Theirs To Protect: a Reverse Harem Romance Page 10

  But any of the trucks would do just fine too.

  “What about gas?” she asked, hoping the question came off as casual.

  “Well, we’re lucky here in Texas. First thing President Goddard did was get the oil derricks and a small refinery back up and running. Clark knows more about it since he’s assistant to the Trade Secretary but we export water, troops, some crops, working cars,” he gestured out at the floor, “anything and everything else we can.”

  “And that?” Audrey stopped and looked at the bigger engine set up in the center of the warehouse. Three men in coveralls were working on it at the same time.

  “Is that a—” Nix started saying from behind them. He’d been following them around the whole time but so far Audrey had been successfully ignoring him. Mostly, anyway.

  “Yep.” Mateo smiled broadly like a proud papa. “This one will put us on the map if we can get her running.”

  What?” Audrey looked at the big hunk of metal. It looked just like all other complex machines or engines or whatever they’d been walking past the last fifteen minutes. “What is it?”

  “It’s a helo engine,” Nix said.

  Audrey felt her eyebrows scrunch. “A what?”

  “A helicopter engine,” Mateo explained. “Or as good of one as we can jerry-rig. The Scrapper team found an old helicopter—the kind they used back in some war a hundred years ago—in some guy’s back yard.”

  “No way,” Nix said. “His back yard?”

  Mateo shook his head. “Guy must have been a real eccentric. Rich too. He had a whole dinosaur skeleton set up in his living room, decorated with lights like he was using it as a Christmas tree. Anyway, he was long gone. Some of the Scrappers stayed with the find and sent for the big hauler to bring her back to town. Most of the engine was useless after all this time, but we’re seeing if we can’t rebuild something that will get her up in the air again.”

  Audrey could only shake her head, eyes wide, as she walked around the huge, complex engine. “Holy crap. You’re gonna have a helicopter.”

  With a helicopter, she could get to the coast in two hours.

  Mateo made a pained face. “Maybe one day. It seems like every time we fix one problem, another crops up. Trying to build a helicopter engine from scratch when you can’t just call in and order parts you need,” he let out a little whistle as he reached out a hand to run it over a valve going down the side of the engine.

  “She’s giving us a run for our money that’s for sure. I’ve been rigging whatever I can from other engines. Then we’re welding some things we can’t find.” He laughed. “We’re throwing everything but the kitchen sink at it to see if we can’t get her running. I like to be optimistic. Maybe she’ll fly sometime in the next six months, if we’re lucky.”

  Six months. All right, so cross off the helicopter. It wasn’t like she could fly it anyway. She wanted to ask Mateo how close the trucks were to being ready, but she could feel Nix’s eyes on her. While Mateo didn’t seem suspicious about any of the questions she’d asked so far, Nix’s attention was entirely too focused for her comfort.

  “Okay, so what are you working on today? This engine? How can I help?” Audrey looked around and laughed. “Not sure what I could do… but,” she grabbed a wrench off a nearby table, “I’m an excellent tool-hander. You’re the engine doctor and I’ll be your nurse.” She teased the wrench in front of Mateo’s face and he laughed.

  “I was planning to work on some smaller projects and yes, I can always use the help.”

  Audrey smiled back and it didn’t feel forced or manipulative. She genuinely like Mateo. He led the way to the back corner that was sectioned off by dividers so it felt secluded and quiet. Mateo entered and right before Audrey could follow, she spun on her heel and confronted Nix head on.

  “You stay out here,” she said, eyes hard.

  He looked surprised but then crossed his arms over his chest. “I go where you go.”

  She rolled her eyes. Infuriating man. “I’ll be all of ten feet away right behind this partition. Could you just let up for ten minutes so I have some room to relax without you breathing down my damn neck.”

  “Careful Princess,” Nix whispered, leaning in. He lifted her hair off her shoulder and then exhaled a long breath on the side of her neck and up along her ear. “You don’t have to play hard to get. If you want me, all you have to do is ask.”

  For a moment she was frozen. His words and the moist heat of his breath against her neck seemed connected to a line tied straight to her clit. Her sex clenched and she felt achingly empty.

  Then she jerked back. “Pig,” she hissed.

  “You love it.”

  She made an offended, scoffing noise. “I do not.”

  “Then why are your pupils blown and your nostrils flaring like you can’t get enough of the way I smell?”

  Damn him, she had been inhaling him. But only because he smelled so damn scrumptious. Her formative years were spent with only her brother and Uncle for company. This was the first time she’d been around humans of the opposite sex for any extended period of time since before she’d gone through puberty.

  And her body, damn, she didn’t know what was going on with it. Except that it seemed to have a mind of its own—especially where Nix was concerned.

  Last night after dinner, he’d walked straight up to her and put his hands around her waist. She’d been like a deer caught in headlights as his mouth lowered to hers.

  His mouth had been so close, so close to hers.

  And then at the last second, he’d veered ever so slightly to the side until he was kissing her cheek, right at the outermost edge of her mouth.

  She’d almost screamed, the need inside her had built so high with every moment his lips lingered against her skin.

  Even worse, all the other guys had followed his example. One by one, they’d lined up and given her a kiss goodnight. Mouth after mouth, dropping close and brushing just to the side of her lips.

  Each of them pulling her close and then releasing her. Even shy Graham pulled her close with surprising intensity.

  But none of it meant anything, she reminded herself harshly.

  She was leaving.

  “You stay out here,” she snapped at Nix and then turned to follow Mateo into his workshop area.

  As soon as she passed the cubicle barrier, she froze. She didn’t know what she’d expected to find him working on back here.

  But it wasn’t big colorful posters of basic electric circuits and children’s toys and board books and a hundred other odds and ends that looked like they’d come straight out of a pre-Fall schoolroom.

  “I’m teaching later,” Mateo said, the easy confidence he’d had out on the floor with his coworkers absent. His eyes lowered to the floor. “I wondered… well, I hoped maybe you would join me in the classroom and help me with some experiments we’re running this afternoon.”

  “You teach? Kids?” Audrey couldn’t help blinking several times. This man was full of surprises.

  Mateo nodded, his lips curving up even though he still didn’t look at her. “I like kids a lot.”

  Audrey stepped further into the small space. She ran a forefinger over a spool of copper wire. “What do you teach them? Science?”

  He nodded. “Physical Science mostly.”

  Audrey tilted her head sideways. “But there’s barely any electricity. Shouldn’t they be learning, I don’t know,” she shrugged, “how to plant crops?”

  “They learn that too,” he said, still smiling. “But they’re the future. They’ll be the ones putting the world back together. We can’t let all the knowledge die off with us. They’re our hope.”

  Mateo was actually managing to hold her gaze and Audrey felt the strangest fluttering in her chest.

  Followed by the most insane thought:

  What if she didn’t leave?

  What if what the guys said wasn’t bullshit? What if her best chance at survival was staying right here? With them.
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  Staying and being their wife.

  She swallowed and wrapped her arms across her stomach, completely wigged out. Because the thing was, when she thought about having five husbands, she didn’t have the knee jerk response of: hell no, that’s fucked up! anymore.

  She’d gotten to know them all a little. Two and a half weeks was hardly enough to know if you wanted to make a lifetime commitment—she still thought the whole thing was insane… but at the same time, maybe the Commander was right. It was a new world. The old rules didn’t apply here. They were all making them up as they went.

  But Charlie, she’d promised Charlie she wouldn’t stop until she got to—

  Charlie was dead.

  She swallowed hard and bit her tongue hard against the tears that threatened.

  Charlie was dead and what if she could make her new start here? What if life could be about more than survival? Was what the guys promised actually possible? Love? A home? A family?

  What was the smart thing to do here? The right thing? If she screwed up, there was little chance she’d ever get another shot at Nomansland. She simply didn’t have the computer skills.

  It was now or never.

  Please, Charlie, give me a sign. I don’t know what to do. Give me a sign. Something. Anything.

  She squeezed her eyes shut and waited.

  Nothing.

  There was nothing.

  She was only more confused than ever.

  “Audrey?” Mateo sounded concerned. “Is everything okay?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said, backing up and almost knocking over a stack of books on the counter behind her. “I— I told Sophia I’d help her with something this morning. Sorry, I have to go.”

  She didn’t wait for a response before she turned and sped out of the cubicle.

  Nix was waiting right outside. He’d probably eavesdropped on every word they’d said.

  “Out of my way.” Audrey pushed past him.

  “What’s wrong?” Nix asked. “Do I need to kick Mateo’s ass? Did he do something?”

  He sounded murderous and she just stared at him with her mouth open. “No he didn’t do anything. Just leave me alone. God, can’t I have a second without you breathing down my freaking neck?” She started jogging through the maze of stations set up around the workshop. And damn Nix, of course he was following her. She heard his heavy footsteps right on her heels.

  “I need the bathroom,” she called over her shoulder. “I’m having female problems.”

  There. That was usually enough to make Charlie and Uncle Dale leave her alone when she got into what her brother used to call her ‘moods.’

  But thinking about Charlie only made the tightness in her chest worse. And no matter what, she would not cry in front of Nix of all people.

  “Audrey,” Mateo called out from behind her. He sounded upset but she couldn’t so much as look back. She ran toward the front of the store, opposite the entrance they’d come in. She was heading for the area marked off “Bathroom” with a big hanging sign. She knew it wouldn’t be anything more than a sanitation bucket, but she just had to get away from everyone. Right as she was about to jerk the bathroom door open, though, she saw something that had her stopping in her tracks.

  There, to the right of the bathroom, was a motorcycle. She didn’t know the model. Charlie would have. He was crazy about bikes. Always had been. But it wasn’t too big and it wasn’t too small.

  And unlike all the other cars and vehicles in the shop, parts weren’t laying all around it. It looked completed. Perfect. Ready to drive off of the workshop floor.

  Exactly what she needed to get herself to the coast.

  She wouldn’t have to rely on roads that might be blocked. Motorcycles had great gas mileage. She should be able to make it to the coast just on one tank.

  She’d asked for a sign.

  And here it was.

  Chapter 14

  MATEO

  Mateo was sure he was sweating through his fancy suit as he stood at the front of the church, side by side with the rest of Audrey’s soon-to-be husbands. He’d wanted everything to be perfect. But now as he stood here, the church as full as it was for every wedding, he knew he’d been kidding himself.

  Putting his name in for the lottery was always supposed to be his secret. Just a dumb little indulgence. A flight of fancy he allowed himself.

  But that’s all it was ever supposed to be.

  The night of the drawing, when the Commander had called his name, Mateo was so shocked, he’d frozen where he stood. It was a mistake. It had to be a mistake.

  He’d meant to go clear it up right then and there.

  But then he’d seen her face.

  She was beautiful, sure. That wasn’t what stopped him where he stood. She was terrified. It was so clear on her face. She thought she was surrounded by enemies. That she was all alone.

  He knew what that felt like.

  In that instant, he pledged his life to her. It wasn’t even a conscious thought. He just knew throughout his entire being that whatever it took, he would protect her. He’d never felt anything with such soul-deep certainty before.

  And the best way to protect her was to go through with the farce. To become her husband. Him.

  He was a filthy, disgusting, foul, shit blister of a human being.

  The idea of him as her husband nauseated him. She was so beautiful and perfect and he was… he swallowed back bile at the thought of all that he was.

  At what he’d become after the Fall.

  For years and years and years.

  People thought the slave markets in Mexico were bad. They had no idea how depraved some trading posts in the outer Texas territory only three hours away were.

  Mateo had been picked up fleeing Fort Worth just a few days after the D-Day nukes. Fort Worth hadn’t been bombed directly, but Dallas had, and everyone was running, terrified of the fallout.

  He was on a Ducati he’d been fixing up at the garage where he worked. He figured he deserved it more than the rich bastard who’d dropped it off, ignoring his latest arm candy and screaming at his kid whenever he started crying that he was hungry.

  Mateo was able to zoom past the traffic that had quickly gotten congested on the I20.

  He was just a terrified kid, barely nineteen, fleeing for his life. But eventually he ran out of gas.

  And he was the dumb fuck who had the bright idea to try hitch-hiking.

  When the big, army barricaded truck came to a stop, he thought it was salvation. He was quick to find out that getting into the back of that truck was the first step on a one-way trip to hell.

  It turned out, in a world short on women, a lanky, skinny boy was a perfectly adequate substitute for lawless men who were murderous, raping bastards. They set in on him almost immediately. When they got where they were going—a criminal trading post that had sprouted up outside San Angelo in the years after D-Day called Hell’s Hollow, though he wouldn’t find that out for years—they threw him in a cage, brought out only to be used before being tossed back in. It was total anarchy for a while before President Goddard brought back some form of law and order. No one cared about a skinny kid in the slums of the most dangerous trading posts in Texas.

  So he did what he had to to get by.

  Mateo swallowed hard against the bile that rose again at the thought of those filthy, hideous years when he’d been more of an animal than anything else.

  And you think you can stand up here now and pretend to be a man for her? You think you can protect her from anything when you couldn’t even protect yourself?

  He looked around him. Nix, Clark, Danny, even Graham—they were real men. If anyone was worthy of a woman like Audrey, and the more he got to know her, the less he thought anyone was—but still. If anyone was worthy, it was them.

  Nix was the man who’d led the raid on Satan’s Hollow—what the place had come to be known as. Nix himself who’d freed Mateo.

  But it was too late by then. Years and ye
ars too late.

  He’d already been used and defiled in every way imaginable. Beyond the imaginable.

  He should leave.

  Right now.

  Make his excuses and run out the back of the church.

  Run and keep running.

  He wasn’t worthy to touch a hair on Audrey’s head, much less—

  Piano music started and Mateo’s head jerked up. All the breath swept out of his lungs in one great heave.

  There she stood, at the opposite end of the aisle.

  She was gorgeous. Even more than usual.

  Her long, fire red hair had been set into curls that framed her face. She was in a wedding dress—a real one. Sometimes women just wore whatever was on hand for these ceremonies but Audrey was in a bona fide wedding dress.

  Mateo had talked to Sophia about it but she hadn’t told him she’d been able to track one down. Mateo dragged his eyes away from Audrey only long enough to search out Sophia in the crowd. She was beaming at Audrey, but, like she could feel his eyes on hers, she looked Mateo’s way and gave him a conspiratorial wink. She had been the one to find it.

  Like a magnet, Mateo’s eyes quickly dragged back to Audrey. The Commander stood beside her in full military regalia.

  Mateo’s eyes hungrily devoured every detail. Her tiny waist. Her full bosom and the hint of cleavage revealed by the dress.

  He swallowed but his mouth was so dry he barely managed it.

  And he knew in that moment that come hell or high water, he was going to stay exactly where he was and marry the most beautiful, strong, and kind woman he’d ever met in his life.

  Fuck his past.

  Fuck right and wrong.

  It would be the most selfish act of his life and maybe he’d never forgive himself for it, but he would take her to have and to hold, till death did them part.

  Chapter 15

  NIX