Love. Yeah, that fit. Not the kind of love where he wanted to ram his dick up the guy’s ass, but like a brother.
And he knew Roscoe loved Dolce.
Maybe it’s time to nut up and admit it.
“We love you, baby,” Niner whispered to her. “We’re here for you. I love you, and he loves you.” He glanced at Roscoe, hoping that was right.
From the man’s arched eyebrow and obvious surprise, he was glad to see he’d hit the nail squarely on the head.
Then, Roscoe nodded.
He nodded back before continuing. “I know we can’t take the pain away, but we promise you we’re not going anywhere without you. I mean, you know what I mean. You’ve got our hearts. We don’t want anyone but you. You aren’t alone anymore.”
“We love you,” Roscoe whispered.
Okay, well, he didn’t fark that up. Thank god.
Her tears slowly subsided and she looked from Roscoe to him. “Please,” she whispered. “Help me stop thinking. Shut my brain off. Even if only for a few minutes.”
Roscoe gently cupped her cheek with his palm and kissed her. Not a spit-sucking one, but with such tenderness and love that hell, Niner thought he could just lie there and watch them for a few minutes.
It hit him right in the heart.
Well, thankfully he’s not a total asshole.
After a couple of minutes, Roscoe turned her toward Niner again, and he kissed her. He was aware of Roscoe moving, doing something, and then Niner realized Roscoe was helping her out of her pants without removing his own.
When she softly moaned into his mouth, Niner knew exactly what Roscoe was doing to her.
She held onto him like a drowning woman, clinging, and he was happy to be her rock.
* * * *
When in the military, she’d always heard about people turning to sex in times of grief, especially after combat. Sometimes, a unit would come back, especially if they’d lost people, and then it was like for the next twenty-four hours you couldn’t walk into a shower tent or latrine or supply tent without accidentally interrupting someone in the throes of sex.
Now, she understood it. After losing her friends, and especially after losing Mark. It didn’t matter that she’d only really known him for less than a couple of weeks.
She’d lost more than she’d ever had, it felt like.
And these two men were willing to give back to her more than she’d ever had.
She’d take every bit of it that they’d give her. Especially since she knew they didn’t have a lot of time, and the unit couldn’t afford to wait on her while she grieved.
Roscoe’s mouth worked its magic on her clit. She noticed he didn’t bother undressing as he lay between her legs and licked and sucked at her, coaxing her brain to follow him for a while, to focus on the pleasure and what they were doing.
Their love.
Holy hell, they had both said they loved her, hadn’t they?
Okay, she could deal with that in a minute. Right now, she didn’t want to do anything to interrupt or derail Roscoe’s valiant efforts in her southern hemisphere.
Niner cradled her face in his hands, his lips on hers, muffling the sound of her cries when her body finally relinquished control to Roscoe. Roscoe grabbed hold of her thighs as she came, refusing to let her push him away as he continued licking and sucking, forcing her to ride through wave after wave of pleasure.
Niner nipped her tongue, sucking on it, dividing her attention between the two of them, rendering her unable to focus.
Just the effect she’d been hoping for.
Finally, only when Roscoe was satisfied he’d made her come long enough, did he finally relent. He kissed the insides of her thighs, the stubble of his cheek rough against her flesh.
Her eyes fluttered open to see Niner’s green gaze staring down at her. “Better?”
She grabbed his head again and pulled him in for another kiss, hard, fierce, wanting, praying her grief made some sort of alchemic transformation into something her heart could live with.
Roscoe sat up. She heard him unfastening his belt and shoving his trousers down, and then he was fucking her, slow and sweetly while Niner took control of their kiss.
He cradled her head in the crook of his arm and pressed his forehead to hers, his hand cupped around the back of her head. “Come for us, baby. Let him get you over like that.” He worked his free hand up under her T-shirt and bra and played with her nipples. “Look at me. Don’t close your eyes.”
She stared into his sweet green gaze right there before her, her entire field of vision. His hand went back and forth, from one nipple to the other, tweaking, playing with them, while Roscoe adjusted his angle and stroke just a little.
And she felt it, the start, the tingle, as her climax sparked.
“That’s it, sweetheart,” Niner said, keeping his gaze drilling into hers, straight into her soul. “You know you want to give it to us. We want it.”
Her world ended just past their bodies. That was the way she wanted it. There was nothing else, no death, no Kite—nothing but these two men and their love for her.
As Roscoe slowly thrust, she let everything else slip away except what she was feeling, the sounds of their breath, their presence trumping everything else.
Slowly, Roscoe picked up speed, bringing her with him as she drew closer, the feeling tightening inside her like a rubber band. Until, finally, it let go, flooding her with pleasure. Niner’s lips crushed hers again, giving her the freedom to cry out as Roscoe began fucking her in earnest now. Faster, keeping her release going as he sought his, until he finally finished inside her, holding still buried deep within her.
Niner let her go with a final kiss. “I love you, too,” she whispered. “Both of you.”
Roscoe leaned in and kissed her. “Love you, baby. You sure you can put up with an asshole like me?”
She smiled. “Yeah. You’re my asshole.”
He grinned. “Only yours, baby.”
They switched places, Roscoe cradling her against him while Niner slipped his trousers down, his cock easily sliding inside her.
With his sultry, brown gaze and darker skin he was so different than Niner in so many ways.
That, and he was an asshole sometimes.
She didn’t care. She’d take him just the way he was, him and his honest heart. That was worth more to her than any glib words.
She had Niner for words. What mattered was feelings, and she knew they both loved her.
For Roscoe, there was always duct tape, if things got bad enough.
Roscoe played with her nipples, kissing her, teasing her until Niner’s cock also started churning pleasure inside her. Working like a finely tuned machine, the two of them teamed together and coaxed her body back up to the edge again.
And when she tipped over, they were there, holding her, catching her, until finally when the last echoes of her climax receded Niner leaned in and kissed her.
“Love you so much, baby,” he whispered.
She reached up to both of them, palming their cheeks. “Love you guys,” she said. “You’re stuck with me.”
Roscoe gave a curt nod of his head. “Good, because if you think I’m a verbal klutz sometimes, I’m sure I could screw up groveling, too.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Silo stood at the windows in his office and stared out to the east, toward the Sandia Mountains, as Jerald talked.
“…I’m afraid what this means is that he’s likely dead, sir. I can’t risk asking around about him for fear of it pointing back to us.” When Silo didn’t respond after several minutes, Jerald asked, “Sir?”
Silo waved a hand at him. “I heard you,” he said.
Inside, he seethed. He knew exactly what had happened. Arliss had sent Macaletto to Los Angeles—deliberately—to put him squarely in the sights of the Drunk Monkeys.
Who’d taken him out the way they’d likely taken out Macaletto’s man in Mexico City.
Arliss was proving to b
e a more cunning foe than he’d first thought.
After several more minutes to let all that digest, he asked, “We don’t have anyone reliable in Arliss’ office right now?”
“Not directly, no. I’m sorry, sir.”
“We don’t even know if Riley Perkins was ever really in Los Angeles, do we? If she actually contacted you? It could have been part of an elaborate ploy by Arliss to expose our connection in all of this.”
Jerald started to answer, hesitated, then finally admitted, “I don’t know, sir. I believe she really did contact us, based on what our operatives said happened when they tried to acquire her. Then, somehow, our efforts were…thwarted. Whether by design or by coincidence, I don’t know. Once they lost sight of her, they were unable to find her and had to leave the area due to the earthquake and escalating violence there. Their mission proved unsuccessful.”
“Awfully funny she contacts us, and then somehow ends up contacting General Arliss, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know the exact details of how that came to pass. Macal—our contact was very brief on the phone. I could have misunderstood him, or I might not have received all the information.”
“Did you try calling him back?”
“Multiple times. I suspect it was a burner cell that he disposed of after we talked.”
Silo finally turned and dropped into his chair, staring up at Jerald. “How blasted difficult can it be to track down a group of twenty men?”
“Well, they’re special ops, sir. They trained for infiltration, recovery, attack, stealth. This is their battlefield, their style of fighting. Urban warfare and evasion is one of their strengths.”
Silo leaned back and pondered that for a while. “They have someone working with them. Someone outside the military. They must have. Someone working with General Arliss and feeding him information. It’s the only way Macaletto missed any of what happened.”
“It would appear that is a valid assumption, yes.”
“Send people after that man in Chicago. What’s his name? Mike? The guy who was the boss of Celia Jorgens. The one she e-mailed while she was in Australia. Send someone to Chicago and find out what he knows. By any means necessary.”
“But, sir, we’ve had electronic surveillance on his accounts, and on Ms. Jorgens’ e-mails. There hasn’t been anything new from her in the past couple of weeks.”
He arched an eyebrow at his assistant. “Well, duh. If the guy is smart enough to track a North Korean scientist and his family to Australia, he’s damn sure smart enough to hide his fucking e-mails!” Silo was screaming by the time he finished the sentence, although he hadn’t meant to be.
Jerald’s eyes had grown wide.
Dammit.
He took a deep breath and calmed himself. “My apologies, son. I’m very stressed out.”
“Yes, sir. It’s all right. No worries, I understand.”
What Silo really wanted to do was stand up, pick up his chair, and sling it through the large, plate glass window behind him.
That, however, could appear unseemly.
Mary is going to get the ass-fucking of her goddamned life tonight when I get home.
“Make sure whoever investigates that man in Chicago,” Silo slowly said, “is very skilled and dependable. And that it is the last conversation the man ever has. Right?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Maybe it’s time to send someone to talk to Celia Jorgens’ family, too.”
Jerald nodded.
Silo shooed him out.
When Silo was alone again, he turned his chair around to face the view of the mountains. It was starting to feel like for every two steps forward they took, they took one step back.
Most men would take that as a sign from God to stop what they’re doing. Fortunately for me, I’m not most men.
Oh, he would have his way. Of that he was certain. One thing he’d learned over the years was that he could do anything he put his mind to.
Anything.
He would not fail.
* * * *
I can’t tell him now. He’s too stressed out already.
Jerald had found several more articles online about the Drunk Monkeys that morning. They’d been buried, news about the LA earthquake and resulting issues taking the spotlight.
But they were disturbing in their praise of the men. It was almost as if someone were determined to portray them as folk heroes of the apocalypse. The men who would deliver the world from this scourge of Kite.
And Jerald didn’t like that one bit. He needed the world to think it was Reverend Hannibal Silo who would lead the faithful to the one true way and guarantee them a place in paradise.
Otherwise, people wouldn’t send money.
Money ran their organizational behemoth. It greased the wheels. It allowed him to get away with things in the name of the better good that otherwise might get them sent to prison for life.
And they were too damn close to their goals for him to accept failure as any kind of an option.
He also suspected the longer it took for the reverend to achieve his greater goals, the more unstable the man’s mood would become.
Might be time to start slipping something into his coffee.
He’d been trying to get Silo an audience with President Kennedy, but the bitch’s chief of staff kept ignoring his requests. And he couldn’t exactly admit their ulterior motives without implicating themselves.
If he could get Silo an audience with the woman, it might take the man’s mind off the fact that it appeared their Los Angeles project had been an utter waste of time and money. The reverend might have his contacts in the CDC, but so did Jerald.
And in other places.
Kite had exploded in the LA region. It was only a matter of time before that fact made it into the media. While the rest of the United States—the parts of it not undergoing their own riots or strife—could sit back and watch the final demise of the California city from the safety of their own homes, Jerald was a man forced to take logistics into consideration.
By his calculations, it might only be a couple of weeks, or sooner, before Kite reached their little slice of New Mexico. Jerald’s contacts had outlined a chilling plan already underway to neutralize as much of the threat as possible in the LA area, but it wasn’t a good plan.
No better a plan than China had to wipe North Korea off the face of the map.
And we all know how that turned out.
Troops were methodically going building-by-building, clearing them, and setting fire to them later, once there were no civilian witnesses.
Witnesses were immediately executed.
So was anyone testing positive for Kite, or anyone traveling with a Kite-infected person.
What the troops doing this hadn’t been told yet was once they herded everyone to Barstow, where road blocks on the other side of town kept people from leaving, they would also be liquidated with the rest of the town and refugee camp, if they’d been exposed.
It was a chilling scheme. Estimates ran as high as fifteen percent of the LA refugees testing blue for Kite.
They would have to leave for St. Louis soon. A little sooner than Jerald had originally anticipated, but he didn’t want to be in Albuquerque when Kite began its deadly march across the state.
Why worry the reverend and tell him about the PR campaign already being waged on the behalf of the Drunk Monkeys? His own life was crazy enough without his boss and mentor going off the deep end on him.
I think I’ll wait. He doesn’t need to know.
Chapter Thirty
Late that afternoon, Dolce perched on a rock in the backyard and stared toward the west, where the sky was a little lighter over the mountains there than it was to the east. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t see the impending sunset through the thick, smoggy haze. She knew it was out there.
Somewhere.
To the south, the smoke from the fires was even more noticeable, eerie, growing thicker and darker as the day dragged on.
/> Well, the city literally went to hell.
More reports from Bubba that Kite was taking hold in the valley. The National Guard and local authorities were no longer requesting people leave the city and head toward Barstow. They had shut down major roads to the south and east, even ones still passable, and were forcibly funneling people toward Barstow.
No one was being checked for Kite anymore in the convoys, either. They were loading them as fast as they could and transporting them to huge tent cities cropping up around the north and west of the desert town.
It increasingly appeared that the unsettling hypothesis about what to do with a couple million people potentially infected with Kite was about to be tested.
Early estimates about death tolls in the Los Angeles area from the riots, earthquake, and now Kite had already topped two million, and were climbing every hour.
And at the last census just a couple of years earlier, the approximate population for the area, following decades of flu pandemics and other earthquakes, had hovered around the five-million mark. Although it had dropped due to people fleeing in the aftermath of the anthrax attacks of the previous year.
Bubba had suggested they clear out of the area sooner rather than later. While their current location in Altadena might be okay for now, it would be less than a week, maybe only a day or two, before a panicked flood of refugees fleeing the area on foot caught up with them once they realized what the National Guard was doing in terms of herding them out of the valley and into the desert.
In the space of a few days, Dolce’s life had completely shifted, first by aligning herself with Mark, then another shift when she met the Drunk Monkeys.
Once more, if she counted finding her friends and learning their fate.
Part of her almost wished she hadn’t. That she could have gone on with the irrational, but emotionally easier idea that they were alive, out there, somewhere, and okay.
Another shift to lose Mark. She’d just gotten to know and rely on him. She felt cheated.