Space Invaders

by Amber Kell

“Then do it already,” I gasped, teeth grinding together with the force to get the words out.

  Armise didn’t release the arm around my neck, but he moved his left hand from my shoulder to my hip, circling it, digging his fingers into the hard muscle, the bruising immediate. Blood rushed to the brand he left on my skin. His fingers slipped beneath the waistband of my pants and I felt him shiver against my back. His lips brushed my neck so softly I wondered if I’d imagined it. My body remained tense, ready to strike, but I was now meeting his touch, pushing back harder, driving him back on feet that were becoming unsteady.

  “Get to it, bitch,” I spurred him on. “Then kill me. It’s time for this to be over.”

  I knew the idea of killing me appealed to him on more than one level. While I appreciated pain, he found satisfaction in death. I was glad I couldn’t step inside his mind at this moment to see just how happy my vulnerability was making him. He would have been the perfect Peacemaker, if only he fought for the right country.

  He tugged at my waistband, pushing my pants to the floor, stripping me, letting my straining cock free. He pushed his own pants to the ground and rutted against me, his thick length sliding against the crack of my ass. He smashed my cock against the frigid steel. I saw stars from the sudden agony and the arm still at my throat, choking off the flow of blood to my head. But the pain grounded me in a way that a beating never would, and I felt my head clearing.

  Armise was the lightning strike in my storm. He appeared without warning—a violent burst, and brilliant flash, lighting up the night sky—then retreated in a cacophonous crash, leaving me dazed, unsteady and blinking back stars from my vision.

  He was unpredictable. Unstable.

  Deadly and hypnotic.

  And yet it was like I stood defiantly in the storm, rifle lifted towards the churning sky, and challenged him to strike me.

  As if I came alive in that moment of impact.

  Armise thrust our bodies together. My lips were cracked, bloodied, the knuckles of my hands split and aching. My shoulder pinned to the wall was losing all sensation, but I wouldn’t let him fuck me. That hadn’t happened in any of our years of negotiation, and I wouldn’t allow it to happen now. Armise wouldn’t win this fight.

  He drew back, removing his shirt, and I spun, setting him off balance. My right arm was too weak to take him on, so I used my left shoulder to turn him as we tumbled towards the opposite wall, and ended up in a position that was almost an exact mirror to how we’d been before, except this time it was me pinning him to the wall.

  My left forearm was against the back of his neck, crushing his windpipe into the cold stone wall, and my right hand sought out his dick. I gripped it harshly and then teased at the head with my thumb. Armise groaned and I loosened the pressure on his neck. He leaned his head back on my shoulder in a sign of surrender. His eyes were closed, his breath coming in gasps that matched the pumping of my fist on his cock, and I knew for certain this was what he had been hoping for. His body was now mine to use.

  “You won’t be fucking me at all,” I growled into his ear.

  Then Armise gave me a wicked grin that broke the last of my control.

  I spit into my hand, coated myself and thrust into him, nearly dry. I imagined my cock, driven inside him so harshly, must have seared, like the hot kiss of a knife. But Armise didn’t make a sound besides a rushed exhale of breath. I pulled completely out, spit again, slicking myself and him, and then forced myself back inside, his tight heat fighting the intrusion. He was still for a moment and then ground back on my cock, driving me deeper into his ass until I couldn’t control the moan ripped from me.

  Armise could take this. He’d been created by his government to withstand pain, to keep standing when anyone else would bend and give in.

  He pushed back with just as much brutality as I gave him. I put my right hand on the small of his back, and forcefully pressed his spine into an arch so I could pull his ass closer to me. His skin was slick beneath my palm, his muscles shifting in the fractured light. He threw his head back and groaned, a sound that rumbled from his chest and filled the air around us. Every nerve in my body responded to the guttural noise and I pounded into him, completely abandoning the soldier in me. There was no mission, no double identities, no war and no enemies.

  For this moment I was just a man, my cock heavy for a man who could take the punishment I was giving him. A man who wanted to be taken by force as much as I wanted to claim him.

  “Fuck me harder,” he commanded, his rough voice careening me closer to the edge.

  I bent my knees and took him at a different angle. My legs were shuddering, threatening to give out, but the pleasure was too good for me to let go. Armise’s body was so strong and masculine. All edges and hard planes, skin that was scarred, covered in the all-black twists and solid letter block tattoos, inked over each permanent wound marking his body. Many of them, wounds that I had given him.

  He fought me to control the pace, slamming himself down on me over and over again, until neither of us could maintain a rhythm anymore and his body spasmed around me as he grunted and came. His body shook as the waves of his pleasure rippled down the defined muscles of his back. The sight sent me over the edge and I was spilling inside him, gasping for breath, inhaling the scent of his sweat into my aching lungs.

  I braced my left hand on the wall and dropped my head into the groove between his shoulder blades as we struggled to catch our breath. I licked at the droplets of sweat falling down his spine and he shivered. When I pulled out of him he sighed and sagged against the steel wall and I could see just how rough I’d been with him. He had fingertip-sized bruises on his hips, his neck and arm. Matching bite marks on his shoulders that I couldn’t remember giving him. A line of blood trickled from his eyebrow, where I’d pushed his face into the wall.

  But Armise was smiling.

  The fucker who the President had chosen to mutilate me was smiling.

  It was only then, when the real world began to intrude, that I realised just how close Armise had come to being able to kill me. Again. This was too dangerous of a game. I had to stop giving into my baser instincts. Giving into him. I was stronger than this. I had to be stronger than him.

  “What the fuck do you want from me?” I said out loud, the words tumbling from my mouth in a frustrated accusation that mirrored what I’d said to him the first time he kissed me.

  And I froze. Realised I was asking the question more of myself than I was of him.

  Armise didn’t turn. Didn’t answer me.

  I slammed my hand into the stone wall then dropped my forehead into the crook of his neck.

  He sighed deeply, and my chest, pressed to his wide back muscles, moved with him.

  I didn’t know how to disengage myself from him.

  Just like every other time I’d found myself in this position, my body wrapped around his, shuddering with the brutal release only his body could give me, a thought flashed through my mind—this man will be the death of me.

  Chapter Eight

  If Armise had intended to kill me he would have done it already.

  I still wouldn’t let down my guard, but if there was a time for him to strike when I was at my weakest it had passed.

  We stood on opposite sides of the tunnel studying each other as we got dressed. The wildness and tension was gone from his body, but the tunnel was too dark for me to read the unsaid thoughts that flickered across his face and hung like a lingering cloud of Chemsense between us.

  I pulled my lip ring between my teeth in an almost unconscious movement that betrayed my unrest and tried to piece together what this all meant. Why Armise had been chosen by the President. Why Armise had refused to follow through on the task of leaving me so bloodied that I wouldn’t be able to make it to the opening ceremony to fire that bullet.

  I wanted to know why the darkness within me dissipated just a bit more every time Armise had me at my most vulnerable and yet offered himself up to me.

&nb
sp; That was the answer I wanted more than any other.

  Armise cleared his throat and my head snapped up.

  “Your President seems to think that you’re part of the Opposition.” Armise barely looked up from smoothing his practice uniform as he made the accusation. We’d had this conversation before. Ten years ago in Bogotá. But this time, I didn’t have to bother deflecting him.

  This was a lie I’d been living so long that it came the easiest of all. “That’s because I am,” I answered. Every tell I’d ever had was beaten out of me years ago by the PsychHAgs, but I wondered again if Armise knew me too well to recognise when I wasn’t telling him the complete truth.

  Armise scrubbed his hand over his mouth, and itched at his beard, his brow furrowing in concentration. I could tell from the way his almond-shaped eyes narrowed and his lips pursed into a thin line that he was examining me and not finding what he needed. “You really are as good a liar as he says.”

  “He?” I redirected.

  “The President,” Armise supplied.

  I nodded. “Ah. I thought you meant Coach.” I didn’t comment on how Armise was trying to prod me for intel. It was too obvious of an attempt to be genuine. He was playing with me. Why he was, I couldn’t be sure.

  Regardless, this was when I had to be smarter than Armise. He was drawing me in, hoping that if he asked the right question that I would slip. But I’d been under deep cover my entire life. Even before I knew what the phrase meant. And the President was right—I was a great liar.

  My training in the art of deceit had been brutal, actual torture at the hands of the PsychHAgs, but necessary for the protection of my identity and mission. My career had been carefully staged all along, with the intent of keeping me alive, solely for the purpose of the mission today. But that was one thing Armise, no matter how connected or deviously curious he was, wouldn’t know.

  Rumour said I’d turned traitor to my nation. That I’d been bought by the Opposition. Each level of my betrayal had been carefully crafted year after year—the supposed death of my parents, my rise through the military ranks and my identity as the lone sniper whose loyalties were fickle and could be bought for the right price.

  But I wasn’t Opposition. I was the front-runner for the Revolution.

  Only Coach, the President and I knew this. I believed in where fate was leading me, and what the purpose of my life, and death, would serve. It was my duty to protect the President so he could lead the Revolution. I was destined to be the one who righted the wrong my namesake had created over two centuries ago.

  And I wouldn’t be baited into a conversation with the one man who might be able to see the difference between truth and lies in me.

  I started to walk away.

  Armise called out after me, “Don’t you want to know what the President told me?”

  I noticed the slip right away. Not “your” President but “the” President. I stopped in my tracks but kept my back to him.

  “It’s going to be you, Merq. You’ll have the first bullet. And I’m the one who will make sure you’re able to kill the leader of the Opposition, the Premiere of Singapore, when the time comes. He told me that in a few short hours I wouldn’t have to lie anymore. If I survived. That’s what the President told me.”

  Only Armise would find humour in that.

  I sneered. Regardless, what Armise was telling me, it wasn’t possible.

  I turned on him, invading his space until he had to take a step back. “What game are you playing with me?” I bit out.

  “For once? I’m not.” Armise put his hands up in a defensive posture. It was a gesture that jumpstarted that flicker of memory of his palms facing me, my gun to his head and Armise leaning in to kiss me for the first time.

  The familiarity in his gesture and the conviction with which he delivered his declaration almost gave me pause. But I wouldn’t be manipulated. Armise was my rival—by country, by the clashing colours we displayed on our uniforms, by history and by right. No matter how much I wanted things to be different, this was our reality. I couldn’t trust him.

  “Bullshit,” I spat out.

  Armise shook his head. “There are…things that have been hidden between us for too long. Unsaid but still true.”

  True? What place did truth hold in our world? I’d thought about truth so little in my life. I was built to be a soldier, to kill without thought. I was designed to listen, obey and act without question. Honesty only existed under the pretence of lies. The truth was subjective, and too grey to be useful in the hunt or survival.

  “Don’t talk to me about truth like it’s something you understand,” I accused, fury building inside me until I could feel my racing pulse in my clenched hands. “Or hell, even something that you believe in.”

  Armise wasn’t thrown by my sudden anger. He shrugged, his cool exterior firmly in place. “Truth is truth, to the end of reckoning. In our case, Merq, that reckoning is almost here.” He took a step back from me and ran his fingers through his hair, smoothing it into place. “But there’s one thing about this mission that has always bothered me. You were trained to operate as a lone gun all along. You knew that…”

  His voice trailed off and the set of his shoulders became more rigid. He looked away from me, his thoughts almost visibly skittering through his head. His eyes seemed to focus on a place that was distant and dark, removed from the present. He was standing in front of me, but he was gone. Emotionally withdrawn.

  It was a look I knew all too well. I’d seen the same emptiness on the face of every soldier who was good at what they did. Humanity faded in the taking of life. Those of us who had made a career from death had to be able to shut that innate connection off. For the best of us it was a switch. And Armise was the best I knew.

  He breathed heavily through his nose and took a step towards me. He was close enough that I could smell his sweat and the tang of sex. I had an almost irresistible urge to touch him, to bring him back to me. Because it was solely in the moments between the two of us that I saw any hope left in him.

  Or in me.

  He exhaled and I felt his hot breath coast across my face and down my neck. It raised goose bumps on my skin. I was aware of his proximity and how unprotected I was. My muscles tensed, and I realised my body was fighting the instinct to strike. But his next move stunned me into submission.

  He lifted his left hand and traced the outline of my jaw with his thumb and then settled his palm against my neck. I couldn’t look at him anymore. This touch was too intimate. But without looking I could feel his eyes on me. My dream from last night came screaming back to me. Armise’s eyes were always on me. A judgement, I’d thought. But that wasn’t right. No, he was an anchor. But whether it was an anchor that would drag me under or keep me rooted to sanity, I was no longer sure.

  Armise gently squeezed his hand, drawing me closer. “Without backup of some kind you had no chance of making it out of that stadium alive once you took the shot,” Armise whispered. The words sounded as if they’d been ripped from his throat. They were full of sorrow. It was an emotion I was surprised either of us was capable of anymore.

  I tore my eyes away from the ground, from the spot I had been steadfastly staring at, trying to ignore the implication of his statement. When I looked up at him, the pain and uncertainty I saw there made my breath catch in my throat. As he studied me his emotions rearranged themselves on his face and that light returned to his eyes, that humanity. Something had brought him back from the brink.

  The idea that that something was me gave me hope that I shouldn’t have dared to have.

  “And?” I challenged him, as my mind reeled to find a way to wrest back control of this conversation. I couldn’t trust him.

  Could I?

  His hand squeezed my neck, his eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. “And? You were going to sacrifice yourself weren’t you? Weren’t you?” He was yelling at me now, inches away from my face. I’d never seen him this angry.

  I slapped
his hand away and pushed at his chest with both palms until he staggered backwards. He had no right to question the decisions I’d made long ago to ensure the Revolution would succeed.

  “Why the fuck do you care?” I yelled back.

  “Because I didn’t turn traitor to my own country just for you to end up dead!”

  I laughed darkly. I wasn’t going to allow my adversary to manipulate me so easily. “What? You’re a Revolutionary now? I never pegged you as a causes kind of guy.”

  The unrestrained wildness returned to Armise’s body. He nearly shook with fury. “Fuck you. I could give a fuck about the Revolution and whether or not it succeeds. Opposition, Revolution, President, Premiere, it’s all the same shit, just a different name.”

  I raised my eyebrows and hands in a sign that said ‘See?’ without me needing to say it out loud. “And that is why I. Don’t. Believe. You.” I turned his words over in my head. Traitor? Armise Darcan? It wasn’t possible. Then I realised the only reason Armise would ever even think of betraying his country. My voice went cold. “How much are they paying you?”

  Armise was deathly still. “Be careful what you accuse me of.”

  I stepped back into his space, crowding him. “Why? Your price must have a considerable amount of zeroes. Or is it citizenship in the States? Somewhere cosy like the Northern Territories where you can tide over your blood thirst with big-game hunting, pick up a surge habit and ignore that voice in the back of your head that reminds you you took the weak way out?”

  He crossed his arms, standing his ground, and put us almost nose to nose. “I don’t have a side in this war.”

  “That’s what someone who’s scared to fight says,” I spat back at him.

  “So now you’re going to bait me? Fuck you, Merq.” He pushed me back a step. “You’ve fought against me. I know you don’t believe the shit you’re spewing.”

  “I’d rather believe you’re weak than a mercenary. Fear I can understand, betrayal I will never forgive.”

  “Fucking betrayal,” he muttered under his breath as he advanced on me. He pointed a thick finger at my chest. “You’re an idiot, you know that? I don’t have a side in this war because the only ass I care about saving is yours. Fuck my country and yours, they will continue fighting whether we live or die. But I can’t, and won’t, go on without you. Not anymore. How can I make that any fucking clearer?”