by Krista Wolf
“I sure hope not.”
I stared back at him, not sure what to think. His face registered nothing.
“He’ll live, unless he’s stupid enough not to go to a hospital,” Briggs said. “Besides, I didn’t want him dead. I sent him back with a message.”
It was an ominous statement, and one I didn’t want to explore. Not now. Not yet.
“You’re here!” I said, suddenly realizing where we were. “You’re home! B—But how is that possible? I thought you were deployed!”
“I’ve been back a few weeks.”
Weeks?
I blinked. I didn’t know whether to be shocked or offended. Angry or confused or—
“Then why didn’t you—”
“Because I was waiting for him,” Briggs said, nodding toward the broken window. The rain was still pouring in. It was getting everything wet. Pooling all over the floor…
“I had a feeling he’d come tonight,” he went on. “When the rain came and the weather turned, I knew he’d take a chance.” He finished toweling off and dropped his shirt to the floor. “He came, and I was ready for him.”
I had a thousand questions. They spun through my head like a whirlwind, making me dizzy.
Who was that guy? What did he want with me?
A sickening feeling crept through the pit of my stomach.
What kind of message just got sent… and to who?
I glanced up again and Briggs was dragging a large plastic painter’s tarp out of the sun room. He draped it over the broken window, using his fingers to pry out the antique mouldings and tuck it behind. I winced but said nothing.
The storm was full force now, and blowing wildly. Toe to toe, Briggs was a full six inches taller than me. He looked me over, the both of us covered in rain and sweat. Blood and grime…
“Come,” he said extending his hand.
Still shaking all over, I took it.
Forty-Four
SAMMARA
Up the staircase we went, dripping water and God knows what else. None of that mattered to me. The house was dark — nearly pitch black — and scarier than I’d ever seen it.
All I wanted was to be near him. His contact was reassuring. I was shivering even more violently now, somewhat still from the adrenaline, but even more from the cold.
I moved closer as he led me down the hallway, deriving scant warmth from the touch of his hand. He opened the door to the master bath. A muted silvery light filtered in from the bathroom window, but the shower’s digital display was as dark as the rest of the house.
“There’s no—”
Briggs pulled a knob out of the wall — one that I hadn’t noticed before. He turned it and water began spraying down, hot and fast. The whole room started filling with steam.
He yanked off his boots. Pulled open his belt buckle. His pants dropped, and suddenly he was naked before me.
Oh wow…
I stood gawking, frozen in place as he stepped beneath the spray. It crashed over him, washing away the caked layers of red and brown. I watched the moonlit filth run down his perfect, ridiculously sculpted body, splashing down his legs and swirling into the drain.
I don’t know how long I stood there before he pulled me in. He did it wordlessly, without asking. Suddenly he was pulling my clothes off with two strong hands, down my legs and over my head, until I was just as naked as he was.
I went willingly, sliding beneath the beautiful world of warmth and heat, feeling the silkiness of the soap gliding over my body as he began scrubbing me clean. I turned around and did him as well. I lathered up his massive back, running my hands up and down every wonderfully firm inch of muscle, until I found myself cupping and caressing his hard, round ass.
It should’ve felt strange, but it didn’t. It was comforting. Comfortable. Touching this dark stranger — this man I barely knew — somehow seemed like the most natural thing in the world.
His hands slid down my legs. Up my body, and around me from behind. Briggs pulled us directly beneath the overhead spray and ran his hands through my hair, washing away the lather, rinsing it clean as we turned into each other. Our bodies were flush now, skin on skin. He stared down at me for a long time as the heat and steam drove the last of the chill from my body.
“They were right,” he said finally. “You are perfect.”
I was lifted from the tile floor as he picked me up and pressed his lips to mine. The kiss was long, hot, passionate. Made even more tactile and sensual by the near-total darkness. I wanted nothing more than to kiss him back, allowing my body to mold itself to his. Feeling the sensations of his strong arms wrapped around me, the water still cascading down all around us.
He pinned me against the wall, and I reached down to stroke him. Dangling between his legs, his cock was thick and strong. It swelled almost instantly at my touch, coming alive in my hand.
Without warning I was being lifted again… and then set straight down upon him. His great body forced my legs apart and I spread wide for him, sighing loudly as he impaled me with the weight of my own body.
“God…”
He sank all the way in, thrusting me upward and pulling me down until I was wrapped fully around him. I slid my arms over his shoulders. Hooked my ankles behind his back. I was bouncing hard as he was already fucking me, using the wall and his legs and everything else for leverage.
“Oh GOD…”
Briggs grunted like a bull as he drove even harder and deeper inside me. He was using my body now — taking it for his own pleasure. Grinding his hips greedily at the end of every thrust, filling me with his heat and his thickness until I felt deliciously, deliriously full.
My face found his and we began kissing again, our tongues delving deep, like two lost lovers reconnecting. The darkness enveloped us. Blanketed us with anonymity and warmth. And the water…
The water felt almost like it was washing away weeks and months of disconnect. Imbuing us with a strange yet wonderful sense of instant intimacy and emotional closeness. As we writhed against each other in the swirling steam, it cemented our physical union. Broke down whatever walls might’ve been there to begin with, only to replace them with all new, intangible bonds.
He began going harder. Faster. It was almost inhuman, how physical he could be, how much he needed exactly what he was doing. Our bodies crashed together, clapping loudly, water splashing everywhere as he turned me around and bent me face down against the opposite wall.
Ohhh… Oh FUCK…
I felt an obscene thrill as he entered me again. Winced at the iron grip of his hands on my ass as he plowed into me, over and over, driving himself so hard against my insides that I had to screw my eyes shut in pain and pleasure.
I put my hand up, to keep my head from hitting the wall. Gritting my teeth I screwed back even harder against him. All at once I wanted him in me. I wanted his come inside me, elicited straight out of his body and into mine whether he liked it or wanted it or not.
“Fuck!” I screamed, using both hands on the opposite wall. “FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK FUCK!”
We gave it to each other like that for a long time, until Briggs finally stepped back, his hands wrapped in my hair. He spun me around. Grabbed one of my legs and threw it high up over his shoulder, his expression all fury and anger and lust.
My eyes fluttered open, and we were staring face to face for the first time. His teeth were clenched. His jaw flexed as he pushed forward, burying himself back inside me, this time fucking me with one leg still scissored upward.
It was deep. Deep and personal. Our faces practically touched, our mouths just centimeters apart as we stared eye to eye, iris to iris, the tiny glint of moonlight playing against the dark ink of his pupils.
“I’ve been waiting for you…” I breathed.
He didn’t talk, or slow, or stop. He only kept on thrusting, over and over, plunging himself in and out of my swollen pussy.
“All this time…”
His breath was my breath. Our physical connecti
on, unspeakably deep and meaningful. And he was looking at me now. Looking through me…
“Waiting for you to come home.”
I gasped as his arms went impossibly tight. Briggs dug both hands into the flesh of my ass, pulling me against him as he began throbbing inside me. His cock twitched and pulsed, thumping powerfully against my insides as he erupted with savage heat and wetness.
“There…”
I clutched his head. Drove his face hard into my breasts.
“Right there baby… right inside me…”
He kept coming. Shooting. Emptying himself in my womb. It was like being filled with molten lava. Sprayed from within…
“Ohhhhhhh…”
Briggs’ whole body shuddered violently, and I clenched him tight through the torment of his ecstasy. He burrowed his face even harder, driving himself deep between my warm, wet mounds.
“Shhhhhhh…”
I even soothed him as he came down. Stroked the back of his short-cropped hair. Kissed his shoulder, his cheek, his forehead…
Then our legs let loose and we collapsed, still kissing, to the shower floor.
Forty-Five
BRIGGS
It was just after Dragon Hammer but before Eastern Fury, where we went back to Fallujah for what could’ve been a very bad time. Thankfully, that last part never happened. But the other part…
Well, the other part did.
At the time we were celebrating. We’d detained the right people. Recovered more than one hundred eighty individual weapons caches, and taken them from the hands of insurgents. They was a lot of bad stuff mixed in with it, too. Incendiary mortar rounds and rockets, and at least fifteen pounds of plastic explosives.
We were on the way back when it happened.
We’d stopped at the ass end of Baghdad — Rashid District, just on the other side of the Tigris. There was a contact there I needed to meet. Someone of great value, high importance. Someone whose intel had never proven wrong, in more than two dozen meetings, over the scope of several operations.
Stopping there was all on me. After all, he was my contact. I was the one who trusted him.
The whole damned thing was my call…
It unfolded as it always did, in slow motion. Sometimes I was driving. Sometimes it was Tempone, or Butch, or even Rossa, although he wasn’t even rated to pilot the ASV.
Either way, the end result was always the same.
The explosion began at the right rear of the M1117. It blossomed yellow, then orange, then angry red… flipping us up and into the air, until the vehicle stood on its nose. We hung there suspended for a moment, like some sort of screwed up kids’ toy spinning on end. Then it fell over sideways, hard.
I can never move fast enough, whenever it happens. Never reach anyone before the flames sweep through. I try over and over, but just like the rest of the scene I also move in slow motion. I open my mouth to warn everyone, but as always, no sound ever comes out.
In just seconds the interior of the Guardian is a fireball of heat and flame. Unbearable. Uninhabitable. I can hear their screams even as the flames sweep through, high-pitched and horrible. The kind of screams men were never meant to make under any circumstances, and yet somehow the human throat is still designed to form them.
My eyes go glassy as the impossible temperatures keep me at bay. The Guardian is on its back now, resting on its shattered turret. Its machine guns are two blackened sticks, bent uselessly by the sheer weight of its own impact.
The force of the explosion spiderwebs the shatterproof glass. I can’t see inside anymore. But I can still hear…
Oh God…
I’m always inside while we’re driving, before it begins. Yet after it happens, I’m suddenly watching from afar.
I open my mouth.
I open my mouth and—
“Wake up!”
My body rocks left and right, possibly from a second explosion. But it’s too gentle. Not enough of a—
“Briggs, wake up!”
I blink awake. It’s dark. Too dark. But I’m somewhere else now. Somewhere warm, and safe, and unharmed. I feel the softness of a bed beneath me — a real one, not a bunk.
And beside me something else. Something even warmer, softer, silkier.
“Honey, you were dreaming…”
Golden hair brushes my face, light and fragrant. I can see it shimmering, even in the dimmest light.
“You were screaming. Yelling out. So I woke you and…” She looks at me, and I still don’t recognize her. I’m still not fully back yet. “A—Are you okay?”
Slowly it floats in, coming in bits and pieces. Memories of last night. Memories of her.
It always takes a while, especially at first. For reasons I’ll never understand, the dream temporarily wipes out my short-term memory.
“I’m okay.”
It’s my first instinct, my gut reply. Only I’m not okay. I’m never really okay, any more than Tempone is okay. Or Butch. Or Rossa, Graziano, Kostas…
“Sit up.”
I do as I’m told, almost like I’ve been given an order. In some ways I have. A moment later I’m rubbing sleep from my eyes, staring around the strange room as a pair of very long, very feminine arms wrap themselves delicately around me.
“It’s alright,” she whispers into the darkness. “Whatever it is, you’re alright now. You’re with me…”
I exhale slowly and breathe her in. The scent of her body, the feel of her skin on mine — it relaxes me almost immediately.
I cuddle into her hard, preparing for the worst part. Bracing myself for the rush of cold, and the inevitable shaking.
But this time the shaking never comes.
Forty-Six
SAMMARA
”Okay, let’s hear it.”
I walked into the kitchen as if I owned the place, and Briggs was just an invited guest. I poured coffee. Sat down. Leaned forward, to make sure he saw me.
“The secrecy bullshit is over,” I told him. “The car chase was one thing, but people are breaking into our house now, Briggs. They’re coming after us. Coming after me.”
He sipped his coffee, eying me impassively over the rim of the mug. Black. Probably no sugar. He’d been up a while though, because it looked cold.
“If you’re not going to let me call the police, I need to know what you are going to do. Besides show up what easily could’ve been five minutes too late.”
“I wasn’t late,” he protested.
“That’s debatable.”
We stared at each other for a long moment, and I saw the thinnest hint of a smirk curling at one corner of his mouth. Maybe he was goading me into anger. Maybe he was just remembering last night…
“Alright, what do you want to know?”
It wasn’t the answer I expected, really. But I pounced on it.
“Everything,” I said. “Start with who attacked me and why.”
“The man who attacked you was an agent of Markus Ladrone.” Briggs looked sideways at nothing in particular, then snapped his fingers. “Daniels, I think his name was.”
“Daniels?”
“Yes.”
“And what the hell did he want?”
“You,” Briggs said simply. “He wanted you.”
“Me?” The blunt honest of the statement sent a flash of panic through me.
“Yes. He wanted you as leverage against me. Against us, really.”
“So this guy…” I struggled with the words. “He… He wanted—”
“Markus Ladrone is a mercenary captain,” Briggs said matter-of-factly. “Runs Di Spatia, his own outfit. He’s been screwing the US military for years by siphoning off surplus weapons, and selling them to insurgents.”
I blinked. None of this made any sense. “What? Why?”
“In order to raise money to expand his own company.”
“But that’s—”
“Illegal yes, but only if he gets caught.” He took another swig of cold black coffee. “I’m the one who
caught him.”
My mind tried processing the whole thing. It felt crazy. Like something out of a movie. And yet here I was, sitting in the kitchen of a 200 year-old house, drinking coffee with someone I’d just met, just screwed. Someone who’d also just saved my life.
Oh yeah, and someone was supposed to be my boyfriend, to boot.
“So why didn’t he just go after you?” I asked.
“He tried. Several times.”
“He wants you dead?”
“Dead would be one option,” Briggs nodded. “Not the best though. Dead would bring attention. Especially because he’d need to make sure he got Kyle, Dakota, and Ryan too.”
My blood ran cold. He saw my expression and quickly put a hand over mine.
“None of that’s going to happen, Sammara. Trust me.”
I let out a long breath. His touch was still electric, and still reassuring.
“So if not dead… then…”
“First he tried to buy my silence. When that didn’t work, he tried intimidation. Next came blackmail. He dug up a little dirt — mostly in the distant past — but none of it would ever stick.”
Slowly I was getting it.
“So now he’s moved on to kidnapping?”
Briggs smirked wryly. He raised his mug. “Attempted kidnapping. He figured if he took something of value to us, we’d eventually shut up.”
I shivered. “Jesus.”
“Yeah. Sort of.”
The kitchen went silent as we studied each other, and suddenly I was very self-aware. I was wearing loose-fitting sweat-clothes. My hair probably looked like I just got done fighting a dragon. He on the other hand, looked fresh and magnificent. Showered, shaven, dressed. Ready to take on anything.
“So…”
I didn’t know what else to say. He was practically a stranger. This was our first actual conversation, and it wasn’t even about us.
But last night…
At the same time though, the connection was still there. The sexual energy, mixed in with the intensity of our bond. It hung there cloyingly between us. Like a heavy static charge in the air, right before a thunderstorm.
