Overlord: The Fringe, Book 2 (33 page)

The few who tried found out in a painful hurry that she wasn’t a woman to mess with. They could have turned her in for fighting, but then they would have had to fess-up to having their butts kicked by a girl. Most men decided to tell tales. They also decided to leave her alone.

“Come with me, Mary.” Michael held out his hand, waiting.

For the life of her, she couldn’t figure out why he was here. Why he’d let himself get thrown in jail with her. His actions made no sense. He had what he wanted. He knew her secrets and every curve of her body. What more could he possibly want from her? Baffled, she looked to his open hand.

What waited for her if she refused? Emmet would kill her when he discovered Overlord had slipped through his greedy fingers. She had stolen a fortune in goods, and Emmet could use the booty to hide for a lifetime. If she stayed, she had little chance of escaping on her own, and she no chance at all of getting off Taiga.

“Come with me, Mary.” Michael again offered his hand.

Swallowing down her fear, Mary reached out.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

When Mary slipped her hand to his, Michael almost sagged with relief. For her to offer even the slightest show of trust filled his heart with gratitude, and he vowed to make the most of his second chance.

He dropped to his knees, kissed the back of her work-worn hand and turned away. “Get on my back.”

After a beat of hesitation, she said, “I can walk.”

“Not with your foot in a cast.” He motioned to his back. “Come on, it’ll be fun.”

With a reluctant sigh, she climbed on him and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He stood, grasping her knees to hold her in place.

“I feel like a little kid.” She squirmed against him.

“Want me to make horsy noises?” he whispered over his shoulder. “I could jump up and down and gallop around.” He bounced her a few times but stopped when the wooden floor squeaked.

With a breathless whisper to his ear, she said, “I think playing horsy with you would be a lot more fun if I was the other way ’round.”

His eyebrows lifted at her surprising comment. Her warm body pressed against his gave him very sudden and very wicked thoughts.

“Other way ’round minus the cast.” Mary nipped his ear.

Heat rose in him at the promise of her words. “Since you’re making lewd comments, does that mean I get to make rude ones?” He carried her out of the cell, wanting nothing more than to be alone with her somewhere private.

“Only if you want to.” She held fast to his shoulders.

“How about a truce for the moment?” He toed open the thick wooden door and ducked out into the humid autumn night. “Later, we can both make lewd comments. Preferably while naked.”

With a quick look around at the darkened buildings and the deserted dirt street, he took a few gulps of fresh air, then sprinted to the nearest stand of pine trees with Mary clinging to his back. Checking his wrist com, he got his bearings and raced through the woods toward
Whisper
’s shuttle.

“Did Emmet post guards on the shuttle?”

“No way. He didn’t want anyone to know what he was up to.”

“Good.”

“How—hell, for that matter—why did you—”

“All in good time, my sweet Mary. I promise I’ll answer any question you have, but not just now.” He poured every ounce of power into running with her on his back through the almost pitch-black forest. A pale crescent moon shed the only light on the narrow path. Thank gods for vision implants or he wouldn’t be able to see the rough, hard-packed trail at all. “Curl against my back, tuck your face down and pull your arms in.”

After a brief breath to protest, she did.

Distributing her slight weight like a backpack made jumping over roots and ducking low-hung branches faster. Off in the distance, he saw the gleaming hull of the shuttle.

Once inside, he set Mary down and cupped her face. “You have every right to be furious. I know I hurt you by not telling you the truth about my name.”

She opened her mouth, but before she could make a snide comment, he touched her lips.

“I am Michael ‘Overlord’ Parker. I don’t say that with any kind of pride, but it’s the truth, that’s my name. But you can call me anything you want; Co-man-dur, f’idiot, Prime Bastard. Call me what you will, but trust me to get us safe.”

She lifted her chin. “I don’t need your permission to call you names.”

“Granted.” He offered no challenge, and he wasn’t surprised that her flirtatious manner had disappeared. “I don’t know what Emmet told you, but he may not have told you the truth.”

“Truth is such a fickle thing.” She lowered her chin and scowled at the floor.

“Indeed.” Exerting faint pressure, he lifted her face. “I promise, we’ll work this all out once we’re safe.”

Her velvet-brown gaze fastened on him with the intensity of a thousand suns. “You’re asking me in a roundabout way not to take over this shuttle.”

He bowed formally. “I have underestimated you for the last time. If you wanted to take over this shuttle, I know you could. I’m asking you—no, I’m begging you—trust me enough to get us safe. After that, you can escape all you want. Deal?”

Suppressing a grin, she lifted her hand. “Deal.”

When Michael turned away, she couldn’t help but notice his outfit. Dirty cowboy. Brown homespun pants clung to his backside with the help of his empty holster. Tan broadcloth spanned his back. All she’d ever seen him wear was the finest silk, leather and cotton. To see him dressed down was almost as arousing as seeing him naked.

Trying to curb her wayward thoughts, she settled herself on the hardtack shuttle couch. No position was comfortable, since the cushions felt like dried slag. She’d grown far too accustomed to the luxury of Overlord’s prison.

Rumbling vibrations indicated Michael had no problem overriding her lock on the shuttle.

Flipping on his old wrist com, she laughed when ACCESS DENIED flashed on the crystal display. She wasn’t surprised he disabled it. He’d be a fool not to.

With a smile, she realized he was right. She could take over the shuttle if she wanted to. Three different ways popped instantly to mind; however, all three would injure Michael to some degree. She didn’t want to cause him pain, and yet did.

He’d hurt her, and she wanted to hurt him back, but in the same measure, she wanted to forgive him and start her life over with him. He turned out to be her romantic dream along with a solid dose of harsh reality. Michael wasn’t a hero or a villain. He was only a man. He’d saved her, and she didn’t know why, yet his heroic action touched her romantic heart and swayed her to trust him when, intellectually, she knew she shouldn’t.

She realized it didn’t matter if Emmet had told her the truth or not. She couldn’t do anything about the past. It hurt to think the one man she’d always trusted turned out to be the perpetrator of all the nasty tricks. Emmet had taken all the goods she’d swiped, sold them and banked the money. Not for an IWOG invasion, but to provide for his own plush getaway.

For the first time in her life, Mary found herself without a goal. She no longer cared to find her parents. She no longer worried about an IWOG invasion of Taiga or the protection of Emmet. She could go anywhere and do anything she wanted. She didn’t have to consider anyone but herself. Such a freedom simultaneously excited and frightened her, much like Michael did. She’d trusted him too, and he’d tricked her. Just like Emmet.

As if he’d known she was thinking about him, Michael’s voice came over the com. “You okay back there?”

“I’m fine. Don’t worry, I’m not planning an escape.”
Not yet, anyway.

He laughed and shut off the com.

What would she do? Where would she go? Michael had to be taking her back to Windmere. And once there, what? He said he loved her, but how could she trust him? He’d come to Taiga, but had he come to save her or Kraft’s ship? Or something else? What if he too lied to her about what he knew?

Lost in her thoughts, she shook out of them when the shuttle docked to
Whisper
with a solid clutch of metal to metal. She wanted to leap to her feet but didn’t. She looked down to her cast-clad right foot. Running away wasn’t an option.

“Mission complete,” Michael told Duster over the audvid. “I’m docking the shuttle to
Whisper
now.”

“We’re thirty minutes in front of you,” Duster responded from
Elusive Grace
.

“Let’s head home.”

“Is Mary okay?”

Michael pondered the concern in Duster’s voice and the distress stamped across his face. Just how deep did Duster’s feelings toward Mary go? They’d never competed over any woman, but Mary wasn’t just any woman.

“She’s fine. She promised not to take over the ship.” Michael spoke with confidence, but technically, Mary promised not to take over the shuttle. She didn’t say anything about the ship. Michael strode to the cockpit of
Whisper
and secured the sensors to his new wrist com and Duster’s ship. “Confirm tracking.”

“Confirmed.” Duster paused. “Did you apologize?”

“Not yet, but I’m getting there.” He went to retrieve Mary from the shuttle.

“I still think she poses a danger.” Duster’s voice sounded clear as day over Michael’s new wrist com.

“We’ll see you at base.” Michael cut the link as he entered the back of the shuttle.

Lost in thought, Mary sat on one of the couches with her broken leg elevated. He took a deep sniff to read her scent, but he stopped when all he got was a nose full of his own whisky-and-beer-drenched body.

“You okay?”

She swung her leg to the floor, close as she could get to a fighting stance. “I’m fine.”

Without waiting for her to argue, he scooped her up into his arms and strode to the bridge of
Whisper
. He settled her into the copilot seat and dropped into the pilot chair.

“Okay, truth time.”

She sighed as if she’d forgotten how to argue. “What do you want to know?”

He hated the resignation in her voice and despised himself for being part of the cause. “I don’t want to interrogate you. I thought you might want to interrogate me.” Offering her a tentative grin, he let it slide right into a frown when she looked everywhere but directly at him.

“Why would I?” She shrugged. “Like I said, truth is such a fickle thing. One man’s truth is another man’s lie. It doesn’t really matter anymore. I’ve been chasing the truth like it’s some kind of holy grail. Turns out the truth is nothing but a rusty old iron cup.”

He’d never seen her like this—defeated, resigned, quietly accepting. Had Emmet broken her spirit?

“What did Emmet tell you?” Michael leaned forward to read her scent, but he couldn’t because of his own stench. Instead, he tried to glean information from her body language. Her pine-green silk outfit was stained and wrinkled. Her hair hung in limp strands around her blank face, her once proud posture was slightly slumped, and she wouldn’t meet his gaze. Worst of all, her snappy, sassy comments dried up.

“He told me a bunch of things that don’t matter anymore.” She shrugged again, as if she didn’t care, but he knew she did. She spun the copilot chair around in slow circles. “Like a wheel always turning, life goes on.”

Whatever Emmet told her didn’t bother her as much as what he’d done to her. Michael knew the full truth of it by her refusal to even glance at him. Feeling lower than a subterranean slime-weasel, he worried that the void inside him would never again know the light of her friendship, let alone anything else.

“I never meant to trick you.” He tried to get her to look at him, but she wouldn’t, preferring to continue her spin.

“Okay.” Her voice sounded bored, indifferent.

“You don’t believe me.” Her rejection hurt more than he’d thought possible.

“Okay.” Mary said it exactly as she had before.

“Stop.” He grabbed the arms of the chair to prevent her from spinning. “I’ll tell you the truth to anything you want to know.”

“Like I said, truth is such a fickle thing.” Her voice sounded emotionless and dry as the desert sands of Windmere. He missed her smart mouth and the defiant gleam in her eyes. More than anything, he wanted his feisty and argumentative Mary back.

“I’ll take truth serum if you want me to.”

She finally looked up, and he caught her gaze. A spark of something close to her old spirit rekindled when she laughed.

“Fine.” Bold as brass and twice as blinding, she looked right at him. “Why did you make me call you Commander and berate me for wanting you and thinking of Overlord when that’s who you are?” Direct, to the point, she didn’t pull any punches.

“I wanted you to want
me
, just the man, Michael Parker. Not some overblown hero I could never live up to.” He shook his head. “I’m not a hero, Mary. I hurt plenty of people while building Windmere.”

She frowned. “Hurt people how?”

He took a deep breath, durosteeling his resolve. “For six months, I smuggled humans as a slaver. That’s what I did before I started smuggling books.” Admitting to the worst of his past filled him with a curious relief. When Mary didn’t say anything for a long time, he feared she would reject him and hate him. Panic surged when he thought he had saved her only to lose her again, not because of tricking her, but for the horror of who he really was. “I’ve done everything I can to make up for my actions, but nothing will change the fact that I was a slaver.” He wanted to give her a laundry list of what he’d done to atone, but he feared it would do no good. Nothing would change the truth of what he once was.

Mary didn’t say anything as she looked down at the floor.

“Do you hate me?” He didn’t want to admit how much her answer mattered. If she could forgive him for his past, maybe he could forgive himself.

“For being a slaver? No. Who am I to condemn anyone when I’m a bandit?” She laughed with a bitter edge. “A sneaky bandit who liberated goods for a cause that turned out to be a figment of my imagination.”

“That’s different.” He couldn’t believe she accepted the horrible truth so quickly, but he didn’t want to dwell on it if she didn’t.

“Because of how little I stole, or why?” She laughed and spun her chair again. “In the end, your cause is no better or worse than mine. Just different.”