Pretty Little Lion by Suleikha Snyder
32
Command was in chaos. Lucky for all of them, it was a familiar chaos. Post-mission meetings, reports being filed, Joaquin being Joaquin. “Gimme!” they insisted, wiggling their fingers for the Honeybee that Finn and Grace had taken on the op. Danny swiped the device off the conference table and chucked the device across the conference room like a grenade, narrowly missing hitting Elijah in the head. “Oi!” he shouted irritably. Danny didn’t even bother looking sorry, the little shite.
Fuck, he was utterly knackered. But it was hours yet till the team could wrap up and head to their quarters. He rubbed at his temples, slouching down in his chair and returning his attention to Jackson—who’d been ranting about the shape-shifter serum for the past seven and a half minutes.
“How do we know Estrada won’t try to sell it to the highest bidder in a real auction?” Jack demanded of everybody and nobody. “Aston took out his direct competition, but there are still takers out there.”
“Like the U.S. military?” Meghna suggested, with no small amount of accusation. She’d taken the seat furthest from Elijah. On the other side of the table. Looking as exhausted as he felt. He was trying not to take her cooling off too personally, trying to be a mature adult and give her space to breathe. But all he’d wanted to do for hours was hold her. In the transport on the way back to HQ. When she haltingly told everyone about the Vidrohi and Ayesha. Even while she was having a go at the armed forces. “The scientist, Schoenlein, he’d mentioned something about the military doing their own experimentation. Who knows what kind of shifters they’ve created? Maybe they want more?”
The flurry of sound and motion in the room ground to a sudden halt. Oh. Right. With back-to-back crises taking up their full attention, he’d neglected to tell her a very important detail about himself. Or expand on the salient points. Half the eyes in Command went to him and Jack. The other half swiveled to JP, who barked out a laugh. The former Marine straightened just slightly from his usual sprawl and raised his hand. “Me,” he volunteered. “I’m the experimentation. Or one of many, anyway. Pretty sure the Apex Initiative has hit on its perfect recipe, though,” he shrugged. “They ain’t in the market for more juice.”
“And we would know,” Elijah added. “We’ve a pipeline from them to 3S. They feed us recruits, occasional intel.”
“How’s that operation any different from Aston and Hollister building their own army?” Meghna’s contemplative frown furrowed her brow. The disapproval was heavy in her voice.
Jack, their golden boy with a dress uniform in his closet, protested immediately. “It’s entirely different and you know it.”
But she wasn’t so easily dismissed. “Why?” she demanded as she leaned forward. “Because the military does it for their country? For their ideals? I’m sure Hollister has ideals, too. I don’t know exactly what you’ve done in the name of patriotism, what your Apex Initiative claims to be, but I do know that it results in the same thing we left back at the lodge: senseless death. Collateral damage in the form of innocent civilians. Drone strikes killing brown women and children.”
Elijah winced. He could hardly dispute that. “I reckon that’s a row we’re never going to stop having, Meg,” he admitted, accepting the discomfort. The responsibility. The questions he, Jack, and JP were still working out among themselves. “It’s not something we’re gonna solve in our lifetimes. Not while whoever has the biggest guns or the sharpest claws runs the world.”
“Can we move from the philosophical to the practical?” Jack was the irritated and tired one now. The sad state of his suit—rumpled, tie discarded—should have been Lije’s first clue that his friend was nearing the end of his tether. “Our next move is the island. Joaquin found the falsified flight plan for Mirko’s private jet and hacked it. We have two options: assume Estrada took the plane to its intended destination and kill two birds with one stone. Or split our focus to look for him and pursue Hollister.”
Pursue Hollister. Jack’s biological father. Elijah was still wrapping his mind around that tidy bit of what-the-fuck. But they had other pressing priorities besides Jack’s personal episode of Coronation Street. “Finn said to assume Estrada went to the island,” he recalled from the vampire’s debrief. “He said, and I quote, ‘The two-faced fucker had his own reasons for being up Mirko’s arse.’ Something about where the bodies are buried. And accessing the cemetery. Tavi wouldn’t have come so far not to see that through.”
“I know how that feels,” Meghna interjected wearily. “I can count my mission failures on one hand. I didn’t want this to be one of them.” She scrubbed at her hair, loosening several strands from her messy ponytail. Neha reached over and squeezed her hand. Some silent message passed between the two women. A moment of solidarity. They barely knew one another…and yet understood some things instantly.
“Maybe the woman you’re looking for is there, too, with the rest of the trafficking victims,” Neha said. “Maybe she got to Hollister first.”
Coupled with Tavi Estrada’s whereabouts, that was a lot of maybes. But Elijah wasn’t going to let the uncertainties hamper whatever Third Shift did next. They’d worked with thinner intel before. Pulled off last-minute miracles. Faked a man’s death and changed his identity in a matter of weeks. They’d flip that bloody island upside down if they had to, in order to see who or what fell out.
“We’ve got this,” he told his team. “What happened upstate was a setback, yeah, but I’ve seen us do some brilliant things when we thought all was lost. We’re fighters. And we’re family. We’ll figure this one out as well,” he promised.
Something flickered in Meghna’s gaze. Warmth. It went from a flicker to a blaze. And her lips tilted up in a faint smile that gradually widened. “It makes you exactly who I thought you were. An idealist. A hero. A man with an overabundance of hope,” she’d said to him not too long ago, in the comfort of his bed and his arms. Was she thinking of that now, as he was? In the end, it didn’t matter if he was any of those things—idealistic, heroic, hopeful. As long as he was here with Third Shift. As long as he was hers.
* * *
Meghna had never been so thankful for paperwork. For all the things that came after an op. The debriefings. The additional medical examinations. Logging the gear used and returning borrowed items to the Locker. Making sure Chase had been put on a private flight back to California. All of it meant that she had most of the night and the early morning filled with mundane tasks that kept her from thinking too hard about what had happened during that last hour in the Finger Lakes. Mostly her mother. Worse, her mother being right. When she at last found herself alone in Elijah’s suite of rooms, washing up in his en suite bathroom, she gripped the edges of the sink with slippery hands and tried not to crumble.
“I think you need a warning about who you’re working with.”
“Apsaras don’t have to leave.”
Those were statements that did not, on their face, intersect. And Meghna was too exhausted to try and figure out how they made any kind of sense at all coming from the same woman who’d kept her at arm’s length for nearly thirty-five years. She was too tired for puzzles, for games. Maybe she’d been tired of them this entire time. And that was why, when Elijah appeared in the mirror, looming behind her and haloed by the track lighting, all she could think was good. Good, now I can rest.
They hadn’t spoken much after the helicopter ride back to HQ. He’d given her space. She’d taken it and then some. Now she fell back against him, obliterating the inches between their bodies. And he caught her. Banding his arms across her. Turning her and settling her head beneath his chin. It was silent. Simple. Not an end to what they’d said to each other on the helo or a continuation of it. A hug. Meghna couldn’t remember the last time she’d been hugged or given one. Maybe some red-carpet cheek press for the cameras. This was different. It was for no one’s eyes but their own, reflected in the glass. And it enveloped her. Sent warmth melting through her skin and her bones. There was nothing transactional about Elijah’s arms around her, nothing asked for and nothing taken. It was pure and shared and safe.
They stayed like that for the longest time. Minutes. An hour. With his heartbeat steady beneath her ear and his fingers drawing gentle circles between her shoulder blades. “What is enough, Meghna? What do you need?” he asked after a while, like they were continuing the conversation from earlier. “Tell me, and I’ll give it all to you.”
“I don’t know,” she admitted. “I might never know.” She’d lived so much of her life alone. And the rest of it superficially. As she’d told herself dozens of times before, all she really knew of happiness came in gift boxes or wineglasses or from a perfect murder. Seeing Purva hadn’t magically fixed that. Maybe only therapy would. Years and years of therapy. Not to mention that she was going to have to tell Elijah that he hadn’t been taken out by debris but by her mother. When he was already highly suspicious of the General’s motives. That wasn’t exactly an auspicious start to a relationship.
Plus, Ayesha was still missing. Meghna was no closer to finding out what happened to her than when she’d started seeing Mirko so many months ago. And they still didn’t know enough about the Committee and Roman Hollister’s plans, though Jackson had sworn to get to the bottom of it all. What if the General was more involved than she’d claimed? Meghna still didn’t fully understand the ins and outs of her mysterious oversight Committee. Why the insistence upon anonymity among the Vidrohi ranks if Purva was going to spill their secrets to some global cabal? Her mother had promised her “later” as she pushed her back toward the event center. “I’ll tell you everything later. For now…do what you must.” And wasn’t that always what Meghna did? What they both did? What they must? What if it put her and Elijah on opposite sides? What then?
“You don’t need all the answers right now, love,” Elijah murmured, his deep and rumbling voice vibrating through the top of her skull and down to her toes. “All you need is to believe me. To believe in us. You and me. Right here. And I know you already do. We’ve crossed that hurdle.”
He was right. They had. She’d trusted him quickly, too quickly. Probably from the minute he’d slashed Sasha Nichols’s throat. Maybe even before. When she’d felt his eyes on her from across the VIP room. She never would’ve gone with him to Connecticut, to the safe house and beyond, if she didn’t believe in him on some basic, implicit level. If she didn’t care about the same things he cared about. Truth and justice and friends and family. She could have, should have, left at any time and continued on her solo path. But she hadn’t. She’d chosen to stay.
Apsaras didn’t have to leave. She didn’t have to leave.
Meghna raised a hand to Elijah’s face. His stubborn, beautiful, strong-featured face. His beard had grown in even thicker over the last day, the hair soft on her palm. She’d kissed him a week ago to seduce him, to distract him. Now she did it to claim him. To promise him. I’m here, she said with the first teasing whisper of her lips against his. I believe you, she said as she traced the bow of his mouth with the tip of her tongue. I trust you. She peppered wicked little pecks at the corners of his lips.
“I love you,” he groaned as he opened to her, hot and hungry, and met her equally ravenous kiss. “I know it’s too soon, it’s mad, but it’s the truth.”
I love you, he repeated as he hitched her up in his arms, wrapping her legs around his hips. I love you, he said again as he walked her to the bed and came down with her to the mattress. Love you, love you, love you, he echoed as he stripped her of her clothes and her every defense. Because she didn’t need defenses with this man. He saw her for who she was and loved her—wanted her—just the same.
Meghna couldn’t say the words out loud yet. She could barely string them together in her head. But she hoped he felt them in the stroke of her hand. In the welcome of her thighs. In how she rose to meet him when he shucked his clothes and bared his cock. I think I could love you, too, she told him as he sank deep inside her and she anchored her blunt nails in the tight cheeks of his ass. She showed him with every cry of pleasure he drew from her throat. With a hundred openmouthed kisses. With her foot tracing restless circles on the back of his thigh. With how she didn’t let go. Not during. Not after. And never again. Elijah Richter was hers. Her man. Her lion. Her heart.
Later, while she drowsed in the warmth of his massive arms and broad chest and he absently threaded his fingers through her hair, a little bit of reality returned. Hollister. His island. Third Shift. There were so many things left undone, so many loose ends to tie up. “What are we going to do now?”
Elijah pressed a kiss to her temple. “Remember that world tour of closets I promised you?”
She groaned. Hadn’t they killed that joke days ago? Now he was resurrecting the corpse. Was Finn the bad influence on him, or was it the other way around? She had a feeling she was going to find out in the weeks ahead. “I’m breathless with anticipation,” she said with a heavy dose of sarcasm.
“Oi. There’s no call for that.” He tugged at a lock of her hair. “I’ve got some downtime coming up, and I think we should start with Jamaica. Maybe head on to London.”
Downtime. Jackson had made a similar suggestion to her. To lie low, stay out of sight, as Chase recovered from his wounds and Third Shift moved into their next phase of operations. It didn’t sound entirely bad. She would have legitimate vacation photos to post on Instagram. Nothing Joaquin would have to doctor. She propped her chin on Elijah’s chest and arched her brows with speculation. “Let me guess: You want me to meet your aunties?”
“And my mum and sisters.” His eyes were like two gold coins flashing in the early morning light. They practically twinkled. “They’ve got a wedding to plan.”
She didn’t even bother stifling the laughter, letting it ring out as her shoulders shook and tears gathered in the corners of her eyes. “Our venue blew up,” she pointed out when she had a measure of control over the giggles.
Elijah reached out and stroked the lines bracketing her smile. Like they were precious. Like she was precious. “Yeah, but we won’t.”
Maybe it was foolish to be with him. Maybe it was the biggest risk she was ever going to take—falling in love, trusting his people, joining his team so they could finish together what she’d started alone. Maybe it would all go up in flames. But she’d be ready. She’d been training for this her entire life. She was ruthless. She was fierce. She was committed. And she never, ever let a target get away. Meghna moved in increments, until she was kissing his fingertips. And she whispered one soft word against Elijah’s skin.
“Boom.”