by Lexy Timms
Then I heard what could only be Sloane deciding she wanted to die.
"I recognize you now! You're the soldier from Crystal's picture." Her voice took on a sickening syrupy quality like she was talking to Bambi in the woods after the hunter shot his mother. "Were you injured?"
Talon didn't say anything and I stayed completely still, not trusting myself to move. Talon cleared his throat like he was uncomfortable and I whirled around. Sloane was standing next to him, her hand caressing his arm, her heavily-lined eyes staring up at him.
It was too much. I launched myself at her like some jealous sixteen-year-old. She had no fucking right and she knew it! I didn't know how much of this was her wanting to mess with me and how much was her genuinely being interested in Talon, but it didn't matter. She'd had this coming since the day she'd borrowed my laptop without asking me and accidentally deleted all my pictures and music. That wasn't the worst she'd done to me, but it had been the first.
I caught her around her shoulders, my weight propelling us both to the ground. I pulled my fist back, prepared to slam it into her pretty face but something caught me around the elbow. Something solid and completely unmovable.
"Gidge, what the hell!" Talon shouted at me while hauling me off of Sloane by my waist. I kicked and tried to get away until my heel connected with Talon's knee and he grunted. Hot regret flooded my face and I stilled, my feet a good foot above the carpet.
"Oh my God, I'm sorry, Talon. Are you ok?"
"Fine," he said and relief filled me when I heard his voice. He didn't sound like he was lying.
Sloane scrambled to her feet and backed away from us. "Crazy cunt," she said under her breath. From the way Talon was holding me up, I could see over the room divider. She went to her desk, grabbed her purse and her phone, and stomped to the door. "I'll be glad when I get my new room," she spit at me. "You were the worst roommate in history and you're going to be a shitty fucking doctor."
"Back at you, Princess," I sneered. She pushed out the door and slammed it behind her, cutting off the rest of what I was going to say. Something biting about her boyfriend and skid marks in her underwear. I didn't have it all worked out so it was probably better that she was gone.
Talon put me down on the floor. "What was that about?"
"Sorry," I said, feeling ashamed. She really knew how to push my buttons but still, I should have more control than that. Doctors didn't physically attack people who pissed them off. "She's really hard to get along with. Thanks for stopping me though, I didn't want to end up back at the police station."
Talon nodded, eyeing me like he'd never seen me before. "Now I see why you petitioned for a new roommate next semester."
I smiled, pleased. "You read my letters!"
"I did." A look crossed his face. Guilt? He'd written me back sometimes when he'd been deployed and once from the Army hospital, but I hadn't gotten anything while he was in Mexico. I didn't mind. I knew he didn't like writing letters.
I turned back to the closet and kept shoving things in my bag.
I heard Talon moving things around on my desk behind me. "Think she's coming back tonight?"
"Nah, she usually sleeps at her boyfriend's place."
I closed my bag and turned around, just as Talon dropped into my desk chair. "Staying here might be easiest, then, if you feel comfortable. I can sleep on the floor."
He gestured to the patch of carpet next to my tiny bed and my heart sped up again. No way was I letting him sleep on the floor. But not having to ride home now on the back of his bike sounded great. My stomach woke up and rumbled loud enough that he laughed.
"We can get some dinner too. Delivery."
He was going to stay with me tonight? That sounded heavenly, even if it did scare the crap out of me.
Chapter 9
Talon
I sat on the floor next to Crystal's bed chewing my New York Style pizza slice and trying not to feel like a dirty fucking traitor. Crystal deserved to know that her brother was missing. I would tell her, the second she took her final. It had been Whip's place to tell her, but he'd chickened out. I wouldn't.
My thoughts drifted and I let them. Now that Crystal was safe, I could turn my thoughts back to what the fuck could possibly be going on with Whip. I knew I hadn't heard all the stories about the club over the years, but the ones I had heard told me they'd been into some outlaw shit for a long time. Whip had enemies for sure, or at least he used to. But I didn't know who any of them were. I would have to have a talk with Whitey maybe. Whitey had been there from the beginning. He had founded the club with Whip and four other guys, and he would be the best one to ask since Whip wouldn't tell me shit.
I worked on another piece of pizza and followed each thread of my thoughts, making silent mental checklists of what I could do tomorrow to figure this thing out. If Whip wanted to bury himself that was fine, but his past and silence might have already buried Jaze. There was no way I was letting it bury Crystal too. I would get proactive as soon as we got back to the clubhouse. All I had done so far was contact Knox and ask him to look into a few things, and ask around about Jaze to his friends.
I glanced at Crystal, sitting at her desk, looking over a text book. She was rubbing her right shoulder.
"Hey, what's wrong?"
She shrugged and stretched her neck. "I don't know. It's sore. Tight all of a sudden."
I tossed my last bite into my mouth and stood up, then approached her, my eyes checking her exposed skin for bruises or redness. "Did he hit you here?" I asked, touching my fingers to her shoulder and applying a bit of pressure where she'd been rubbing.
Crystal stiffened under my hands and I almost pulled away, but then she relaxed. "Yeah, he full-on tackled me on that side. Pinned my arm against my body and propelled me into the trees."
Fucker. If I ever found him I'd fucking kill him. I'd killed a few men on government orders, and it wouldn't bother me a bit to kill one more on my orders. Some people didn't deserve to live, and I knew how to cover my tracks.
"What did he look like?"
She shrugged. "I never saw his face. Big dude. Short, brown hair. Black shirt. Black pants."
Sounded like half of the men in California. I palpated the muscles in Crystal's neck, then up and down her arm, then checked her back. During my own rehabilitation exercises and therapy for my shrapnel wounds, I'd learned more than I ever wanted to know about what a tight muscle group felt like and how to fix it. My fingers crept over her shoulder, following a rope of tissue down the front of her body, onto her chest. My eyes fell down the front of her shirt, where the tops of her small but perfect breasts were visible. My dick hardened in my jeans at once, making its wishes known. Fuck.
I pulled my fingers back up to her shoulder. I could work on the muscle from there. I pressed into it, squeezing and releasing, ignoring my dick. It had no idea what complexities were, what loyalty was, what forbidden meant. It had always been partial to Crystal, even when she'd only been fourteen, a whip-thin girl, all legs and hair and big brown eyes. When her breasts had come in, I couldn't even look at my best friend's little sister if I wanted to make it through the day without a raging hard on.
Crystal leaned her head to the left and sighed, then moaned out loud. "Feels good."
My defector dick swelled until I could feel my fucking heartbeat in it. It wanted to make her feel a hell of a lot better than just what a shoulder rub could do. I swallowed and willed it to calm down. She's off-fucking-limits.
I worked the muscle until I could feel a bit of give and then I backed up. My dick wasn't softening and I knew it wouldn't until I stopped touching her. Got my mind on something else. I turned towards the door, angling my body away from her. "Hey, is there something I can block that door with?"
Crystal stood up. "Yeah, I've got the perfect thing, actually." She went to the closet and rummaged through a few drawers, opening and searching each one in turn. I kept my eyes away from Crystal until I didn't feel like I could punch holes in the w
all with my hard-on.
I took off my cut and draped it over Crystal's desk chair, then shrugged out of my holster, draping it over the chair also.
"Here!" Crystal stood and handed me something. A small wedge that looked like a doorstop with a metal flange on the top. "Press that down," she said, nodding her head at the metal piece.
I did and a piercing alarm filled the room making me let go immediately.
Crystal put a hand on her ear and winced. "Still works," she said.
"Perfect." I walked to the door and shoved the wedge as close as I could to the space under the door without triggering the alarm. It would keep the door from opening and alert us if anyone tried to come in.
"It's Sloane's," Crystal said from behind me. "She transferred here from Mills. Apparently they have a security issue there and—"
I straightened and turned around as her words cut off.
"What the hell is this?" she asked, pointing to her chair.
"You know what it is."
"Whose is it?"
"Your dad's."
She dropped both hands to her hips and cocked her head to the side. "Great, so you brought an illegal handgun to my dorm room? What if you got pulled over on the way here, huh? How were you planning on explaining the lack of a serial number on the gun? I swear, you and my brother are determined to land in jail. I don't understand why! You're too smart to follow in my father's footsteps."
"I wasn't pulled over." I shot her a look that said enough already, but Crystal had never been one to listen to anyone. She opened her mouth, ready for another blast at me, but I cut her off, curling my hands into my pockets first to try to keep my energy down. "Look Gidge, I don't think you understand what is going on here. That guy today didn't want to tickle you, or ask you about your recipe for Stanford's prize-winning split pea soup. We don't know exactly what he wanted, but there's a chance that if he had his way, you woulda ended up dead. So why don't you shut your mouth and give it a rest, ok? He's not playing around, so neither am I."
Crystal blinked. I saw hurt creep into her eyes and I bit back my regret for talking to her like that. She needed to hear it. The information I was withholding from her about her brother burned me like a welder's torch to the soles of my feet but I didn't spill it. Her future depended on her grades, and I would not be the one to fuck up her future.
You probably killed her brother. You don't think that will fuck up her future?
I shook my head and turned around, putting a hand on the door behind me, cursing Whip for not telling me shit, for choosing me to go with him that night, for ever fucking coming into my life.
A soft hand touched my back. "Hey, I'm sorry, you're right," Crystal said, her touch dangerously close to igniting me again. My cock had no civility when it came to her.
I stepped away. "It's fine. Don't worry about it." I went back to the pizza box, just to have something to do that didn't involve looking at her. I pulled out a slice and sat in her chair. She came close to me, putting me on high alert, but all she did was grab her textbook and take it to her bed. She lay down and propped the book up so she could read it.
I chewed my pizza and tried not to think about her, about Jaze, about anything.
The next time I looked back at her, her eyes were closing and her book was drooping dangerously close to her nose. I stood and took the book from her. "Hey, you got an extra pillow?"
She shook her head sleepily and patted the spot next to her. "This is my only one."
"How about a blanket?"
"No, sorry," she said, looking suddenly like she was exhausted. Who could blame her? It had been a hell of a day.
She flipped her blanket up and patted the spot next to her again, her voice heavy. "Share mine."
I eyed her in her tiny bed. No way we would even fit in it together without touching. A lot. I would never be able to sleep with her that close to me.
"I'll find something," I said, walking to her closet.
"You can't sleep on the floor, Talon. I won't let you," she called softly.
"Watch me."
I heard her move behind me and turned around. She was on the floor in the spot I had picked out for me, curling her arms under her head.
"Crystal, no."
"Yes. If you sleep on the floor, I sleep on the floor."
"Stubborn fucking woman," I muttered and walked back over to her. "Fine, get in the bed."
She smiled like I had paid her a compliment, her eyes mostly closed. I could see the exhaustion settling on her.
A moment later, I was in bed with Crystal. She turned on her side and scooched all the way over to the wall to give me room. I perched on the far edge of her bed, trying not to touch her. My dick still knew she was there though.
It was gonna be a long night.
***
Crystal
Talon, in my bed. It had been my steady fantasy for the last seven years, long before I ever had any idea what I would do with him if I got him in there.
Fatigue weighed me down, confusing my thoughts. Everything was crashing on me at once and I just needed sleep. But I wanted to stay awake to smell his masculine scent, maybe ask him to rub my shoulder again, enjoy his proximity. What I wanted to do even more was roll over to face him, then beg him to tear my clothes off and make love to me.
Yeah right. He wouldn't make love to you, he would fuck you, a small part of me chided, the part that knew Talon well, the part that had seen him melt women with just a glance, always wishing it was me he was looking at.
A good fuck would be even better.
But I didn't do it. I couldn't bring myself to say a word, move a muscle. Because the worst thing that could happen to me was definitely not getting fucked instead of made love to. It was being told no, nothing will ever happen between us, you're nothing but a sister to me.
That would kill me.
I burrowed deeper into my covers. Best to forget about it for now. I was so exhausted I couldn't do anything even if I wanted to. My body angled backwards on its own, seeking out comfort, touch. If all I got was brotherly concern I would take it. It would rip my heart in two, but it would be better than nothing.
As I felt myself floating downwards into sleep I snuggled into him and dreamed that I felt his body respond to me.
In my dream, at least, he wanted me.
Chapter 10
Talon
Crystal pushed through the heavy double doors in front of me, and walked down the hall to the classroom where she would be taking her test, her mind obviously far away. I ran to catch up with her and grabbed her arm.
"Should I wait out here?"
She looked around. "Nah, security might give you a hard time if they see you. You don't exactly fit in, you know."
I raised my eyebrows. I knew.
"Come in the classroom. The professor is cool. He won't care if you sit in the back as long as you are quiet."
"Ok." She kept looking up and down the hallway at the people passing us, her eyes nervously scanning faces. I hoped what had happened to her yesterday wasn't going to affect her test grade. "Coin check," I said, just trying to get her mind straight.
She smiled and stuck her hand in her pocket. When she withdrew it she had the military challenge coin I had mailed her from basic training in her hand. A first sergeant had given it to me for being soldier of the cycle. He'd said I would make a good special forces soldier and I should consider pursuing it. The conversation had stuck with me as special, so that was why I had sent the coin to Crystal. I knew she would appreciate it.
"Perfect. Now you can't fail."
She made a face at me. "I wasn't going to fail anyway. How about you? Coin check."
Ah, she knew I always had my coin on me. I found it in the special pocket inside my cut and held it up for her to see. It had paratrooper wings on one side and an eagle on the other, given to me by the commander of my unit. Most times we didn't care about the coins the brass handed out, but that guy had been high-speed. He'd tossed it to me o
n my way out of the plane and I caught it in mid-air. When we hit the ground he'd put an arm around me and told me he knew I would catch it. He said I had reflexes like a cat and talons like an eagle and that's how I'd gotten my nickname.
I'd been proud of that nickname, even writing to tell Crystal about it. When I got hurt and was laid up in the hospital, she went around to all my old buddies stateside and told them to start calling me that. God I had loved her for it. She'd made it feel less like I was losing a part of myself.
Crystal ran her fingers along the jagged edge of the coin, her eyebrows closing in on each other. I took it gently from her hand. The point of this wasn't to remind her what had happened to me. The point was to get her mind off what had happened to her.
"Test time," I said gently.
"Right." She turned and headed for a door and I followed her. Once inside, she motioned for me to sit down in one of the seats on the right. I did, watching her walk down the steps to the very front of the room where an older man with white hair sat behind a desk. The room was large and reminded me of a theatre with its rows stacked one above each other so everyone could see the professor.
The door continued to open as students filed in and took their seats. I kept eyes on each person that entered until I assured myself they weren't looking for Crystal.
Crystal walked halfway back up the steps, gave me a thumbs up, and sat down, opening a small notebook and leaning over it for some last minute cramming. I was glad I wasn't her. Me and books had never gotten along, especially in high school. I'd done ok with my studies in the Army, probably because we dealt with guns and explosives and machines more than we ever had to stick our noses in books. Put a book in my hands and you might think I was slightly retarded, but put a machine in my hands and I'll show you I'm part genius. Preferably by blowing something up that's very far away. Too bad there wasn't much call for that kind of knowledge outside of the military. Crystal had encouraged me to try to be some sort of a cop, but I wasn't ready yet. I didn't know if I ever would be. These days, I was more criminal than stand-up citizen. Even if life left me no choice, that was still the case.
