Shepherd (9 page)

The rush in her ears built as he pressed one, then several fingers into her to torment her higher. She couldn’t restrain the need to move with him, to bring the final end closer, but one of his palms pressed against her hip, keeping her balanced on the edge, where she couldn’t quite tumble over.

She clutched his hand and raised her hips into him. “Please. Clay. Please.”

For one second, he pulled back. Her breath caught, and she glanced at him in desperation. His look projected dominance and certainty that he would give her exactly what she needed. His fingers stroked deeper as he drew her flesh into his mouth again. The touch, a deeper pressure, and a stroke from his tongue shattered her. On and on the sensation rolled. He kissed in caresses instead of harder suckles, but his fingers continued a deep, slow twist that she rode on the crest of her climax for what seemed like an eternity.

“You okay, Sugar?”

“Mmm, yeah. I think…” She stared at him, too sated to move. “Why do you call me that?”

His gaze ran over her face as his hand caressed beneath her breast. “Have you ever seen any archives from before the devastation? Granted, they’re grainy and almost two hundred years old, but some images still exist. Like the clips of…advertisements.”

She shrugged. “I’ve seen some for the vehicles. A few for food and appliances. I used to search through them for ideas.”

He’d leaned across her, draped intimately between her legs, his chin braced on his hand over her belly as he played with her breast. “There was a lot of focus on food—types of food, preparations of food, menus and recipes. I probably paid so much attention because—well, we don’t have those options.”

The intense stare he gave her nipples and the way his thumb lazily brushed across one made her feel a bit like a morsel of food he was considering.

“There was so much variety. Yet when it came down to delicacies, what appeared most coveted was a variation of something they called chocolate. Old, young, men, children, and especially women seemed enamored of the delicacy. The colors ranged from deep midnight black to light milk chocolate.” He dipped his head and rubbed his face against her abdomen with a final lick. “Milk chocolate the color of your skin. Offered in rectangles and round dots and sometimes filled with light creamy centers.”

He chuckled as his finger circled around her nipple. “Inside and out—I doubt it was this delicious.”

His squeeze of her breast and tongue’s caress sent a shudder through her. “And the sugar?” She forced the words.

“Confections were what they called them—cocoa beans, cocoa butter, and sugar. The only interest I had was in the final smooth product after the addition of the sugar.” His kiss pressed into her belly, the tip of his tongue carving a ticklish design over her skin. “You remind me of sugar every time I look at you. Tasting just reinforces my assumption.”

“That explains the hungry looks.”

His grin widened as his hands drifted down her body. His expression of levity and anticipation turned to stone with the beep of a communiqué on the far wall.

He swept up her pants and tossed them to the table before he strode away, business focus rigidly back in place. Esme eased into her clothes with a silent sigh. Each time something new popped up, she felt like she was racing to beat a deadline in their relationship. Where moments before they’d shared an incredible intimacy, from Clay’s movements and expression, now mistrust returned, locked back into place.

She waited a few minutes, her chin on her knees, watching him from her spot on the table. His actions and task executions were economical, no wasted time or movements. The more worried he became over this extraction, the more efficient he became—and the more closed off from her.

For all of her work and suggestions, the prospect of helping him make headway on his mission appeared futile.

***

Orcus: Shepherd?

Clay spun off a separate virtual screen for other incoming transmissions and responded.
Active

Orcus: SS5 verified Central 3 Facility Below

Aaron’s team had surfaced. Central 3 was located in the belly beneath New Delphi’s grid, between the central point of the five-mile platform and the edge closest to the woods of the western foothills. Now all he needed was Aaron’s exact location within the barracks, some indication as to the reason for Sicaria Squad 5’s return to home base, and someone insane enough to provide a distraction on the inside. No fuckin’ problem.
Copy SS5 #s?

Orcus: 3

Shit. The squad always left with seven.
Wolf status

Orcus: Confirmed present—my designation on the team?

No. Team already established
. No way in hell was he allowing Orcus, or Hena, as Aaron would remember her, to join the team. Whatever Aaron’s state once they extracted him, there’d be no holding him back if something happened to his one obsession. Then again, the transformation that Hena had endured during Aaron’s absence would be enough of a shock. Her infiltration into the darker side of Down Below’s sex clubs, to search for word on Aaron and Regent activity, made Clay and every other team member uneasy.

Orcus: Onyx designation on the team?

Confirmed

At least he could give her some reassurance. Aaron would have family on the extraction team. His stepfather, the Underground’s premier doctor at that.

Orcus: Copy

At least Hena/Orcus would be appeased for the time being even if she couldn’t have a place on the team.

Ratter: Shepherd?

Active

Ratter: Intel—SS5 last mission hit undefined presence @ 30°south

What the—thirty degrees south latitude? What the hell had the squads been doing around the equatorial perimeter? Those hot zones contained those hardest hit by the virus.
Details?

Ratter: None—SS5 to redeploy in 72 hours

Shit. Baiting a trap. The squads were sending the survivors back in to ferret out the enemy, chumming the waters with the most expendable. Seventy-two hours didn’t give his team much time to extract Aaron before Sicaria Squad 5 redeployed.

Ratter: Target 52 hours for extraction?

With all the pieces requiring coordination, fifty-two hours was going to seem like minutes. But Ratter had a point. Twenty hours marked the squad lockdown before mission departure. Clay gave a quick glance over his shoulder. Esme sat surrounded by pieces she’d rummaged from his stash, deep in the construction of the detonation and control device. “I need you to have the keg ready in forty-eight hours.”

Her head lifted for the briefest second. Lips pursed, Esme paused in connecting a wire filament into the mechanism’s core. She glanced toward his screens, nodded once, and then went back to work. The determined flicker in her eyes made him swallow hard and shift uncomfortably in his seat. Touching her, feeling her response as she climaxed around his fingers and against his mouth, was an experience he was certain had been new for her and had done nothing to dampen his lust. Her response left him doomed personally and professionally, because the pivotal part of the plan now hinged on a woman he trusted from only his gut instinct—or perhaps lower.

Shit, focus.
Confirm
—
Target 52 hours for extraction from SE Central 3—will relay delivery coordinates @ 50 hour mark

Ratter: Copy

Ghost: Shepherd?

Active

Ghost: Site volatile—Target classified hostile—will require excess force for extraction

He shook his head with harsh exhale. They’d expected problems and anticipated Aaron wouldn’t come out willingly, but a “hostile” designation wasn’t something he wanted to hear. Taking the young man out by excessive force would complicate an already tenuous situation.
As Needed—52 hour extraction
—
confirmation @ 50 hour mark

Ghost: Copy—have medic

Understood

Dead air reigned as he initiated a visible count on the screen from fifty-two hours to zero—extraction time. At the two-hour mark—fifty hours from now—the distraction in Central 3 would execute, and he would initiate the “mission active” message. During the next hour, the extraction would proceed, coupled with launch of the detonation device, which would open the delivery point in the sewage intersection, ending with delivery of Aaron into the sewage line. Fifty-nine minutes until zero hour—Aaron’s retrieval. He would go, Onyx would be there, and… He glanced back at Esme. No, even if he trusted her, it was too dangerous.

He turned back to the screen. Should he mark the seventy-two-hour milestone for SS5’s liftoff to the Amazon? The truth was, if they reached that point, Aaron would be gone, and no amount of teamwork or good luck would bring him back from a one-way helo trip to the southern latitudes. Yet he keyed in the time and hesitated.

“It’d be more positive to delete your last entry.” Esme didn’t meet his gaze but kept working.

“Positive makes it sound like a choice, some sliding scale. Failure isn’t an option.” She had a point, though, about not assigning failure a position on the list. He deleted the seventy-two-hour mark. “One hundred percent—must make this happen.”

“Okay, one hundred percent.” She gave a small chuckle. Low and throaty, the sound froze him in his tracks. “So why did you pick Shepherd?”

“Radar picked it for me, long time ago, after I’d been here a few months.” He refreshed the two screens at the edge of the Down Below market.

“You sound like you don’t know why.”

He glanced back briefly and then continued typing his messages. “He mistakenly thinks he has a sense of humor.”

New relays transmitted in on a separate screen. Two code names requested backup and help removing guards on their tails. Clay tapped a series of commands. Noises and movement initiated in the requestor’s quadrant to provide distraction for the Regent guard squad after the two individuals.

He frowned at the next request—help in searching for a missing child. He moved the request to a separate screen. If a child disappeared, he would assign other resources. Unfortunately, “child missing” messages were also a favorite Regent lure. He skipped to the last message, an alert of scouts on the perimeter of the Down Below marketplace. Shit, the guards were muscling into homes again.

“That one inscription isn’t like the other ones.”

Not pausing in his maneuvers, he slid the screen with the search request for the child her way. “Why?”

“Hmm. No code name. My guess is the code names are confirmed against data records dispersed around your groups. Also no entry acknowledgement. I also gather you have a feel for who’s out there and which calls are legitimate?”

“The Regents know of us and try to pull us out. It’s pretty routine. If that request was valid, I would never see a message. The activity on the screens would have already confirmed a child abduction situation.” He nodded toward the several live feeds of Down Below cycling on other screens. “They would alert me. We’d have people already looking.”

“Alert you?” Her laugh was more full force this time. “You’ve got to be kidding that you don’t know why he named you Shepherd?”

“He was being fucking cute, giving me a name to live up to.”

“What, you’d rather have Ratter? I don’t even want to know how they got their code name.” She waved back to his screens with a scowl. “Radar didn’t give you something to live up to. I bet you watched over all these people the minute you set foot in Down Below.”

“Don’t confuse penance for sainthood.”

“You sell yourself short.”

“What, five days and you’re an expert on my life and motivations?”

She shrugged and turned away. The regret he felt at lashing out lingered, and once again he experienced a tight squeeze in his throat and fought it down. He’d lived here for the last five years; she hadn’t. This wasn’t her world. Yet she caught on quickly.

He shook his head and turned back to work. His ease around her wasn’t an attachment he could afford. Especially since he would have to give her up. This was no place for a beautiful woman, and he was no catch either.

Chapter 6

Images shifted from one camera’s view to the next, cycling a new virtual screen to the foreground with each refresh. Esme frowned at the hypnotizing lack of variety in the sequence. “Nothing ever changes. How can you tell if something’s wrong?”

Clay glanced up. His brows furrowed as he scrutinized the screens through one cycle. Then he pulled up a new screen, his fingers widening the rectangle of the market and sweeping the visual angle back and forth across the empty marketplace.

She detected nothing, yet his motions grew faster and more intense. Surely she hadn’t missed something. “What’s wrong?”

“The market runs like clockwork. Vendors should have unpacked an hour ago with customers crowding to get the bargains before the squads arrive to catalog their faces.”