I WOKE first as I often did, my muscles stiff from a night on the hard floor with only a sleeping bag for padding. I couldn’t say I’d slept well, having jolted awake a few times at distant sounds that sent a peal of warning through me but had proven to be nothing of concern, but I was used to operating on minimal rest from my time in the military. What we’d faced so far had nothing on my most intense special ops missions overseas.
But that didn’t mean the stress couldn’t weigh on us all the same. I sat up quietly, glancing across the sprawled bodies of my sleeping comrades—Julius’s spot empty while he took the current watch by the front of the building—to where Dess lay.
She looked almost peaceful in sleep, but there was still a tension to the way one of her arms was drawn up to her chest, her hand balled against her collarbone. A slight furrow marked her brow.
She’d set her sleeping bag a little apart from the rest of us, halfway between our cluster and the door that led to the room where we’d imprisoned her brother. For most of the evening, I’d sensed her pulling away from us, withdrawing into her own head.
The situation was obviously getting to her, stirring up more uncertainty than ever before. She’d had to kill almost her entire family, for fuck’s sake. She’d found out that even more of her life had been manipulated by outside forces than she’d already known. How could it not be bothering her?
I didn’t like the idea that she might feel she couldn’t turn to us for support, though. We were hard men, yes—and I was the hardest of us all—but I’d thought we’d shown her how much she mattered to us. Imagining her leaving set off a burning sensation all through my chest.
My instinct was to suppress the emotion and push it aside. This once, I didn’t let myself. I absorbed the full impact of the discomfort, feeling out what it meant to me. As I gazed at Dess, the sensation gradually transformed into something softer.
I knew this emotion. That was the feeling that had driven me closer to Dess over the months—the feeling that had convinced me to allow myself to feel anything at all again.
And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t hate it. It seemed right for Dess to hold this special place in my heart, to have opened it up in a way no one ever had before. She was special, after all.
Did she understand how much?
An unexpected impulse rose up inside me, but I didn’t hold myself back. I eased out of the sleeping bag and padded across the floor to where Dess was nestled. She’d opted to use her entire sleeping bag as a mattress and pulled a blanket over her. It’d slipped partway down her torso as she dozed.
For a second, I grappled with how to handle the moment. Then I sank down behind her, stretched out on the edge of the sleeping bag, and tugged the blanket up to her shoulders and over my own in the same gentle motion. I tucked my arm around her waist and lowered my head against the soft waves of her hair.
This was some kind of bliss right here, feeling her body aligned with mine, soft with sleep. Other urges woke up inside me along with a surge of heat to my dick, which was positioned against her ass. I forced myself to ignore those desires for now, simply breathing in the delicately sweet scent in her hair. She needed her rest, as much as she could manage to get.
I dozed a little more myself, only snapping awake when Dess stirred against me. Her ass brushed my groin in a way that had me rising to attention in an instant, which obviously didn’t go unnoticed.
“Someone is having naughty thoughts,” she murmured in a voice raspy with sleep.
I couldn’t resist stroking my hand over her stomach. “I plead the fifth.”
She snorted and rolled over to face me, meeting my eyes with her still drowsy ones. The flush of her cheeks with her increasing alertness and the softness of her gaze had my heart racing in an instant. I reached out and smoothed a few stray strands of hair behind her ear.
“Did you have trouble sleeping?” she asked in a lightly teasing tone. “I don’t mind being used as a teddy bear, but I wouldn’t have figured you needed one.”
I opened and closed my mouth, grappling with the best way to put my thoughts into words. Finally, I simply said, “I wanted to talk to you.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You want to talk?” She sounded both amused and a little concerned.
“Yes,” I said firmly, holding her gaze. “I know that you’re dealing with some difficult crap right now. And obviously you’re going to deal with it in your own way. But I want you to remember that I’m ready to support you with whatever you need.”
“Talon,” she said, shaking her head as if to tell me that I didn’t need to say that.
I kept going anyway. “The crew and I will be here for you no matter what, Dess—if you need help or just a person to talk to. We want to see you make it through this mess as the powerful woman you are. I want to see that.” I paused, my chest clenching up for a second before I said the final part, maybe the most important part. “I love you.”
Dess stared at me, startled into silence. I wasn’t sure what response I’d have wanted, but a second later, she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a kiss. There was so much eager passion in it that I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
My erection was straining against my pants now. I pressed into her, and she ground against my hips in return, making me ache with hunger. As I swallowed a groan, she let out a light laugh. Then I pushed into her harder, rocking against her clit through our clothes, and she muffled a whimper of her own against my mouth.
I flicked my tongue between her lips where it tangled with her own. My hand slipped under her shirt and rose to cup her breast. As I swiveled her nipple beneath my thumb, I brought my mouth to the side of her neck. Her breath was already breaking into those little gasps I loved to hear.
“God, Talon,” she muttered. “You’re—”
The front door banged open so loudly we jerked apart. As we both scrambled up out of the blankets, the other guys heaving to their feet nearby, Julius strode into the room. His expression was so tense that all lingering heat from my encounter with Dess fled my body.
“We’ve got company,” he announced.
I leapt for the guns I’d kept at the ready next to my sleeping bag. I had a feeling we’d be abandoning nearly everything else we’d brought into the factory with us. Garrison and Blaze kicked aside their own blankets, pistols in hand. Blaze’s gaze darted around the room. “How many? What are we dealing with?”
“Several cars just pulled around back. If we’re fast enough—”
Dess was already racing to the room where we’d stashed her brother. But we wouldn’t have made it out in time regardless. It seemed more men had shown up in the few seconds it’d taken Julius to rouse us. Engines roared near the front door as well.
They were surrounding us.
“How the hell did they find us?” Garrison grumbled.
“It doesn’t matter,” Julius said. “You, handle Carter. We need Dess able to fight. And let’s get out of here before even more of these assholes show up.”
For once, Garrison didn’t make any snarky remarks about the indication that he was the least skilled fighter out of the five of us. He knew his talents lay elsewhere, and I doubted he wanted Dess hindered in combat any more than Julius did. He dashed over to catch the boy’s elbow where Dess was just urging him upright and hustled him toward the rest of us. Dess snatched up a gun in one hand and a knife in the other, her eyes gleaming with nervous anticipation.
Julius swept his arm, urging us toward the window closest to where we’d parked the car. We’d left the pane propped open specifically in case we needed to make a hasty exit while the doorways were more of a danger. We all hurtled toward it, leaving sleeping bags and blankets behind without a care.
Julius shoved the window higher up and sprang onto the ledge—just as a multitude of bodies slammed through the doors at either end of the main room. Our commander opened fire outside as the rest of us blasted away at the men coming at us from the inside now.
“Don’t kill them unless you have to,” Dess said, taking one shot and another that simply incapacitated the attackers she’d aimed at—one bullet smashing through a man’s gun hand, another toppling one with a wound through the thigh. “The Blood Hunter is probably forcing these people to come after us like the others. They’re just trying to survive.”
“Us surviving is my first priority,” I said, even as my awareness sharpened with my sniper instincts homing in on my targets. “If anyone hurts you, they’re dead.”
She didn’t bother to argue, picking off more men with her impressively honed aim. I followed her example, disarming and crippling with my shots rather than outright killing.
But there were too many of them to follow that ethical stance all the way to its limit. When several of the men pointed their guns at us at the same time, I had to add a few kill shots to the mix to ensure I hit all of them hard enough to stop them in time.
“All clear outside,” Julius hollered, leaping through the window. I automatically bent to give Dess a leg up, still firing with my other hand. My bullets caught more wrists and calves and thighs, toppling men left and right—and occasionally slamming right into their skulls when I saw no other option. Not one of them managed to get a good shot in at my crew.
As I hefted Carter and then Garrison after Dess through the window, a sense of cool exhilaration spread through my mind, only intensifying my focus. I did love this woman, with every particle of my being, but that emotion wasn’t a distraction from my work. Quite the opposite. The knowledge that I had her fighting alongside me and the determination to protect her bolstered my motivation and energy for the battle like nothing else ever had.
These unfamiliar feelings that’d been emerging inside me were making me stronger, not weaker.
Blaze vaulted over the window ledge next. More shots rang out on the other side of the wall—some of our attackers had dashed around to confront us once they’d realized our gambit. I took down a few more before heaving myself over the ledge after the others.
Garrison had jumped into the driver’s seat of the minivan, Carter staring out the back window with a bewildered, near terrified expression. Dess blasted the kneecap of a man charging toward us and caught another in the forearm, forcing him to drop his weapon, but a third attacker loomed, hefting a rifle, none of him visible to me other than the top of his head showing beyond hers.
I didn’t have a choice. My next bullet shattered apart his skull.
Dess let out a rough breath, but she didn’t criticize my methods. She knew as well as I did that this war was an imprecise situation at best. Staying alive mattered above all else, as much as I’d rather not destroy the lives of men who’d been forced into coming at us.
This was the Blood Hunter’s doing like so much else. Fuck that prick and all his influence over this city—and who knew how much of the rest of the world too. We needed to destroy him before he ruined even more lives.
The van’s engine growled. “Get in!” Garrison hollered.
Everyone dove into the vehicle, Julius and I providing cover for Blaze and Dess before leaping in ourselves. We fired off a few more shots through the open windows as Garrison hit the gas. The van groaned and lurched forward, speeding away from the factory and the men who’d done their best to end us.
“He found us again,” Dess said, her voice tight. “Where the hell do we go now?”
Blaze had already flipped open his laptop, because of course he had. His fingers clattered across the keys. “I was working on something last night,” he said. “It might only take another hour or two to get all the information we’ll need…”
“Need to do what?” Garrison demanded with typical impatience.
Blaze glanced around at us with the nearly manic grin I’d learned to be wary of. “To make it a lot harder for the Blood Hunter to manipulate anyone into doing his bidding.”
Julius nodded. “Sounds good to me.” He slapped the back of Garrison’s seat. “Keep driving while our computer guru does his work. And let’s keep the tires on the road this time?”
Garrison let out a rough chuckle. “I’ll do my best.”
