Being Emerald. Sylvia Ryan

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      He displayed just the barest of smiles and then waved her over. “Come on.” His voice was rough. He’d been on the verge of sleep.

      Instinctively, her Amber needs flared to life. The need to be smiled at, touched, hugged, fucked. This man triggered all of them. She plopped down next to him. Thigh to thigh.

      Laila had dreamed about having the unconditional acceptance of a roommate relationship in Circle City. Through the years, she’d often wished she had a man watching over her, caring for her like all the other girls she’d grown up with in the Amber Zone.

      Rock offered his hand, and she laced their fingers together.

      “You have to tell me where you’re going before you go,” he said. “This is non-negotiable and not entirely because of what you did this afternoon. During your training, we’ll create routines that will keep both of us safer. Actions will speak louder than words between us. Sometimes the absence of a routine or a non-response to a normal everyday signal is the only warning you may be able to give. Do you understand?”

      She sighed. “Yes.”

      He shook his head and closed his eyes for a few seconds as if her simplistic view of the world tested him. When his gaze met hers again, it had softened. “Baby, you’re in the big leagues now. If he’d found that bug when he searched you, that guardsman wouldn’t have hesitated splattering your brains all over the walls.”

      “I get that. Your little drama drove the fact home loud and clear.”

      “Good. Now, who is your contact?” His voice was gruff, but she didn’t feel any anger in him.

      “If you’re Resistance, you know I can’t tell you.” Cells were made up of individuals who didn’t know the others in their cell, unless something occurred to make it absolutely necessary. Morgan interrogated with drugs. Many Sapphire Resistance members in drug-induced stupors gave up co-conspirators, decimating a substantial portion of the Resistance in that zone.

      “Do you even know the name of your contact here in Emerald?”

      “Yes. And if you knew it too, it could mean a death sentence. It’s not worth the risk.”

      He responded with silence.

      I’m right, and he knows it.

      It didn’t seem like the subject was settled as he sat there, stiffly, a million miles away.

      She experienced a sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach.

      His sinking feeling.

      “What is it?” she asked.

      Eyebrows furrowed, he looked down at her. “How did you know to ask what?”

      “Huh?”

      “What did I do that prompted you to ask what just now?” he asked, over-enunciating.

      Avoiding his gaze, she shrugged. She’d almost given herself away.

      He grabbed her chin and lifted her face to meet his gaze. It seemed like he inspected every nuance while their eyes were locked until, finally, he released her. “Your risk today has already paid off. Unfortunately, the news isn’t good. We won’t be any safer from the Gov when we’re out of the city. Morgan couldn’t let us go. Couldn’t let us out of his reach.”

      “What are you talking about?”

      “After you left his office, I got an earful of him getting his dick sucked by none other than Sydney Parr.”

      “Oh, no.” She groaned.

      Rock raked his hand through his shaggy brown hair and focused on the vid screen. The flickering light tinted his face blue.

      She laid her head against his arm and yawned.

      “There’s something you need to know,” he said. “My father was one of the original Resistance members back when the Repopulation Laws were enacted. The history between Morgan’s father and mine seems to have aligned the stars to make us enemies. It’s like we were born to finish the struggle they started so long ago.”

      “Except this Morgan is crazier than his father.”

      “Yeah. And since he can’t outright murder me without severe retaliation, he placed me on the recovery team, hoping something or someone will do his dirty work for him. I’ve been on mission after mission outside the city walls. It has to be pissing him off I keep returning.

      “Now you’re assigned to a mission traveling farther from the city than anyone’s gone since the pandemic.”

      “Yeah.”

      “He’s hoping you won’t come back.”

      “His goal may be for neither of us to return, with Sydney on the mission to make sure of it. You have to be very careful with Garret. If Sydney’s being deployed on this mission to kill us, he probably is, too.”

      Rock grabbed the remote off the table and flicked off the video, plunging them into darkness. “C’mere.” He shifted them around until he spooned her. With a heavy leg slung over hers, he enveloped her in solid muscle.

      “So that’s it,” she said, “an old grudge started by your fathers? I had a sense something more personal was going on.”

      “It’s not all, but enough of an explanation for tonight. Just be aware Morgan will never leave me alone. If I had the opportunity, I’d kill Conrad Morgan with my bare hands, and he knows it. So, he flexes and flaunts his power in my face every opportunity he gets, knowing I’ll never get close enough to make him pay for his actions.”

      Laila closed her eyes and enjoyed his warm breath ruffling her hair. The slow expansion and release of his chest pressed at her back. His heavy arm slung over her waist cinched her close to him. She felt exceptionally small and perfectly safe.

      “So, you can have babies now?” The rumble of his words vibrated against her back.

      “Yes,” she whispered, feeling if she said it too loud, it wouldn’t be real.

      “Are you going to run right out and fuck the first man you see?”

      Something fluttered inside. You’re the first man I see. “If that’s your way of asking if I’m seeing someone, the answer is God no.”

      “Not just no, but God no? Why so adamant?”

      “Getting me pregnant is all sex with any of these boys outside Amber is good for. And, yes, I mean boys, because men should know how to give a woman an orgasm.”

      He chuckled. “I’ve heard their skills are lacking.”

      “You’re being kind. Not one man I’ve been with since I left Amber could get me off. Plus, every damn one of them treated me like a novelty. Brave men who took a walk on the wild side putting their dicks into an Amber. It didn’t take long to realize what was going on. Overall, it was too much effort to put in just to be disappointed once we got our clothes off.”

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