then kneeled down by the side of the bed and pulled her towards the edge. His fingers caressed her folds gently, finding her already wet. He brought his mouth down to her, much like the first time he’d gotten her off, and started licking. He found her clit and sucked on it very gently, remembering what she liked.
She brought his large hand up to her pubic bone and pressed against it directly. He loved that she felt comfortable enough to tell him what felt right. He kept the pressure up as he lapped at her. Her moans became frenzied, her voice louder and louder, until he knew she was going to come.
“I don’t want to come without you,” she panted.
He brought his head up for an instant. “Come for me now. We can come together later.”
She shattered in his arms. “Oh God! Gabriel!”
“Shh … I’ve got you, Eva. I’ve got you.” He lifted her easily and shifted over her on the bed. She opened her legs for him. He’d never seen anything so beautiful. He wanted to be staring right into her eyes as they made love.
“I’m still coming,” she gasped.
“I know,” he smiled, kissing her.
He sat on the bed, his back against the headboard, and lifted her onto him easily. He held his breath for a moment, enjoying the connection, but making no attempt to enter her. He knew he was large and did not want to scare her. He wanted her to choose this.
