Emma: Part One (Outpost Nine Book 1) (5 page)

Max relaxed in his arms. "A few times there, I thought you were going to be zombie meat."

Jack heard the fear in Max's voice and squeezed him tighter. "It was all that damn mud. My boots kept slipping. I'm just glad it dried out once we hit the woods."

Max grunted and nuzzled his nose against Jack's neck. Eyes closed, Jack surrendered to the wild sensations tickling the pit of his stomach. All the adrenaline and excitement of the day had left him feeling exhausted and worn out. Now all he could think about was Max and the way his hot, hard body felt pressed against his own.

Never one to ease into things, Max crushed his mouth against Jack's. Groaning with need, Jack allowed Max's stabbing tongue to invade his mouth. They clutched and groped at one another as their tongues dueled for dominance. This time, Max won as he drove Jack against the nearest wall and eased his knee between Jack's thighs. He rubbed his throbbing cock against Max's knee, desperate for the stimulation that felt so good.

When Max grabbed Jack's growing erection through the tough fabric of his tactical pants, Jack growled into Max's mouth. He grasped Max's ass and ground against him. Things between them were quickly escalating and as much as it pained him, Jack put a stop to it. "No," he said, tearing his mouth away from Max's. "We can't. Not now. What if Emma hears us?"

Max shrugged and sucked Jack's lower lip. "What if she does?"

Jack struggled to remain level-headed. "She's not like us, Max. She's as untouched as pure, white snow. If she comes out here and finds us fucking against the wall, it might scare her."

"Because we're both men?"

Jack shook his head and cupped Max's bruised jaw. "No, Emma doesn't seem to have a hateful bone in her body. I meant that she's probably never seen two people having sex, male or female or any combination thereof. You and I aren't exactly quiet and gentle when we're together. Seeing us pawing and grunting and cursing at one another might be too much for her."

Max nodded and reluctantly pulled away from Jack. "She'll have to get used to it sooner or later, Jack. She might be
our
woman, but that doesn't mean I'm willing to give you up completely. I want you
both
, not one or the other."

Jack smiled at Max's possessive tone. Some men would have been turned off by Max's jealous streak, but Jack found he rather enjoyed not having to worry about Max's eye straying. "We'll ease her into it, Max. You'll see. It will all work out in time."

"And the union papers?" Max asked as he started to strip for a shower.

"We tell her," Jack decided finally. "But not until after we've made love to her. We just have to make it really, really good for her, Max. She deserves that. With all the hell she's survived, she deserves one night of pure pleasure."

"If she comes with us, she can have a lifetime of pleasure and pampering."

"That's exactly what we have to get through to her, Max. We have to help her see that she can live a wonderful, secure life at the Outpost and maintain her independence."

"Well, not too much independence," Max said. "I don't enjoy her bossy attitude."

Jack laughed. "No, you wouldn't."

Max scoffed. "What? You do?"

Jack glanced back at the house through the open doorway of the bathroom and shrugged. "If I had a woman like that in my bed every night, I wouldn't care if she shouted orders like a drill sergeant from sunrise to sunset."

3
Chapter Three

Emma snuck glances at the two behemoths sitting on either side of the rustic dining table. Both men ate as if they were starving. Apparently the two meanest hens in her flock of chickens made delicious fried chicken.

As she had planned dinner, Emma had considered how to put enough food on the table to satisfy the cyborgs. It was clear they consumed huge amounts of calories with their overly muscled and very hard bodies. All that running they had done to escape the zombie horde had obviously burned up all their excess fuel.

In the end, she had settled on frying those two birds, mashing up some potatoes, opening a couple of jars of green beans, and pulling some carrots from the garden. The loaf of bread she had baked that morning was nearly gone. Gravy seemed to make them both happy, and she had had to practically beat them off with a wooden spoon when they got a look at the peach cobbler she had pulled from the oven.

"This is delicious, Emma." Max paused long enough to drink some water. "You're a fantastic cook."

"My dad taught me everything he knew, even how to can," she said with a laugh. "I'm so glad those folks down in San Antonio were able to get that glass factory working again. I don't know what I'd do without jars for putting food by. My freezer is only big enough for a few things."

"You don't waste much," Jack remarked. "I noticed the compost out back."

She nodded. "I also feed a lot of my food scraps to the chickens. I'm able to trade some of the eggs and the soap I make from the goat's milk to the Hill family when they come through on their runs every few weeks. They bring me butter, ham, and beef. I keep telling myself I'm going to trade them some goats for hogs, but I never do. Pigs are a lot of work."

Emma noticed the men nodding as she spoke, but could tell they had no idea how a farm worked, even one as tiny as hers. "But enough about me. What about you two? What do you do when you're not running from zombies?"

"Train," Jack said as he dug into his mound of potatoes. "I teach sniper school. Max trains Special Forces recruits for the human battalions. We go on missions in pairs or large units every few weeks."

Emma started to ask them what kinds of missions when she heard the chirp of her radio. It was the handheld again. She rose from her chair and snatched it from the counter. She listened to the Morse code and identified her caller as Leila Keaton. Emma signaled back and then spoke, "One fish, two fish."

"Red fish, blue fish," Leila answered with a relieved sigh. "I'm so glad to hear your voice, Emma! I heard some crazy shit went down near your place."

Emma's gaze flicked to the pair of cyborgs eating quietly at her table and pretending not to eavesdrop. "What did you hear?"

"Some roughnecks traveling the 277 came across a burned-out cyborg truck. Said it was ripped to shreds. No sign of the cyborgs, but there were piles of zombie bodies. They pinged the Outpost and were told they were sending a rescue team out in the morning. Be careful, Emma. You don't want to tangle with cyborgs."

Emma grinned as the two men at her table smirked. "No, definitely not. I'll keep my eyes open and pop the first cyborg I see."

Leila's snort filtered over the airwaves as Max and Jack frowned at her. "Did Avery tell you about the zombies they ran into on that highway?"

"Yes, and I saw some of them today in the woods outside my place. Do me a favor and send it up the Chain. People need to stay away from my corner unless they're armed to the teeth. I'm going to send out a Morse blast at the nine o'clock round-robin."

"I'll make sure to spread the word. Do you need us to make an extra trip and resupply you? Oh, and we met up with a guy who found a warehouse stuffed to the gills with light bulbs. I know you've been dying for some."

"No, I'm good on ammo. I'll take my usual delivery in five weeks, but bring some of those bulbs." Her gaze moved to the fixture over the dining table. "I'm down to four bulbs in the kitchen and one in the living room. The candles are nice, but they make it impossible to read at night."

"I hear you," Leila agreed. "You got any more of those peaches or plums? You know how Daddy loves those. I bet he'd make you a good deal."

"I'm sure we can work something out," Emma replied as she considered what was in her pantry. She'd had a bumper crop of stone fruit, but hadn’t been able to get her hands on enough sugar and jars to put up all of the excess. She had traded and bartered with as much of the fresh produce as possible to stock up for winter and had resorted to drying what she hadn’t been able to eat

"All right, chickadee," Leila said, "I'm off. We're about to eat and then I'm heading to bed. All that driving today really sucked the life out of me."

"Good night, Leila."

"Night, Emma."

The radio went dead and she placed it back on the counter. As she sat down, Emma glanced at both men. "So that's the Chain. We all have call signs. I have friends who contact me directly, but I'm also in the center of the Chain and have one family I contact with information in emergencies. After dinner, I'll call up the Hills and let them know about the zombie situation out here. Then I'll do a Morse code blast at nine. We turn our radios on every night at nine to share coded information. Some nights there's nothing, and other nights there's a ton."

Both men digested the information. Max spoke first. "We've never picked up these transmissions."

Emma's face heated as she realized she was going to have to tell them why. "Yeah, about that…"

Jack's eyes narrowed suspiciously. "Just how good of an engineer are you, Emma?"

She smiled sheepishly. "Apparently I'm good enough to jam your abilities to pick up signals in the FM range we use."

Max shook his head. "Do you realize that we could help you? If your people are in trouble, we can come to their aid. One radio call, and we'd have helicopters overflowing with commandos on their way."

"I told you, Max. The people out here don’t want the cyborgs involved in their business. I took a huge risk letting you on my land. I went against everything I was raised to believe. You didn't slit my throat or try to rape me or steal me. You're nice guys. I'm convinced." She pointed to the window. "But out there? People don't like you. They think you're a necessary evil against the zombies and tolerate your presence, but they resent that your people have so much power and control over us. It's going to take a long time and lots of good deeds to convince them otherwise."

"Then help us." Jack leaned forward and put his hand over hers. "You could come back with us to the Outpost and serve as an outreach officer for your people. A liaison between us and them. Think of all the good you could do, Emma."

She pulled her hand free. "Are we back to this again? I told you. I'm not going anywhere."

Jack let the issue drop and returned to his food. Max gazed at her a moment longer before dropping his gaze to his plate. She didn't miss the way their shoulders slumped. They really wanted her to go home with them—and it scared her. Before today, she had been mostly okay with her living situation. She had fantasized about living elsewhere and about belonging to someone who would love and care for her. But it had been just that: a fantasy.

Now these two ridiculously sexy and extremely male cyborgs were tempting her. They made her want things she shouldn't want. When she had been alone in the kitchen, her imagination had kicked into overdrive. All those deliciously steamy love scenes she had read in her books suddenly seemed possible. She could let those two men ravish her. She could finally experience pleasure and sex and the feeling of being desired.

There was no doubt about that. Max and Jack obviously wanted her. Their intense gazes made her belly wobble and her skin burn. She swore they were undressing her with their eyes. Men like that had probably slept with gorgeous and genetically perfect cyborg women. There was no way an Original like Emma could compare to that. The thought of disappointing them once she was naked scared her straight.

She had to be reasonable about this. The two cyborgs could sleep in different rooms and leave in the morning. As tempting as it was to imagine otherwise, this was her life. It wasn't going to change simply because a pair of cyborgs found refuge on her farm.

After dinner, Emma cleaned up the kitchen while Jack and Max pored over her logs. She took a couple of candles into the living room and contacted the Hills. After the radio call, she started fiddling with the powerful transceiver. The cyborgs operated on certain frequencies outside the normal range of most folks in the Outlands. Emma's father and grandfather had built a transceiver strong enough to pick up any and all transmission throughout the New Republic of Texas.

But she had to boost the power. Emma considered the control panel mounted on the wall adjacent to the radio stand. She decided to divert power from the alarms, guard tower video cameras and the water heater for the short time it would take to send the transmission. Even if something tripped the sensors outside the fence, the alarm panel lights would still blink and alert them. She could quickly switch over to the cameras to check out anything.

As Emma flipped switches and rerouted power to the radio system, Jack and Max put their heads together over the notebooks and murmured back and forth. She had purposely handed them only one set of logs, the bare-bones recordings of attacks and other oddities, and kept the book filled with maps and call signs and other information safely hidden. She hadn't dared pull out the logbook containing the information she'd gathered by monitoring some of the cyborg transmissions over the last year or so. She didn't like to use their frequencies very often because she always feared they would figure out she was listening in and track her down. It was a silly fear, but she'd never been able to kick it.

Emma walked over to the nearest window and opened it. She grabbed the long-range antenna she and her father had fashioned and started to slide out the window to attach it to the roof. She had barely slipped one arm under the window pane before Max was shouting at her.

"What are you doing?" His loud bellowing voice and the stomp of his boots against the floor startled her. In the next instant, Max's big strong arms had lifted her up of the ground and crushed her to his hard chest. "You could have fallen and killed yourself!"

She looked up at him and tried not to be mesmerized by his hazel eyes. "I climb out that window all the time. I need to put this antenna on the roof if I'm going to be able to tune into the signal for your Outpost." She wiggled the metal contraption in his face. "Besides, I climb out that window all the time."