The words were like liquid fire, freeing the frozen parts of his heart, waking a hunger in his veins and a cry in his blood that demandedmore, more, more.
Zane took a deep breath. “I thought you said we couldn’t do this.”
“I don’t care.”
His lips were on hers in an instant. Hungry. Desperate. He tugged her closer. As she straddled his lap and moved against him, fire burned through his body. His heart thundered, like it was on the brink of exploding. Slipping his hands under the fabric of her shirt, Zane caressed her bare skin.
Kalie shuddered and gripped his hair.
Moving his lips against hers, Zane let his hands spiral higher. His fingers brushed the curve of her bra, and she moaned into his mouth—then she pulled away. As she glanced at her wrist chrono, her face paled.
“We have time,” he murmured, tugging her back to him.
His rough calluses scraped her smooth skin, and Kalie gave a breathy moan that rocked through him like a rush of fire. More. He needed more.
Zane tugged her shirt past her bra. His lips crashed down, worshipping her neck, the hollow of her throat, her collarbone. Her skin tasted of salty sweat. He was shaking, and she was trembling, and their hearts beat as one as their bodies moved together. Her fingersplunged into his hair, and all logic and reason fled his mind as he gasped into her mouth and freed the button of her pants.
“Zane,” she panted, music to his ears, “Zane, they’re coming.”
Screw it, let someone find them like this. He’d trade his life to worship her, just once.
Then her words registered, and a pit plunged into his stomach.
Shifting her onto the bench beside him, Zane jolted to his feet. His pulse hammered as he crossed the cell, trying to shield her from view. Darkness spanned the length of the hallway, and awful screams wailed in the void, but no sign of black armor or glinting pulsers. Yet.
“Now?”
“Forty-five seconds.” Kalie buttoned her pants and smoothed her rumpled, muddy shirt. Marching across the room, she took his face in her cold hands. Her eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “Come back to me. Please. I’ll be there. Fight with everything you have, and come back to me.”
“Kalie—”
Selene’s voice hissed down the hall: “Kalista!”
“I have to go.” Kalie pushed the iron bars open. The hinges screeched, and Zane winced. She bolted through, but paused in the musty hallway beyond. “May Azura bless you. Oh, gods, Zane. You have to live. Come back.”
Loud, mocking voices drifted down the hallway, and the color drained from Kalie’s face. Zane opened his mouth, but she sprinted away.
Before he could speak, she was gone.
Dali, Sector 4
Undecemmensis-22, 817 cycles A.F.C.
Zane’s heartthudded against his aching ribs as he groped blindly through the near-darkness. Slivers of dreary light shone through slits in the stone walls. He latched onto the weak rays like lifelines, taking slow, shuffling steps past them before speeding through the next stretch of darkness. He’d never feared the dark before, but Mordir now lurked in the inky shadows, waiting to claim him for death.
A splinter of light glowed on the jagged floor. Zane slowed his steps.
Then a pulser cracked across his back, and he gasped. The impact burned through the mottled bruises spanning his spine.
“Keep moving!”
Gritting his teeth, Zane stumbled into the shadows. Cobwebs clung to the iron rafters overhead, and dust swirled under his feet. One of the stocky Feds elbowed his way past to a pair of rusting iron doors, bolted by a piece of rebar. He yanked on the metal rod. With a screech, it skittered out of the latch, and the doors groaned open.The yawning hinges vibrated through the stone floor and up Zane’s legs.
Eerie lights shone in the next chamber, casting the stone walls in minty hues. A muffleddrip-drip-drippattered in the room. Muted cheers rang beyond the walls as Zane shuffled through the gaping doors.
Then he froze, his left foot hovering mid-step.
Zane’s mouth fell open. His legs trembled, threatening to collapse. The awful odor of blood and shit twisted up his nose as he gaped at the mutilated corpse staked to the wall.
