He’d taken his time, because somewhere in the back of his head he’d still been rationalizing, telling himself this was just another mission objective. Give in to the inevitable. Give them both what they wanted and prove that lust and danger and terrible decisions were an explosive combination that burned hot, but burned out fast.
Knox turned his face toward the pillow. The bed smelled like sex, the pillow like the impossible floral sweetness of her hair. His body’s swift, fascinated reaction to the combination made a liar of him.
Danger and bad decisions might burn hot, but they were nowhere close to burning out.
Lightning flashed again, revealing the outline of Nina’s naked body. Thunder cracked almost immediately, proof that the storm was right on top of them. Most people huddled in interior rooms or deep in their basements when storms like these swept the South. The TechCorps had made some investments into weather radar and storm predictions within the city itself, but out here …
When tornadoes hit Georgia, they usually came wrapped in rain. You might not know it was coming until the lightning lit up the sky just long enough to show you that smudge on the horizon … and by then it was too late. He’d seen entire settlements swept away in mere seconds of terrifying destruction. Even more disturbing, he’d seen buildings cut in half, part of them reduced to rubble, the rest pristine and untouched, dishes still on the table, paintings hung straight—like a giant knife had carved off the fronts and turned them into macabre dollhouses.
People down here respected the weather. They feared it. And there was Nina, naked and letting the storm inside.
Reveling in it.
Maybe that’s all he was to her, a storm passing through her life. Excitement and danger and the thrill of something forbidden. Maybe all of his self-indulgent brooding over his impending betrayal was the arrogance of a man assuming he had the upper hand, when he was really nothing more than her latest adrenaline high.
And maybe he was just trying to rationalize fucking her because he already knew he was going to do it again.
“Did I wake you?”
He could barely hear her over the sound of the rain slapping on the pavement outside, but her husky tone still stirred his blood. “If you hadn’t, the storm would have.”
“That’s too bad.” She turned her head just enough for him to see her smiling profile. “You seemed like you needed the rest.”
Hard to argue with that. Knox pushed himself upright and swung his legs off the bed. The tequila was still open on the bedside table. Since it was a night for reckless decisions, he snagged the bottle. It burned going down. He knew his body would metabolize it before he could get a good buzz going, but it felt decadent and irresponsible.
God, how long had it been since he’d let himself be irresponsible? “Do you like storms?” he asked after taking another swig.
“No. But my sisters did.” Nina’s smile vanished. “It was the only thing they could ever agree on.”
Sisters.
He paused with the bottle halfway to his lips. He’d built all his assumptions around the idea that Nina was part of some rogue military project. Most of the military bases east of the Mississippi had been privatized during the tumultuous runup to the Energy Wars, liquidated for the cash flow the faltering government needed in order to bring the West Coast—with its vital food supply—back under control. But some of those newly minted private mercenary companies had retained access to information on military genetic projects, and they had no doubt resumed experimentation once the Flares had wiped out any pretense of oversight.
As far as Knox knew, what had remained of the actual military after the Flares had focused on consolidating power in the West. Rumors drifted back across the Mississippi River, whispers of genetically altered soldiers who were born possessing all of Knox’s implant-gifted strengths. Knox had also heard rumors about the brutal brainwashing protocols they used to keep those soldiers loyal, a regime of torture and conditioning that stripped away emotion and empathy and made Protectorate training look like a cheerful slumber party.
It was a lot of work, keeping your supersoldiers in line. The TechCorps had always preferred the elegance of a kill switch. Even knowing that the biochemical bomb ticking down in his brain would eventually destroy him, Knox couldn’t say he’d trade places with one of those emotionless killing machines. At least his mind had always been his