Free Unchained by C.J. Barry Page A

stats from the unearthed battle swam in her
head. Far too many to absorb at once.
    She reached back over the
desk and picked up the personal communication unit she had been
issued shortly after boarding. It felt cool and smooth in her palm,
a perfectly balanced disc of metallic technology. The comm unit, as
Decker had called it, provided a direct link to other units or the
main communication board on Calíbre . She smiled. It made her feel
like part of the crew.
    Cidra placed it back on the desk. She lay
back on the bed and contemplated the first day of her new life.
Some of it bothered her even now—the Victor battle over Avion
particularly. Some of it was wonderful.
    She caught her breath as she remembered the
kiss of a lifetime. At least her lifetime. The last time she’d been
kissed was by a young man who had fumbled his way through it badly.
Grey was no boy and he certainly didn’t fumble. Even with her
limited experience, she realized it was no ordinary kiss. She
closed her eyes with a sigh.
    So much intensity in one man, so
overwhelming and without warning. But more unexpected was her own
reaction to him. The strange warmth that had unfurled deep within
her. The wild recklessness that had surfaced, goading her on.
    Cidra grimaced at how easily she’d
surrendered to his unspoken demands. She would have to be more
careful with him. He had a way of destroying her defenses with a
single look, a single kiss. She wondered if he had the same
devastating impact on everyone else.
     
    Grey stretched out
restlessly on his spacious bed, locked his hands behind his head
and forced himself to close his eyes yet again. Sleep eluded him.
Even the strenuous workout in Calíbre ’s rec center had done little
to curb his uneasiness.
    This mission was unsettling. Instinct told
him there was more to it than they had seen. Something greater was
brewing, something that would change his life forever. He knew it
with the absolute confidence of a man who had ignored the feeling
before and had later regretted it.
    At least his plan to deal with Sandor Wex
was on track. He smiled in the darkness. As expected, Mora had
taken the bait: the final location of the Lost Mask of Teran. Or
that’s what she thought. Knowing his little spy as he did now, the
file would be in Wex’s hands the minute they landed on Vaasa
tomorrow.
    But he suspected the real reason for his
restlessness was the distraction of innocence, strength, and
stunning beauty he’d picked up on Avion. He could still smell
Cidra’s hair. He cursed Syrus yet again. The old man had set him up
with a woman he could lose a great deal of sleep over.
    In the blink of an eye, she had stripped him
down to primal, elemental male with a single kiss. A kiss that
haunted him relentlessly. A major mistake on his part. He’d tasted
the fire in her that hovered just below the surface. For a brief
moment, she had unchained it and let it rise. He wasn’t sure which
one of them had been more surprised.
    He exhaled hard. Forget it. It would never
work. He already had painful proof that business and ecstasy didn’t
mix, no matter how tempting or how innocent those blue eyes
appeared. He wouldn’t tolerate another Mora, wouldn’t play the fool
again.
    Satisfied with his renewed determination and
self-control, he concentrated once again on sleep. Even drifting
toward it, he realized his body hadn’t heard a word.
     
    It began as it always did. Oppressive
darkness and debilitating horror, a suffocating terror that gripped
her to the core. Cold, raw, bottomless fear.
    The screaming started, blood-curdling
shrieks unleashed from the heart. Cidra was never sure if they were
her own. A mother, begging, pleading and then silenced with a
brutal blast. A sickening flurry of twisted imagination and
snippets of reality. Footsteps thundering, so loud, so close, so
fast. Fire and smoke.
    Fear choked her, paralyzing her body,
freezing her legs. Frantically, blindly, she struggled to escape,
her heart