“What are we doing here?” she hissed as he paused by a door and hammered on it with a massive fist.
“Fuck off, Zero!” a muffled voice came from inside.
Zero winked at her and leaned in, one massive shoulder against the door. “Either open the door, Sparky, or I’ll tear it off its fucking hinges!” he yelled.
The door cracked open widely enough for them to see one blue eye. Jayce Allen. She should have known. “Good luck. It’s a slider,” he hissed. “Now fuck off. You’re messing with my meditation.”
The door started to slide shut, but Zero was quicker. Jamming his metal hand into the gap, the door mechanism squealed in protest as he forced it open.
“Meditation?” she asked as Zero ushered her through the door, only letting go when they were both through. The door slid shut behind them and she turned to look at Allen’s quarters. Far from the squalid hovel she’d expected, it was neat. Like barracks neat. The blanket on the single bunk was tight enough to bounce a coin off… if you could find such an antique all the way out here.
“I find a little one-on-one time with the captain works most issues out.” He gestured toward the bottle of whiskey on the desk. Captain Jones… the cheapest rot-gut whiskey there was on base. She knew it well.
He folded his arms over his chest, looking at them both, and glared at Zero. “What do you want, big guy?”
“Whatever weaponry you got, the keys to whatever ship you can steal and a winning lottery ticket.”
Sparky’s eyebrow lifted. “What color would you like your dragon? Because if you think you’re getting off this rust bucket with SO13 here, you’d better think again.”
“Shit…” Eris breathed. “I thought they were normal special forces.”
SO13 weren’t just special forces; they were black ops… blacker than a black cat in a damn coal cellar. So black they were a myth because most people who saw them didn’t survive the encounter.
“Nope,” Sparky’s lips compressed into a thin line. “So whatever it is, big guy. Not my problem.”
Zero didn’t move, arms folded over his chest as he mirrored Allen’s stance. “Well, I’m making it your problem. Unless you want to be on the Warborne’s shit list.”
Eris felt like she was watching tennis as she looked between the two men. Uppermost in her mind was the fact that Allen had recognized SO13. Then…
“The Warborne?” she asked, confused.
“My unit,” Zero answered without looking away from Allen. The two were locked into a staring contest so intent that if a fly flew between them it was sure to explode. “And you humans owe us. We helped you with Lady Cole. Remember?”
“I knew it!” she hissed. He was military, just as she’d suspected. “What… wait? Us humans?”
“Yeah,” Allen drawled. “Loverboy here didn’t tell you? He and his buddies are little green men. Not local. AKA not fucking human. And why do I gotta pay for that mess? Cole was nothing to do with me.”
❖
Fuck. This hadn’t been how Zero had wanted Eris to finally figure out he wasn’t human. But, caught in a staring contest with Sparky, he couldn’t reassure her. He winced internally, waiting for her to blow up or issue the barrage of questions he knew was coming.
What he did not expect was for her to round on Sparky. “The fact that you recognized they’re SO13 is interesting. Don’t’cha think, Allen? It is to me anyway… how would they react if someone were to tell them you were on base as well?”
Oh fuck… she had him there. Zero suppressed his grin as Sparky’s expression went flat under his scowl and his eyes shuttered. It was only the tiniest tell, the minutest movement of muscle. For Zero, the human might as well have hung out a banner that Eris had surprised him.
Sparky sighed, running a hand through his shock of dirty blond hair.
“Well, okay… I guess I should welcome you to the dark side then.” Then he grinned salaciously and looked Eris up and down. “I’d offer you more than cookies, but lover boy here would turn me into human jam on a bulkhead, so the best I got is the cap’n there…” he jerked his thumb toward the bottle on the desk.
“When we’re free and clear of this place, we’ll join you in finishing the bottle,” she replied, offering her hand.
Sparky shook it firmly, winking at Zero. “Well, we will… Handsome here can’t get drunk.”
“Oh?” She looked over her shoulder at Zero.
He shrugged, folding his arms so he didn’t deck Sparky for daring to touch her. Jealousy was a bitch, surging out of nowhere and almost overwhelming all his systems.
“My non-organic systems purge any poisons before they can become harmful.” Shit. He didn’t want to explain further than that, not without a lot of preparation and sounding her out. The last thing he wanted was for her to see him as a machine… or worse, a robot. He was a man with a man’s needs…
“Fuck… that sucks.” Her expression was full of sympathy but leveled out as she looked back at Sparky.
He was pleased to see she let go of the human’s hand at the earliest opportunity and stepped back closer to him. The move might have been purely instinctive to put some space between her and the human male, but Zero was more than happy to construe it as she wanted to be closer to him. That she trusted him.
He wanted her to trust him. He wanted her to do far more than trust him… but trust was a start and could go so many exciting places.
“Okay… show us the goodies,” Eris ordered, all professional and business-like. Only she wasn’t. Her heart rate and respiration were elevated. Zero knew the signs. She was riding the edge of panic and was concealing it well. “So… what you got in the line of
