by Bethany-Kris
And when Alessio wanted that, he found it. When he needed sweetness, he could find that, too. Right now, he just needed the one.
Corrado had it all.
“Come on,” Corrado mumbled against his skin, “fucking give it to me—I want it.”
Alessio could feel him hard at his back, the length of Corrado’s erection grinding into him in time with the strokes of his cock. In the next breath, he hit that numb place before he was thrown into the orgasm.
There was no holding that back.
He spilled on Corrado’s fingers, and the sheets.
“Shit.”
Sinful, rough laughter filled his ears, and Alessio wanted to swallow it right up. He wanted all those dark, hard sounds against his mouth as he did the same to Corrado that had just been given to him.
Those feelings.
Those sounds.
Corrado needed to have them, too, he thought, and he twisted in the bed. Alessio found him already waiting as he reached back.
12.
Corrado
“Fuck,” Corrado hissed, lifting his gaze from the scope to glare down the barrel of the sniper rifle. He didn’t need to check the sights again to know, in fact, he had not hit the goddamn target four miles away from the complex’s roof where he was currently perched. Or rather, resting on his stomach with the gun in front of him. Behind him, Nathan, his current trainer, sighed loudly. “The wind is too—”
“The wind is fine.”
“I adjusted the way you told me to.”
“And inhaled when you shot.”
Had he?
Fuck.
Again.
It felt like Corrado had been saying that a lot this last week. Propping himself up on his elbow, he used the tips of his fingers to massage at the spot on his temples that were throbbing. He’d woken up with a headache, the day was half over, and it still hadn’t gone away.
“Fuck this,” Corrado muttered.
Pushing up from the ground, he snatched up the gun to disassemble it the way he’d been taught. Nathan cocked his head, asking, “What in the fuck are you doing?”
“Not this. Not today.”
“That’s not your choice. Get back down there, and do it again.”
Corrado laughed bitterly. “No.”
“No?”
“That’s what I said.”
“Corrado, I don’t know what stick got stuck up your ass this past week, but—”
Fuck that noise.
Corrado tossed the gun to the ground, uncaring that it was unsafe and stupid. He looked Nathan right in the face, so there was no mistaking what he said next before he got off that roof, and said, “Sometimes, people just need a goddamn break.”
Right.
That’s what he was going to tell himself.
It wasn’t entirely a lie, either. From the point he came to this place, he had not gotten one chance to breathe. Not one day to do what he wanted. Hell, he still hadn’t even spoken to his three brothers back home, or his parents. He’d been in Nevada for months, but had yet to see the lights of Vegas.
He didn’t see anything but this place.
The League.
That was it.
And the fucking desert around it.
Screw that shit.
It was made slightly more bearable when Alessio was around because that took Corrado’s mind off other things. Or rather, he looked forward to when the day and training was done, and he could head to the privacy of Alessio’s rooms where no one bothered him. It was just him, and Les ... nothing else mattered.
Except Alessio wasn’t here.
He was fucking tired.
And today was not the day for this shit.
It just wasn’t.
“Where are you going?” Nathan shouted at his back.
Corrado didn’t even answer.
He just flipped his middle finger over his shoulder. There. Let the man make of that what he wanted because he was sure that he would. No doubt, he would quickly run it back to Cree or Dare, too, which meant Corrado would have to deal with that eventually.
He didn’t care.
Not right now.
This bad mood wouldn’t go away, accompanying him all week like a stink he couldn’t get rid of no matter how hard he tried. And he did try. The problem was, he knew exactly why he felt this way, and the fact that it all led back to Alessio being gone.
He didn’t like that.
None of it.
Corrado didn’t do emotional shit—he found it much easier to deal with life and other people when he kept a healthy distance from it all. Then, stupid things didn’t get brought in to play, too. You know, like someone’s feelings.
Climbing down from the roof, he could still hear Nathan bitching up above. Then, it turned to Nathan getting on the phone to shout at someone—probably Dare, but he didn’t care to listen and figure it out. It took him another twenty minutes before he was walking the corridor leading to his rooms.
Where he would be alone.
And irritated.
A great fucking combination.
The first thing he did once he was in his rooms was head straight for the connecting bathroom. It wasn’t big—hell, Alessio’s bathroom was bigger than his, and had a bathtub instead of a standing shower—but that’s all he needed. Stripping down to nothing, he stepped in under scalding hot water, letting it pink his skin as he attempted to scrub away his frustrations, and clear his mind.
It didn’t work.
Nothing worked anymore.
He needed quiet nights.
Conversations in darkness.
Fingertips keeping him awake when they glided over the ridges of his muscles because for some fucking reason, his body felt like a live wire whenever Alessio was near. A man who was nothing like him. And yet, he found familiarity in that same man, too.
He needed those things to get back to a good place, except he didn’t want to need those things at all. That was where he found his biggest frustration, and he didn’t know how to deal with it at all.
It was only once Corrado stepped out of the shower, dried off, redressed, and exited from the bathroom that he realized, no ... he wasn’t alone anymore.
Chris leaned in the doorway. He passed his twin a look, but when Chris didn’t say anything, Corrado chose not to offer an explanation for his silence or tenseness, either. It was just easier that way. Life was always easier when he kept his problems to himself.
Besides, Chris had his own shit he was trying to deal with, but Corrado couldn’t relate. He wanted to be here—even if he was struggling right now for reasons that he didn’t want to face—but Chris didn’t want to be there at all.
Not anymore.
You know, ignoring the fact Chris wasn’t really saying that. Corrado didn’t need his twin to say it for him to know it was true.
“You okay?” Chris finally asked.
Corrado let out an annoyed snarl under his breath. “What’s it fucking look like to you?”
“Like you got a bad attitude.”
“Yeah.”
“And nobody fucking likes it.”
Corrado turned around to offer his twin a sardonic smile. “Then, feel free to leave, Chris. The door is right there, and look ... it’s already opened for you.”
Chris raised a brow.
He didn’t change his stance, or attitude.
In fact, Corrado waved at the door and added, “Go on.”
“Les has been gone about a week, huh?”
Corrado’s jaw tensed. “What about it?”
“Don’t you find it funny how a couple months ago, you could barely stand to look at him ... and now lately, it seems like you become fucking impossible to deal with when he’s not around?”
“No, I don’t find that funny at all.”
Truly.
He didn’t.
Annoying.
Strange as fuck.
Not funny, though.
“Hmm.”
“Get out,” Corr
ado uttered.
Chris shrugged. “I’m just saying, you’re in a mood lately. You should probably get that figured out, Corrado.”
“Nobody asked you.”
“And yet, I still told you.”
Fuck that noise, too.
• • •
His bad mood didn’t go away.
In fact, it got worse.
Three weeks later, he felt like he could probably rip someone’s face off if they looked at him the wrong way, but Corrado had somehow managed to convince his delusional ass that if he ignored his mood, then it wouldn’t be a problem.
Wrong.
He wasn’t willing to admit it, though.
His pride was a bitch.
How many times had he said that?
A lot.
Corrado heard the footsteps—several pairs, not just one—approaching his rooms long before the figures shadowed his doorway. He refused to glance up over the weapons magazine he’d snatched from the communal kitchen to greet the newcomers. This was supposed to be his day to relax, and he was trying his fucking hardest to do that.
Not that it was working.
Nothing did.
“What is it you want, Corrado?”
Cree.
He glanced up over the edge of the magazine, but instead of looking at Cree, his gaze drifted to the people standing just behind him. The team, it looked like. The same team that dragged him into those fucking rooms months ago.
He still didn’t know who they were beneath their black masks. It could be Nathan, the sniper, under one. Or Oliver, the fighter, under another. Although, he doubted that simply because he figured now, he might know them just by being near them. He knew at least one was a woman considering her smaller build, and curves that were accentuated by the tight, black clothing. But that was as much as he knew—they didn’t speak unless they absolutely had to, and he was sure their voices were not the same when they gave orders as it was when they were joking down in one of the communal areas of the complex.
Corrado tried damn hard not to show how seeing the team at his rooms made him feel—tight in his chest, and like a deadweight had come to rest in his stomach. He was not doing those fucking rooms again. He had news for them, if that’s what they thought.
“Are you listening?” Cree asked.
Corrado’s gaze cut back to the man in question. “No.”
Cree’s expression didn’t change.
Nothing new there.
“The last month—three weeks, give or take, but who wants to be specific?—you’ve been struggling,” Cree noted.
“And?”
“What is it you need, hmm?” Cree tipped his head to the side, considering Corrado as he said, “Your brother wanted contact with his parents ... he needed motivation, we’ll say. He earned it, and got what he wanted. Did you know that?”
“And?” Corrado asked again.
Because yes, he did know. And no, he didn’t see what it mattered.
Chris was Chris.
Corrado, despite looking the same, was not actually the same. Why was that so hard for people to figure the fuck out?
“I have an offer for you,” Cree said, tipping his hand over like there might be something waiting in his empty palm for Corrado to see; there was nothing, obviously. “I don’t think it’ll be exactly what you want, but some things can’t be helped ... and, if anything, it might help with the fact you’re a little stir-crazy.”
He looked to the people behind Cree again.
“What kind of offer?”
“The team—they’ll drop you off about twenty-five miles from here, even further out than we already are. You’ll have to the end of the day.”
Corrado blinked. “To do what?”
“Get back alive.”
What?
Cree smiled slightly, as though he could see the questions forming in Corrado’s mind. “For one, it’s a good way to put some of the skills you’ve been learning to a real test. Out in the real world, so to speak. The team will be near, or close enough to cause you trouble here and there. Think of it like a—”
“Hunt,” Corrado interjected.
“Well, yes.”
“And what do I get ... if I make it back, I mean?”
Cree shrugged. “You’ll make it back, that’s a certainty. It’ll be whether or not they need to carry you back, or if you’ll walk in with your own legs that’ll make the difference.”
“That’s not that I asked.”
“A night away,” Cree said. “Whatever you want to do, wherever you want to go ... within reason, keep it to the state, you will be able to go. You’ll be provided with everything you need—vehicle, fake identification, just in case, and whatever else. No babysitters watching you. Prove you’ve learned something these last two months, because the past three weeks have put you back several steps, and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
Corrado chewed on his inner cheek. “Hmm.”
“There is an expiry on this offer. Ten seconds is what you have to decide.”
“Where will they drop me?”
“I told you, twenty-five miles—”
“No, where exactly?”
Cree smiled. “Nowhere. It’ll seem like nowhere because that’s exactly what it is.”
Huh.
Corrado looked at the team again.
“Three seconds,” Cree said.
“All right,” Corrado muttered, pushing off the bed and tossing the magazine aside, “what’s it going to hurt?”
Cree laughed.
An unusual sound, considering the man rarely did it.
“That’s what I want to hear,” Cree said, slapping him on the back as he passed. “Try not to fight the team too much when they put the hood over your head, yeah?”
“Great.”
• • •
Corrado was shoved to his knees roughly, and he felt the fucking rocks on the ground dig into his skin and bones through his pants. Something dropped to the ground beside him with a heavy thud, and then that hood was ripped from his head. It took him far too long to realize he was surrounded by cliffs. Red dirt, dry plants, and a few towering trees keeping the sun shaded.
Where the fuck was he?
He focused in on the man kneeling in front of him. Ten feet away from him was a helicopter that had landed in the only spot that seemed safe and wide enough for it to do so, considering the rocky ledges that led hundreds of feet down into more rocks.
Fun.
“Hey,” the guy said.
Corrado swallowed his nerves, saying, “Yeah?”
“Here’s where I let you go, huh?” Without warning, the guy pushed the mask up over his face, giving Corrado the first peek at one of the people on his team—the team that trained him. Dane, one of the few members of The League that Corrado liked ... strange how that worked ... gave him a grin. “Everybody else got dropped off in vehicles at different points. Nobody is going to kill you, but it might seem like it when they get a little close. Don’t stop moving, because that’s when predators find you, find your way back—keep going east. Do you remember how to tell if you’re moving east?”
Corrado glanced at the rocky ledge.
Yeah, he knew.
East meant going right over that ledge.
“I know how to keep going east,” he muttered.
Dane chuckled. “Now you get it. This isn’t going to be easy, but if you keep going east, you’ll be fine. At some point, if you’re going the right way ... you’re going to start recognizing shit from things you’ve done in training, or whatever else.”
He wasn’t wrong.
Some training had taken place in areas around the complex. Miles into the desolate land that surrounded the area.
Dane pointed at the bag next to Corrado. “There’s a satellite phone if you need it, and it’s preprogrammed with the only number you can call from it. You want water? Find some. You’ve got one small blade in there—get it out, and have fun getting your ties cut. Then, start moving
. Sound good?”
Corrado smirked. “Sounds like hell, really.”
“Depends on who you ask. This was one of my favorites. How else are you going to learn to survive, Corrado?”
Something beeped.
Dane checked his watch. “And that’s my signal. Stop wasting time, Corrado.”
That said, Dane straightened to his full height, and turned to head for the chopper. Corrado had about a million and one questions he still wanted to ask, but he figured Dane was right. Those things didn’t matter, and he was losing seconds right now.
He bet even those were going to count here.
Seconds would make the difference to him succeeding with this or failing. With hands still tied, he used his booted feet to drag the small bag back closer. Then, he used his teeth to rip the zipper down as far as he could get it.
Corrado had the knife balanced between a rock and his boots as he ran the edge of the blade against the zip ties at his wrists before the helicopter had even lifted from the ground again.
And then he heard it.
A whistling.
The dirt next to his knee exploded, peppering his body, and making him jerk sideways to protect himself. The knife slipped from his grip and hit the dirt. Not that it mattered, despite slicing his skin a bit, he also cut the ties enough to break them when he yanked his wrists apart.
He was more concerned with the fact a bullet just hit the ground next to him, though. Looking up, he found Dane resting along the side door of the helicopter, sniper rifle aimed right at him. The man looked up over his scope, winked, and waved two fingers.
Yeah.
It kind of was a hunt.
Except ... he didn’t like to be prey.
Damn.
“Let’s fucking go, then.”
No one else could hear his mutter, sure, but that was fine. He grabbed that bag and the knife tight in one hand, and headed for the rocky ledge leading to the cliffs. But first, he had to fucking climb.
All the way down.
13.
Alessio
“Now why would you put metal in your face?”
Stepping off the escalator leading in from arrivals, Alessio grinned, knowing exactly what Cree was griping about. Raising his hand while giving Cree a look from the side, his fingertips drifted over the two small, golden hoops he had put side by side—with about five millimeters of space between each—in his right nostril.
