Silver Lining

by Skye Warren

  There’s nothing to see except the way the blankets rise and fall with every even breath she takes. The rhythm is enough to hypnotize a man, and it does. I become attuned to the steady in and out, in and out, in and out. I watch, enraptured, while my mind works through the decisions that need to be made. Though they’re already made, really. Everything has already been chosen for us. It was chosen years ago, and it’s time to tell Holly the truth.

  As soon as she wakes up.

  She sleeps for a long time, alive and breathing. So long that my own eyelids grow heavy. At some point toward dawn I close my eyes for a moment. Soldiers learn how to sleep in short, necessary bursts. I open my eyes when I hear Holly shifting on the cot.

  It’s heartbreaking, watching her wake up.

  She stretches her arms over her head. I reach to stop her—too late. Holly stops herself with a wince. A gasp. I shouldn’t have fucked her last night. It was wrong.

  It was wrong, but the memory of it has me hard right now.

  Holly turns her head, her sleepy gaze finding my face. “Don’t regret it.”

  She means the sex. That’s the only part of this I don’t regret.

  Most of all I regret what happens next.

  Every part of me resists telling her. My calves tense. My heart slows. I’d rather walk to the ends of the earth. There’s no other choice. “We’re in danger.”

  Holly rubs at her eyes with one hand. “I know.”

  “You don’t.” I run a hand over my face. I want to throw my body in front of the bullet for her, but I already failed. “It’s not a matter of if they’ll find us, it’s when. You have to know what to do when they arrive. Because it’s not about murder, not really.”

  “Elijah—”

  “It’s about treason. Casus belli. It’s an act of war.”

  She looks stricken, and I hate myself right now. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be sorry. You were defending yourself. And me. I’m not angry, but I have to… I have to tell you this. I have to prepare you for what happens next.”

  A hard swallow. “Which is?”

  “They will spin it like it’s an act against country. His crimes won’t matter. And—” I swallow against the knot in my throat. A million times I’ve been in the hands of the enemy. There’s always been a little bit of relief. A little hope that the pain will end. Even death means a cease to the suffering. The thought of Holly in the enemy’s hands is a new type of fear. It freezes me solid, ice from the inside out. “The military doesn’t need to follow the rules. They don’t need an arrest warrant, they don’t need to give you a lawyer. Not for an enemy combatant. You can disappear, if that’s what they want.”

  “Okay.” Her voice only shakes a little. “So we need to get out of the country.”

  Yes and no. Being out of the country would only delay the inevitable. And there’s no way she can be moved right now without risking her life. I refuse to do that. I know it’s damned hypocritical because I was willing to fuck her raw, but I only have so much control where she’s concerned. “When we’re caught, you need to say that I pulled the trigger.”

  I can tell how much it hurts her to sit up with such speed and force, but Holly does it anyway. “I’m not going to do that. I’m the one who shot him, and I won’t—” She winces, and I reach for the bottle of painkillers. “You are not going to drug me out of this conversation.”

  “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.” I pull my hand back from the painkillers and stand up. She has to lay down. Has to rest, before the storm breaks over us. “That’s asking too much. You protected me by shooting him. Now it’s my turn to protect you.”

  She gets her feet over the side of the cot before I can stop her.

  “Holly, what the hell—” I try to stop her, but she’s throwing all her weight against me. It would tear her wound apart if I insist, so I’m forced to hover around her, ready to catch her if she falls. “I swear to god I will tie you to this bed with no remorse.”

  “Good,” she says. “At least that would be the real you.”

  There’s nowhere to go except back, and she’s pushing herself into me, butting against me, with such a furious insistence that I could laugh if we weren’t waiting for the end of the world.

  Holly puts both hands up on my chest and pushes.

  My hands come up on instinct. She can’t be doing this, can’t be using her body like this, not when it’s injured. And she knows it.

  She lets herself go, a wicked streak in her eyes, and I land in the chair with her between my legs. Holly clambers up onto my lap, her breath hitching.

  The sheet falls.

  All my noble intentions fall with it.

  Because she’s straddling my lap, reaching down for the fly of my pants. And I’m running my hands over the curves of her hips and down to pinch her ass. Hard.

  I want to leave bruises. Even if they come for us, she’ll have my fingerprints on her skin. Fucked up? Yes. But I never claimed to be otherwise.

  Even through my jeans I can feel her pussy, warm and wet against my cock. It would be so easy to slide inside, to pump inside her toward oblivion. It’s the only heaven I’ll ever know. The only heaven I’ll ever need. I pull her flush against my erection, and she whimpers. The pressure feels incredible for me, but I know it’s too much for her. The taut denim is too rough against her secret flesh. I drop my head back and stare at the cold, dark ceiling, reveling in the uneven pleasure. Above us is a place of worship. What kind of god would make men hard and rough? Women are so soft, like flower petals. I’ll grind her into pieces on the altar of my lust.

  I stroke myself with her sex, rubbing her against me, enveloping my cock, lifting her entire body with every thrust. I’m not even inside her yet, and I’m about to come. Only that makes me stop. I sit back, breathing hard, trying to get myself under control.

  Holly’s hands move quickly on my zipper. All these hours I’ve spent wrestling her into that damn cot and it’s still come to this—gripping her flesh, lifting my hips so my cock is freed from layers of cloth. My cock stands proud and thick between us, already glistening with pre cum.

  I touch the tip to wet my finger and push it into her mouth. One finger. Two. Her eyes go wide, but she doesn’t fight me. She accepts me as I fuck her mouth this way, two fingers that taste like my come, rubbing my forefinger over her tongue, reveling in the damp heat. “That’s right,” I say, my voice low. “Show me how bad you want my come.”

  And bless her, she does. She forms a beautiful suction on my fingers, and my cock flexes in the cool air between us. I push farther back, touching the back of her throat, and she gags around my hand. Even that makes me harder, the sound and the convulsion a reward all its own.

  “Go ahead and fuck me, sweetheart. Work me good.”

  She’s determined and already lifting her hips. Effort shines in her face while she works herself down onto me. It has to be painful. My job here is to stop her, to convince her to heal. The entry wound has healed better than the exit. Her insides are still torn to shit.

  Then her wet heat envelopes me, and her inner muscles clench my cock, and I forget that I existed outside this moment. There’s only bliss and endless pleasure.

  “Hold still,” I say between clenched teeth. I grasp her hips and thrust from beneath her, forcing my cock inside her, again and again, holding her suspended above me. It’s only slightly better than letting her fuck me. She still has to clench her muscles while I use her body. She could start bleeding from what I’m doing. But she submits so sweetly, almost as if she knows how badly I’ve needed this, how hard I’ve had to hold myself back from her. Even as I changed the dressing on her wound and pulled the blanket up to her neck, I’ve imagined taking out my cock. I’ve imagined fucking my fist until white liquid covers her face.

  My brothers were right to turn their backs on me. Liam was right when he questioned my treatment of Holly. Look what I’m doing to her—and she’s so fucking beautiful, color spread across her
cheeks and her neck, tits bouncing beneath the sports bra.

  As quickly as I started, I stop. I lift her up from my lap so she’s an inch above the tip of my cock. It hurts, the dry air on my private flesh. It hurts to be outside of her.

  “No,” she moans, her hips rocking uselessly where my cock used to be.

  “Promise me,” I say, licking my lips. “I’ll only let you come if you promise.”

  “Promise what?”

  “Promise you’ll say I shot him.”

  Her eyes are lust-dazed and dark. They go wide when I say that. It takes her slow seconds to focus on me. Outrage and desire mix in her brown gaze. “What?”

  “You heard me.”

  “Don’t… No. You can’t be serious.”

  “Stone cold,” I say, resting her ass on my thighs. That gives me space to bring my hands to her front, to run my thumb through her wet folds. God, she feels good. I want her around my cock again, but not without this. “You want this cock, you promise me.”

  Fire flares in her dark eyes. “You’re sure I’ll give in.”

  My thumb finds her clit, and I circle, circle, circle. She gasps and wriggles in my arms. There is no country safe enough. There is no safehouse hidden enough. We will be found. The only way to save her is this. “Promise me, and I’ll fuck you until you cry.”

  Her thighs tremble around me. Her hips give a small, telling jolt. “No. Please.”

  “It’s so easy,” I coax, an asshole to the last. “So easy to give me what I want. Then I’ll make you feel good. I’ll fill you up and come inside you.”

  She shudders. Her eyes drift closed. “Please.”

  I stroke her with blunt, harsh movements. I’m not trying to make her rise gently. I want her spilling over and desperate. She has a strong will, but I have time on my side. Seconds turn into minutes. They might even become hours as I fuck her with my fingers, keeping her on the edge, never letting her fall into orgasm. Tears fall down her cheeks, squeezed from beneath tightly closed eyelids. “Promise me, sweetheart. That’s all you have to do.”

  She should have known I’d get my way, whether I used the pain medicine to distract or sex to fuck her into oblivion. She’s rocking on my legs, arousal dripping onto my jeans, lips parted in a sexy pant, whole body moving in time with my thumb. I’m relentless, bringing her inexorably to the pinnacle only to hold her there. She can’t move. Can’t go anywhere, can only take it. The tears come faster now, they flood down her cheeks, because she knows she’s lost.

  The words are a broken whisper. “I promise.”

  Relief sweeps through me, wiping out all thought. I slam her down onto my cock, and she comes immediately, her muscles clenching and quivering around me, liquid desire sliding down my cock to my balls, and I come in a hard, endless pulse that coats her inside with come.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Holly

  Washing up at a utility sink shouldn’t be sexy, but it is.

  I shouldn’t spend my time memorizing the dips and lines of Elijah’s hard body, but I do.

  He rubs soap between his big palms. Water runs over his knuckles in white suds. Such mundane movements but the sex has given them a surreal, shimmering quality. A joke about being in a movie comes to mind and flits back out again. He looks too serious for jokes. So serious. So tense. Like someone might burst into this dark church at any moment.

  I see the shadow of fear in his eyes when he looks into the mirror above the sink, but he blinks it away in an instant. Did I imagine it? Does he truly believe that the net is closing in around us, or is it just his nature to be prepared? God knows he’s earned the right. Survival has been the focus of his entire life, and not in the abstract way it is for other people. We’re all trying to make it in the world. Elijah carves out heartbeat after heartbeat.

  It’s my new mission to convince him this isn’t true.

  “Elijah,” I say, and his green eyes meet mine in the blackened mirror. They’re so intense that I’m winded. What was I going to say to him, anyway? That he’s wrong about the world around us? That soon, we’ll be able to sneak out into the dark and disappear? I didn’t have a plan when I shot that gun and I don’t have a plan now. I just have a fierce, delirious need to prove to him that we’ll survive. We can survive anything as long as we’re together.

  “I love you.” The words fall out of my mouth like stones to the bottom of the ocean, swift and sure of their way down. It isn’t a solution. It won’t protect us from bullets, but it doesn’t have to. It has a power all its own, and the love builds inside me until I’m bursting.

  He whirls to face me, stunned for a single, breathless moment.

  Three things happen at once in the pause before he speaks.

  There’s a sound of wood splintering on stone. Elijah blinks, and when his eyes open again, something flashes through them, onyx through emerald. It looks like heartbreak but it’s gone too soon to pin it down. And he moves.

  “What are you doing?” It’s a pointless question, wasted breath, because as soon as he’s between me and the bathroom door it’s obvious.

  It’s so horribly, awfully obvious.

  He was right.

  I’m out of time to prove to him that we’ll be okay in the end.

  We will not be all right. Love doesn’t conquer all.

  Men swarm down into the basement, too many to count, a swarm of black shields and weaponry. They’re multiplying, shouting. My question is swallowed up in the storm of noise. Something loud explodes in the next room, toward the cell, but nothing heats or burns. A flashbang? I discover I’ve put my hands over my ears and I’m too late.

  My entire skull rings with the noise.

  Elijah’s shadow falls away from me.

  He’s falling, too. There are so many people, too many people, and they’re coordinated. They knock him down and he gets back up. The bathroom is too small to fight in, far too small. The rim of the sink presses coldly into my back. I’m afraid to let go of my ears in case my brain spills out, but I do, I do, because I have to reach for him.

  I get a fist into his t-shirt.

  It’s ripped away.

  A frustrated scream I can’t hear scorches my throat, fear corroding the raw flesh. They’re kicking him. Killing him. How is ever going to survive this? He won’t, not unless—

  I lurch forward and throw my body down over his. There’s a chance if I can hold on.

  There’s a chance.

  I can’t hold on.

  How many people have crowded into the bathroom? Six? Ten? Four hands dig into my skin. I don’t know what I’m shouting as they drag me away. I get one arm hooked through his. It comes to nothing. My nails rake across his bicep, leaving red trails behind.

  He’s hidden from me by the black outfits and combat gear and I feel something like vertigo. Something like the disembodied horror of losing a tooth. They’re dragging me, carrying me, toward the stairs.

  I’m not going to get back to him. If they take me out of here and I die, I won’t be able to get back to him.

  I let myself go limp, the full weight of me pulling down toward the floor. My heel catches on the stairs and it sends a bolt of pain up through my leg. At least I have contact with the bottom step and I dig it in.

  Sounds filter through the ringing in my ears. One of the men, cursing me out steadily and fluently. Knuckles meeting someone’s cheekbone. The grunt as a punch clears the air from someone’s lungs.

  And a high, keening cry.

  Me.

  I’m the one making that noise, and it strangles itself into words. They’re having to work for this. A detached part of me is proud that I’m putting up a fight, even though it hurts like a motherfucker. There’s no way I haven’t undone all Elijah’s careful healing. Even that doesn’t hurt as much as being separated from him.

  He’s still fighting, but they’re piling on now with me out of the way. “Leave him alone,” I shout, a hot tear dripping into my mouth.

  Leaving Elijah alone is not on the agen
da for the day and anger screws itself into my spine. They’re monsters. They’re monstrous. There are too many hands and arms to keep track of. One of those hands rises and comes down to meet the side of Elijah’s head and I scream again. A black-clad arm locks itself around my neck and pulls. I claw at body armor and get no response.

  He drags me up two more stairs, his partner huffing beside him. It’s a narrow space and I kick out again and again, trying to sink my heels into their shins, into the steps, anything. Anywhere.

  Elijah falls again and the metallic anger is replaced with fear the color of his blood. It’s red like paint, red like pretend, but it’s real enough to stop my heart.

  We’re almost to the top of the stairs now and an animal cry tears itself out of me. I don’t want to lose sight of Elijah. I want to keep my eyes on him for as long as possible. In the process I manage to wedge myself against the wall, one man’s hand pinned underneath my shoulder.

  For a moment we’re face to face.

  I can hardly make out his features through the haze of my tears. He’s half hidden under a tactical helmet, dark glasses covering his eyes, and if I could rip those glasses off I would. Letting go of his arm to do it isn’t an option.

  My only option left is to beg.

  It cracks me open, having to do this, but what wouldn’t I do for Elijah?

  Nothing. The answer is nothing.

  “Please,” I sob at my blurred reflection in his glasses, then swallow the crying like it’s broken glass. I set my teeth. “Please don’t do this. You’re killing him. Your friends are killing him. You could make them stop.”

  His arm tenses under my hand and then he moves, too fast for me to fight him off. His fingers lock tight around my biceps. I’m caught in a trap now, a trap of my own making, goddamn it. This man’s options are practically unlimited. He could lift me straight upward, he could throw me over his shoulder, he could throw me back against the wall hard enough to knock me out.

  I freeze in place. “Let me stay with him. Please, please, let me stay with him.”