Vin's Rules (Outer Settlement Agency) Read online

  “When we’re done with our tea and light refreshments.”

  The woman clasped her hands together, one on top the other in a fist and bobbed. “Yes, that’s it.”

  “Right.”

  The room was upstairs past another set of men in tan. It was a small but clean. A massive four-poster bed occupied most of the space. What was left went to one table holding one vase with one flower inside.

  A framed painting of Graham smiled down benevolently from the wall above it.

  Nasty.

  “Do you get guests often?”

  She watched the woman’s face, but the same creepy, toothy smile was in place. “No. We haven’t used this room in ages.” She unclasped her hands. Somewhat. The left one stayed balled against her chest. The right unfurled, flat and facing upward. “There’s your tea service over there. When you’re ready for town, come on out. I’ll just be sitting.”

  “Where?”

  “There.”

  “On what?”

  “The floor.”

  “Right.”

  The second the girl closed the door, Vin whirled around and rolled his eyes. “What the fuck?”

  “I know.”

  “No you don’t. You can’t. We can’t. Because we’re normal. We can’t understand this shit. I swear that I am never breaking regulations again.”

  She hated herself for laughing and cursed him for making her do it.

  The fool’s head lolled back, and he paced with his hands on his hips. “This isn’t some plan by my brother to teach me a lesson, is it? Because I’ve learned it. Everything by the code from here on out, I swear.”

  “I wish. No, we’re here on our own foolish accord.” She walked over to the self-aggrandizing portrait and ran her finger along the edge. Spotless. Not a speck of dust or fingerprint other than her own. She smudged it away.

  “You didn’t expect to find anything wrong, did you?”

  She turned to answer but found herself caught in Vin’s arms.

  And on his lips.

  She wasn’t nervous.

  Or scared.

  Just surprised.

  His mouth was as soft as his arms were hard. The man left no room between their bodies, melding his chest to hers. It could have been good—if she’d given him permission.

  Heck, it was good, but she wasn’t in the business of letting men get away with stuff like this. Then he had the nerve to grab her hand, dragging it across his belt.

  She pushed against his arm, but Vin kept pulling and yanking, all the way until her hands brushed across something hard.

  And long.

  And slick.

  A knife.

  “They might be watching us,” he mouthed and he was probably right. They could have a million cameras in here. He’d shown her his closely held secret the safest way he could.

  She chuckled against his lips. No, they hadn’t taken every weapon from him. Nor from her either.

  In their testosterone-fueled stupidity, the soldiers hadn’t bothered to check her. Now was her chance to show her secret as Vin had shown his.

  Allie leaned back and winked at the smiling man before her, before slapping the mess out of him.

  His face dropped in confusion. Allie grabbed his shirt at the collar with both hands and hauled him in for another kiss.

  One he very quickly took command of.

  This kiss made it very clear that the first one had been for show. It’d been soft, almost delicate. However, at her rough invitation, Vin’s lips seared against hers. The heat of his body pulsed through him, and the hands that held her drew toe-tingling circles at the tender spot between her shoulders.

  He’d kissed her as a means to tell her that he had some sort of weapon. She’d kissed him...

  Oh, yeah. Right.

  As his tongue dragged across her bottom lip, she hitched her left leg around his butt. He greedily held onto it, digging his fingers into her warming skin.

  This was way too good. Before she forgot why this whole thing started, she squeezed against him, jerking and rubbing her inner thigh across his hip. “You feel that, baby?”

  “Fuck yeah.”

  Clearly, he hadn’t.

  She did another slow grind against him, and the thickheaded man just moaned against her neck. “You should have told me, Allie.”

  I’m trying.

  Desperate, she jumped up and wrapped both legs around him. She tried pumping again, but Vin apparently wasn’t the type of man to let a woman do all the heavy lifting. He pushed her against the door and rotated his very impressive self against her groin.

  She’d be lying if she told herself he wasn’t good at this. He could be the lover of any woman’s dreams. Soft hands, hard body, bloody massive cock. Beneath her hands, the muscles of his shoulders rippled. He licked his plush lips and captured her chin in his hand. “You know you don’t have to do this.”

  “I do.”

  “You’re nervous.” He bowed his head and spoke in a voice so gentle she wouldn’t have thought him capable of producing it. “Sweet thing, you are amazing. Perfect, but we can’t. They may be watching us, and I’ll have to kill everyone here if they look at you. ”

  “Ya think?”

  “Huh?”

  Stupid, stupid, hot man.

  “Touch me, Vin.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “For all the right reasons, yes.” And a few wrong ones. “Touch me, down there.”

  “They won’t see anything. I swear,” he said, his lips tickling her ears. Vin unwrapped her legs and set her on her own two feet. One hand captured her wrists, bringing them to rest on the wall above her. “I know what you need. I’ll let you have it.”

  He gathered up the hem of her garment with his free hand until he had enough space to slide his knee beneath the fabric. Then he lifted his leg to the embarrassingly wet space between her legs.

  She gave one final thigh-clenching thrust, and something finally clicked in Vin’s eyes. After eighty billion years, he’d made unmistakable contact with the knife on her thigh.

  “Oh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ohhhh. So, no?”

  “No.”

  “I see.”

  The knee fell as fast as his smile. He leaned forward and gasped, cursing under his breath. So many desperate words of apology scrambled from his lips that she cupped her hand over her mouth to hide her smile. “It’s okay, Vin.”

  “It’s not.”

  “It is.” She tapped his cheeks and smushed his pitiful frown into a smile. “Really.”

  “Hell, I’m no better—”

  His eyes said the rest. No better than this place? Oh, please. “You’re so much better. Full stop.”

  His face flamed red, and he kept shaking his head. “Allie, I didn’t mean to. I thought, just, yeah.”

  “If you keep apologizing, they’re going to know something’s up. Besides, you have nothing to be ashamed of. And I do mean that in every possible way.”

  His head jerked up. The cherubic smile returned to its normal place, and he winked. “I don’t like to brag, but...”

  He dodged her playful smack and rushed to open the door. “Ladies first, but uh, we’re good, right?”

  “Of course. Don’t be so sensitive.”

  There wasn’t any more time to talk about what had just happened. Thank goodness. He’d been so wrapped up in his own embarrassment that he hadn’t brought up the subject of her obvious signs of desire. Maybe he was just being a gentleman. She sure wasn’t going to bring it up. No point anyway. Their best shot at private conversation would be in the middle of the street, away from possible recordings. Even then, they’d have to be on their guard. Of all the things that needed discussing, that kiss was at the very bottom of the list.

  Or the middle.

  The blue draped girl waiting in the hall waved at their approach. She rose from her cross-legged position on the floor, shoved a handful of something brown into her mouth, and led them downstairs. The
smile never once dropped.

  Allie’s eyes wandered to Vin every few steps. The man had a thousand sides to him. He’d gone from playful to on guard to deliciously sinful and now back to the Vin who’d been on the back of the cyclerover. His head swiveled to every dark corner, and he made eye contact with each man they passed.

  Was he trying to remember faces?

  The floor plan?

  Or issuing threats?

  Perhaps all three.

  For all his different sides, a part of her knew she’d be safe with him no matter what their circumstances were. This man, however briefly, lost his spirit at the mere hint that he’d done something improper. His resulting embarrassment was oddly endearing, and it showed a depth of humility most people lacked. Where was this Vin the first time they’d met?

  She squeezed his hand and winked.

  He blushed and looked away.

  Cute.

  But then their guide stopped and cleared her throat, reminding Allie that this was the wrong place for such thoughts. “Here’s the exit. When everyone starts running, come on in for dinner.”

  Chapter Five

  One day, this would be funny. But for now, he felt like a twelve-year-old getting caught busting his first nut to nudie pics on his omnitablet.

  It could have been worse.

  Check that.

  It couldn’t.

  No. He’d just rubbed his Best Talent against a woman who’d simply wanted to inform him of a hidden weapon.

  Gah! He was an idiot.

  Allie’s initial attempts to make him feel better made it worse.

  Allie’s giving up at such attempts and devolving into giggling fits every few steps had him looking up at the heavens and praying for death. “I liked it better when you were feeling sorry for my humiliation and not building on it. You know for most women—”

  “I’m not most women.”

  “Don’t I know it.”

  “You’ve never been laughed at by a woman, have you?”

  “I find it unpleasurable.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and tried to focus on the slightly bigger issue of their containment. “Nice place, when you take the people out of it. Didn’t think I’d ever see a sidewalk made out of wood.”

  “I expect a horse and buggy at any moment.”

  Women in blue worked on the small plots of fruits and vegetables interspersed among the buildings and what he assumed to be homes. A few looked up and smiled.

  The same smile.

  Correction: the same freaky-ass smile. The one that didn’t quite reach their eyes. Vin squatted next to one of the older ones. “This garden is great. I wouldn’t have thought you could get produce this size without modern technology.”

  She kept smiling, but hell, it changed. It deepened to one of authentic satisfaction. Pride.

  Vin waited a breath or two, but when she didn’t speak, he rested his hand against her shoulder. “You should be in the house looking after grandchildren or resting, not working into the evening.”

  A new look took hold of the wizened face now. Suspicion. It spread like a virus, jumping from one woman to the next as their hands stilled in the dark soil.

  He’d chosen his words with care, but evidently he’d gone too far. His next words would have been to ask if they wanted out. He held those back now. These women were either too scared or too indoctrinated. He dragged his hands down his face and got back up. “Good day, ladies.”

  Allie’s arm slid into his, something comforting in this hellhole. But when he looked over, she nodded to something across the street. Another man in tan with a woman in red. The woman walked beside him, head up, but with her arm firmly clamped beneath the man’s.

  Vin turned and waved at the couple. They waved back, but didn’t stop for conversation. The woman was too busy slapping a blue draped girl for bumping into her on the walkway.

  Allie elbowed him and let out a huff of air. “So do we make a run for it in the morning, or risk running now?”

  “Did they happen to tell you where they put our cyclerover?”

  “We’ll ask.”

  “We ask and they know we want out. We run and they catch us, or we’re poisoned by things that live in the woods.”

  “My vote is we run. Fast. I mean it. We’re in good shape. Maybe you a little more than me. And admittedly not good enough to outrun being shot, but we can’t stay here. I don’t know...”

  “We’ve got one thing on our side. We’re smart. Hell, we’re OSA. They trained us for survival. That’s our job right now. You watch my back, I watch yours.”

  They wouldn’t be done in by this place. He’d get them out one way or another. Every building they passed was a new opportunity. Anything that could be used as a weapon he mentally catalogued for future use.

  Allie’s gasp pulled him back to the present. Her skirt caught on an upturned nail and she flicked the voluminous scarlet folds to free it. Before he could bend to help, a young girl in blue sprang from an alleyway to let lose the captured cloth.

  “Thank you. I’m Allie, and you are?”

  The girl giggled and ran away.

  Allie’s grip on him tightened and she sucked her teeth. “We’re ending this.”

  Damn straight they were. He swallowed back against a stomach roiling with rage and tried for the billionth time to focus out getting of this place, rather than imagining just what this place was and what evil lay beneath the surface.

  Everything behind the barricade was centered on one main street. He knew the narrow alleys must lead to homes. From certain angles the facades of smaller fenced-in buildings were visible, but there was little activity back there.

  They’d walked the full length away from the main buildings—up to the barricade—and were making the return loop back when Allie skidded to a stop.

  “Look at that.”

  “What?”

  “That!” She jerked her head down one dim passageway.

  No houses here, save one. A big one. With an armed man patrolling outside it. “Graham’s house?”

  “Must be. Can’t hurt to confirm it.”

  It could, but they had to know.

  Three steps in and the young, flushed faced guardsman rushed their way. “This area’s restricted,” he said, voice cracking.

  “We need to talk to Graham.”

  The man shrugged at him and holstered his weapon. “Then you need to go back to the main house.”

  “This isn’t it? I just thought that with you guarding the place it must be important.”

  Johnny-Wants-To-Be-A-Soldier nodded. “Oh, I understand. Yeah. No, this is Doc’s place.”

  “Do you have two doctors then? I saw that sign on the main thoroughfare and—”

  “Right, right. That’s where you go if you’re sick.” He coughed and cleared his throat. As if remembering this wasn’t a social visit, his voice dropped a few octaves, and he waved them on. “This is restricted. You need to go on now.”

  “No worries. Sorry to bother you. Nice to see a good man doing his duty.”

  The kid brightened and damn near skipped back to his post as they departed. He couldn’t have been more than eighteen.

  Allie looked as though she might gag. Patting her head didn’t improve the arched eyebrow. “Lessons learned, Madam Inspector?”

  “Get your hand off my head first. Thanks. Okay, we need to get into the building before we leave.”

  “No. That’s not the lesson, actually. No. Not even a little. The lesson is, there’s fucked-up shit here. The larger lesson as a whole is that we need to get OSA and—”

  “Like you said, we don’t have immediate transport.”

  “But—”

  “And they’re probably watching us like hawks. They plan on us running. They might even be waiting for it. Why don’t we lay low a little until things settle down?”

  “Because they’re sickos. The only way to help is to get rid of this Graham guy and toss him into the nearest lake.”

  “So we k
ill him?”

  He’d thought about it. If he saw the asshole with his hands on a woman, there wouldn’t be anything stopping Vin from ripping his throat out. But what would happen next? Good odds said they’d be killed immediately by the men in tan.

  At least he would.

  And leaving Allie alone with these rejects wasn’t on the table.

  “If we have a shot of making it out—and I think we do—we need other people. Folks can’t be going along with this happily.”

  “Every man in tan seems to be.”

  “But who’s to say that’s every man? And don’t make their mistake of ignoring the women. If we stay, we need to prepare to fight. Who cares about the gender of the army we use, Allie? I just gotta get one. We find weapons and put them in the right hands.”

  She turned toward the alley then looked at the main building. “I can think of two places they’d be held. At the big house or at the medical lab. We’re going to have to break into Doc’s after all.”

  She flinched at an ear-splitting ringing bell. Fabrics of all colors caught the wind as folks scurried toward the main building.

  He bent at Allie’s incessant pinching of his arm and upturned face. “How’s this look? Docile enough?”

  “When this is over, I’m going to take you out to dinner.”

  “That sounded very much like an order, Security Agent Dhoma. In the real world, I’d own your career for that.”

  “You’d deserve it. Let me try again. When this is over...”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m going to do whatever it takes to make up for bringing you here.”

  “That sounds better and since you asked, I think I’d like a dinner at the most exclusive restaurant on that space nest everyone’s talking about.”

  “The Lana? Pretty sure I can make that happen.”

  The Lana was a space station named after his sister-in-law. The woman brought new joy to his family, and the vision of introducing her to Allie triggered a dampening wave of homesickness. Lana and his brother Cyprus, his parents, his crew. He wouldn’t let this place cheat him out of seeing them again.

  “Are you okay, Vin? You’ve gone quiet.”

  “Thinking about what to wear on our date. Something svelte.”

  “Do you even know what that means?”

  “No. Sounds rubbish, don’t it? Something manly, then. Sexy. Debonair. And yes, I know what it means. Debonair, not svelte.”