Dominant Predator (5 page)

And wasn’t that just the last fucking thing in the world I wanted to discuss. Like feeling his arm around me on that transport platform after the shot, it all felt too intimate.

As if I knew what real intimacy felt like at all.

Armise pushed his empty plate away, grabbed the steaming cup of coffee into his hands and rested his elbows on the table. He didn’t bother waiting for me to finish when he said, “You have no desire to make sure your parents make it out of this alive?”

The fork stopped partway to my lips. “My parents gave me nothing.”

“Life. For a cause that you believe in.”

I dropped my fork, pushed away from the table and crossed my arms. “We’re going to have a heart-to-heart?”

Armise sipped at his coffee. “You going to stay in this shit mood?”

I ran my fingers through my hair and mumbled, “I can’t sit here anymore. Exley!” I yelled. The door to the kitchen swung open and his head appeared around the corner, braids swinging. “They have a gym here?”

Exley nodded. “Full training facility one floor down. Weapons range as well. You want me to take you?”

I shook my head and nearly sent my chair halfway across the room with how fast I got up. “I’ll find it.”

I didn’t wait for Armise. Didn’t extend an invite for him to join me. I was too restless. That feeling of too close, too much was grinding away at me each second I was forced to look into Armise’s steely gaze and begin to refit the pieces of our convoluted fate back together in a way that could make sense.

It only took one question to a woman scurrying through the hallway—as if she was desperately trying to get as far away from me as possible—to find the stairs down to the lower level. True to Exley’s words, most of the lower level appeared to be a stocked training facility.

I was standing in the centre of the room debating the benefits of working off some aggression with either weights or guns when the door snicked open and Armise entered without a knock.

I glared at him. “Listen, Darcan. I don’t need you following me around here. As if I’m expected to entertain you. This truce or whatever it is between us changes very little.”

Armise chuckled. Low and derisive. “Is that right? Are you telling me there’s not even a part of you that’s beginning to trust me? A part of you that wonders why you’re so fucking smart and capable yet it took so long for you to figure out what was actually going on? Open your eyes for once, Merq, and focus on something besides yourself. This ‘whatever’ between us changes everything. And if you’re too self-absorbed and petulant to see it then I’ve wasted the last fourteen years of my life.”

Petulant and self-absorbed? Right. As if I was a child who Armise had been sent to mind.

“Fuck you,” I answered and went for the weights.

I slid the weights over a barbell—maxing out the amount I could press—and lay back on the bench. Armise came up behind me and stood with his arms crossed.

I positioned my hands around the bar. “I believe I said fuck you.”

“And that’s supposed to be my cue to leave? It’s as if you don’t know me at all.”

“Do I?”

Armise motioned to the bar, for me to start. “Not really,” he answered with an honesty that surprised me.

I hesitated for only a second, then grabbed the bar and lifted it from the machine. I made the reps slow, inching the bar nearly to my chest and back again while Armise watched. I tried to ignore his presence, to forget that he was so close, but even with the focus it took to press the weights off me I couldn’t push him out of my mind.

My muscles began to shake under the heavy weights, warmth spreading through me, endorphins kicking in. I tracked my progress by the shaking of my muscles instead of by a predetermined number of sets. My heartbeat pounded in my ears, sweat rolled down my temple, and I fought to keep my back and legs unmoving as my arms tired. The adrenaline served only to hype me up more.

This nervous energy had to go. And I was going to do whatever was necessary to drive it—and him—from my mind.

“I don’t need a fucking babysitter,” I gritted out between reps.

Armise walked away without saying a word—I sensed him moving out of my orbit rather than seeing it. I didn’t know if my ability to track him was due to my training or something more primal. If there was anything I’d come to terms with over our fourteen years, it was that being with him was an instinct and a drive I hadn’t been born with but existed deep within me nonetheless. He fuelled my aggression, my frustration. He made me uneasy and left me unhinged. And I couldn’t deny anymore that that might have been the reason I was so drawn to him. There was little that affected me anymore.

But he still did.

A mechanical hum and the thump of heavy steps came from the corner of the room.

I put the bar back in place and sat up, my elbows on my knees as I caught my breath. Armise ran on the moving floor beneath him, his fingers working over the transparent screen, adjusting speed, incline and resistance. I didn’t watch him outright. His back was to me, his shirt and shoes discarded to the side, his tattoos flexing with the movement of his shoulders and back, his breathing even, as his bare feet pounded the machine. Most likely testing the outer limits of what it could handle.

Always testing the limits of what
I
could handle.

I swallowed thickly and swiped the sweat from my brow and above my lips. I thought about our last encounter, in that tunnel, me driving into him harshly. Without regard to what he could or couldn’t physically take.

Never enough. No matter how many times, it was never enough.

He was my greatest weakness.

My addiction even when the ability to resist temptation should have been beaten out of me by PsychHAgs.

And now he wasn’t going anywhere.

I pulled my piercing between my teeth and openly watched him run. Appreciated would be a more appropriate word. Leered would be more accurate.

He was strength of will embodied. A testament to training, hard work and singular focus. Much like me, he had been moulded by his government into what and who he was today. But unlike me, that had never seemed to be his primary motivation.

My thoughts skittered back to his admission that I didn’t really know who he was.

I understood his battle tactics. Could read him better than some of the soldiers I’d fought with for years. I knew his history from classified files and from the little Armise had willingly told me over the last fourteen years.

Fourteen fucking years since he had kissed me in that warehouse in Singapore.

And it still wasn’t enough.

Chapter Three

Why the fuck was I even trying to fight this?

I didn’t just
want
to touch him. It was a physical need. I needed my mind to still. And the only time it ever fully did was right after I’d fucked Armise. In those minutes, lost in him, for him, and in the seconds after. When I was only aware of his body and mine. Of the movement of muscle and bone. Of tongues and teeth. His hands. Hot breath and uncontrollable moans.

The floor shook from the falls of his feet on the moving section of the floor and with deep reverberations as bombs continued to fall above us. The continual movement unnerved me. This sensation was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. I’d been in active battle, but sonic weapons surged then pulsed—an audible pop and hiss of waves piercing the air. Even when a reverb was dropped there was no real explosion, more of an implosion and collapsing of whatever had been struck.

I crossed the room. Armise didn’t turn as I approached, but I knew he felt me coming. He always knew where I was. If I’d given it much thought before today, I’d probably considered it the watchfulness and wariness that comes with tracking your enemies. But now, I was rethinking everything. Re-evaluating our time together through the lens of confession and hidden loyalties.

He’d been the one to save me in the DCR, to make sure I made it back to the States alive. And he’d been the one who had got me out of the stadium after shooting the Premiere when I’d been sure I was going to die.

He’d told me he couldn’t live without me anymore. That he wouldn’t.

I still didn’t know what to do with that. With him.

Shit.

He really wasn’t going anywhere now.

So I was going to have to find some way to deal with this.

But right now, my body was itching to move. I didn’t have any orders besides to rest up and wait. My next mission was likely to rescue my parents—two people whom I hadn’t seen in person in almost three decades. Their presence had always been more theoretical than real. Their influence over me non-existent.

I was closer to Armise than I would ever be to them. And yet it would be my next job to risk my life to bring them back to the President.

Their place in the Revolution was one of myth—not unlike my grandfather who had invented the sonicbullet. Their supposed deaths had been viewed as martyrdom for the cause. They were part of the original rebels who had formed the Revolution. Colleagues of the president. Friends even. If any such thing existed anymore.

I stepped onto the section of floor next to Armise and hit the button on the screen that activated in front of me, the floor sliding effortlessly into fluid movement. I quickly matched and exceeded Armise’s pace.

I outpaced him, nearly two footfalls for every one of his. My nervous energy dissipated, but only by the tiniest of fractions. Every crunch and rumble from the bombs overhead drove the peace from me. Every shuddering crack of the walls, the ceiling feeling like it could cave at any moment, jangled my nerves.

That we were underground didn’t help the situation. I wasn’t claustrophobic, but I’d been trained well enough to understand with complete clarity the dangerousness of a place with limited exit options.

I preferred being above ground. I was at my strongest in an urban environment. I didn’t fare well in the wilds—forest, desert or water. I didn’t understand nature, even the little that was left of it. Most of the world had been turned to wasteland during the Borders War, and our current use of artillery would only further that change. We were destroying our planet, but that consideration had long since been studied, debated and rejected in favour of the destruction that came with fighting for our cause.

I couldn’t shake my anxiety, no matter how fast or hard I ran. I clicked the speed up until my breaths were coming in forced huffs, sweat dripping from my brow. Faster, harder, I had to drive the thoughts from my head. I needed a mission. A purpose. And right now, I had none.

Armise swiped his hand over the screen, shutting the moving floor down, and yanked me off the machine, setting me off balance. I tumbled away from him and he pulled me into his grasp, his arms snaking around my waist. His lips grazed my neck, his breath hot against my skin.

“What do you need?” he whispered into my ear.

His touch grounded me, brought me back to my senses with jarring clarity.

I looked back at him, licked my lips. How had he known I needed anything?

“Not here,” I said pointing to the corners of the room where the cameras were probably located. “Too many eyes. Neveed will have made sure our quarters are free of surveillance.”

I pulled out of his arms and went for the door.

I didn’t wait to see if he followed me. I knew he would.

As I passed by the galley, I popped my head inside. “Exley!”

Exley emerged from the back room and cocked an eyebrow in reply.

“Where are our rooms?”

“Last two to the right. Not sure…”

I didn’t hear the rest of what he said because I was already on the move again.

I stopped at the door that was second from last, twisted the doorknob and hesitated before opening it.

Exley had said there were two rooms set up for us. One for me, and one for Armise. But there was no way in fuck I was letting him go anywhere else. I needed this. I needed him.

Now.

Armise came up next to me and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed.

“Do we need to…?” Armise asked, the question fading off.

“What?” I snapped.

Armise’s jaw ticked as he restrained a smile. “The same room?”

“I’m not asking you to move in with me,” I erupted, not sure whether my sudden surge of anger had more to do with him or me.

“I am the traitor,” Armise observed.

“Right. And I’m the hero of the Revolution. Didn’t you hear that?”

“Perception matters, Merq,” Armise mused.

I knew what he was saying, but I couldn’t have cared less.

“Fuck that,” I said, throwing the door open and motioning for him to come in. “I have nothing to hide.”

* * * *

The door slammed definitively behind me.

I was sealing my fate, probably had long before this moment, but there was something about this exact scenario that gave me pause. I was in a Revolution stronghold. The President and my fellow Peacemakers only steps away. And Armise was with me. Without fear of discovery. Without fear of retribution or death.

With
me instead of against me.

The ground shook beneath my feet again and I had to close my eyes to shut down the sensation that the world I knew was crumbling around me.

“I’ve never seen you this unsettled,” Armise’s voice came from the other side of the room.

I took a deep breath and scrubbed my hands through my hair. I could feel Armise moving towards me, his normally silent footfalls thudding against the carpet, as if he was warning me that he was coming. When I looked up he was only inches from me, the inherent coldness of his body filling the air around us.

“What do you need, Merq?” he repeated, this time in a much firmer voice. Demanding an answer.

I didn’t know how to answer him. I couldn’t cut through the static in my head, the reverberations of the bombs dropping above us. I needed him to take it all away. And it scared me that I knew he could if he wanted to.

He put his hand against my neck, drawing me into his body, and I obeyed, moving because he had ordered me to.