I grab what I came for and go back out to Embry, who’s now standing by the window, still holding the sheet around his hand. He’s staring at the blood glistening on his fingertips with a strange look on his face, like he’s lost in a memory.

I gently peel the sheet away from the cut and use a clean edge to wipe away as much blood as possible. The bleeding has slowed, but the cut still oozes and drips.

“What is that?” Embry asks, breaking the silence.

I hold up the fabric I brought out from the closet, which is essentially a length of silk and lace. “It’s a decorative scarf,” I explain as I begin wrapping it around Embry’s hand. “It goes with a lingerie set in there.”

“He bought you lingerie?” Embry’s voice is razored with anger, and I glance up at him.

“Yes. Hold still.” I pull the fabric as tightly as possible and knot it on the back of his hand in a makeshift bandage.

He lets out a short breath as I tie it but otherwise keeps silent. His eyes trace over the marks I know score my neck and collarbone and then move over to the open closet door.

“You’re not like him, you know,” I say, pressing his bandaged hand against my chest.

He looks down at his hand, bound and bloody against the soft curves of my breasts. “I don’t know what I’m like.”

I kiss his fingertips, tasting blood. “You’re like Embry Moore. Isn’t that enough?”

He sighs, pulling his hand away from me. “I’ve been asking myself that question for a long time. Get dressed. We have to go.”

And so I dress in another one of the filmy frocks Melwas set aside for me, find a pair of silk slippers (all the other shoes are high heels), and then Embry and I leave the house, Embry with his gun at the ready.

We crawl over rocks and under fences with holes cut in them. We dodge drones and skitter down dangerous slopes, the rocks cutting through my slippers and gouging into my feet. For several anxious minutes we hide under a cluster of fallen branches as we think we hear men patrolling nearby. It takes us a good thirty or forty minutes to reach the people who are here with Embry, and by the time we get there, my feet are bleeding and I’m covered in scratches and cuts from rocks and brambles.

Even so, I look at Embry as he hands me into the car they’ve concealed farther down the valley, and say, “It feels too easy. Can it really be over?”

Embry shrugs, climbing into the car. “What else could Melwas possibly do to you?”

13

Embry

before

So Colchester couldn’t love me, and I shouldn’t love him. Morgan was right. He deserved someone who could give him what he needed, who could worship him without hating him at the same time. I was too selfish, too broken, too careless. Even if he were bisexual—and he’d given no sign that he was—there was no way in hell I’d be his first choice.

So I told myself I was taking Morgan’s advice. I told myself I was sparing us both the pain of incompatibility. But really, I was sparing myself the pain of rejection.

He was probably straight anyway.

The day after Morgan left, I went to the captain’s office and asked for anything, anything, to get me off base. Extended patrol, a raid in the next valley over, whatever it took to get me away from Colchester. Within eight hours, I was out in the Colchester-free air again, tramping through the brush and listening to Dag and Wu argue about the finer plot points of the movie Blade.

Volunteering for every off-base mission became a habit of mine—one my men didn’t appreciate—but one I couldn’t stop. Stopping meant seeing Colchester, talking to him, and on those awful, unavoidable moments when we were together, every word of his, every twitch of his gloved hand and squint of those green eyes in the mountain sunshine sliced me open. There’d be times when he’d clap me on the shoulder, playfully rub at my hair, and I’d stare at him and realize he had no idea. None at all.

Eight months passed torturously, painfully, and if I thought I could sweat Colchester out of my system by fighting more, soldiering harder, I was wrong. I wanted him more than ever, I longed for him, I practically rubbed my cock raw to thoughts of him. As the end of my deployment rolled toward me like a storm front, I found myself resisting the idea of leaving Colchester more and more. Avoiding him was one thing, but being apart from him, leaving this base and maybe never seeing him again…

The day before I left, I went looking for the source of my torment. The valley had been quiet and his platoon was on base, and even though I knew I might see him tonight at the going away party they were throwing me and my guys, I wanted to see him now, and alone.

I didn’t know what I was going to say. To him, I was just the guy whose sister he’d fucked last year. Just the troublemaker he’d once pinned against a wall. Did I even want him to realize there was anything more on my end?

It was spring again, with that strange brand of chill that lingered in corners and shady spots and retreated under the sun, only to return the moment the light began to wane. I found Colchester in the yard where we’d first met, wearing a tan T-shirt and combat pants, and talking to a tall man in a suit who I’d never seen before. The man was white and dark-haired and attractive in an angular sort of way, and he seemed to be ten or so years older than us.

I was about to turn away when I saw that Colchester was occupied, but he threw back his head and laughed—laughed! He hardly ever did that!—at what the stranger had said, and the sound was so rich and warm that it melted me on the spot. The T-shirt clung to his shoulders and back, showed off the narrow lines of his hips as it tucked neatly into his pants, and I allowed myself a lingering gaze on his ass and legs—all tight, tempting muscle. The want I felt, I felt it on a cellular level. Like it had fused itself to my DNA.