Night In A Waste Land (Hell Theory #2) - Lauren Gilley Page 0,69

she sighed when she’d pushed herself too hard, and exhaustion was dragging at her – and the way she sighed when he touched her just right. Knew when she shivered from cold, from fear, from pleasure. He knew the way she murmured in her sleep, the way nightmares pressed a groove between her brows. He knew the scrape of her nails, and the press of her heel, and the clench of her body around him, when he was buried deep.

He knew her now.

But there were so many moments when he was struck with the cold assuredness that he didn’t know her at all.

Now felt like a knowing time, though.

“So,” he huffed. “Like I was saying.”

She chuckled. “If you can remember, then I didn’t do my job right.”

“Oh, no. I can’t remember shit. Just stalling.”

She breathed warm and amused across his chest, raising goosebumps there.

He really had meant to keep things professional this evening. He had a stack of reports, and he’d picked up two cups of gross, instant coffee, and he’d invited her in thinking about the tasks that lay ahead, rather than other distractions.

But she’d sat down on the end of his bed, crossed her legs, leaned back on her hands, and sent him this look. He was only human, after all.

“The…” He lifted his hand only long enough to flap it toward his tiny, wall-mounted desk. “The thing. You know.”

“Uh-huh. Insightful.”

“Shut up,” he said, without heat, smiling to himself. “I think my brain came out through my dick.”

“That’s charming.” Rose gathered herself, and sat up, and he immediately regretted the loss of her heat and weight at his side.

Unbothered by her nakedness, she climbed out of bed – on gratifyingly unsteady legs, he noted – and snagged the files of the desk. She sat on the edge of the bed and flipped through them.

She stilled. He saw tension streak up her back, the lean muscles along her spine tightening beneath her skin.

Lance sat up.

“This is New York,” she said, turning the pages more slowly.

“It is.” He’d asked her to his room to begin with because he’d been afraid she would have a reaction – even if it was only to close off and go quiet and tight-lipped enough that he felt compelled to try to coax her back to a softer place.

He shifted across the mattress so he could sit beside her, and set his feet down on the floor, corner of the sheet pulled into his lap because this didn’t feel like a dick-out sort of conversation. “To be honest, I’m a little surprised we haven’t been sent in there since you joined up.”

She stared at the paperwork she held – a printed-out, infrared, aerial map, white circles marking potential target sites. Blinked, after a long, still moment, and then looked up at him, gaze as hard and closed-off as he’d feared. All the warmth of the past half-hour had drained out of her. The flush of pleasure, the spark of humor, the satisfaction – gone, replaced with cold wariness. “I thought New York was a lost cause. That’s what they said in Basic: that it wasn’t possible to retake it.”

He took a breath, and saw her brows lower in reaction, a ratcheting up of her tension. He stroked her back – and she didn’t respond to the touch, not even to avoid it. Okay…

“In the immediate aftermath of the Second Rift, right after we left the city, the mob war blew up. Castor’s death left a big hole in the hierarchy, and a half-dozen smaller-time thugs tried to take up his throne.”

“Right.” She had a gimlet stare worse than any captain or general he’d ever reported to.

“Right. So. There was that. And then there were conduits from both camps: outright biblical war in the streets, gangsters choosing sides with them. It’s – well, it’s like hell there.”

She kept staring, and he was reminded, unwelcomely, of Arthur Becket, burning now in actual hell. Still, he wouldn’t have traded his metaphor; it was the best he could think of.

“If any civilians are left there,” he said, they’re either enslaved to, working for, or at least working at the mercy of the top dogs there – whoever they are. An evacuation would be ideal, but we’re not just talking about one or two targets to eliminate here. It would be a full-out war, and the casualties would be…unimaginable.”

“We don’t deal in full-out war,” she reminded, frostily.

“I know. Which is why I’m proposing, now that there are other companies to