Supernova the portal con.., p.1
Supernova: The Portal Connection Book 2, page 1
Supernova
The Portal Connection Book 2
Jade Thorn
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Epilogue
Also by Jade Thorn
Readers may also find some scenes distressing. Trigger warnings contain but are not limited to:
Gun violence.
Copyright © September 2021 Jade Thorn. All rights reserved.
* * *
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
* * *
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
* * *
ASIN: B08HGSF71W
* * *
Cover design by: Natasha Williams of DAZED Designs
https://dazed-designs.com/
* * *
Edited by: CB Editing Services
https://www.facebook.com/CBlackEdits/
* * *
Please note that due to its content this book is not meant for readers under the age of 18.
Acknowledgments
I have a small clan of people who help me with my books. Editing, cover design, alpha reading, beta reading, ARC reading, a street team who promote me, and an amazing author promoter and her team.
Without them all, I could not possibly do what I do.
To my editor, Charlotte Black (AKA Secret Agent Noir!). Thank you for taking my crazy process in stride. No matter what I throw at you, you just dig in there, get it done, and ask what’s next. Your diligence, loyalty and professionalism set you apart. In you I have found not only an amazing editor, but a friend for life.
To all my amazing volunteers—many of you span more than one activity. You ladies ROCK! You share the word, boost my confidence when the trolls go to town on Amazon, and encourage me to keep trying. Your positivity keeps me going. Thank you for all you do!
To Tash—the new covers look amazing. Thank you for “covering my ass” lol. You rock lady, and I’m privileged to work with and for you.
To Alicia—thank you for keeping track of the details. Without you, there would be a million and one plot holes in my books. Thank you for knowing my universes better than I do.
To Andrea and the team at AMR Author Promotions—thank you for all you do to get the word out there, and to take the organisation of “things” out of my hands. We all know if it were left to me, nothing would get done. I’m deeply in your debt and highly recommend AMR.
Finally, to you, who are reading this. Thank you. For without readers, there is no point to all of this.
Jade
xoxo
Prologue
Ray Harrison Junior panted, his heart thundering.
Carla might not bring in sales, but her mouth could make him cum harder than anyone else had ever managed. Idly, he wondered if her cunt would feel as good, but he doubted it. At least when she was sucking his cock, he didn’t have to look at her. Mind you, if he took her from behind, he wouldn’t see the hate in her eyes then either.
It was something to consider.
The ring tone in his ear was far more interesting. Surely they’d pick up soon. Part of him enjoyed prolonging his orgasm. Prolonging her ordeal. The idea of speaking calmly on the phone, while Carla did her utmost to make him cum, amused Ray no end.
“What do you fucking want?” snapped a voice, before Ray had even registered the call had been answered.
“I heard you like collecting images,” he said carefully. There was no knowing who was listening. Fucking government was spying on everyone, and despite all the devices he’d used to ensure this was a secure call, this was an electronics store, not a spy store.
“What the fuck are you on about?”
“I heard you collect Da Vinci. The Vitruvian Man. Like you worship it or something. ‘Coz you need to see this one. Real powerful like,” he replied, trying to speak in code. Carla might be dumb as a bucket of rocks, but he didn’t want this traced back to him.
The silence on the other end had a bead of sweat forming on his brow, and it wasn’t from Carla’s pitiful efforts. Fucking bitch was always listening in on his calls, but he used the code words, the ones they were supposed to get excited about.
The Pure Human Movement had adopted a logo that looked a lot like Da Vinci’s ‘Vitruvian Man’. They claimed it was their own design, because it signified purity and perfection in humanity.
“Fucking idiot, you got the wrong number,” snarled the voice at the other end of the phone, and the line went dead.
Ray wasn’t bothered in the slightest. His buddy had told him it would happen. They were paranoid. They’d trace his number and someone would come by the store in the next few days. The Pure Human Movement paid handsomely for good intel on portals.
If that fucking bitch wouldn’t suck his cock, he’d fuck her another way. Yeah, he’d fuck her completely over.
For once, it wasn’t Carla who sent him over the edge, but an image of the waif-like woman, tied down as he fucked her hard, her screams of terror abruptly silenced as he shot two loads in her. One with his cock, the other with his gun.
It was everything a freak like her deserved. Ray came so hard he nearly passed out.
Chapter One
Jacinta
She’d been moved again. Doc and Bowie were nowhere in sight, but Jacinta was back in a hospital bed with a Geiger counter grumbling quietly nearby. Whatever was happening, they were expecting trouble. Damn, would she never get a break?
Sitting up, she gave herself a cursory examination. Other than stiff and still a little tired, she seemed largely intact. A tugging between her legs told her she’d been out of it long enough for them to put a catheter back in, and although the cannula in her arm wasn’t hooked up to anything right then, the stand wasn’t far away.
There was no sign of the white panel which controlled the bed, and the one that summoned the nurse was also absent. Between the catheter and the sides of the bed, both of which were raised, she was stuck there. It sucked. What the hell was she going to do?
Tie up the back of her gown for starters.
Lying on her side, the air was a little chilly, running down her spine with a cold caress from the currents present in the room.
The toilet in her en suite flushed, and then she heard the tap running in the sink. That was good, at least she wasn’t alone. Jacinta wondered who was with her.
“Hey, Princess,” Tones greeted her as he entered. “It’s about time you woke up.”
Jacinta smiled at him. “I thought you weren’t meant to take toilet breaks?”
Tones pointed at the door to the room. It was closed, and a chair had been propped up against it. Even as he grinned at his own ingenuity, someone gave a light tap and tried to enter.
“A chair wouldn’t stop them,” Jacinta told him, seriously.
Bowie had promised. He’d promised she’d never be left alone again, she’d never be as vulnerable as she’d been in the last hospital.
The door handle rattled.
“Yeah, give me a moment,” Tones called out. He walked over and stood beside her bed, gently smoothing back her hair from her face. “I wouldn’t betray you like that. It would have held them long enough for me to get my junk back in my pants and my guns out. That’s all the time I need, Jack. I’d have had you in the bathroom, and called it in, securing our position before they’d even got the damn door open. If I wasn’t confident you were safe, I’d have stood there and pissed my pants rather than leave you.”
The mental image of him standing there with wet pants as he guarded her, his dignity gone in his desire to protect her, did a lot to ease the tension in her body. Jacinta still didn’t know these men as much as she needed to, but his declaration went a long way to earning her trust.
“My name is Jacinta, I refuse to be called after his favourite drink.”
Tones laughed. “Well, one, he’s already said it wasn’t that. Two, why not? A bottle of Jack is worth a lot of money if you get a good vintage, and it’s a kick-ass-take-no-prisoners kind of drink. Sounds to me like the two of you go well together.”
He sauntered casually to the door, removing the chair and a door stop he’d wedged underneath it. She hadn’t noticed the extra little
Tones held his gun out of sight of the small gap in the door as he checked who was knocking, before he tucked it into the back of his pants and took a step backward.
A cross-looking male nurse entered, heading straight for her bed with a large bag of fluid in his hands. Without saying a word, he hung it on the drip stand, pulling it back beside her, followed by the portable table that would slide over her bed. He slapped down a yellow kidney dish on top, then walked to the sink where he washed his hands and gloved up.
Hooking the fluid up to her cannula took only a couple of minutes, and he said nothing the whole time.
“At the last hospital, a man tried to suffocate me with a pillow, and the surgeon decided to test my pain levels by sticking his fingers into my bullet wounds, while a nurse was worried I was going to blow up on her shift. We’re a little edgy about medical staff,” she told him.
The nurse’s expression went from irritated to shocked, as he glanced from her to Tones and back again.
“Bowie took a piss, the asshole came into the room while he was drying his hands. Bowie shot him in the leg. I needed a piss, so I made sure she was secure enough until I could get back.”
“This isn’t a civilian hospital,” the nurse snapped, finally over his surprise.
“Neither was the last one,” Tones snarled. “It was a fucking base, so don’t give me crap. She’s my protectee. If that means you have to wait a few fucking seconds while I dry my hands, then you’ll wait.”
“I have other patients to look after. I can’t just hang around in the hallway every time you want to take a leak!”
“Then go look after them,” Jacinta said tiredly. “I’m sick of this shit. Ever since I found out I’m a portal, it’s been nothing but trouble. I was taken from my home, my job, my friends, shoved into an apartment and left alone for the Pure Human freaks to shoot me, dragged across to a base where all that shit happened, had an event there in a fucking x-ray room because they didn’t have a chamber, and then we fled halfway across the country where I had to start all over again. It’s been nothing but stress and drama, never mind the events hurt like fucking hell, the fact I can hardly talk because I’ve spent hours screaming in agony, or anything else. Never mind the asshole manager at my new job who wanted me to suck his cock just to keep my job, or the fact I nearly had a fucking event in the center of town. Or how about the other portal who threatened to rape me because I called him on his bullshit? Never mind any of that shit, because I’m just a useless fucking portal who should be put down.”
The two men gaped at her.
“I’m just tired of this shit, okay?” Jacinta rolled to face the other way, careful not to tangle the drip line and giving both of them her back.
She’d survived this event. Big deal. Another loomed, and if those voices she’d heard weren’t a result of her own brain melting down, then she was going to have to yank four innocent men into the chamber with her to anchor her containment field or something.
And if she chose the wrong people?
They’d be incinerated.
Chapter Two
Doc
On the dining table beside him, Doc’s phone buzzed with an incoming text.
Tones: She’s awake, and she’s not in a good headspace. She needs some counselling or something.
Around him, the others looked up expectantly.
“She’s awake,” he said aloud for their benefit, but already he was calling Tones.
The call, however, was denied, Tones instead sending him a text.
Tones: I’m not saying this shit aloud where she can hear me.
Doc: What the hell is going on?
Tones: Some nurse gave us a bit of attitude, pissed because I had the door locked, and she just laid out everything she’d been through, like it was a history lesson. It was kinda freaky. She wasn’t angry, she wasn’t upset, she was just, I dunno, kinda dead. Then she ends it by saying, never mind, because she was a ‘useless fucking portal who should be put down’.
Doc: Who the fuck told her that?
Tones: NFI, but she rolled over, facing away, and hasn’t spoken or moved since. There’s a bag of saline running into her right now.
Doc: Okay, I’m on my way over. I’ll get her a psych assessment.
Tones: ??? Are you out of your fucking mind?
Doc: You think she’s depressed? We need to record and evaluate that shit if we’re going to get her treatment.
Tones: Not what I meant. She needs some TLC, an ear, a shoulder, some-fucking-thing. The last thing she needs right now is to be poked at some more and made to feel like more of a fucking freak than she already thinks she is.
Doc: I thought you said she needed counselling.
Tones: Dude, by US! Not official shit. Tier one, depressed, they’ll shut her in a little padded room and won’t let her out except to go to the chamber for an event, and that’s if they don’t take her to a black ops site and put her down. A suicidal portal with nuclear tendencies? You’re meant to be the smart one.
That hit home.
He was meant to be the smart one. Every point Tones made was spot on. Of course they couldn’t say anything yet if she was feeling down. Fuck knew she’d been through a hell of a lot in a short period of time. Of course she was still processing it all. For now, she was allowed to feel low. They’d have to watch her though, even though he hated it. He’d protect Jacinta from everything, including herself if he had to.
“What’s wrong?” Bowie asked, his words clipped.
Doc looked up at the concerned faces around him, thinking, assessing. His gaze bounced from one to the other before he made a choice.
“She needs you. Now,” he said quietly.
Hammer abandoned his meal, his bulk rising from the table and heading for the door. Once he was clear of the last set of chairs, the huge man broke into a jog.
Doc relaxed a little, knowing he’d made the right call.
Chapter Three
HAMMER
As a teen, Hammer had played football. It was an obvious choice for him. Even back then, he’d been huge. Not as muscular as he was now, but at fourteen he was taking on players four years his senior and knocking them flat.
Now he’d bulked up even more, nothing stood in his way. Outside the mess hall, Hammer’s jog became a full-on sprint, and people moved aside, vehicles stopped or swerved and everyone made room. It was obvious he was on a mission, and in their own ways, they let him get on with it.
He appreciated the deference.
When he slammed through the front door of the medical building, people stopped in their tracks. The story of him running Jacinta into the chamber had spread through the base like wildfire, and they now looked at him in panic.
Fuck, he should have asked what she needed him for. It didn’t matter, he was hers to summon either way.
He didn’t need directions. All of them had taken their turn in the roster of protecting her.
She’d been in there for two days, and she’d stay in there until she was ready to come out, or for her next event, whatever came first.
Eschewing the elevators, he headed straight for the stairwell, taking them three at a time. In seconds, he’d climbed the two flights, reaching her level and yanking open the door. On the other side, a woman squeaked.
