Range (22 page)

"Because this is not a fucking game I'm playing." His weight settles across my stomach, his face coming closer and closer until he's a breath away. His words come out as a whisper. "We're done playing, Junco." His hands are on either side of my head now, leaning on the bed, forming little impressions in the mattress so that the palms are brushing alongside my cheeks. I try to watch his eyes but all that registers is how with each passing fraction he is closing the distance between us. "We're gonna set it straight, right now." His mouth dips down and caresses mine.

My eyes close as I respond, but he pulls back almost immediately.

I lie there. Waiting to see what he'll do next, not even caring that he just blamed that whole fight on me, because this man is heating me up in a way that makes me powerless to resist.

"And then yer gonna tell me exactly who you are, my Junco. Because one thing is painfully obvious. Yer no Commander's daughter from the RR. Yer no spawn of Inanna. Yer no long lost Seventh Sibling. You are all those things and more and I'm gonna get the truth out of ya, whether you want to tell it or not. And when I'm done relieving you of that burden, I'm gonna take you in a way that will obliterate any longing you ever had for John Hando, or Aren, or Kush, or Mikah fucking Mesner,
forever
." He stops to kiss me again, teasing my lower lip with a small bite as his hand wraps around my neck and slides up into my hair, tugging on it as I moan.

Holy shit. How did I get here?

His mouth pulls back and I try to follow it with my own, but the distance is too great. He has me trapped beneath him, and his fingers reach down and grab one wrist and he pulls it above my head.

I do not move.

He shifts over top of me and then his other hand finds my other wrist and brings it up as well. And then he's got both of them clasped in his hand.

"And then yer gonna tell me what that fuck Gideon is up to, my Junco."

He pulls back to watch my expression, but all I can do is stare into his eyes, mesmerized.

"Do you understand me, little bird?"

My head is nodding out a yes before I even have a second to think about it and then his kiss finds that little dent in the center of my throat. I tilt my head, exposing myself to him as my eyes roll back with the pleasure.

Tier leans over on his side as his right hand slips inside my hoodie. His fingertips trace up my ribcage, the lightest touch I've ever experienced in my life. He drags them up, crosses the lowest rib, stops for a moment to watch me, and then continues his path until he's tracing circles on the fleshy inner part of my upper arm. I gasp just before his kiss returns to my lips and he pulls back. "Still ticklish, I see."

I can only moan out the affirmative, because he's kissing my belly now. Little flutters of euphoria burst through as the sensation travels up my torso. His hands are all over, cupping and kneading my breast, sliding down my pants, and then, before I can even process that, he's wrapped them behind my neck once more, his fingertips clasping my hair.

"Where do you come from, Junco?" he breathes. I look into his eyes and hold his gaze as his hand slips under the waistband of my jeans.

"Council 3. I'm not hiding that—" I gasp as his fingers slide between my legs. "This is not fair, you're trying to seduce me into telling you things!"

His mouth teases my lips again as I momentarily forget what I was complaining about.

"Trying to? Darlin', this has gone beyond trying." He uses both hands to push my hoodie up, his thumbs dragging across my skin and sending shivers of delight up my spine as I whimper. He pulls me up off the bed for a fraction, slips the hoodie over my head, and then lowers me back down.

And stares at me.

"What?" I breathe.

His answer never materializes because his mouth is all over my body.

I close my eyes and grab his hair as best I can, it's much shorter than it used to be, and pull his face towards my chest. He accepts with a low rumble from his throat and
oh shit
is coming out of my mouth.

He stops.

"Do not swear in front of me, Junco."

I open my eyes to find his face hovering over mine, the green bright with annoyance. "I said shit, not fuck."

"That's not funny."

My grin creeps out. I thought it was.

He moves to the side and falls back on the bed next to me.

Now I've done it. "Sorry, OK? I was kidding."

He pulls me towards him, wraps his arm around me, and I rest my cheek on his chest. "I need to know what you know, Junco. Where did ya come from?"

"So that's it?" I ask. "Heat me all up with the promise of sex, then stop and make me talk? That's your plan?"

He eyes me cautiously. "It worked, didn't it?"

"Pffft. I've still got pants on, Mr. Death. So I'd have to go with no, not quite."

He turns away, trying to stifle his laugh, but his hands disengage from my body and he clasps them together behind his head, like he hasn't got a care in the world.

"So, we're done here? Or what?"

"I'm waiting for an answer to my question, Junco. Where do ya come from?"

I'm not quite sure what he's after. "Tier, I admit, I have lots of secrets, some are so fu—" I stop and reconsider the curse. "I mean, some are so horrible I've tucked them down in some very dark places. But this is not one of them. I come from Council 3. I grew up in a sentient HOUSE, I spent my summer and winter breaks at Stag camp for training. I went to Council 1 Cadets for upper school, and I completed advanced sniper training with the RR military. This is what I know to be true. So if you've got more information, I'd like to hear it."

"No, all of that is true. But you've left out one part. Where did ya come from? Who made you, Junco?"

I throw up my hands. "You guys said Gyr made me!"

"No, we said you came from Gyr's genetics. But that cannot be true, because Gyr was not High Order."

"What's that mean?" My brows scrunch up as I think about what he just said.

He watches me for a few moments. "Gideon knows who made you, Junco. He's been throwing it in my face for two years. So you mean ta tell me he never told ya where you come from?"

The sigh comes out as exhaustion. "If Gid knows something, he hasn't told me. We've got secrets from each other, too. We basically stopped hanging out together back when I was ten. I never even knew he had
lovers
until a few hours ago, and you think he's sharing this secret information with me? No! He's not!"

"Ya said the two of ya did a job in Prague, back in the Runout tunnels. When ya remembered about those fake nightdogs. So, yer telling me ya did that job when you were ten?"

"No, I mean, of course I saw him as a teen. We did jobs here and there, but he was gone most of the time. It's not like when we were kids, back before they changed him."

"Changed him? How?"

"What do ya mean, how? He's an Archer, right? He's got those scars on his back. Lucan knows this." But apparently Tier did not. "You didn't know?"

"I suspected, of course. So they turned him avian, when you were ten?"

"Avian? No, he was never an avian. At least that's the impression I got. Back when I first saw him, in Subjack's camp before we went up to Runout, he was touching my wings and—"

"Touching yer wings?"

"Yeah, he had to help me put that stupid dress on." Tier's growl tells me he's annoyed at this revelation so I move on quickly. "Anyway he was making me gasp with those little touches and then he asked me if it hurt. To touch them. And I told him no. It's sexual."

I look over to Tier. His eyes are glowing so bright he's casting shadows.

"And," I continue in a rush, "that totally took him by surprise. He was embarrassed, apologized even, and said he had no experience with wings." I shrug. "That's all I know. He was never an avian, but he was gone for years and when he did come back, he was…"

"What?" Tier prods.

"Not the same. He was not the same."

"How? In what way, Junco."

I think about this for a few moments. When he came to my house that first year of cadets he acted like we were never apart. Like him going away for almost three years was nothing. Just a blip of time among billions of blips. He offered me no explanation. At all.

"He barely talked, he didn't want to go shooting with me or spar. He didn't even want to tell me the stories anymore. And these were all things we did regularly, before, ya know? I mean I get it about the stories, those were just coping mechanisms when I was little. Parables to help me understand that my life was about training and death and killing. And when he came back I was already almost fourteen by then and I was mature—had grown to accept what my life was without the stories. So I can see that one. But all the other things I did
more
as I got older. We had schedules, right? And when he left that summer I turned ten, his camp schedule became my schedule. Every Monday I'd shoot. Every Tuesday I'd range. Every Wednesday I'd—"

"Range?" he asks, cutting me off. "What's range?"

What is range? I'm lost in time as the memory begins to play in my head. "I got in trouble that year. They sent me home from camp after Gid left. Actually, my dad came to get me because I ran away."

I look over at Tier to see his reaction. He smiles and brushes some hair from my eyes.

"And then I—I had a hard time holding myself together, so that's the second time they erased me."

His arms come down from his head and he wraps me up, pulling me to his chest. "I'm sorry, Juncs."

"No, it's OK. It was OK that time because I
was
crazy. Here's what you don't understand, Tier. Gideon is my sanity. He holds me together. And when they took him away I just… I just lost it. I went out ranging alone. I was so angry about everything. They could track me of course." I motion to the spot on my shoulder where Tier removed that tracker from me when we first met. "But it was underground, and I was…" I stop and smile up at him. "I was sneaky."

His squeeze says he agrees.

"Anyway, they found me eventually and my dad came and got me and took me home that summer. But I still had to train. And that was the year I started ranging alone for real." My heart-rate jacks up just thinking about it. "Just because I wanted to and just because I could." My shoulders shrug because how can I explain that?

I can't. It's disgusting.

"What is ranging, Junco?"

"Hunting." I look up at him and study his beautiful face. How can the Angel of Death look like this man? "But not regular hunting."

"What kind of hunting? Tell me."

I look up at him and shake my head. "No."

"Junco," he sighs. "For once, can you just do as I ask?"

I turn my back to him and stare out into space. The tiny pinpricks of light are teasing me in a dangerous way. "It's not that I don't want to tell you things, Tier. And it's not that I told Ashur or whoever personal things about me on purpose. They slip out sometimes by mistake." I turn back and watch his eyes as I talk. "I don't want you to know that stuff about me. It's all bad stuff. You don't want to know what I did as a kid, and even though you think you do…you don't."

"Was it hunting people, Junco?"

My body turns away but he stops me this time.

"Was it?"

My head nods. "Sort of. They were not human according to us, but who were we to judge?" We lie there silent for a few moments, I know he's picturing me doing these horrific things and that hurts more than anything else right now. "I remember everything, ya know. All of it."

He watches my face carefully, patiently.

"And I'm just a very bad person." I don't say it for sympathy and I don't say it so he can tell me I'm not. I say it because it's true.

His lips caress my cheeks for a few moments, but he stays far away from that topic. "Where does Gideon fit in? How was he different? What was he doing?"

The change of subject is such a relief I don't even mind talking about Gideon. "When he came back from being morphed, that was my first year of cadets. It was spring I remember, he came to my house for Easter break. I had him to myself for two weeks and I thought we'd just slip back into our routines, right? I mean, that schedule was my life outside cadets. It's just what I did. But Monday came and there was no shooting. Tuesday, no ranging. Wednesday, no grappling. He just sat in the guest room most of the time. Alone."

I swallow as I look up at Tier. "He came back broken. And it shocked me. Gideon is the only reason I'm alive right now. Even more so than my dad, because my dad wasn't there most of the time. They made him drop me off with Matthew. Matthew ran the Stag, my dad ran the rest of the country. But Gideon, he ran me."

"He was yer handler." It's a statement, not a question.

"Yes," I say, looking up at him. "He
is
my handler."

"You were his weapon."

I nod. "Yes, I
am
his weapon."

We wait, our eyes searching each other. He seems satisfied with this.