Soon enough, someone scored his vein and put it to her lips.
Xcor dropped his eyes to his boots and allowed his peripheral vision to monitor the environs.
There was a time when he would have become aroused at the sight—not because he was particularly interested in the sex, but more in the same manner that when he saw food, his stomach would grumble. And accordingly, in the past, when he had had the need to take a female, he had done just that. Usually in the dark, of course, so the dear girl wouldn’t be offended or afeared.
He could well imagine the strained expressions males sported when they were in their erotic throes did little to improve his looks.
Now, though? He felt curiously unplugged from it all, as if he were watching a team of males move some heavy furniture or perhaps rake a lawn.
It was his Chosen, of course.
Having had his lips against her pure skin, having looked into her luminous green eyes, having smelled her delicate scent, he was utterly uninterested in the well-used charms of that female in front of the fire.
Oh, his Chosen…he had never known such grace existed, and moreover, he could not have e’er surmised that he would be touched so completely by that which was antithetical to him. She was his opposite, kind and giving when he was brutal and unforgiving, beautiful to his ugliness, ethereal to his filth.
And she had marked him. Sure as if she had struck him and left a scar deep within his flesh, he was wounded and weakened by her.
There was naught to be done.
Lo, even the memory of the moments he had shared with her, when she had been fully clothed, and he had been so gravely injured, were enough to stir him at his hips, his sorry sex stiffening for no good reason a’talclass="underline" Even if they had not been on different sides of the war for the throne, she would never have let him come to her as a male does when he is enthralled with a female of worth. That breezy autumn night when they had met under that tree, she had been performing a valid service in her own mind. It had naught to do with him in particular.
But oh, he wanted her nonetheless….
Abruptly, the female before the fire arched under the shifting, orgasming weights atop her, and he refocused on her. As if she sensed his sexual arousal, her blissed-out, fuzzy stare drifted over in his direction, and brief surprise flickered across her face—or what little he could see of it around the thick forearm offering her nourishment.
Shock widened her eyes. She evidently had failed to notice his presence—but now that she had, fear, not passion, clearly flared within her.
Unwilling to disrupt the action, he shook his head and flashed her his palm in a stop motion to reassure her that she was not going to have to bear his bite—or worse, his sex.
The messaging apparently worked, because the dread left her expression, and as one of his soldiers presented his cock for attention, she reached out and began stroking it over her head.
Xcor smiled to himself in a nasty way. This whore wouldn’t have him, and yet his body, in all its biological stupidity, insisted on responding to that Chosen as if the sacred female would e’er look twice at him.
So silly.
Checking his watch, he was surprised to find that the feeding had been going on for an hour already. So be it. Provided his males complied with his two basic rules, he was content to let this continue: They had to remain substantially clothed, and their weapons had to be holstered with the safeties off.
That way, if the tenor changed, they could defend themselves quickly.
He was more than willing to give them the time.
After this interlude? The lot of them were going to be at their full strength—and with the way things were going with the Brotherhood…they were going to need to be.
EIGHTEEN
“No. Fucking no way.”
Qhuinn had to agree with Z’s read on Rhage’s bright idea.
The bunch of them had struggled through the woods, with Rhage bearing most of Z’s weight while everyone else circled the pair, ready to pick off anything or anyone who threatened from the fringes. They were now back at the airplane hangar, and Hollywood’s solution to their mobility problem seemed like a complication with mortal implications, not anything that was actually going to help.
“How hard can it be to fly a plane?” As everyone, including Z, just looked at him, Rhage shrugged. “What. Humans do it all the time.”
Z rubbed his chest and slowly sank to the ground. After gathering his short breath, he shook his head. “First of all, you don’t know if…the damn thing…can even get airborne. It probably has no gas…and you’ve never flown before.”
“You wanna tell me what our other option is? We’re still miles from any plausible pickup location, you’re not improving, and we could get ambushed. Let me at least get in there and see if I can get the engine to turn over.”
“This is a bad call.”
In the quiet that followed, Qhuinn did the math himself, and glanced over at the hangar. After a moment, he said, “I’ll cover you. Let’s do this.”
Bottom line, Rhage was right. This foot-race of an evac was taking too long, and that lesser had disappeared before they’d stabbed him, not the other way around.
Had the Omega given his boys some special powers?
Whatever—a smart fighter never underestimated the enemy—especially when one of his own was down. They needed to get Z to safety, and if that meant an airlift, so the fuck be it.
He and Rhage filed into the hangar and flicked on their flashlights. The airplane was right where they’d left it in the back corner, looking like it was the ugly stepchild of some much prettier mode of transportation that had long since fled the scene. Closing in, Qhuinn saw that the propeller appeared to be sound, and, although the wings were dusty, he could hang his weight off of them.
The fact that the door hatch squeaked like a bitch when Rhage opened the way in was less than good news.
“Whew,” Rhage muttered as he recoiled. “Smells like something died in there.”
Man, must have been one hell of a stinky if the Brother could differentiate it from the rest of the smell inside the hangar.
Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea.
Before Qhuinn could offer a second read on the stench, Rhage turned himself into a pretzel and squeezed through the oval hole. “Holy shit—keys. There are keys—can you believe it?”
“How about gas?” Qhuinn muttered, as he swept his flashlight beam around in a wide circle. Nothing but that dirty-ass floor.
“You might want to step back there, son,” Rhage hollered out of the cockpit. “I’ma try and fire this old lady up.”
Qhuinn eased away, but come on. If the thing was going to go up in flames, like fifteen feet was going to make much of a difference—
The explosion was loud, the smoke was thick, and the engine sounded like it was suffering from a mechanical strain of whooping cough. But shit evened out. The longer they let it run, the more even the rhythm became.
“We gotta get out of here before we asphyxiate,” Qhuinn yelled into the plane.
Right on cue, Rhage must have put the thing in drive or something, because the airplane eased forward with a groan like every nut and bolt in its body hurt.
And this thing was going to get airborne?
Qhuinn jogged in front and hit the double bay’s seam. Gripping one side, he threw all the power in his body into the pull and ripped the thing apart, various latches and locks popping free and going flying.