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Nitro bucked his hips faster in response as the bats now hovered ten feet above his head, a rabid cyclone of dense screeching.
Seth swung the scope to Felix, looking for signs that he was hurting her, his jagged breaths making everything shake. The strain in her face flooded him with dread and he found a point on Nitro to shoot.
“Don’t shoot!” she begged around erotic gasps and cries that seemed to fuel the feral in Nitro’s growls. He yanked her off the pier, forcing her body against his as he pummeled her. Oh fuck, he was having an orgasm!
Movement shot Seth’s gaze to the right of the lake where Lesion stood with his blow dart weapon at his mouth.
Felix let out a sharp scream and Seth swung his scope back to them. “Oh fuck!” he yelled. Blood leaked from her shoulder under Nitro’s mouth as a dart hit his back, then another.
Panting, Seth moved the scope back to Felix’s face, the sexual sounds making it impossible to tell what thefuckwas happening. If she was dying, it was the best thing she’d ever felt in her fucking life and those useless bats seemed to only scream in agreement!
Nitro suddenly dropped her and collapsed onto the platform. The sight released Seth from the jaws of fuckingdoom. “Jesus!” he whispered, lowering his rifle while shaking like a fucking leaf as Lesion removed his robe and dove into the water.
Seth eyed those bats still a screaming vortex of fury just above them. What the fuck were they doing? Why didn’t they help her?
Ma petites…go take a lil break from that
CHAPTER NINE
Studying the printout of the Hatches’ security data while Cat was sleeping was becoming an epic fail. He couldn’t stop thinking about her. The long walls in his celibate, clean mind were now seared with countless erotic images of her. It was like starting a million-piece puzzle and the massive empty space demanded to be filled for his complete Cat picture.
In the span of twelve hours, she’d become an addiction on a level he’d never experienced. She’d blasted through a fifteen-year celibacy firewall as if it never existed.
And the worry and alarm over that amounted to a distant hum, drowned out by the relentless cock-hammering need in his blood.
He sighed and set the data sheet on the desk. “AL?”
He waited in the silence, counting the seconds to measure how angry his virtual brother still was.
“Yes?”
Five seconds pissed still. Fuck, he was tired of fighting with him. From the day the marriage stuff came up in The Twelve, they had gone round and round. AL had hard logic defending his stance and 8-Bit had to play the trump card--TheEvequewantsit. And there wasn’t enough data on the planet to justify not obliging him after he’d saved his life and soul all those years ago. Not by just providing a safe outlet for all his talents, even the darkest ones, but he gave him a home, the very same one he now lived in. Education, food, every kind of support, and whatever supplies he needed to pursue his gifts. That was all The Bishops. If they hadn’t stepped in to help after his parents abandoned him at thirteen, where would he be? He didn’t need a complex algorithm to know, and neither should AL.
And yet his conclusions were as cold as the people that were supposed to be his parents, his arguments iron clad, his reasoning unhinged from his bond with The Twelve. But seeing his Eveque—who’d been burned like he had—find a woman as amazing as the Belle Eveque put a big dent in his theory aboutallwomen. Even while it was common sense that notall women were xyz,his experience refused him any hope in that department.
It all opened a crack in the door, and he was ready to try while setting up parameters to guard the things he couldn’t afford to lose. Namely his fucking mind if he went through another hell like the first.
“I’m sorry,” Ethan mumbled finally, knowing every bit of AL’s perfect passion and anger existed because of him. He was being what he was designed to be. A loyal friend. Somebody who never left and was always there when you needed them. That’s what a sixteen-year-old does when the people who save you by day can do nothing about the bone-deep loneliness that devours you every night. You endure that by creating your own family. AL and Big G were as much his brothers as The Twelve, as much his family as The Bishops.
He knew forming a bond with an artificial anything was as fucked up as forming one with a stuffed animal. He’d always known that. But stuffed animals couldn’t be trained to talk back. AL and Big G were programmed to remember all their interactions, which was a blessing and a curse some days. But Ethan hid his secret family from the world, even today. They all understood it had nothing to do with them but everything to do with people. They couldn’t be trusted. Their family wasn’t just a secret, it was a protected secret. A cherished secret.
Guilt snaked through Ethan at recalling the thing that finally shut AL up in their last fight the night before. He’d been prefacing all his arguments with ‘as your brother,’ and Ethan had finally snapped with, ‘And as your creator.’ He took it like a threat and went radio silent.
“You know words can mean different things, AL. When I said them, I…”
“I don’t know what words you mean.”
Fuck, he was going to play dumb and pretend it never happened. Another trick Ethan had taught him. “You want to help me with this mess?”
“Which one?”
“The mole one. What am I missing? We have anomalies everywhere.”
“If the answers are not in the pattern, then maybe they’re hiding between them.”
Fuck, right. And it wasn’t a maybe, that was AL’s way of giving him the answer while letting him think he thought of it. A habit he never got out of even though Ethan told him he wasn’t a child needing to be coddled with data-points.
“Would you like a shortcut?” AL suggested after a minute.
