sunfall (22 page)

In my mind, I flashed back to Tian, crazed in her thirst for vampire blood. To imagine a vampire civil war perpetrated by legions of starving, mindless killers was beyond horrible. For a moment, I was glad that Tian had perished so she wouldn’t see the Armageddon that was coming. The tragic betrayal of her own parasite DNA.

“Do you think he might already have weaponized it?” I asked. “Do we know if Brenner’s still here?”

“Our people have been closely monitoring the air traffic out of the Alaska interior for the past five days,” said Malcolm. “We’ve been able to account for all passengers in and out of the region, and none of them were Brenner.”

“That’s no guarantee that he’s still at the installation,” Constantine chimed in. “He could have left by car or he could be four-legged. But that would still put him in the general vicinity.”

I nodded, discouragement adding to my fatigue. We were adding up what-ifs, not certainties. They could easily amount to nothing.

“Okay. Enough.” Alexa got to her feet and extended her hand to me. “We’re going to get some rest.” Her tone brooked no argument, and no one made to stop us. “Until there’s a plan, or a question only Val can answer, we’re out of commission.”

She kept her arm around my waist as we ascended the stairs, but when she would have immediately pulled me into bed, I resisted.

“I need to take a shower.”

“You’re fine, sweetheart. Let’s just crawl under the—”

“No!” My vehemence surprised me, and I dropped my eyes to the floor. “I’m a mess, and…and after talking about all that, I just want to be clean again.”

“Okay,” she said softly. “I understand. Can I join you?” When I nodded, she smiled and told me to raise my arms. As she undressed me, she pressed a kiss to every scrape, every bruise. She treated my aching body with the utmost care, and instead of feeling weak, I only felt cherished.

“You’re beautiful, Valentine. Bruised and battered, yes, but still so beautiful. Now, pay attention.”

Alexa stripped slowly. As I watched her peel off each successive layer of clothing, desire welled up in my chest, over-spilling its bounds until it cascaded through every vein and vessel. She made me feel so alive, and I relaxed into my arousal, my thirst, my love for her. They braided together to become
need
—all encompassing need that blazed through my every cell.

With a smile, she went into the bathroom and turned on the shower, adjusting the temperature until steam billowed out into the room.

“Come on, sweetheart.” She took my hand and led me inside, wincing in sympathy at my hiss of pain as the water struck my abrasions. I fell into a daze as her fingertips massaged my scalp, as her palms swept gently over my body. She cleaned the grime and blood from my skin, and as I watched the shampoo and soap run down my legs and into the drain, I imagined my fears and anxieties following suit.

Once I was clean, she began to wash herself, but I snapped out of my daze and took the bar of soap from her hands. I whispered to her as I washed her, telling her how much I loved her, how much I had missed her, my hands lathering her thick hair and kneading the muscles of her back and lingering on her full breasts.

We dried off quickly and fell onto the bed, everything forgotten except each other. When I moved to slide my body over hers, Alexa pulled me beneath her with a strength I could not resist.

“No,” she whispered, eyes shining with love but her face fierce with need. “I almost lost you, Valentine. You know what that feels like—so dark, so empty. And now you’re here, you’re safe, and I need to fill myself up with you. Don’t deny me that.”

“Never,” I gasped, the intensity of her words making me liquid with desire. “I would never deny you anything.”

She cradled my face as she kissed me, our bodies cleaving together. As I stroked the long muscles of her back and the curve of her buttocks, she raised her head and shuddered for breath.

“Your hands on me feel so, so good.”

“I love you,” I said and tried to recapture her lips. But she had other plans.

Her mouth skated along my jaw line, then down the column of my neck. The closer she moved to my breasts, the more incandescent I became, my harsh breaths echoing loudly throughout the room.

“I love the sounds you make. How responsive you are for me.” She flicked her tongue across my nipple, and her name left my mouth on a low moan.

As she lavished attention on my breasts, my capacity for thought deserted me, swept away on the tide of arousal she had created. My body melted beneath her and my groans became incoherent. I was need incarnate.

Her mouth remained at my breast as one hand slipped lower, bumping across my ribs before stroking along my abdomen. And then her fingers found me, and my hips rose to meet her touch as pleasure flared along every nerve.

“You feel amazing, Val,” she whispered, never pausing her soft strokes as she slid farther down my body.

When I felt the warmth of her breath against me, I shuddered and forced my eyes open. She stared back at me, smiling, exultant. “I want to be inside you, Valentine.”

“Yes. Please, yes.” My breath caught as she poised one finger to enter me, then slowly, carefully increased the pressure.

“Oh, God,” she groaned. “You’re so tight.” She pushed, and my body clenched around her fingertip. “Open, my love. Be open for me. I want all of you.”

She bent her head, and as the heat of her mouth closed around me, she slid deep inside my body. My mouth opened on a soundless scream as the ecstasy found me, possessed me, wrung me out. Alexa stayed with me through it all, coaxing every ounce of pleasure, every drop of release from my body.

Finally, she withdrew, sliding up along my side to wrap her arms around me. She kissed the corner of my mouth, my cheek, my earlobe. “That was incredible. I love you, Valentine.”

Her declaration galvanized me, and I fought past the lassitude that suffused my body to roll her beneath me. Her eyes were wide and dark, her breathing quick. Now that she had had her fill of me, she craved my touch.

The confidence was heady. Bracing my weight on my elbows, I plunged my hands into her hair and tilted her head back, exposing her throat. She shuddered against me, and as I pressed my thigh between her legs, I felt her wetness coat my skin.

“Mine,” I growled, nipping gently at her breasts, her collarbone, her neck, teasing her without breaking skin.

She reached up to pull my right hand down to the juncture of her thighs. “Yes,” she hissed. “Take me, Val. Make me yours.”

Refusing to be commanded, I teased her first, swirling my fingertips against her most sensitive skin and kissing the breathy pleas from her lips. She grew more and more insistent until at last I gave in, plunging two fingers deep inside her body, glorying in her ecstatic cry and the clench of her muscles around me.

I thrust slowly at first, then faster and faster until I felt her grow impossibly tight around my knuckles. Finally, I slid my teeth into her neck and she exploded, bucking and shivering, her passion igniting every corner of my soul.

It was so hard to withdraw—to ease my teeth and my touch from the welcoming embrace of her body—but I didn’t want to deplete her much more than I already had. She blinked up at me in sleepy satisfaction as I smoothed her damp hair back from her face.

“I love when you look at me like that,” I said.

“Mm, like what?”

“Like I’m some kind of demigod.”

She laughed and rolled onto her side, fitting her body into the curve of mine. “If I say that you are, will it go to your head?”

I nuzzled her hair and closed my eyes, content to surrender to the pull of my exhaustion. But as I was sliding into sleep, a knock came at the door. I blinked and began to sit up, but Alexa stopped me with a hand between my breasts.

“It’s Karma. I’ll get it.”

I watched her as she answered the door. She was unashamed of her own nudity in that way only wereshifters could be.

“We have a game plan,” Karma said. “Do you think Val will be mission ready by tomorrow night?”

“Whether she is or not, she’ll insist on going. What time?”

“We’re briefing in the morning. Oh-nine hundred hours.”

“Thanks,” Alexa said. “We’ll be there. You’ll get some rest, too?”

“I’m going right now.”

When Alexa climbed back into my embrace, I kissed her neck. “I guess our people must think they’ve found the installation.”

“And Malcolm’s not wasting any time. I’m glad.” She stroked the back of my hand. “Do you feel up for it? Going back there, I mean?”

I tightened my grip on her. “I want to go back. Brenner and I have unfinished business.”

She spun to face me. “Promise me you won’t take any unnecessary risks.”

“That’s an easy promise to make, as long as you do the same.”

She nodded, sliding one leg between mine as she snuggled even closer. “I promise,” she murmured. “Whatever happens, we’ll face it together.”

The plan was simple, really, I reflected as I pulled on my parachute. Maybe too simple. We wouldn’t know for sure until we were in the thick of things, and by then it would be too late to adjust.

The success of this mission depended entirely on our having the element of surprise—a reasonable assumption at this point, but one that could still quite easily blow up in our faces. Once Malcolm had pinned down the location of Brenner’s base, he had made the decision to go in with a small strike force first rather than mount a large-scale invasion right away.

I agreed with his logic completely, and I wouldn’t have missed being a part of the team for the world. We would be the surgeon’s scalpel, swift and precise. As I double-, then triple-checked my chute, I reminded myself of the many missions for which this method had worked beautifully. As much as it had a chance to backfire, I admired the plan’s all-or-nothing approach. Either we would succeed or we would die.

I tapped Alexa on the shoulder to get her attention over the loud drone of the propellers. “Let me check your chute!”

Once I was satisfied that nothing was tangled, I turned so she could return the favor. A few moments later, she spun me around and gave me the thumbs-up.

“How are you feeling?” she shouted.

I returned the thumbs-up. We’d had a full night of sleep prior to the briefing, and before we left she’d convinced me to drink from her again. My full-body muscle pain was gone, and I felt alert and strong. My only point of weakness was my leg injury, and we had wrapped it up as well as we could without compromising my range of motion. Still, parachuting out of a plane into enemy territory was probably not on the recommended list of activities while recovering from a leg wound.

“ETA five minutes,” Foster called. I pulled on my infrared goggles and clipped to the line just behind Alexa. We had been skydiving once, fairly early in our relationship. The experience had been exhilarating, but it certainly hadn’t prepared me for this kind of maneuver.

The jump was going to be tricky even for those who were very experienced. We were aiming for a large air duct that was one of the only aboveground structures of Brenner’s installation. It would almost certainly be guarded, and we needed to dispatch whatever sentries he had posted without alerting the main facility. Once inside, we would follow the duct into the center of the facility. From there, we would be on our own.

The jump doors opened and freezing air streamed into the hold. Malcolm stepped out into the night, and ten seconds later Constantine followed him. When it was Alexa’s turn, she squeezed my hand, then jumped. It wasn’t difficult to throw myself after her. I would have followed her anywhere.

The stars wheeled above me as I plummeted earthward, and I focused on keeping a steady count in my head. Just as I reached “four one-thousand,” my shoulders were yanked backward and up as the static line activated my chute. Willing away the pain, I focused on steering toward the infrared beacon that the Consortium intelligence agents had dropped a hundred yards north of the air duct.

My landing wasn’t nearly as graceful as it could have been, but I didn’t make too much noise and I didn’t injure myself any further. After abandoning my chute on the ground, I raced to join the rest of the team.

“You okay?” I asked Alexa quietly as we waited for Karma, who had brought up the rear.

“That was great!” she whispered. “When this is all over, we should go skydiving again.”

Before I could reply, Malcolm motioned us forward. We fanned out, crouching low as we made our way up a slight rise, but no guards appeared in our field of view. While Constantine removed the grate over the duct and disabled the fan, we kept watch. I thumbed off the safeties on both of my silenced pistols, surprised that Brenner didn’t have a sentry posted out here. Then again, to his knowledge this base was still a tightly kept secret.

The vent sloped down steeply for several yards before flattening out. With Malcolm in the lead, we split the difference between moving quickly and maintaining a quiet approach. Each time we reached a branch, he paused to reevaluate where the strongest breeze was coming from. The outlet with the largest fan would, he had reasoned in our briefing, be located in the place requiring the most ventilation—the main laboratory in the complex. From there, we would systematically search in a spiral pattern until we located Brenner.