AllFreeNovel
Share Us
While I think, Brooklyn curls in even tighter on herself. She looks so small and vulnerable that it almost breaks me.
“Distract me,” she murmurs. “Tell me…a story. Anything. Please.”
A story. I’m not much of a sharer, but at least that I can give her.
“Before my first deployment, I trained for a while on a base in Germany,” I tell her, settling into a semi-comfortable position next to her. “My bunkmate was this skinny fellow, Tony Russo, and he could never keep up with the physical training. He’d fall behind running laps, and his arms would just give out doing push-ups. We were all asking ourselves, how did this guy even qualify?”
I look at Brooklyn to see if she’s listening. She’s still curled up and trembling, but she glances at me when I pause. So I keep talking.
“He could barely hold up his equipment, but the sergeant in charge always let it slide. He’d yell at the rest of us till he was blue in the face, but for Tony, there were never any consequences. It’s like he had a different rulebook than the rest of us. We asked him right to his face, but he never told us. He wasn’t close with anyone, always hanging around the edges, lost in his own world most of the time.”
“Then, Tony and I got paired on a training exercise. I resented it, thinking I’d have to drag his equipment plus mine when he got tired. And it’s true—every other pair got a head start, and Tony was lagging behind. Then, when they were out of eyesight, Tony puts his bag down. Told me, ‘I’m hungry. Wanna get some lunch?’ I’m looking at him like he’s crazy. Because any minute, our superiors are gonna come out and yell at us for ignoring orders. Of course I’m not leaving to get lunch.”
“He tells me, ‘Briggs, you’re a smart guy. You really think this whole excursion is worth your time?’ And I tell him no. Because the exercise is stupid, stuff we learned in basic training. We’re really only doing it for team building. And Tony says, ‘I got something better for team-building.’”
“So he sneaks me into this training session we’re not a part of. We get on simulators and learn how to navigate a cargo ship. It was cool as hell, and nobody said a thing. Not the leader of the class, and not our sergeant when we get back. It’s like Tony had a spell on everyone.”
As I tell the story, Tony’s face swims into my mind. A thin-faced Italian-American, with dark eyes and a mouth that curved up at the edges naturally, so it always looked like he was smiling. It’s bittersweet, knowing how he ended up. There shouldn’t have been explosives on his routine surveillance route.
I usually avoid thinking about Tony, and everyone else. It’s too hard, remembering that I’ll never see them again. But telling Brooklyn, I feel a little lighter. I’ll always carry my grief with me, but with that grief, there’s treasure. Tony and the guys made me who I am. Sharing the better memories with her takes away some of the bitterness of how it ended.
“Eventually,” I say, “Tony tells me how it all happened. Turns out, Tony’s a computer whiz. I’m talking, blackhat hacker stuff.”
Brooklyn giggles. It’s a small noise, but it’s not one of pain.
“Thought you didn’t…like rulebreakers,” she whispers.
I grin. “I like them too much. That’s why I avoid them.”
It’s true. I stayed away from Brooklyn so long because I know she’s trouble. It’s like she was hand-picked to appeal to my personal preferences in a woman. Independent, smart, wild, and beautiful.
I clear my throat and get back to the story.
“Tony could get through any firewall. Turns out, he got into the phones of everyone right above us. He left them little notes in their files, just to show them that he could. He never blackmailed anyone. They just knew what he could do, if he wanted to. And that was enough. They let him do whatever he wanted, just because they didn’t want him finding the weird shit they googled.”
Her laugh shatters into a broken cry.
The hand clenching her stomach shifts to the space between her legs, and I realize she’s touching herself. Her slick smells so tempting, I can barely stop myself from following the path of her hand.
“I’m sorry,” she whispers. “I have to.”
Her hips rock against her hand, but there’s no power to it. It’s clear how much energy it costs her just to try and make herself come, knowing it won’t even get close to the kind of relief she really needs.
Fuck, I can’t stand it anymore. She’s too far gone. If I don’t knot her, she’ll die. And that’ll weigh heavier on my conscience than anything else I could do right now. It’s not just my job anymore—I know the world will be a darker place without this woman in it.
“You need a knot,” I say. “I can help you, Brooklyn. But I want something in return.”
Her eyes flash to mine, and the hope I see in them hits me right in the heart. It almost makes me feel bad for what I’m about to ask.
Almost.
“I’ll knot you, but only if you promise to let us bring you home. No more running off or slowing us down. When the rain stops, we’ll head back and I want you fully cooperative. Is that understood?”
“I understand,” she says, her voice faint.
“So you’ll give me your word.”
I expect her to nod eagerly. It’s the smart move, and at this point, her heat symptoms are so bad, she doesn’t have even minutes to spare. Yet she bites her lip, thinking. What the hell does she have to think about? At this point, none of us are a threat to her anymore. Memphis and Camden have already knotted her, and managed not to claim her. What more do we have to do to prove that she can trust us?
