Page 76 of Choosing Jenny
He grabbed the front of my fatigues and yanked me to him, but he paused just short of kissing me. “I won’t beg, Tiger love. If you don’t want me—”
Fuck it.I had no idea what the future would hold, but for right now, I had this, and them. I crushed my mouth to his, my pulse roaring in my ears as something primal surged through me. His scent, his lips, his need…all of it swept away my disturbing thoughts. The fear dissolved for now, snuffed out by desire.
I barely noticed Jenny working her way between us, helping to remove our clothing while we frantically kissed. When I finally opened my eyes, she was already naked and settled back on the sheets, waiting for us.
We joined her, a tangle of lips and limbs as we spent the next few hours lost in each other, our desire heightened by the looming threat of tomorrow and the desperate need to feel something real before it all began.
The next day was long and tense, because none of us could get started on our missions until the suns went down. We had planned and strategized everything on Halla—everyone knew their assignments, their positions, what to do if things went wrong.
Leaving Jenny and Malice behind was the hardest part.
Sam and I were the first out, since we had the farthest to travel. We met Jac at the old city dump, still the worst-smelling place on Halla, hands down. To her credit, Sam didn’t complain too much.
We waited for Curse and Patch—two of Jac’s most reliable underworld contacts. Their submersible ship,Regal, would get us through the sewer access points, and they brought along an old junker ship to use as our explosive decoy.
When the two ships bubbled up from the murky, stench-ridden water by the dump’s dock, Sam startled and jumped back. I laughed.
An amused smile tipped up the corners of Jac’s mouth. “Don’t feel bad. Tiger did that the first time here, too.”
Curse popped out of the door and grinned, his bronze skin shining in the overhead lights of the dump. “All aboard.”
We loaded up, and their ship towed the junk ship for us. WhenRegalsubmerged, Sam’s eyes went wide. But it was when we had to change into old diver uniforms that she frowned.
“What, um…what are these for?” she asked.
“To protect us from the raw sewage,” I said, zipping mine up.
“Lovely,” she muttered. Her suit was far too big on her slight human frame, the fabric bunching in awkward places, but it was the best we could do.
When we reached the tunnel system beneath the royal prison, the cargo hatch opened and the stench slammed into us as the three of us disembarked.
Sam gagged and grimaced. “Oh god, that smell!”
We trudged our way through the waist-high sewage in the tunnel. Our goal was clear: bribe the guards, access Sam’s family’s cell block, get them out, and blow up the decoy ship over the prison as a distraction.
Bribing the guards was easy. They weren’t paid enough to remain loyal and most of them made their living from bribes as it was. They took us to where Sam’s family was being held, down three levels from where we had entered.
Twelve humans, just like she’s said.
They cried the moment they saw her, assuming she was going to be imprisoned as well. But when we explain that we were getting them out, they cried even harder. They were understandably terrified we would fuck this up, and the consequences would be worse than what they had experienced already.
But Sam was insistent. “Mom, guys, we have to gonow, or we will all die!”
Given their hesitation, I was surprised they finally agreed. We gave them diver suits, too, and rushed them from the prison. Twelve shell-shocked, Ladrian-wary humans sat quietly inRegal’scargo hold. At first, the only one to speak was the youngest. I wasn’t good with human ages, but I assumed he was four or five.
The little boy walked over to me, staring up at my face in awe. “I thought all the monsters were bad.”
I smiled at him, unable to imagine the terror he’d experienced, being whisked away from Earth and held hostage on an alien planet. “Some are, some aren’t. Just like humans.”
He took my hand and returned the smile. “You’re a good monster.”
Sam choked back tears, but she was smiling through them. “He’s thebestmonster, J.P.”
Once we transferred the Riggins family to Jac’s borrowed ship, it was time for me to do my part.
Jac came to me, his gaze searching my face. “You sure you know how to do this?”
“It goes against everything in me to blow up any ship, but yeah, I’ve got this.”
