Page 106 of The Hero Within
"Are you sure? What about your rules?"
"Fuck the rules," she said, and kissed him again.
Johnny lurched to his feet with her in his arms, staggering blindly toward the place he'd feared only minutes ago. He'd been trying to be good ever since that night in Shadow Rock. Having an audience wasn't exactly his idea of a good time, and Eden had been so exhausted last night she'd crashed and burned like the meteor that plunged the world into an impact winter nearly seventy years ago.
"Let me make love to you," she whispered, as he laid her reverently down upon the sheets as if she knew he'd already promised her his heart and soul that morning in Shadow Rock. As if she knew he'd made love to her when she'd been trying to keep this strictly physical between them.
"As you wish," he breathed, as she pressed him down onto the bed, and swung her leg over his thighs, straddling him.
Eden captured his mouth again and this time he felt the difference in the kiss, as their palms locked together, their fingers threading through each other.
And whatever tension had been lingering in his spine, vanished as she made him forget everything but this.
Dawn arrived,bringing with it a new sense of peace.
But not, unfortunately, a new body.
"This is where we're meeting your contact?" Eden asked, walking stiffly into the bar behind Arik. She felt like she was eighty.
He'd managed to set up a meeting with this Mayhew, whom he said was an information broker and hacker.
She couldn't come to terms with what that actually meant, though she supposed in a world where every piece of information was available on the Confederacy-controlled Fednet, it might be a lucrative proposition.
Johnny hovered on her heels, looking well out of his depth. She understood how he felt. Arik had led them through a maze of dark alleys and twisty streets. The section of town they were in wasn't like the structured and sterile streets she'd first seen.
Even Cortez City had a dark side, it seemed.
"He said nine o'clock, sharp." Arik scanned the darkened interior of the bar.
It wasn't what she'd expected to see. The walls were concrete—like the rest of the city—and cigarette smoke hazed the air. Despite the fact it was midmorning, there were over a dozen patrons in here. A table with painted numbers on it stood in the center of the room, and a man threw a pair of dice across it. Another pair of women lingered in a dark corner, their heads close together as they sipped from elegant glassware. Everywhere she looked, people held hushed conversations. This wasn't so much a bar as a place to meet.
"There he is." Arik nodded toward the corner.
A man stood by one of the tables, the faint flicker of a cigarette gleaming as he watched the game in front of him with rapt attention. He wore a black, nondescript tunic, similar to what Arik had dug up for Johnny and his brother, the material clinging to his chest. It seemed most of the people of the Confederacy wore the same sort of thing, as if being one of many was the fashion, and individuality could be dangerous.
She couldn't see the stranger's face. Somehow he'd positioned himself beneath a hanging light, and it was so bright it obliterated the details, merely forming a halo over his blond hair.
Derek Mayhew rolled a pair of dice over the back of his fingers. Sleek, she would have said. Dangerous. He examined them, pausing on her. "Arik." A faint smile toyed over his lips. "It's been a long time."
The pair of them clasped hands.
"Was hoping it would be longer," Arik admitted. "Didn't plan on ever coming back. Did you get the information I requested?"
"Please." Mayhew looked amused. "Now I'm insulted."
Arik swiftly introduced the pair of them. Lincoln remained outside, surreptitiously standing guard.
"What information?" she asked.
Mayhew gestured toward a steel door. "I have a rule, Miss McClain. Don't ever discuss your affairs in public. You never know who's listening in."
He snagged a glass and a bottle of brandy off the bar and led them to a small concrete room down a flight of stairs that looked suspiciously like a bunker. The second the door was shut, he gestured for her to sit at the small metal table in the center of the room. "The room's been swept."
She glanced at the floor.
"Of bugs, Miss McClain," Mayhew said sarcastically. "I mean we can speak freely without fear of someone listening in."
"Oh."
