Paired Pursuit (15 page)

“I'm not the only one who hacks in and reads confidential records.” Gareth cracked a rare grin, then sobered. “The woman in charge of Reno was killed two months ago while undertaking a wide patrol. Ramsey's likely her replacement. Anyhow…let's get to work. We can do a lot with these parts.”

“You can?” Mari blurted.

“Yep. Would be nice if we could put you to work as well. You can help me, and we'll compete against Gareth.” Finn reached out to tug her chair nearer his.

Mari snorted but complied. She began rummaging through the jumble, locating promising pieces and sorting them into piles at the end of the table. The Twins pulled repair kits from their leather jackets, and Mari tried not to imagine how much her father would have envied those kits. It wasn't long before they managed to construct two things that looked to Mari's untrained eye to be suitably lethal.

Wordlessly, she handed Finn a screw, watching closely as he tightened a joint in his contraption. It looked vaguely like an oversized gun, with dual bulbs at the front.

“Close your eyes,” Finn ordered. There was a
zap
, and a flash that she saw behind her shut eyelids.

“Not bad,” Gareth said. “Gonna suck up a lot of battery juice, though. Mine's more efficient.”

The way they affectionately competed against each other, extolling the virtues of their separate inventions, made Mari smile. Yet even as she felt herself begin to relax, lulled by their solid, protective company, the sound of Barks in the distance made her tense up.

“Well, they're here. I'm going to take a quick stroll, see what's up on the wall.” Gareth scooped up his invention, hesitating at the door. “Lock yourselves in. I don't know the soldiers here, and I don't trust some of them not to freak out and do something idiotic.” His gaze caressed Mari briefly.

She sat, bending an old wire in her hands, as Finn went to the door to lock it behind his brother. Slowly, idly, a dog took shape between her fingers, complete with wire ears and a stub tail. Bending one hind leg into shape, she suddenly registered Finn's gaze.

“That's neat,” he said. “Do you mind if I keep it?”

“It's not useful,” Mari muttered. She slid the dog across the table, abruptly hating it.

“Sweetheart…
useful
isn't the be-all and end-all in this world. There has to be beauty too. Otherwise what would we live for?” Finn pulled her chair even closer, so that the wood banged up against his own seat and their thighs were pressed together.

When she startled again at the howling of Barks, Finn began stroking her back, a comforting gesture. She leaned into him and simply absorbed his presence, grateful that her life had finally taken a turn for the better. What if she'd taken the train a day earlier? Or if the Twins hadn't been aboard?

“Hey. Easy with the overthinking.” Finn whispered the words right against her ear, making her shiver. He followed the command up with a tiny nibble of her lobe.

“I can't help but overthink. Life could be so different.” Even her protest was weak, just as her knees were beginning to be.

“Yeah, life could be all crazy kinds of different. The aliens could have headed in the opposite direction or we could have fought them off more successfully. Those possibilities don't change the fact that we are here, now. Together.”

This time, his lips strayed to her cheek, kissing a line toward her mouth, which he accessed by tilting her chin gently but firmly toward him. And she was lost in his warmth instantly. Gravity skewed as he pulled her atop his lap, never relinquishing contact for a second. Mari settled atop his muscular thighs, the bulge at his crotch brushing tantalizingly against her sex. She was wearing a skirt, so all they'd have to do was pull down her underwear and unzip his fly…

Mari halted that train of thought. Should they, without Gareth? It seemed wrong, somehow, to leave him out.

Anchoring herself on Finn's strong shoulders, she pulled away with a Herculean effort. “Gareth,” she panted. “He's not here.”

“He's currently pacing the walls, pissed off that the Complex hasn't bothered to scramble a cargo plane for us yet.”

Mari blinked. She'd thought Gareth seemed a bit subdued, but tension was running high. She hadn't considered he might be seething.

“But we…should we wait for him?”

“I'd rather go back to what we were doing.” Finn's hands were under her skirt, toying with the waistband of her underpants. “This will bring him running far faster than anything else. It's hard to maintain a good grumpy mood while sporting a huge boner.”

Finn's phrasing made her giggle. “Oh. So he won't mind?”

“Nope. But,” he said, sobering a little, “you should realize that we're
really
a package deal here, sweetheart. Twins rarely get sick, we're robust as hell, and we have large appetites.”

No doubt someone who had grown up fully in pre-apocalyptic times could have responded to that statement with something light and flirty. Mari could only nod. “I don't mind,” she said. “I—I like that.”

Apparently her response was enough to satisfy Finn, for he leaned forward again with a smile. With deft fingers, he tugged her underwear down her thighs, nostrils flaring in eager response. Mari traced the outline of his erection through his black jeans, unzipping his fly with some difficulty.

“Yeah, that's the way,” Finn said, his voice throaty, harsh. “Should have brought that vibrator with me, kept you boiling hot, but you're ready enough.” He slipped one unexpected finger inside her, made a come-hither motion with it that had her arcing her back and gasping with pleasure.

Eager to reciprocate, she eased his cock through the fly of his boxers and into the open, undoing the button at his waistband to allow greater access. Finn hissed as she stroked down his shaft, eyes slitting in pleasure. The windowless room was hot after baking all day, and evening hadn't lasted long enough to cool it down, so they were both sheened with a light sweat now.

He didn't enter her right away, but toyed with her until she was uncontrollably wriggly, desperate for him to—she stiffened suddenly, knowing she was on the edge. “Finn, please,” she managed.

The Twin made a series of strokes across her clit, and the world clenched and released. She didn't have any time to come down from it before he was lifting her onto his cock, entering her brutally, thoroughly. She moaned, wrapping her arms around his neck.

“Gonna fuck you hard, fast, dirty,” he said, speaking just past her right ear. “Time enough at the Complex to make you beg for us. Tonight's for relief. To prove that you're mine. Ours.”

Her lips formed the word
yes
, but she didn't quite have the courage to speak the word. She closed her eyes as pleasure began to ramp up again, driven by the unrelenting pace of his cock, the way he held her waist and moved her to his pleasure.

He tensed as he came, his loud sigh filling the room. Caught up in what seemed like a spell, Mari did her best to tamp down her spiked arousal. But he noticed. Of course he would notice.

“Easy, sweetheart.” He kissed her, held her in a lingering embrace. “So hot.”

The rattle of keys in the door made her jump, but Finn remained unfazed. Gareth came in so fast he made her head whirl, his eyes blazing down at them both.

“Goddamn, Finn. I could feel every inch of that. Had to get away from the soldiers I was instructing.”

“You didn't seem very hurried.” Finn's grin was lazy, and he lifted her, sliding out of her and cupping her sex. She responded with a gasp and a moan and an involuntary movement of her hips.

“I am now. Fuck. Gonna come fast and hard.”

The transition from one Twin to the other was so smooth that Mari barely registered the difference. But she wrapped her arms around Gareth. “I'm glad you came,” she said.

“Haven't come yet,” was his wry response. He backed her against the wall, the concrete soothingly cool against her back. “Wrap your legs around me. Ah God. Yeah. Now undo my fly.”

Gareth wasted no time thrusting into her, and she welcomed the invasion with a moan. She had no idea how Finn had done it, but she was balancing on the edge again, wanting, needing. But the concrete was unyielding, becoming rapidly uncomfortable against her shoulder blades. She made a sound of protest.

“Let me.” Finn moved to her side and the Twins settled her so that Finn was leaning against the wall, sandwiching her between them. One strong hand supported her opened thighs; the other pulled up her blouse, exposing her breasts to the warm air. Gareth's free hand immediately toyed with her nipple, making her clench against his hard cock.

“Y-you said you'd fuck me fast and hard,” Mari stammered.

“And dirty,” Finn clarified. “This isn't dirty enough for you?”

“Vibrator up her ass next time,” Gareth said. “I love feeling her so tight.”

Mari couldn't think of a response, lost as she was in utter desire. It felt decadent to be held by one Twin while being fucked by the other, and both of them caressed her body, working in tandem to heighten her pleasure.

“Scream when you come,” Finn invited, pressing a kiss to her neck. “Too much going on outside for anyone to overhear you.”

“Yeah, let yourself go,” Gareth's statement was almost a command, and the rawness in his tone was the thing that drove her over. She sank her teeth into his shoulder in response, knowing that her cries were muffled in the leather of his jacket and taking perverse enjoyment in deliberately disobeying him.

“Defiant—little—minx,” Gareth punctuated each word with a hard thrust, and threw his head back with a roar, pumping his seed deep within her.

The aftermath was fuzzy, and she kept her eyes closed, not wanting to lose this sense of peace. She was aware of both men taking care of her, smoothing her skirts down and settling her on their laps atop a battered sofa in the corner. Mari wanted very much to drift, reveling in a post-orgasmic glow and the unexpected tenderness of the men.

But she couldn't ignore the growing howls outside. The sounds penetrated the thick concrete walls until she sat up in a paroxysm of pent-up energy and fear and demanded, “How many are out there?”

“Easy,” Finn said. Both men had their hands upon her, half restraining her as if they were afraid of her running away. “It's too early to estimate numbers. It's only just after dark, so there may be more Barks headed here from their dens who haven't yet arrived.”

“Well, that's reassuring,” Mari muttered.

“In any case, we can't do anything right now.” Gareth pulled his bag toward him. “So we're going to eat.”

Mari ignored the sandwich he held out. “You can't do anything right now? Surely you can go burn them with UV light or something.”

“We could, but the bastards are spry as hell. We're best in hand-to-hand close combat.” Gareth held the sandwich to her lips until she took a reluctant bite. “Right now there isn't anything we can do that the human soldiers can't do just as well. I made that clear when I was out there.”

“Which invention did they like better? That's the important question.” Finn plucked his own sandwich out of the bag.

“Mine.” Gareth's smug, laconic response provoked a good-natured argument between them, settling Mari's nerves somewhat. Before she knew it, she'd eaten the entire sandwich and was sitting back to sip water out of a flask.

Underneath the spare parts that covered almost every inch of the room, she recognized the layout as a bedroom, with a sink plumbed into the corner. There was a mattress-less bunk bed against the far wall, and yet another cot leaning against it. The waste of space irritated her. Despite the lack of windows, it was a perfectly usable room—more spacious than the shipping container she'd called home in Flagstaff.

“How many people live in this City?” she asked.

“Twelve thousand or thereabouts,” Finn said after a moment's consideration. “Hardly enough to qualify as a town.”

“Twelve thou is the official number,” Gareth said. “It's not like the government has run a proper census since the Invasion, though, so I'd say the number's higher, probably got some junkies living underground who hardly see the light these days.”

“Hopefully, we'll have enough time to do a thorough evacuation.” Finn tucked the reusable sandwich bag away and stood up. “Right now, we'd better keep tracking that device. I've had two missed calls from Command—no doubt that's Dr. Felton wanting results.”

There was a beep from his pocket, and Gareth snorted. “Might as well pick it up, otherwise he'll start calling
me
.”

“Finn 01223,” Finn snapped, pulling out his commtab. Mari blinked at the set of numbers he rattled out, then realized it must be what passed as his last name. She frowned, instinctively upset. Nobody should be defined by a number.

“Yes, we're on it. City's being attacked, so there are complications.”

“…urgent…evacuation…time of the essence…daylight drop?”

“I don't think it would be wise for us to venture outside the City, Doctor.” Finn's already-abrupt tone cooled noticeably, and Gareth scowled. “If we don't find the other half tonight or tomorrow, we'll evacuate with the general population. Over and out.”

“Asshole,” Gareth breathed. “He really wanted us to stay after the evac to keep looking?”

“He's desperate to find the other half.” Finn stood up, raking a hand through his black hair. His body language reminded Mari of a stalking panther thwarted of its prey. With a few abrupt movements, he threw his bag onto the table, removed the device from it. “Let's go. Let's get this over with.”

“Come on.” Gareth looped his arm around Mari's shoulders. “I want you with us so that we can keep an eye on you. That all right?”