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More than that, he tried not to think about how she’d looked in that dank, filthy place, that room of stained mattresses and bloody wires, that smelled of sex and sour sweat, mold from the monsoon rains, rotted food?and yes, sex.

Even in that filthy, depressing den, his desire to fuck flared high enough to make his knees weak.

A brief look at her now brought that pain back in a thick pulse.

He shouldn’t be thinking like this.

He should not.

Even apart from who she was.

Moving his eyes away from her heart-shaped face, those large, dark eyes and full mouth, he glanced down the length of the narrow brick corridor towards where Anale guarded the entrance to the alley. He squinted up at the overcast strip of sky.

When he returned his gaze to his people, Jax and Holo were watching him, their lights holding flickers of curiosity.

“Did the mission go well?” Jax asked finally. “In Macau?”

“No.” Loki clicked mildly, although he couldn’t exactly blame them for asking. Moderating his tone, he went on with a seer’s shrug. “It did not go well, brothers and sisters. They were able to pick up most of the humans, but the seers had been sold. They had reason to believe they were on their way to Dubai. Also, several humans were murdered.”

They all fell silent.

Holo grunted. He pulled up his own weapon, a F2000 like Illeg’s. He wiped the sight, frowning down at the cloth as he rubbed it vigorously over the organic lens.

“I bet the big boss didn’t like that,” he muttered.

Everyone knew he meant the Bridge. They just looked at him, silent.

Loki wasn’t sure what to add to his words.

He could have; Oli had been forthcoming about the Bridge and Sword’s reactions to their failure in Macau. Loki’s team appeared to be secure here, as long as they stayed out of the Barrier, and none of what Loki knew was particularly compromising.

It wasn’t really in his nature to share that kind of information, though.

Oli additionally told him about an encounter with a strange seer, who claimed to belong to a mysterious group devoted to the Bridge. According to Oli, the Bridge threatened that strange seer due to some personal interaction with the Sword?or maybe because the seer had stabbed Jon, Loki was slightly fuzzy on the details.

In any case, the story clearly had a personal element.

It felt personal enough that Loki was uncomfortable hearing it, especially long-distance, and even apart from the security issues it raised to do so on a military channel. Not only did it make him not want to ask anything further of Oli herself, it caused him to terminate the connection altogether.

That was when he’d pinged Balidor.

He knew his own team would likely want to know all these things.

They craved personal information out here, whatever Illeg’s annoyance at Oli for breaking protocol. They would want to hear every word Oli told him, if only to keep their minds off the grimmer realities they faced, and to feel connected to their friends back on the carrier.

He still felt uncomfortable sharing such a thing.

So he didn’t.

“Do we have an approach plan, sir?” Jax asked. “For D.C.?”

Loki clicked softly. He didn’t answer beyond that.

Mostly because there was no need.

They all knew the Sword never proposed anything without a plan. Usually that plan would have a half-dozen contingencies in addition to his recommended approach.

Jax knew that.