Authors: Ella Drake
He backed a step, ripped his shirt over his head, and was rewarded by her sharp intake of breath.
“We don’t have time to mess around.” The observation came out more like a question, as if she wanted to be proven wrong. The early morning sun streamed in his one curtainless window at her back, sparkling off her hair. She hadn’t moved, still leaning on his desk, but now one arm hugged tightly around her, the other crossed her chest, chewing on her thumbnail. The habit she’d conquered long ago came back now as she frowned at him.
In a lesson in self-punishment, he put as much distance between them as possible, which wasn’t much in the cramped room, and moved out of touching distance until the back of his knees hit the small bed. The mattress was the latest in tech, a nanotech foam that memorized his shape, a piece of furniture so advanced it wouldn’t normally be found in servants’ quarters, but the previous tenant of this room had somehow gotten that luxury. He’d never cared until now.
He pulled his dice from his pocket, fingering them, and rolled them on the bed. “Odds, you on top. Even, me.”
“I really don’t have time for this.” Her soft insistence was merely token. It better be, anyway—changing her mind might have its upside, but he wanted soft and willing for their first time in so long.
“The dice say odds. You on top.” He flipped open the top snap of his jeans, and her stare, which had caught on his abs, tracked down to his stomach. He flexed, her hungry bright gaze as real as a stroke across his hot skin.
“How did you get here, Jaq?” He merely meant to distract her as he sat on his bed and bent to remove his shoes.
“On a beanstalk.”
He must have heard wrong. With a shake of his head, he tucked his socks in his aligned shoes under the bed, long practice for dressing in emergencies. She hadn’t moved, but her breathing was rapid and loud. His only consolation was that physically he got to her as much as she got to him. “How did you plan to get out of here, love?”
“Don’t call me that. Not anymore.”
“How? When?”
He leaned back on his elbows to relieve the pressure on his hardness, and a wash of cool air flowed over the head of his dick, exposed by his unbuttoned fly.
Like she was completely hypnotized, she stared at the flesh that must be bright red at this point and answered distractedly. “The stalk will come back around at eleven.”
“We can get out of here, for good, in a matter of minutes.”
She nodded, still staring as if she couldn’t stop herself or do anything else.
Good
.
“We have plenty of time. I have all the evidence we need tucked away in my harmonica.”
“Harmonica?”
He shifted on the bed and looked away from her curious expression. “Yes, well, I am a singer.”
“I remember.” No longer distracted, her response was gentle and filled with an edge of sadness, and maybe he detected a bit of yearning there.
With a merciless move to put them both on a course they probably shouldn’t take, he edged down his zipper slowly, the metallic purr of the teeth loud in the room. Each little notch freed his erection further, making him even harder with relief and the exposure of his desire.
“Yes, well. Good. I think.” With her back to the window he couldn’t quite see, but he imagined she turned a bit red across her cheekbones as she was wont to do when turned on. Yes, she must have her endearing blush right now. Had to. “I did come here for that. Partly. Anyway. But there’s more.”
“There is definitely more.” He parted his jeans.
Jaq whimpered.
Her familiar sound of surrender gave him the answer he needed. He lifted his hips, for the moment ignoring the groan rewarding him, and pushed his pants down. He kicked them off and left them on the floor in a heap as he leaned back on his elbows, spread his legs in invitation, and willed himself to wait.
She hadn’t moved, but the tenseness of her body nearly vibrated across the small room. “I’m not just here for the key to Giant Corp’s bag of gold. I have to get an antidote.”
“We’ll get it. Whatever you need, Jaq.”
She lifted her chin and a stream of sunlight illuminated her face. No longer seemingly transfixed on his erection, the glittering pools of blue he wanted to see infused with passion gazed at his face. “How can you give me what I need?”
The question he’d asked himself every day since he took this job. He’d always been able to give her what she needed in bed. That’d never been their problem, but he doubted they could be what they needed for each other outside of bed. The doubt had insinuated itself into a conviction and he’d walked away.
For years they’d danced around each other as friends. Then, at the end of a joint mission, they’d fallen into her bed. For months he rarely crawled out and he moved into her apartment without even asking. As an agent, he started to make mistakes. Luckily nothing big, but by the time his handler at Mother called him in, told him to get his head back in the game and that this deep cover at Giant was just what he needed, Harp didn’t recognize himself. Afraid of the changes in himself, he desperately leaped at the chance to have his old life back. A life of being sure about what the hell he was doing. A life of controlled emotion.
Jaq had needed him to give up deep cover, unable to handle his being in a position to use sex as a tool, or get his throat slit. To make it worse, he hadn’t said a thing. Hadn’t asked her opinion. Just walked out. He’d failed her. “Come here. I have what you need. Right now.”
“For now.”
“Always, Jaq.”
“How can you say that?” She still hadn’t moved, but with her damning question she pushed off the desk and moved toward the door. “I don’t have time for this. We can’t go back to how we were, Harp. I have to get the antidote. I have a security pass to the medical labs.”
“You can’t get in there without me.” He rushed out the warning as her hand closed on the doorknob. “It’ll be busy. Everyone is working right now. How can you expect to waltz in and find what you need? And what exactly are you looking for?”
Erection subsiding, he sat up, the mental need to switch into operative mode barely held at bay. He wanted to be Harp for a little longer and try to win back his once-fiancée, though he wasn’t sure anything had changed, with his nearly blinding urgency to have her again clouding the picture. But he had to hurry this along. Madame Ochre would wonder what took him so long to get down to breakfast. Before she came back, they’d be on the hacked hovercraft and heading to the ground.
Still facing away from him, her hand on the latch, Jaq stiffened, her back straight.
“It’s Merry.”
“Merry? How is the little imp?” He liked Merry, and he was sure she liked and approved of him. Her acceptance of him had infiltrated into his heart and added to the burden when he’d walked out. Still, he didn’t want anyone to hurt Merry any more than he wanted to hurt Jaq.
“She’s sick.”
That little sentence, said with the slightest hitch in her breath, changed everything. Their history didn’t matter.
He stepped into his jeans and crossed to her before he’d decided to do so. When he pulled her into him, her body tensed before she sagged into his chest. Her fully clothed body warmed him and, despite himself, his dick half hardened again as he adjusted himself around her, to hold and comfort her. Her hair, fresh as the outdoors, familiar and heady, tickled his nose before he nuzzled the top of her head to get closer, to get more of her scent. “Tell me.”
“She had a stupid, regular old cold that lingered. Nothing big, but the cough made her tired. She wanted a good night’s sleep. That’s all. She’d started her first job.”
A surge of pride filled his chest. “I’m sorry I missed her graduation.”
“She said she wished you were there.”
He didn’t ask if Jaq had wanted him there.
“She went to the new company’s doctor. He was a Giant shill. He gave her something experimental. She bought into his hype and took it. She got worse. The antidote isn’t covered by the med certificates. She sold everything to pay for a substitute that didn’t work.” She took a shuddering breath and he held her tighter. “She’s bedridden. Withering away. Without a cure, she’ll die. I need that antidote before the sun sets.”
“Yes.” His throat threatened to close, and he hugged her, the weight of her back against his front comforting him possibly more than her. The Giant vaccine he’d wanted to halt had obviously gone to ground in trials. If only he’d worked faster. His gut burned with anger and remorse. “I’ll get it for you.”
“I’ll get it myself,” she hissed.
“You’re more than capable—with the right planning, tools, codes—but whatever you have planned will take longer. It’ll be riskier than if I go. You’re a stranger. They’ll stop you and question you, and even if you have a cover story, I’m familiar. I can get what we need and get us out faster.”
She relaxed her rigid posture. “Maybe.”
Until that moment, he’d harbored some idea of fucking Jaq senseless before getting out of here, getting off this trap, this island in the sky, and using his evidence to bring down the corrupted corp, but now that plan wouldn’t work. Damn it all, now they had to risk leaving his room before the escape and chance going into the secure area of the mansion and sneaking meds out.
So much more likely something could go wrong, but Merry’s life depended on it. He had to do it.
He held Jaq tighter. Just a minute more, to be Harp alone with his Jaq, the woman he’d walked out on because she could do this to him, keep his mind off the mission.
She’d never been so afflicted. “I have the floor plans memorized,” she assured him. “Your latest intel says small quantities are being produced for the wealthiest clients. All in a lightly guarded facility on the third level.”
Harp nodded. “My latest report hasn’t made it to Mother yet. Ochre’s finally lost all his sense. He’s desperate. He had his labs create a new vaccine that’ll turn on its host. They’re holding the cure hostage. For money. Without a costly Giant antidote, the victim will die of lung failure. The vaccine rollout is scheduled in a matter of months. Mother has to make a move. Now. Before Giant’s tainted meds decimate the lander population.”
“So they are doing this for money. Killing people.” A haunted look crossed her face before she wiped it clear.
“I didn’t know it’d started. Gone to trials” He fisted his hands, wanting to plant Ochre a facer. “Merry will not be a victim of this. I won’t let her.”
After slipping his shirt on, he swiped his dice from the bed and pocketed them. From the side table he retrieved his harmonica, slid it into his back pocket. A special design from Bovine, it molded to his shape. With a glance at the alarm clock that doubled as his surveillance control system, he sat on the bed to put on his shoes. “Stay here. I’ll get the antidote, then we’ll clear.”
Her back straightened and she turned to him with a completely emotionless look. “You know I won’t stay here.”
He needed some rope. He’d tie her here and get the meds on his own.
“And you can’t detain me. First, you’ve never tied me up in a way I couldn’t escape.”
The cold deserted him as he heated, his dick full in his jeans again as images of her tied to the bed, his mouth very busy on her sultry skin, and her jumping him and riding mercilessly when she slipped free. One of the many talents she displayed was her amazing ability to escape from any bonds. He didn’t dare think of the other talents she possessed, which she’d only used on him. He ground his teeth again. At least, it had been only him a year ago.
The memories must have attacked her as well because her voice lowered to a husky murmur. “And second, leaving me defenseless could get me killed in this place.”
He froze, the whirlwind of chill taking him so fast he nearly got dizzy. A steadfast rule of Mother was to never leave backup compromised. A deep-cover agent knew the risks, but putting another operative in danger was unacceptable.
“You do exactly as I say.”
Her blues twinkled at his command. “Don’t I always?”
“No.” Resisting the urge to throw her onto his bed and kiss her senseless, he leaned down toward her pixie face and spoke softly. “You will this time. Do exactly as I say.”
“If I want to.” She gave him her lopsided grin and opened the door a crack. “All clear.”
He jerked his hands back from where he’d nearly swatted her ass and followed her out the door.
The familiar click of heels came down the hall.
They were going to get caught. If she found out what he was really doing here, Madame Ochre would string him up by the balls.
Ignoring the antique furnishings, expensive paintings, and gilded accents in the grandiose hallway, and ignoring her bitter anger over Merry’s illness, Jaq gripped Harp’s hand and darted into the stairwell. She hoped her question came out in a whisper but couldn’t tell as her pulse pounded in her ears. “Do you think she saw us?”
“She’s probably coming to see what’s taking me so long. But she stopped to talk to someone at the end of the hall.”
For a second, Jaq let herself drink in the sight of Harp. Lean, muscular build snug in his jeans, black tousled hair, dark brown eyes that softened when he looked at her. Wanting to touch every sharp plane and angle of his face, she ignored the urge and turned from him to peer back the way they’d come.
Down the hall, the sun shone brightly, more vivid and warm than she’d ever seen. The rich and expensive carpet ran down the hallway, exhibiting more wealth here in the servants’ wing than in any lander’s home. Even his room had been nearly as large as her apartment and, though sparsely furnished, the expensive woods had screamed wealth. His sheets had been luxurious and looked as if they’d be soft to the touch, but he’d been hard, masculine, heartbreaking, as he’d leaned on his bed with that dangerous glint in his eyes.
His warm breath tickled against her ear, and she leaned into him for a second. His nearness brought it all back. As if he’d never left, they clicked. His mere presence made her more complete, powerful, as though she could do anything from making him beg for her touch to climbing into the sky.
But she
had
climbed into the sky. On her own. Even if she’d been out of sorts and not quite whole for the past year, she didn’t need him.
She stole up the steps. He’d follow.
The wide foam-covered treads muffled their steps. The circular walled-in staircase rose up and up, windows letting in the light. On each landing, a pot full of bamboo decorated the otherwise utilitarian stairwell. She didn’t dare look out, or down toward the ground. They didn’t talk until they’d gained a level. The door to the stairs beneath never opened.
“If she saw me, we’ll have company soon. She’ll want to know why the guy who’s supposed to be singing in the dining room is running off into the stairwell with a girl.”
“And you say you haven’t been sneaking off with girls?” She nearly missed the next step as she kept plodding on.
“Nothing. No action in months,” he groused, but she ignored him.
She hadn’t gotten any either but she couldn’t quite believe a man as virile, as responsive to women as Harp, wouldn’t have gotten a piece of tail now and then.
Following rumors of a girl who knew several languages, he’d found her on the streets and rescued her from despair by offering her a place at Mother. Only five years older, he’d seemed so much more experienced but kept his distance for a few years. Later, when she’d matured as a woman and an agent, they became friends and he made her whole, shared himself with her—body, emotions, and all. He was her first live-in lover, the first man she’d ever really wanted, and he’d been quite adept at making her crave him to pieces.
Then he’d ripped her heart right out of her body without warning. No fucking warning. Things had been perfect. Too perfect. He just woke up one morning, rolled out of their bed, and said goodbye.
Off to deep cover, baby. It’s been real.
She’d had a few disastrous dates since him. That she’d not been able to get hot and bothered was all Harp’s fault. She’d gotten to the point where she’d considered picking up a random guy to have sex for sex’s sake, to flush her ex out of her system. She hadn’t.
“Dick,” she muttered at him.
He didn’t answer. He’d always read her perfectly. He knew exactly what was going on inside her, running hot and cold, needy, pissed and hurt. Wasn’t it the way of life as a lander? The bitter ironies that made their lives hollow shadows?
They ascended the stairs in tense silence, but she couldn’t wipe away the feel of his stare on her ass. She hadn’t been turned on even once in a year. In his presence for a minute and she slicked her panties, but she couldn’t take him back, even if he wanted her again. She would not take him back. She couldn’t live through that hurt again.
“What was it like, living in the clouds?” Hand on the door, ready to step into danger, she hadn’t meant to ask the question.
“You know I grew up on one of these.”
She’d forgotten—well, not really, but she didn’t think of it. Of course they’d both shared their histories, but he didn’t talk about it much and he didn’t remind her he’d given up the life of the filthy rich only to take down the corrupt ones.
“It’s the same as down there, except the smog doesn’t cover everything, hovercars don’t make a constant buzz of background noise, and the sun shines. Early. Oh, and people spend their money like they have a goose laying golden eggs to refill their accounts.”
She snorted. “It’s not the same. Up here, everything is clean. Fresh. Sparkly. There’s no hope down there. People get sick. They work their fingers to the bone for nothing.”
“People up here despair, too.”
His bleak tone brought her around to peer at his serious face. “What happened?”
Her arm fell to the side when she realized she’d nearly stroked his hair, as she’d used to do when he’d come home from a tough day.
“Later.” He slid an arm past her, brushing her waist to send tingles all over, and opened the door.
Conversation over.
They didn’t have time for it anyway.
“This is the medical level.” He ushered her into a foyer with fake plants, a few couches and three glass security doors blocking access to business centers already abuzz with workers arriving at this early hour.
“We’ll want the one on the left, the viral research division.” She’d memorized everything about the Giant’s floating island.
“You can’t get through without ID.”
“I have one. I told you. And a cover story to go with it.” She patted the courier bag she still wore. “It’s foolproof.”
“I’ll go. Everyone will recognize me and I won’t be questioned. If you go, you’ll be asked for your credentials and have to wait while they screen them. It’ll take you much longer. You sit here on the waiting couches and fill out one of the visitor forms you’d need to get through there anyway. I’ll be out before you’re done with them.”
“I haven’t even told you what we’re looking for.” She glared at him. He was so bossy. His eyes focused on the door and not her.
Four men, nearly identical in green scrubs, passed their identification cards through the reader at the door in the middle. She and Harp turned to the visitor desk and read the sign instructing visitors to fill out forms, don a lab coat from the wardrobe against the wall and wait on an escort. Harp grabbed the tablet with the form and a lab coat, closing the wardrobe door with a soft click.
Thoroughly ignoring them, the four men continued through the first security doors and stopped before the inner door as the first closed behind them. Sealed in the security area, one by one they placed their hands on a pad for print analysis before the inner door opened.
“You can’t get through without a crack or a bought code, maybe even a palm skin to fake your prints, but you’d need someone’s security files first.”
She had all those, all the security cracks, but he was right, it’d take him minutes while it’d take her maybe an hour by going through the forms and checks.
“Stop chewing your nails,” Harp said in an offhanded manner as he nodded toward the couch.
An operative always knew when to accept help to accomplish a mission. In this case, the mission was much more important than her ego. Much.
“We need the antidote for V534b.” She plopped on the couch and grabbed the tablet with the visitor access request.
Shrugging into the lab coat, Harp nodded and winked at her before he went through the door to the viral research lab.
Alone, she swayed in her seat as anxiety waved over her, hot and suffocating. All these years at Mother they’d only worked together once, and it had been a simple, nonthreatening surveillance mission. She’d never seen him walk into danger. With a force of will, she kept her foot from tapping and her legs from forcing her off her ass to pace uselessly. The words on the form blurred in front of her.
To grip the touchpen, she stopped chewing on her thumbnail and wiped her hand on her jacket.
“Let’s see,” she murmured.
Name. She couldn’t put Jacqueline Robinson.
“Jackie English.” She grinned at what she’d written on the tablet before she erased it.
The man who’d prompted her long-ago pastime of scribbling her dream married name had walked through security doors and out of her protection.
She slammed down the tablet and stood in one motion. After crossing the waiting area once, twice, she plopped back down again and forced her glassy stare toward the tablet in her lap. She emptied her mind, relaxed, and tried to let the time flow by.
She’d missed Harp.
Missed the way he made her crazy, the way he made her melt at a touch, the way he made her feel at home, but she couldn’t let him be her home again. His leaving had nearly broken her. She didn’t have the luxury to fall apart. Merry needed her. Unsure how much time had passed, she jerked when the door slid open.
A woman came into the waiting area. Skinny, long blond hair pulled back, bright red nails flashing, the newcomer didn’t glance at her. Identical to her surveillance photos, Madame Ochre brushed by into the viral research area and left behind a stream of floral perfume. Jaq wrinkled her nose.
From all the reports, Madame Ochre didn’t involve herself in the work behind Giant Corp. There could be only reason she’d brought herself to the third level.
Harp was in trouble.
Harp headed straight for the medical storage room. He thumbed through the orderly files and grabbed the V534b folder, thick with sample blister packs. After shoving it into the top of his jeans at his back, the lab coat fit a little tightly, but it’d do for now.
The door to the storage room darkened. It’d been too easy. He should’ve known.
“I thought you were up to something, with all your sneaking around this morning. All I had to do was wait for your security code to come up. What on earth could my favorite singer want here in the lab?” The lights bore down on Vera’s slender frame, accenting the cruel twist of her glossed lips. She slung her long tied-back hair across her shoulder and petted the blond tresses over her pert breasts. Her type didn’t do anything for him—the type being “not Jaq”—but he recognized the beauty that entranced Ochre.
With not so much as a shift of his shoulders beneath the coat, he responded as John Singer. “I wanted a lab coat for my routine this morning.”
She smirked at him, eyes glinting. She didn’t believe the cover any longer. In the case of a blown cover, the less said, the better. He snapped his mouth shut with an audible click.
“Let’s see this routine. Come.” With a turn, ponytail fanning around her, she left the storage room and passed back through the workers, who wouldn’t look him in the eye. They’d never hesitated to point her in his direction. For the first time he regretted his decision to keep to himself, remain squeaky clean and avoid the others here at Giant Corp.
Filing in behind them, two of Madame Ochre’s silent guards—hulky, large and massive—kept pace. The folder scraped against his skin. Their beady eyes would surely catch how the folder stuck out, but they didn’t demand he hand over his prize.
They weren’t too bright. If it’d been him, he’d have patted down any suspicious character first thing. The folder at his back would get him pitched over the edge of the island. His skin itched, the urge to scratch taking up most of his thought process.
He had to get rid of the folder. Where was Jaq? She’d better have gotten out as soon as Vera showed herself.
In the waiting lobby, the swinging door of the wardrobe exposed a row of lab coats, crisp and green. He’d closed the door. There hadn’t been time for another visitor to have come through security. So only one person could have opened that door.
Jaq.
He sidestepped toward the wardrobe. The two guards glared at him before following him over. With a tilt of his head toward Vera, who also frowned darkly at him, he backed toward the wardrobe. His shins bumped into the lower edge of the wardrobe and the garments hanging inside brushed against his back. Was it his imagination, or could he feel Jaq’s intense stare boring through him?
“A moment, Madame Ochre. Just let me change this lab coat. This one is a little tight.”
A puzzled expression crossed her sharp features as he lifted the bottom of the coat in a motion to pull it over his head to remove it.
“No. Leave it,” Vera shrilled.
He froze, but the sure fingers at his back sent goose bumps over him. The folder lifted silently and smoothly from his jeans. Good girl. Jaq had all she needed. All she had to do was make her rendezvous.
The guard’s rough hands yanked down his lab coat and patted him down. “Nothing.”
“Come on.” One of them gripped him by the arm and half dragged, half pulled him behind, but no one moved toward the wardrobe and Jaq.
They wouldn’t take him to the great hall to perform while they ate. They were past the subterfuge, but until they tipped their hand, he was still John Singer. The silence from the usually talkative Vera would’ve normally had him cajole, play the crowd pleaser, but that time was past. He could take the guards, but he didn’t want to stir things up until Jaq had time to get the hell out of there.
The guards took him to the large Ochre apartments, a place where they mixed business with more intimate entertaining in the couple’s large living room. On entering the posh suite, the guards forced him to his knees while they stood at the door, one on each side like little tin soldiers. He waited, muscles cramping, while the sun cast shadows that crept across the floor like the hands of a clock. He wondered where Vera had disappeared to. They thought to make him sweat, he was sure, but when time passed and no alarm rose, he held out hope that Jaq got away.