“I don’t know if I agree, but I’m good at keeping secrets. I won’t say anything.”
Tam fell quiet then. It would be disastrous if the saboteur caught them, as it would return them to the beginning in terms of laying a trap to catch the spy. Despite the danger, however, this was just the sort of challenge Tam thrived on. In the end, he’d come up on top. He always did, even when winning meant life in prison. After all, his incarceration signaled his greatest victory to date.
* * *
JAEL thought long and hard about his reply. In the end, he yielded to the impulse to flirt. “I suppose that depends on what you intend to do with me.”
You know better. Don’t be stupid, man. While three in a bed worked for some people, four was just asking for trouble. Yet he didn’t step away or break eye contact. She gazed back from nearly at eye level; Dred was tall for a woman, just a few centimeters shy of his own height, and he measured a bit under two meters. He shouldn’t cup the back of her head in his hand, but he did—and gave her ample opportunity to retreat.
This time, however, she kissed him. Dred gave him a little push, and he went with it, falling against the wall as her lips met his. She kissed like she fought: hard, demanding, and aggressive. The rasp of teeth on his lower lip made him groan, and she leaned into him, her hands framing his face. Such intimacy kindled a sharp ache. He couldn’t remember wanting anything—anyone—more.
Trembling, he skimmed his palms down until they found her hips, and she still didn’t back off. She moved against him, oddly tentative, as if she wasn’t sure of his response—though that wasn’t in question—or her own intentions. It had been a long time, but this felt like the precursor to sex.
Jael broke the kiss to ask, “Is that the answer to my question?”
“Part of it,” she said softly.
He wanted to ask what this meant, if she was looking to add him to her stable of men, if he’d be rotated in and out of her bed. Do Tam and Einar take turns or do they share? But questioning her would imply he cared about her personal arrangements. If the other men didn’t care if she slept with someone else, then he could deal with it, too.
“I’m not opposed.”
“Then let’s finish up here and get back to Queensland.” That sounded like a promise.
He threw himself into the task of squaring Abaddon away, helping the others stack the supplies that would be transported immediately. A runner went back to their territory to fetch the air pallet, as some of the goods were too heavy to carry back by hand. Even so, the cleanup, salvage, and restoration efforts took hours.
She probably won’t feel like making good on that implied offer by the time we get back.
It had been an incredibly long day with the promise of harder work to come. Now they had to protect their extended borders as well as figure out a way to defeat the Great Bear. Even to him, it sounded daunting. Dred proved that rack time was the last thing on her mind when she ordered him back to Queensland guarding the air pallet while she stayed on to continue working.
“You want me to return once we stow everything?”
She shook her head. “Help Tam and Einar. Make sure the place is in order.”
Ah. He only nodded and departed along with five other men. Fortunately, they encountered no trouble on the way back, and it didn’t take long to put away the supplies. Wills was delighted when he saw all the goodies Priest had stored up. Jael listened with only half an ear as the soothsayer went on about all the things he could do with such bounty.
“Do you need anything else?” he asked.
Wills shook his head. “Ike and I can take it from here.”
The older man looked none too pleased to be volunteered for the task, but he set down his drink. “Fine. What do you need?”
Oddly discontent, Jael joined Tam and Einar, who held a mug of something alcoholic. From the cloudy look of their drinks, the liquor came from the still. Come to think of it, the rest of the men seemed to be living it up, too. It wasn’t quite a victory party, probably because of the heavy losses, but given another hour or two, the wild celebration would be going, full swing.
“Do we have anybody sober and on watch?” he asked.
The big man scowled at him. “You think we’re idiots? Of course.”
“It’s a low-risk opportunity for them to blow off steam,” Tam added. “The odds of a retaliatory strike so soon are low, and the men need a break, especially when everything went off exactly as we planned.”
Einar laughed. “And that’s so unlikely, too. I can’t believe your alien gambit worked.”
Jael froze, not that the other two men noticed. With a drink in hand, even the spymaster had lost his customary wariness in the spirit of celebration. But clearly, they both knew why the aliens from the Warren had been attacking Priest at such a convenient moment whereas he’d heard nothing about the scheme.
“How did you get them to cooperate?” he asked.
Tam tapped a finger on his mug, then shrugged. “In my old line of work, I never got to boast when a plan came together. This is a nice change. I was afraid our numbers wouldn’t stack up to the diversion Silence requested, so I took advantage of some . . . discord between Priest’s people and the aliens in the Warren.”
“Brilliant,” Einar said, lifting his glass. “Priest’s people killed some, and it’s ugly stuff, dismemberment and evisceration, the markings and the blood painting left behind. The aliens keep to themselves, mostly, but they’re quite vicious if you get them riled.”
Jael registered the cold calculation in Tam’s eyes. Often that look went unnoticed because the man moved silently and didn’t draw attention with violent behavior. But it didn’t mean he was a good man or better than the obvious brutes.
“Took advantage, how?”
“I performed a service for Katur. Between his anger at Priest and his gratitude, he was willing to fight.” That was vague enough to be frustrating, but Jael suspected Tam wouldn’t be offering full disclosure anytime soon.
To him, we’re only numbers and probabilities. I doubt he has a single genuine emotion.
“It worked like a charm,” Jael forced himself to say lightly.
In his gut, a hole opened up. Dred must have known about the plan yet she’d chosen not to tell him—when it was his squad that would’ve been annihilated if the aliens hadn’t kept up their end of the deal. As it was, he’d lost all but five of his people. This meant she, too, saw him as a tool to be used: Sharpen the blade and keep it wet with blood. To make matters worse, she’d been perfectly willing to screw him as part of that arrangement, maybe even for the same reason she’d used her hand on him before—to keep him happy and compliant, asking no questions.