“Perfect,” I murmured, my mouth consuming hers as I started to pump my hips.

  Oh, fuck me, but she felt good. Words failed me. Thoughts drifted away on a rising tide of erotic heat. I couldn’t get close enough. I couldn’t assuage the need that roared inside my head like an out of control firestorm. I wanted more. I needed more. I had to have more.

  “Lena,” I moaned. Me begging now.

  “What do you need?” she asked, and my heart opened right there and then, letting Lena Carr storm in and make it hers.

  She owned me.

  “Harder,” I managed. Wanting to ask her if she could handle me taking this to the next level.

  Her hands stroked down my back, offered a firm squeeze against my arse, and then she moved them around the front to press against my chest, levering me up a little. I couldn’t stop pumping. Nothing in all this world would stop me sliding in and out of that sweet heaven. But the press of her hands did reach through the haze of delirium enough for me to doubt what would come next.

  I shouldn’t have worried. This was my Lena. She gave as good as she took.

  Her feet came up to rest on my shoulders, her thighs pressed back against her torso, bending herself practically in half.

  Then my hands were around her ankles, holding her steady. While heavy lidded eyes looked up at me and locked with mine. Our breaths came in panted huffs with each thrust forward. And I started to… pound. Had I paused to think of what it was I was actually doing I might have stopped.

  Fuck, who am I kidding? Lena felt too good. Look too fucking good. There was no way I could stop taking what she offered.

  But I could give back a little too.

  My hand slipped between our bodies, fingers finding her swollen clit and starting to rub. Pale blue eyes widened. A heated breath of air exhaled over my chin.

  And then we both came together in a heart thumping, chest heaving, voice breaking wail.

  “Lena!” I managed to yell, the force of my ejaculation pulsing though my entire body as though a part of me was being sucked right out. Her walls tightened and released and tightened again, milking me, making her moan a sweet sound as I finally started to slow my thrusts and frantically searched for oxygen for my lungs.

  Holy shit, the woman could make me lose all reason.

  Her beautiful face looked up at me; awe, wonder, and something I prayed was true staring back at me, cracking my heart all over again.

  “Good morning,” I said, after I’d gently placed her legs down into a more comfortable position. Not that she’d been complaining, of course. But I am, underneath all the rebel crud, a gentleman. Maybe.

  “Good morning,” she husked, and I felt my cock jerk inside her. She smirked.

  And I knew I was gone. I was so fucking hers and always would be. And perhaps it was the moment, the hormones or chemicals or whatever the fuck happens when you have the most magnificent orgasm of your life with the most magnificent woman in your life, but I said it.

  I damn well said it.

  “I am so fucking in love with you.”

  And then sat back and waited for the Elite slap down.

  Chapter 33

  And Then He Was Gone

  Lena

  “I am so fucking in love with you.”

  He looked like he regretted it immediately. Going from a post-coital high to a cringe worthy fear in a split second. Then assuming that look men get on their faces when they tell themselves to suck it up.

  I would have laughed. But this was no laughing matter.

  Trent Masters was in love with me.

  And I was, had been for quite some time, so damn well in love with him too.

  I smiled. He stilled. No breaths. No blinking. Nothing. Just a suspended moment of anticipation that I could feel right down to my toes.

  We’d come through so much, Trent and I. We’d overcome our society’s strict caste structures. God, we’d annihilated them.

  And we’d learnt to trust. It hadn’t been easy. Or natural. For either of us, I should think. And there’d been bumps along the way. Not to mention the war we were battling daily just to stay alive.

  But we were alive. He’d walked into the line of fire to save me. I’d followed him into hell.

  There was nothing left for us to fight against. Nothing left worth fighting for. But us.

  “You know what I thought when I first laid eyes on you,” I said softly.

  He swallowed, it looked painful.

  “No,” he said, his voice just as soft as mine.

  “The ocean,” I said, and watched his brow furrow, drawing attention to his eyes.

  I looked at him, held his inquisitive gaze, then added, “Your eyes. They’re like a bottomless ocean. Something I had never seen before, but desperately wanted to.

  “You represented adventure, freedom, even before I knew who you really were.”

  He let a huff of breath out and said, “The morning sky.”

  My turn to furrow my brow.

  “Blue the colour of a promising morning sky,” he went on to explain. “Your eyes, when I first met you. They gave me hope, even before I knew who you really were.”

  I let a little laugh out.

  “I think I fell for you the first time you put your foot in your mouth.”

  “What?” Trent said, relief making his body relax above mine, confusion turning his eyes to a darkened storm.

  “Remember the home run comment?” I asked, playfully.

  He groaned, closed his eyes, and thumped his head down softly on my chest.

  “So, not when I kissed you on the roof of the hub and then told you it was because you’d made a noise?”

  I laughed suddenly and so hard that I let out a snort.

  “But when I told you a little later that I could make it to home base if you shared a Serenity Tab with me?”

  “Yes,” I said between laughter. “That’s the one.”

  His head came up, deep blue stared down at me.

  “And that’s when you fell for me?” The words were soft and reverent.

  “Or it could have been an accumulative effect of the several foot-in-mouth moments since those first two.”

  “I did tend to stuff things up when I spoke around you, didn’t I?”

  “A little,” I said, holding up a finger and thumb just millimetres apart.

  “But you fell for me, anyway,” he pressed.

  I nodded.

  “Say it,” he demanded in a soft and sexy voice.

  “Say what?” I teased.

  “Lena. Say the fucking words.”

  “The fucking words?”

  “Elite!”

  “I’m in love with you, too.”

  All breath left him, his lips parted, his face froze in an expression of pure shock. And then he grinned. A cocky, self-satisfied grin. Pure male.

  “I’m going to get you to say that when I’m buried deep inside you.”

  “Are you?” I asked, feeling him harden against me again. “Shouldn’t we be getting up and facing a war?”

  “What war?” he said between open mouthed kisses against my collar bone. “I’ve just won the most important battle of my life, no other war can even come close.”

  “Not even Wánměi’s war?”

  “Not even,” he said, rocking his hips and somehow managing to slip himself inside. “Now, what was it you had to say to me?”

  A mischievous look glinted in his eyes, and then he swirled his hips and made me gasp, arching up off the bed, pressing my breasts into his hard chest.

  “Mmm, that’s it, baby. Show me what you’ve got.”

  “Trent,” I chastised.

  “What?” he said, mock innocence. “You love me.”

  And then he rolled onto his back, holding me close so he didn’t slip out and I was left lying down his front like a lusty, wanton blanket.

  “Ride me, baby. Take what you need. And scream it to the world.”

  “Who said anything about screaming?”

  He thrust up into me as I sat myself up and started to rock. We both groaned low and loud.

  “Jesus, Lena. You take my breath away.”

  “Ditto,” I managed and then really started to get to work. Taking what I wanted, but also giving him exactly what he desired as well.

  Kind of. I didn’t scream it. But after he’d made me come, twice, and was just shuddering through the last of his release, I leaned down and whispered in his ear, “I love you.”

  His arms wrapped around me as his face buried in the side of my neck and a hot breath washed over my skin. For a long while, I thought he would never again release me.

  “You’re my light,” he finally whispered, still holding me impossibly close. “You chase away his memory.”

  I stilled. His words sounded heavier than they should have.

  “Whose memory?” I whispered back.

  “My father,” he said after a lengthy pause. “He was not essentially a good man.”

  “He led the revolution,” I countered, unsure if I was defending his father - a man I didn’t really know and had always thought had killed my father - or if I just needed to hear the words said aloud myself.

  The alternative was too bleak to contemplate.

  “He had high ideals,” Trent said agreeably, rolling us to our sides, so we could face each other. Under the covers, skin on skin, close enough to breathe each other’s air. “But he was not a charitable person.”

  “Then what was his goal?” Freeing Wánměi had to be for the people.

  “Political, at a guess. A better Wánměi, for sure. But not because it was necessarily the right thing to do, more because it was the only thing he could do. But that’s not what I meant.”

  He sucked in a deep breath, closed his eyes for several seconds, and then said, without opening them again, “He hated me.”

  That couldn’t be true.

  “What makes you say that?” I asked, choosing my words very carefully.

  His eyes opened and a depth of a pain that seared my heart washed over the blue.

  “He never loved my mother and when she died he considered me a burden. Which he then decided to use.”

  “Training you to replace him,” I guessed.

  He nodded. “I have memories,” he said, voice barely a whisper. “They’re dark.”

  “Of him?”

  Another nod of his head.

  “You burn them away,” he added. “You’re so full of beautiful promising sunshine.” Another deep breath in. “You’re my light.”

  Oh, dear Lord. How could I not love this man?

  “I just wanted you to know,” he said, almost an apology for opening up and spilling such dark secrets.

  I leaned forward and softly pressed my lips to his, thinking to offer comfort, like he so often gave me. But the kiss deepened, his arms wrapped around my body and pulled me closer still, and a sigh escaped as his tongue delved hungrily and we careened toward another explosive coupling.

  “Lena,” he breathed against my jaw, my neck, my ear. “You have no idea how much I need you.”

  I think I did. It hadn’t come easily, but I’d realised how much I needed him too. It had scared me, this depth of desire, this chasm of want and hunger and everything. It had scared me so much, and even now, I wasn’t sure if I was over the fear that loving someone, needing them to that degree, could make you so vulnerable, but I had accepted that Trent was not something, someone, I could ever give up.

  Not someone I could live without anymore.

  I’d been born Elite. Into privilege and pampering. Respected for what I was, not who. And here was this man, a Citizen who had fought for everything, someone who had earned that respect. And yet, when we were together, like this, none of it mattered. We were Lena and Trent. Trent and Lena. Not Elite. Not Citizen. Just us.

  “Lena, baby,” he said, and my lips curled into a smile. There was nothing else to say. He’d said it all, so I let my body tell him my story, give him the answer his touch required.

  It was slow and tender, a contrast that meant even more to me because I knew what Trent liked. I knew his need to thrust hard and grip tight. To kiss me like I was his dying breath. To hold me still and make me feel. To give and take without apology. To set my body on fire and dance within the flames.

  But it was beautiful, this slow inexorable rush to ecstasy. His deep blue eyes swirling with heartfelt emotion, his lips murmuring quiet words of reverence and love. Promises of forever and ever. Measured glides and purposeful thrusts. Soft pants and long, low moans. Fingers digging, even as palms cupped and tongues smoothed. Bodies quaking and nerves tingling. Our breaths intermingled, our skin slick with sweat, our orgasms a welcome home that was at once new to me, and yet so very right.

  It was heaven. Or paradise. I’m not sure which. But it was ours. And in that moment, when we both knew we were about to tip over that delicious edge, our eyes locked, the world ceased to exist, just us.

  Lena and Trent. Trent and Lena.

  We lay back in the afterglow and stared at the ceiling, our bodies aligned, skin brushing skin, heartbeats almost in tandem. Chests rising and falling too swiftly as though we had gone hard and fast. But more, I felt free. I felt loved. Cherished. Desired.

  I felt like I’d finally come home.

  In an abandoned military bunker, hiding from the Overseers and Shiloh. In a country that was so far from “the perfect” its name would have you believe. Without identity. I… was… home.

  “I’m not sure I want to head out there,” Trent admitted, his fingers threaded through mine and resting on his chest. His thumb rubbing back and forth, back and forth, a soft caress that I was sure he wasn’t even aware he was doing.

  “It’s late,” I pointed out, not making a single move to get up. “And we really need to shower.”

  He turned his head to look at me, a wicked, cocky look in his eyes.

  “Did I make you all dirty, Honourable?” he asked.

  “No,” I said and watched his eyebrows arch. “I made you dirty, Citizen.”

  He grinned, leaned forward and kissed me softly, then whispered, “That you did.”

  We held each other’s gazes and almost simultaneously stopped smiling.

  “Shiloh,” Trent said.

  “The spy,” I added.

  “Harjeet Kandiyar.” Delivered in a decidedly angry growl.

  “The Citizen address.”

  Silence as we digested that.

  “Welcome to the revolution, Selena,” he quipped, a semi-repeat of words he’d used in the past.

  I screwed my nose up, not liking my full name on his lips. I was his Lena. His Zebra. But never Selena. Selena was someone else. Someone I had no intention of ever being again.

  I let out a sigh. We’d come so far, built bridges, crossed fjords, found common ground, and blown our respective worlds apart. And yet, the war was still raging. The drones were out in force.

  Shiloh waited.

  “You shower while I go check up with Si,” Trent offered, the rebel leader appearing at last. And then he ruined the effect by adding, “If I follow you into that bathroom, no telling what we’ll be doing next. And there are some Citizens in this complex that might just find that a little too liberating.”

  I laughed despite the heaviness of responsibility.

  “OK,” I offered, rolling off the bed and grabbing my clothes. I’d have to make a quick trip to my room for my toiletries, and maybe I’d pick up some extra clothes and bring them here.

  My mind already contemplating the consequences of wanting to share Trent’s space with him. The realities of living so close to someone, wanting to live that close. The images that closeness would bring.

  “What are you thinking, Lena?” Trent asked from across the room, clearly having seen something on my face.

  “I might show you later,” I said with a grin.

  He shook his head, a laugh rumbling in his chest, and slipped his t-shirt over his shoulders, hiding all that glorious skin.

  “Gotta say, love that sexy look you’re wearing right now.” He crossed over to me, now fully dressed, ready to do rebel leader things. “But if you let any of the other guys see it, baby,” he whispered, wrapping a proprietary hand around the nape of my neck, “can’t promise I won’t gouge their fucking eyes out.”

  My turn to shake my head.

  “You, sir, are incorrigible.”

  “Who me?”

  He gave me a slow, deep kiss, pulling back only when we both needed to breath, and then rested his forehead against mine for a second. And then he was turning toward the door, taking his warmth with him. Making me crave his touch again already. Just before he opened it, he looked over his shoulder, took in the sight of me half dressed, groaned and then turned the handle.

  I thought that was it. I thought he was done. But he popped his head back in, after walking through the opening, and said, “I think I fell for you when I watched you somersault off Wántel’s roof.”

  And then he was gone.

  I stared at the closed door, my heart in my throat and my body thrumming with delicious sensations.

  Out there, I was sure that Trent would act the leader. The man in charge of overthrowing a constricted, imperfect Wánměi.

  But in here he was mine. Soft, tender, saying the most wonderful things that made my heart race and my body tingle.

  In here he created perfection. Perfection that I’d long ago believed could never exist.

  Wánměi wasn’t perfect. I’d learnt this when I was fifteen. And I knew Trent wasn’t perfect either. No one is. But in this, he was my perfect.

  And I was beginning to believe that I was his.

  Chapter 34

  Oh

  Trent

  “Where are we?” I asked Si as I entered the tech room. He was alone, and the door had been locked. Reminding me exactly what lay ahead of us.

  The rebel army teetered on a knife’s edge, one slip and we’d be cut apart. But there was more than one faction holding the blade. Harjeet. Shiloh. The fucking spy. Who was working for Harjeet and possibly Shiloh to boot.

  I crossed the room and stood at Si’s back, flicking eyes over the external security camera screens, noting the sun was low in the sky.