by J. M. Madden
It didn’t matter what he did though, because nothing changed. His hands grew bloody from fighting against the bars but he kept at it, because the damage kept repairing itself. And he screamed for someone to help him.
Then the two guards were dragging her out of the facility and she hung limply between them. He couldn’t see any blood on her, but maybe because she was too far away. The braid had come loose, her long, glorious hair hanging. As they drew near he lowered himself to try to be at her level, to see under the fall of her unbound hair, but they passed too quickly.
Aiden called out her name, even though he knew the guards would beat him for it. Finally, finally, she looked up. That blame had been magnified ten-fold. Now she looked at him as if she were disgusted by even a glimpse of him. Her lips were swollen and one eye was black, and it punctured his heart like a saber stroke. Deliberately she turned her head away from him.
Just before one of the guards pulled his sidearm and shot her in the back of the head.
Aiden yelled out as he slammed against the bars.
It took him a moment to realize he was sitting on the old gray couch. Angela was sitting on the coffee table right in front him, waiting for him to see her. Her hands were up like she was about to catch him as he lunged over the table, and her blue-grey eyes were full of alarm as he braced his arms out in front of himself to ward off blows.
Aiden rocked back against the cushion, trying to orient himself back out of the dream world. His hands were quaking and he felt out of his body. He scanned her face. Yes, her reddish-gold hair was down and mussed, but she didn’t have the look in her eyes she’d had in his dream. There was no blame or recrimination. But he still felt it. The thought of her being kidnapped or killed by one of the men from the Collaborative absolutely chilled him to the bone and he had to fight off nausea.
Before he even knew what he was doing he had reached out and cupped her face in his hand. Her eyes creased as she smiled and he could tell she was still worried about him, but would trust him to know if he needed anything.
Aiden needed to feel her vitality. Maybe her heat would chase away the cold in his heart.
She seemed to understand that he needed her to be the strong one in that moment, because she just started talking. Grounding him in mundane, everyday stuff that wasn’t heavy.
She launched into a story about a young man streaking through Target a few days back because he’d been dared by his fraternity. Then she talked about her college and how she’d gone to a community campus because she’d wanted to get through the criminal justice training sooner rather than later.
Aiden pulled away and planted his elbows on his knees, rested his head in his hands, eyes closed, and listened to her talk. That smoky voice was almost hypnotic, and the cadence was smooth. She didn’t stutter or pause awkwardly, just kept talking. Training she’d received in the Marines, no doubt. He knew if she had to she could probably scream down a crowd.
Then her hand drifted down over the crown of his head, neck and down his shoulder. The touch gave him chills. It wasn’t anything he’d ever experienced before, but he found himself leaning into her touch. Within just a few minutes the dream had faded and a new fantasy had moved in. This. Just the stroke of her fingers on his hair.
Angela talked for a long time. Aiden would have been happy listening to her for hours, but he knew that wasn’t fair to her. She was doing him a favor, talking him off the mental precipice he’d been on. He’d known the dream had been just that, a dream, but when you were in the middle of one like that it was hard to distinguish reality from fantasy.
Aiden knew that his mind was fractured. The training in the jungle camp had created the fracture, then the death of Rector had widened it. He feared that if Fontana or Wulfe were killed he would be permanently broken. One thing that they had all noticed, though, was that after Rector had died and they had recovered, they had felt stronger. They hadn’t absorbed his energy or anything weird like that, but something about the death had changed them for the better. They couldn’t exactly identify what it was.
Would any of their deaths benefit the others? He didn’t know. And he definitely didn’t want to find out.
The stroke of her fingers fell away. “I know you’re male, a SEAL and all… and you probably don’t want to talk about it but it really does help sometimes.”
Aiden snorted softly. He’d never even been offered the option to talk about his feelings before. It just wasn’t something you did when you were in an orphanage, unless it was to some do-gooder counselor. You definitely didn’t bare your soul to anyone as a SEAL. One whiff that you were off your rocker and they would wash you out. There were guys in the SEALs that definitely shouldn’t be there because of some of the shit going on in their heads.
“It was just a dream,” he said finally, glancing up. “Too vivid.”
She nodded her head. “I have those sometimes. Wake up thinking you’re five thousand miles away and in the middle of a gunfight or something.”
Aiden blinked. That’s right, she was a Marine veteran. How could he have ever forgotten that? “Did you see combat?”
“I was in Afghanistan for two tours. We all did.”
And something about the way she said that told him that she had her own demons to deal with. Suddenly, his own were forgotten in his concern for her. “I’m sorry.”
She shrugged her shoulders, tugging on a long length of his hair. “I’m not. It allowed me to see a beautiful culture and a beautiful country. It was just … my job. I got through it then came home to real life.”
He wished it had been so easy. Aiden thought about all the shit he and the guys had been through. They hadn’t had a single easy day after signing up for the Spartan Project. It had been horror after horror after horror.
Would he feel better telling her about it or would he just be spreading the misery?
“Once we signed up for the Spartan Project,” he told her eventually, “our lives were not our own. I think I told you we lived in cages?”
She nodded.
“They were literal cages, with bars. No urinal or toilet. We had a pipe in the floor that went down into a hole. We got two cups of water a day and a supposedly vitamin-filled oat cake. I dream I’m back in there all the time and I can’t get out.”
“That’s what you were dreaming of just now?”
Something about the look in her eyes told him she knew he was skimming the truth. “Kind of.”
He didn’t want to say anymore, just because he didn’t want to give the vision weight.
Aiden pushed to his feet, determined to move on. “I’m going to get a drink of water,” he told her.
But Angela caught his hand, and held it when he would have pulled away. “I’m sorry you had to deal with that. The government is supposed to take care of us in the military and they betrayed you in the most heinous way possible. Whether they knew what was going on or not, they are going to pay for what they did.”
He appreciated her words more than she knew. With a squeeze of her hand he headed for the kitchen to get a drink of water. For some reason he expected Angela to go to bed, but instead she watched him from the coffee table.
“Did you know Rector before the project?” she asked softly.
“No. Met him there. It was my cage, then Wulfe’s, then Rector’s. He was a good guy. One of the most forgiving of the group. I would never have thought he would have been hard enough to be an Army Airborne, but he was. Proud of it, too.”
Aiden grinned as he thought about Rector showing off the Airborne eagle tattoo he’d had emblazoned across his pectoral. It hadn’t been a great tattoo, but you couldn’t have told him that.
Angela laughed and he realized he’d said that last part out loud. The woman was entirely too easy to talk to.
“Did he have family?” she asked softly.
Aiden frowned, looking out the grimy windows of the warehouse. “I think his mother might still be alive, but I’m sure the army has told her he’s lost
or whatever. It’s what they told everyone’s family, if they had any.”
“Did your brother get a notification?”
He paused to look at her. “I don’t know, actually.”
“She may not know anything, then.” She shook her head in aggravation. “Maybe when this is all done you should find her.”
That didn’t sound like a bad idea actually. He could tell her what a strong young man he’d turned into, and how vital he had been to their escape. A knot of something in his gut eased. Maybe he’d been thinking about that for a while, whether he realized it or not. Rector had had a bad rap in life and he hadn’t deserved it. He’d had one of the most giving, loyal hearts of any men he knew.
“I think I will,” he told her softly. “Thank you.”
Angela shrugged. “No biggie.”
She pushed up from the table and for the first time he realized she barely wore any clothing. Tugging the hem of the t-shirt down over her thighs she tried to make it more modest, but her legs were too deliciously long. Muscles flexed beneath her skin and he wanted to touch her so bad he ached.
Aiden stared. He couldn’t help himself. He thought back to the fantasy she’d dragged him into. It had been something lacy she’d been wearing, but he found that the soft cotton looked as enticing as the lace. No, more so because it made her more approachable.
His dick hardened and it was a struggle to stand where he was and not follow after her. It had been so long since he’d touched anyone, and he suddenly felt that lack. Other than the guys in the jungle, then later in Miami, he couldn’t even remember who he’d last stayed the night with. Had to have been some woman back on base before the Spartan Project, but sadly, he couldn’t remember a face or a name. There had been a time when he’d been able to play and not look back, but now the thought of actually laying down and being allowed to touch her appealed to him even more. He had a … need, a hunger, to just stroke skin, feel that connection —contact with another human being.
“What’s wrong?”
Aiden looked up. He’d thought she’d gone to bed but she stood just a few feet in front of him, concern in her big blue-gray eyes. For a moment he wanted to wrap her in his arms and just be held by her, skin to skin. He wanted to feel someone else’s heartbeat against his own, and feel her hair beneath his chin. Something told him that she could be the answer to every dream he’d ever tried to imagine.
Angela seemed to sense that he was on an emotional edge, because she stepped forward and took one of his hands in her own. For the barest second Aiden wanted to pull away and man up, but the hunger surged inside him. For one night he wanted to not be alone, to not wonder how other people lived. So rather than pull away and slam up his walls, he let her take his hand.
Angela cupped his hand in her own and brought it up to hold beneath her chin. “What do you need, Aiden?”
Chapter Fourteen
For a several long beats of time, Angela didn’t think he would answer her. His throat worked and his eyes grew slumberous.
“I uh…” he cleared his throat. “I’ve been alone a long time. Would you be willing to just … lie down with me? Next to me? I just want to know I’m not alone for a few minutes or an hour or whatever.”
In her career she’d seen a lot of heart-breaking things, but his words touched her more deeply than anything else she’d ever heard. “Absolutely,” she told him, no hesitation in her voice.
There was no hesitation in her heart, either. This man had been turned away from by everyone in his life that he’d ever been connected to. His mother had given him up, his government, his friends, in a way. She could totally understand why he hadn’t gone to his brother yet. Even though she could see he was a vitally important person in Aiden’s life, even peripherally, that space gave him the protection he needed to not be turned away.
After a dog has been kicked so many times it learns not to be friendly.
Angela felt honored that he trusted her enough to bare himself to her that way. She was no one special, but she felt more than she should for this lost man. And she found that she didn’t pity him in any way. No, she admired his heart in asking for what he needed. So many soldiers that returned from war never asked for anything, even what they really needed, and they suffered needlessly.
Holding her hand out to him, she gave him a smile. “I warn you, though, sometimes I hog the blankets.”
Aiden stared at her hand for a long moment, his dark eyes inscrutable, as he decided whether or not to go through with what he asked for. Then, with a sigh, he took her hand, his fingers clutching her own.
Angela led him to his bed. She crawled beneath the sheet and light blanket, then held a corner open to him. Shucking his jeans to the floor, Aiden crawled onto the mattress and turned, laying upon his back. Angela mirrored his position, but her right hand reached across the space between them to clutch his hand. There was a tremor in his fingers.
The warehouse wasn’t completely dark. There were a few peripheral lights on. Just enough for her to see his clenched jaw and narrowed eyes. Tension held his body rigid and she wondered what she could do for him. It didn’t seem like this was working for him.
“I’m sorry, Aiden, maybe I should go back to the couch.”
“Don’t you dare,” he whispered. “Just give me a minute to get used to this.”
Maybe it would be better if he didn’t feel her eyes upon him. Curling onto her side she backed her derrière up to his side, then rested their joined hands on her hip. His heat radiated through the thin clothing layers between them, from his shoulder against her back to his hip against her butt. The hands were a little awkward where they were though.
Shifting behind her, Aiden also rolled onto his side, then, as if he couldn’t help himself, he wrapped his right arm around her hips and pulled her to him. Angela didn’t say anything, just let him do what he wanted.
She was very aware that he could just be playing all wounded and needy to get her to open up to him, but she didn’t feel like that was the case. She set her skeptical self aside and tried to just read him with her heart. Now that she was so close to him, she could feel the tremor running through his entire body, as if her warmth were beginning to take the chill from him.
When she felt his forehead rest against the upper part of her back, she had to blink away tears. He’d been fighting for so long. Angela couldn’t even imagine the things he’d been through. Even if only a portion of what he’d told her was true, he deserved to be acknowledged. And the only thing he wanted was physical contact, simply to be able to touch another human being.
When she’d returned from overseas and been discharged it had taken a long time to settle back into real life. She’d lived with her parents for almost a year as she tried to figure out what she’d wanted to do. When she’d started college, it had been just as alienating. The other students her age didn’t have her experience and for a long time she’d struggled with anger at how blasé they were about their lives. If she remembered correctly it had taken a few years for her to find a guy to sleep with that she didn’t feel like strangling. He hadn’t been a student.
She didn’t cry as he held her, but it was a near thing, because she could understand. It could be a desperately lonely existence coming back from a war alone.
No one deserved to be treated the way he had.
As his breath puffed against her back, Angela began to relax. There was a secondary sensual tension humming between them, but this thirst he had for touch had to be quenched first, then they could move on to other things.
Aiden basked in the warmth of Angela’s body, and the feel of her beneath his hand. He hadn’t known what she’d say to his off the wall request, but she hadn’t even blinked an eye. Did she have guys ask to touch her a lot?
Maybe it was just that she was level-headed enough not to freak at odd requests. He was sure she got them every day as a cop. And maybe his request wasn’t so odd.
Whatever. He was curled up around her now, basking in th
e warmth of her body, and the feel of her hand holding his own. There was a hint of fresh clothing smell, like she’d just gotten the shirt out of the dryer. Aiden loved smelling clean things. It was almost an obsession. After living at the compound for the Spartan Project, then on the streets, it felt like he and clean clothing were just passing acquaintances. Yes, he would shower and brush his teeth, but as soon as he lifted the dirty sweatshirt, his ‘street camo’ over his head, he stunk again.
At the shelter and on the streets he’d gotten used to the smell of unwashed bodies and rotting teeth, but there was only so far he would allow himself to go.
Angela was pristine and beautiful, clean. Even when she’d had blood running down the side of her face and dirt on her cheek there’d been something appealing about her.
He tightened his arm around her stomach, pulling her close to him. She’d drifted off to sleep some time ago but he just hadn’t been able to let her go.
Aiden realized his mistake within a split second. His body’s needs had been outweighed by his skin hunger, but as he felt the curve of her ass nestle into the cup of his lap, the sexual need rolled back, harder than ever. Gasping, he put space between them again, praying he hadn’t woken her. He stilled, waiting for some sign that she was rousing, but she stayed quiet, breathing steadily.
His heart still pounded, though. The thought of burrowing his hand beneath her soft t-shirt to cup her breast was at the forefront of his mind. Her tummy would be soft and womanly, but she would hold him with strength as he nestled between her thighs.
Clenching his teeth, Aiden very carefully rolled to his back, breathing through his nose as he tried to calm his racing libido. It didn’t work, though. Instead, thoughts of her rearing above him, her long strawberry blonde hair hanging like a curtain around them as she spread her thighs over top of him raced through his mind. Aiden’s dick flexed in his underwear and he could feel moisture at the tip.
