Page 9 of Rescued By the Convicts
Now that was going too far.
Zev’s eyes jumped from her to the guard standing a few beds over. Oh, she had to go along with this. Damn, she hated this. She’d never been good at subterfuge.
“Ivan’s not weak!” she protested, putting as much venom into her words as she could.
“Then why does he let you work here, Doctor? Where you’re vulnerable?” he said, clear disdain pouring out of his mouth.
Zev wasn’t putting on a show for the guards. He worried about her. She wanted to reassure him, but she needed to keep her emotional distance, at least in front of the guards.
“You’re all patched up, Mr. . . What is your last name, anyway?”
“If I thought you needed to know, I’d fucking write it on your naked back in my cum.”
She let her finger glide to his thigh as her hair swung forward and hid her smile from the guards. He’d alluded to the Bacculan mating ceremony.
Zev’s dark eyes stared into her face as she wrote his name on his thigh with her finger, mimicking what he’d done on her chest in the underground cavern. She hadn’t been imagining that moment. Zev had marked her according to Bacculan custom, even though he’d refused to ring her along with the others later that week.
“Guard!” she called before she broke down and plastered her lips to his. “Get this. . . this. . .”
“Asshole?” Elgin offered.
“Yes, exactly. Get him out of here.” She spun away from Zev even as she tried to lock his image in her head. It could be a very long time before she saw him again.
* * *
ZEV
The guard threwZev out of the med-center as hard as he could, making sure he’d stumble and fall flat on his face. Maybe the guy didn’t like how he’d spoken to Melina. Hell, Zev hadn’t like it either, except it had been necessary. He needed to stay away from her, make everyone believe she meant nothing to him except as a good lay. . . the same way every other man in this colony thought of her.
If the animals here ever got their hands on her, they’d brutalize her. So many of them talked about what they’d do to her, in graphic detail. Zev continually had to restrain himself from starting fights over a woman he was supposed to have no attachment to. Joining their conversations about her, degrading her, sickened him, but he had to blend in. He’d only recently made it into Hawke’s gang as an initiate. He had to keep up the facade. Let them think he and Ivan hadn’t gotten along—which wasn’t too far from the truth—and he’d been kicked out of their unit.
As Zev headed in the direction of Hawke’s camp, he noted the increase in security. Hawke had added another seven men to his ranks in recent weeks, including Zev, which made blending in easier, but made the hair on the back of his neck rise.
“Took you long enough,” Hawke said from behind. Damn, the man had stealth.
“There were five of us in the med-center. Low priority wounds get treated last.”
“Next time I’ll stab you myself, make sure it’s to an organ so you’re moved up in line.”
“And I’d get out that much later. As it is, Branson is a fucking bastard. Ran off the second the fight went down.”
“I only needed one of you wounded.”
So Branson had been given orders to cut and run, literally. Zev grabbed Hawke by the collar and slammed him up against the wall of his command center, a two-story building made of metal and cinder block, much like the guards’ housing. The man definitely had connections either to the guards or Manager Thorne himself. These building materials weren’t given to prisoners, and Jayce had said this building wasn’t built by The Company.
As expected, Hawke drew his arms up from the inside, knocked Zev’s outward, and punched him squarely in his face. Blood gushed from his nose.
“You forget who’s in charge here, Winfield.”
“You fucking set me up.”
“You still had Rivers with you, which is more than you should have needed against those assholes. And the objective was to get you into the med-center, which worked. Tell me about the woman, the guards. Everything.”
“Three guards, as usual. Two med-techs. Yost and another guy I don’t know. The doctor and I exchanged some words. We’re not going to be able to woo her to leave the med-center if that’s what you’re thinking. She’s loyal to Ivan’s unit.”
“You should have taken her.”
“I was fucking chained to a bed, Hawke.”
