True Refuge Page 13

  This was real Nirvana. This was beauty. This was the miracle.

  Nick’s answering earnest hunger, his unfeigned groan of relief and elation, his own eager strokes and thrusts with his tongue had Euan tangling both hands in his hair. He pulled Nick against his mouth in a hard, brutal melding of lips, teeth and tongues.

  Good. Christ. So fucking good.

  Nick dug his fingers into Euan’s bare shoulder blades. The unkempt nails embedded deep into his skin. It was glorious. Powerful. It almost brought him to his knees. Their breaths became pants and they fought for air, a secondary vital requirement to their need for one another.

  After some time, when even Euan’s jaw was beginning to ache, he pulled Nick from his swollen lips with a hard yank to the blonde waves.

  Their gazes clashed and held, all the emotion and tension bleeding out between them. Euan knew they weren’t a long way down the road to recovery, but they were finally moving out of the woods.

  Thank. Christ.

  Nick was the first to speak once they caught their breath, his eyes glazed with lust but still harboring a glint of mischief. ‘I only got one pair of briefs, big man.’

  Euan let a low rumble reverberate through his chest. ‘You can have the other pair Kira gave me. No way are they gonna stretch over my hips. Her brother must have been the size of a ten-year-old.’

  Nick took a deep breath, and that shit-eating grin Euan knew so well stretched out on his face. ‘He was clever though. Built this.’

  ‘Yeah, I’ll give him that. After your shower, we’ll get our heads around how this place works. I also want you to start thinking about how to improve it, make it last as long as it can. I don’t want anything catching us unaware. Yeah?’

  ‘Sure thing,’ Nick replied as he gently pulled out of Euan’s arms, his eyes moving towards the shower cubicle.

  Euan noticed the direction of his gaze. ‘Almost as good as an orgasm,’ he told him with a nod.

  Nick jade eyes glinted with eagerness. ‘Looks like I got a few things to look forward to then, huh?’

  That glimmer of light that had flickered on the horizon, a symbol of hope that Euan held tightly against his heart, began to flash and grow, burning through a little more of the darkness and easing the aching steel band that had become a permanent fixture around his heart.

  ‘Yeah, I’d say you do,’ Euan murmured.

  Chapter 17

  Euan was the first to exit the bunker through the hatch in the main bedroom in the above-ground home.

  Kira’s pancakes sat in pit of his stomach, a lead weight rolling around in his gut. The excess salt had made him thirsty and the undercooked batter had almost made him gag. How the woman could ruin something as simple as pancakes Euan would never know. The flour alone should have made him grateful.

  Instead he wanted to heave.

  The untouched kitchen was cast in shadows. The morning light was weak. Clouds of grey, white and yellow were visible through the cracks in the closed blinds, blocking the full strength of the sun. It would rain soon. It was the first time in years that thought didn’t give him a cause for concern.

  Kira was close on his heels, her breath loud in the quiet. As he walked to the front door, he ran his hands along the walls. The plaster board was smooth under his palm. Dry and unblemished. There were no peels in the paint and no decay, just impeccably smooth walls. Euan couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen such perfection.

  Behind him, Kira cleared her throat. ‘Do you mind if I ask you something?’

  He paused. ‘You can ask whatever you like,’ he told her as he marvelled at the contrast of his scarred hand with the smooth white paint.

  She cleared her throat once more, stalling. Euan turned his head over his shoulder and gave her his full attention.

  ‘What happened to Nick?’ she questioned.

  Euan attempted to hold in the flinch. The jolt of adrenaline caused his heart to skip and his fingertips to tingle. He took his hand from the wall and struggled to push it into his pocket. When it didn’t fit he pulled it out, and, unsure of what to do with it, he squeezed it into a fist. ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Something happened, didn’t it? To him.’ She paused, her eyes roaming his face. ‘To you?’

  Euan swallowed. The bite of reality stung. He thought they were making progress. Nick had not held back as they had kissed in the bathroom. He had tasted his passion, felt the heat of skin, enjoyed the small thrusts of his hips. He thought that the visual effects of Nick’s torment were no longer fresh, noticeable, painfully obvious.

  Evidently, he’d been wrong.

  ‘Didn’t Nick answer enough of your questions this morning?’ he asked evenly even as his chest ached.

  She continued to hold his gaze, a tiny woman standing tall before him. Her spine was straight, her shoulders back, work-roughened hands on her hips. Her tanned skin glowed in the shadows. She radiated life, vitality, health.

  And a woman’s perception. He narrowed his eyes as she waited from him to continue, despite his grumbling. She saw it for the mask it was.

  How much should he tell her? If she hadn’t left this bunker, hidden in the remote recesses of the country, oblivious to the perils and torment that others of her sex—or even the rest of humanity—were suffering, how much did she really know? How much did anybody want to know? Euan had tried and failed to hide Nick from such atrocities. Could—should—he do the same with Kira?

  But her crystal-blue eyes called to him, opening his wounded heart, and before he could stop himself, he found words tumbling out of his mouth.

  ‘I made a bad decision. Left Nick alone. We were travelling with four men. They seemed civilised enough, better than most when we met them. It’s not good to travel alone, no matter how big you are, how clever you might be or how little you need to sleep. It’s dangerous, deadly, especially near the cities,’ he told her, focusing on the delicate lines of her beautiful face.

  Kira was patient as he gathered his thoughts to continue.

  ‘I left Nick alone with three of them. I was only meant to be gone a short time, but it ended up being longer. By the time I found him, I was too late.’

  Euan paused, breathed out slowly. ‘He wasn’t good, sweetheart.’

  That was the understatement of their time. That image of Nick lying bloodied, bruised and broken on that filthy floor, blood spatters forming intricate patterns around him, his pants around his ankles, his twitching purple fingers. It all still haunted Euan’s nightmares.

  ‘He’s been pulling away from me ever since. There’s something about what they did to him, said to him, more than just the obvious. I think he could have handled the physical violence of what happened, but something else is tormenting him.’ Euan swallowed and turned his head to look towards the bedroom where the subject of their conversation would emerge any minute.

  ‘You love him.’ It was a statement, not a question. A look of sheer, desperate longing flashed across her sad features. Euan blinked from the painful force as it slammed against his chest.

  Before he could decipher what that fundamental look meant, it was gone. Euan frowned at the unease that filled the room before he let a sad smile play around the corner of his mouth. Of course he loved Nick. He loved him more than his own worthless life. Euan knew the only reason he’d been spared from succumbing to the plague was to protect those who were put in his care. He’d failed at that with Nick and girl from Nirvana, but he’d do anything to rectify it, and if that meant using his life to bring him back from the brink of whatever cliff he was clinging to, he’d do it. Without a thought.

  ‘Maybe you should tell him that,’ Kira told him gently, her eyes awash with sympathy, pulling at a lock of her hair.

  ‘He knows it, sweetheart.’

  ‘Does he?’ she asked, matching his soft tone.

  Just at that moment, Nick emerged from the hall.

  The rose-coloured glasses dissolved and with his vision clear, Euan saw what Kira could see. A man bea
ting a desperate pain into submission, a man building a mask, a man fortifying a wall around a broken heart.

  But it only strengthened his resolve. He would stop at nothing to ease that pain, smash that mask and destroy that wall.

  Absolutely nothing at all.

  ***

  ‘And these are the chickens!’ Kira told them enthusiastically, making both Euan and Nick flinch at the volume.

  As she began to rattle off their names, Euan turned to Nick, his eyebrows raised. Nick twisted his lips and shifted his focus to the trees, both of them distrustful of their surroundings.

  He returned his gaze as Kira continued speaking, pulling at lock of her hair without thought. ‘Will convinced me to come back home just as the virus was spreading through Indonesia. I didn’t want to leave. I was making some real headway with a marketing campaign and loving it, but he was ...’ She paused, made a clicking sound with her tongue at the chickens and continued.

  ‘Well, he was insistent. He used to work for the government, travelled all over the world, but after mum died of a heart attack about twelve months before the first signs of the virus, he quit and moved into the house. I hadn’t seen him since the Christmas after the funeral. And well, to say he’d changed would be an understatement.’

  Euan became wary. ‘Changed?’

  Kira pulled on the same lock of hair absentmindedly. ‘Well, he built this place for starters,’ she told him, as if it explained it all.

  She sighed at Euan’s exasperated look. ‘He was tormented. But it wasn’t just that. He was obsessed with survival. Obsessed with my survival.’

  ‘That doesn’t seem like a bad obsession,’ Nick commented, narrowing his eyes in confusion.

  ‘You’d think so right? But I wasn’t allowed to leave the bunker for weeks. He tried contacting our friends and family but got nothing. He was so worried, he’d have panic attacks, couldn’t sleep. I’d find him staring at the monitor until three in the morning. And the lessons. My goodness the lessons!’

  The crease between Euan’s brow deepened.

  Kira sighed. ‘How to use, clean and care for the weapons. Maintenance of the bunker, the solar power system, the water treatment plant and reservoir, the greenhouse. Tracking, hunting and the rest. Exhausting.’

  Euan felt Nick’s gaze and turned to meet it.

  ‘I know what you’re thinking,’ Kira said, twitching nervously. ‘But at the time I was trapped underground, with no news, no access to the outside world. I had no idea what was happening, still don’t. It was overwhelming. It was scary.’

  Nick ran his hand along the robustly built timber frame of the chicken run. The animals clucked at the scraps Kira had fed them happily, completely oblivious of the horrors that surrounded them, that were at their doorstep. Just like the woman that kept them.

  ‘And then he got stabbed?’ Nick questioned.

  Kira cringed and Nick reached out, remorse twisting his features. The subject of her brother’s death was a sensitive one, something they had forgotten, surrounded as they had been by so much death. She let him squeeze her hand in condolence before continuing.

  ‘Things settled. I was allowed outside. But yes, then he was killed. And I was glad of all the lectures. Missed them, in fact.’

  This time it was Euan who interjected. ‘Did he tell you anything? How it started, if there was a cure?’

  Kira shook her head slowly, her focus internal. ‘If he knew, he never told me, even as he was dying.’

  Euan was loath to press her, but he spoke regardless. ‘He must have told you something, even at the end?’

  Kira twitched in a way Euan was beginning to understand had become a habit from being alone. ‘He did.’ Her lips quirked and her gaze returned to meet him. ‘Don’t leave the house, shoot anyone on sight, and never, ever let anyone know about the bunker.’

  Nick choked. Euan frowned. ‘What changed?’ he asked.

  Kira she shrugged, acting surprisingly shy. ‘It doesn’t matter. Let me show you the rest.’

  Euan let her keep her secret, but he’d have his answers eventually. Their lives depended on information, and he wouldn’t let the little blonde sprite hide her heart from him forever.

  ***

  Euan was exhausted.

  The king-sized bed had been only one of the items they had moved from the above-ground homestead to the safety of the underground shelter.

  After Kira had showed them an exit big enough to move supply equipment in and out of through one of the storage rooms, its exterior hidden in the trees, Euan had gone about setting up the bunker as a home for his new family.

  He’d started by getting rid of the plastic chairs in the living area. Not just because he was afraid they wouldn’t support his weight, but because the mahogany wood table with its tall-backed, modern chairs were too beautiful to be left unused and decaying in the house. He also had Nick help him move one of the smaller matching buffet units so Kira could display her crafts in a more complementary setting. He liked looking at her little frames and stitchwork and wanted to encourage her rudimentary talents in that direction, since they sure as fuck didn’t lie in the area of cooking.

  He swapped the red fabric two-seater couch with the three-seater supple leather one that would not only support the three of them more comfortably, but would also form a more robust—and easier to clean—setting for his more lurid fantasies.

  After all the information she unquestioningly divulged, the proximity of Nirvana had Euan’s instincts sizzling. The thought of it was a tight ball of dread twisting in the bottom of his gut, which only increased in ferocity when he thought of those damn sundresses dancing in the wind.

  The other reason he was increasingly irritable that evening was Kira’s innocence. She trusted the two of them without reservation, and even though she’d been warned not to, she had divulged the intricate workings of the bunker without question.

  They could’ve been psychopaths. Sadistic, murderous assholes with brutal intentions, just biding their time, and here this delicate young woman was giving away all her secrets, keeping nothing for herself.

  It made Euan sick to his stomach.

  The day had been long, and he was overwhelmed with all the possibilities and threats that suddenly weighed on his shoulders. He was looking forward to wrapping himself around two soft bodies and falling blissfully to sleep in the huge bed that had taken half a morning to maneuver.

  Kira was flittering around the bunker like a tiny blonde sparrow. She constantly kept busy to avoid sharing the bed with them, even though she had spent a large amount of time during the day washing and drying sheets so the mattress had the overwhelming scent of lavender from her garden and sunshine to welcome them.

  ‘Kira, for Christ’s sake, calm yourself down and get into bed,’ Euan ordered with a heavy sigh as he watched her go back out into the living room while he sat on the edge of the bed to take off his boots.

  ‘You jump in. I just have one more thing to finish for tomorrow’s breakfast,’ she called out as she almost ran from his presence.

  Christ, that was another reason he had to get that woman into bed. He didn’t know how he could ingest another one of her meals with a smile on his face. Euan had lived off outdated tinned food, uncooked animals he’d caught after being so hungry he hadn’t been able to wait for a fire, tree roots, even moss and pine needles, but that beautiful woman’s cooking was going to be the death of him.

  ‘Nick,’ Euan growled towards the young man, who was still standing by the door.

  ‘On it,’ he answered with a not-so-subtle moan.

  After a bang and a feminine squeal, Nick ushered the cranky spitting kitten back into the bedroom. She wore a thin-strapped nightgown of pale yellow that came to mid-thigh. It had delicate white lace edging, stained over time by her skin. Three tiny buttons down the bodice had Euan imagining the look of breathless anticipation in her eyes as he slowly undid each one, dipping his hand down the neckline to tease her prominent little nipples.
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  ‘Really,’ she said. ‘I’ll just slip into the bunk room when I’m finished out here.’

  Euan closed his eyes and silently prayed for deliverance. The woman could argue, fighting nearly every decision they’d made. It had either been too much, not enough, or something she wanted to do herself. ‘Not gonna happen.’

  She jerked in the doorway, her eyes wide. ‘We can’t all sleep in one bed. That’s … Well, that’s inappropriate.’

  Euan remained silent.

  Kira held his stare for a heartbeat before looking over her shoulder to Nick in desperation. When the blond man only winked in return, she all but turned into a living tomato. ‘But …’ she whispered. ‘What about when you need to ...?’

  ‘Need to?’ Euan prompted when she trailed off.

  She leaned in and muttered, ‘Meet your urges,’ darting her gaze to Nicky and back.

  Euan let his lips twitch. ‘We’ll think of something.’

  ‘I’ll just sleep in the bunk room.’ She nodded, emphasising her point.

  ‘Not gonna repeat myself,’ Euan warned.

  ‘But …’ Kira tried again.

  Euan had had enough. He could compromise when he was convinced there was a good enough reason, but there was never going to be suitable reason to risk her safety, or Nick’s. He’d learned that lesson. ‘Sweetheart, you might not get this ’cause you haven’t been out there since the beginning, but that world out there is broken. So damn broken that they use pretty girls like you as currency. They use them up until there’s nothing left. No dreams, no hope, not even a soul. I’m not going to let something that precious, that beautiful, that special sleep down the hall in a bunk room where I can’t get to her in an emergency because she’s worried I can’t keep my dick in my pants. Feel me?’

  Kira held his gaze then searched his face. She was silent before heaving a resigned sigh. ‘You really are very bossy,’ she huffed.

  Euan would hold in his temper, he would. But he couldn’t help the sigh of exasperation. ‘Get your pretty ass in this bed before I turn it pink.’