by Krista Wolf
“So what do we do now?”
Briggs stood up and pulled something from his belt. He laid it on the table before me with a loud clatter, and I stared it at in alarm.
“W—What’s that?”
“That,” Briggs said with pride, “is the Sig Sauer XM17 MHS sidearm.”
He pushed it across the table in my direction. I stared down at it, a little intimidated by the beige-handled gun.
“It’s a little more compact than my Glock. But this is easier to shoot, with less trigger resistance.”
Apparently Briggs was expecting me to say something, or at least pick up the pistol. I did neither.
“If you have a preference,” he shrugged. “I could get you a—”
“I’ve never shot a gun before.”
The words were so foreign to him, it was like I was speaking a different language. His face registered confusion. Almost even insult.
“What the hell do you mean you’ve never shot a gun?”
I shrugged. “I never owned one. Never had one. Never tried to—”
“You’ve been here since the summer,” he swore. “And not one of these jackholes taught you to shoot?”
I shook my head.
“Not even Dakota?” He sounded absolutely astonished. “That grinning farmboy has more marksmanship qualifications than the rest of us combined! He never showed you to—”
“Nope.”
“Holy shit.”
He lowered his head and scratched his neck. It left us both staring down at the thick, deadly-looking gun between us.
“I’m fucking offended,” he said finally. “You should be too.”
It never occurred to me, actually. I’d seen the guys suit up with firearms on occasion, but I’d never asked about them. I’d never thought for a moment they’d ever want to show me.
“Well get dressed,” Briggs said. “We’re shooting.”
“Really?”
“Of course.” He squinted down at me for a moment. ‘Unless you’re gonna get all gun-squeamish on me.”
In answer, I picked up the weapon. Hefted its weight. Closed my hand firmly over the grip and looked down the sights, being sure to point it well away from the both of us.
“Good girl.”
Forty-Seven
SAMMARA
“That’s better! Now you’re following through.”
The fifth plastic bottle exploded in a violent, pinwheeling spray. It fell to the grass next to the others, as the round splashed into the lake behind it.
“Remember, keep your elbows locked. You want to look through the sights.”
It turned out firing a gun was a lot less scary than I thought. Maybe it was because I’d imagined them to be so hard and powerful. Not curvy and sleek and comfortable in my hand.
Briggs stood behind me, his body tantalizingly close to mine. Every once in a while he’d lean in to adjust my stance, putting an arm on my shoulder, or his hands on my hips.
My hips…
During those times I usually missed the target. Either on purpose, because I wanted him to touch me again, or because the feel of his hands on my body was so pleasantly distracting.
“I still can’t believe they left you here without protection,” he said, shaking his head. “I’m going to kick their asses when they get back.”
I shrugged. “I guess they didn’t think I’d need it.”
We shot all morning, at various different targets, until the polymer-resin pistol felt like second nature — an extension of my own right arm. It was the first really warm day of spring. Last night’s rain had made everything green and beautiful.
“Lunch?” I asked sweetly.
We picnicked down by the water, staring at the glass-like surface that stretched out before us. It felt good to be outside again. Good to feel the sun on my skin.
And all the while, I kept staring at my fourth boyfriend and latest lover. Not because he was beautiful, which he was, but because I was trying to read the man behind the name. For so many long months he was just ‘Briggs’ — far away, intangible, untouchable. I’d only seen photos. Heard a few tales. And now here he was, all mine, and I could finally know him any way I wanted to.
Only I didn’t want to press things too quickly. Not after last night, where things already seemed to be going a million miles an hour.
“You were crying last night when I showed up.”
He said it casually as he bit into a sandwich, staring off into the distance. I forced a laugh. “Well, there was a man breaking into my house, so—”
“No. Even before that.”
I had to think for a moment. So much had happened in such a short period of time, the events of yesterday seemed so long ago.
“Oh. That.” All at once I was embarrassed. Then the anger came back, and I realized I had no reason to be ashamed. “Let’s just say I had a falling out with my business parter.”
Ex business partner, the little voice in my head reminded me bitterly.
“Ah, yes,” said Briggs, still chewing. “Dawn.”
My brow furrowed. I turned to look at him.
“You know about Dawn?”
“I know about everything,” Briggs shrugged.
I was instantly skeptical. “Oh yeah?”
“Sure,” he said, matter-of-factly. “Dawn Fitzpatrick, Two Trees estates. Been your partner almost five years now.” He sighed and cocked his head. “Been stealing from your business too, for just about that long.”
A chill shot through me. My mouth dropped open.
“W—What are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about Dawn skimming from your shared bank account. Putting in false requisitions and taking cash. Stealing client consultations outright, and signing them on privately, without you knowing.”
I felt totally blown away. Like an atomic bomb had gone off in the distance, and I was just standing there waiting for the shockwave.
“Oh, and she redirected most of the business’s traffic to her own private website.” He leaned back on his arms. “A cute little php script one of her friends cooked up. Selective forwarding, based on—”
“HOLY SHIT!”
Briggs stopped talking. He took a deep breath and sighed.
“She stole all my stuff last night, too!” I cried. “Took everything I had — cleared out the entire warehouse!”
He looked out at the lake for a moment and nodded. “Sounds about right. Last month she opened twin storage units over in Woodbay. I’ll bet it’s all there right now.”
I wanted to scream. I did scream.
“HOW THE HELL DO YOU KNOW ABOUT ALL THIS?”
Briggs let out a long, slow sigh. “Sammara, I already told you. I know about everything.”
As stunning as his statement was, the revelations about Dawn were even more shocking. It all made sense now. The strange way business had dropped off. The way she always seemed busy, even when there wasn’t any work to do.
Those two new folders on her desk that day…
“I can’t believe it,” I breathed. “I thought… I thought we were—”
“Friends?”
I nodded.
“No, not friends,” he said. “Dawn covets you, Sammara.”
It was a strange thing to say. I knew what the word meant, what it implied, but I had to ask anyway. “Covets me? In what way?”
“In every way,” Briggs said. “She’s ‘liked’ you from the beginning. Only you never liked her back. You never showed her any interest, and eventually she got jealous. And when you moved in here…”
“She got really jealous,” I breathed.
Briggs nodded. “Especially since there were a few of us.”
I must have looked like a lunatic, holding my hands over my mouth in disbelief. And yet that part made sense too. In the beginning, Dawn had showered me with praise, gifts, even affection. She’d even kissed me once at a client’s Christmas party, but I’d figured she was just drunk and overly happy and—
She
likes you.
It was a tribute to my own cluelessness that I hadn’t seen it before. Dawn was single. She’d never had a boyfriend. But she had lots of girlfriends she went out with, and—
“Oh my God, I’m such a blind asshole!”
Briggs let me stew for a while, as everything sunk in. It was a lot to process. He twisted the cap off a cold beer and handed it to me.
“I’m so mad!” I screamed across the lake. “I can’t believe she’d do this to me! She took everything I owned!” I kicked at the ground. “And why? Because I didn’t like her? Because she thinks I snubbed her? I didn’t even realize what the hell was—”
“So what are you going to do about it?”
The question snapped me suddenly back to the present. I realized I’d been staring at Briggs the whole time.
“About what?”
“About Dawn robbing you,” Briggs said. “Taking all your stuff.”
I shook the question off dismissively, as if it annoyed me. “There’s nothing I can do. I can’t afford a lawyer. I can’t even prove what’s mine. No court is going to sit there and sift through everything we co-own and decide what’s mine and what’s hers. It would take months. Years.”
“So that’s it?”
The question had a sardonic edge. He was asking it mockingly. As if intentionally trying to piss me off.
“I guess,” I shrugged. “It’s not like there’s any other—”
“If you’re this angry, this outraged,” Briggs said, “why don’t you just go and take your stuff back?”
I stared back at him like he was crazy. Like he was asking me to do something impossible, like drive my jeep to the moon.
“You mean—”
“I mean go. Get your stuff. Take it back.”
He talked like it was so simple. So uncomplicated. Like it was something anyone could do, on any given day.
But isn’t it?
“I… I don’t even know where she’s keeping it.”
“You’re making excuses,” he told me, “without even trying.”
I went silent. A big part of me knew he was right. I’d given up pretty easily — almost immediately in fact — and the realization stung. It just wasn’t like me, to abandon something so important, so quickly. I felt suddenly embarrassed, even shamed for it.
“Speaking of last night,” I said, shifting gears, “what about you?”
He smirked. “What about me?”
“I’m not talking about the shower,” I said, blushing. “Which was amazing by the way.”
“Better than amazing,” he agreed.
“I’m talking about afterward. In bed.”
His smirk turned into a grin. “First time or second time?”
“No,” I conceded, fondly remembering that part of our little adventure. “No, even after that. After we slept.”
He went silent, and his grin disappeared. I hesitated awkwardly.
“You… you woke up screaming.”
Briggs drew his legs in and crossed his arms over his knees. It didn’t take a psychologist to tell me it was a defensive gesture.
“Did you have a bad dream?”
He inhaled deeply, and I watched his incredible chest expand. He was in amazing physical shape. The way he’d moved last night; both in chasing down our intruder and in the way he’d driven into me so deep and hard, and for so long… I could only imagine the conditioning it took to get to where he was.
“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” I said. “I—I was just—”
Abruptly he stood and turned in the direction of the house. For the first time since we’d sat down, he was no longer looking me in the eye.
“We should get inside,” he said. “Crews should be here soon.”
Forty-Eight
SAMMARA
The ‘crews’ consisted of a bilateral force. A mixture of my own private renovation army, plus men Briggs merely explained were ‘loyal’ to him.
The first to arrive was the electrician. Apparently the storm wasn’t responsible for the power outage last night — my would-be kidnapper had cut the exterior power to the entire house. This got fixed just as two separate repair trucks pulled up. One to replace the shattered front and back windows, and another to dry the rain-soaked floor.
Machines had to be set up — big dehumidifiers that would draw the water from the wood slowly, so as not to buckle it. It would be expensive but well worth it; saving the centuries-old oaken floor was my biggest priority.
I saw two other vehicles, and both looked military in nature. Briggs approached them at the end of the long driveway while I hung back to watch. I saw him talking to a pair of serious-looking men and one woman, none of whom wore uniforms. They carried themselves like soldiers though. Even to someone like me, their training was obvious.
“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me what any of that was about?” I asked when he finally returned.
“Of course I will.”
I laughed. “You will? Well that’s a refreshing change.”
“The dark-haired man and woman are ex-special forces. Colleagues, so to speak. They’ll be watching over the house and grounds, twenty-four seven, at least until we have the whole Markus thing figured out.”
I was both stunned and relieved. “They’ll… they’ll do that?”
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Because they’re employees of mine.”
Employees. That part didn’t make sense. I was always under the impression Briggs worked for the Army. ‘Ranger stuff’ as Kyle or Ryan would put it.
“They’d do it anyway if I asked,” he added. “They owe me. Especially Magdalen.”
“What about the other guy?” I asked. “The older one?”
“That’s Arato. He and I served together. In some very bad places, too.” His gaze went distant for a moment. “He’s also a good friend. I’ve asked him to gather some intel. I’ll need to have everything possible before I can make an informed decision on what to do next.”
It was amazing, how much he was giving me. Unlike the others, Briggs was being open. Honest. He hid absolutely nothing.
It was almost a little disconcerting.
“Won’t the Army deal with Markus?” I asked. “If you went to them?”
He nodded. “If I went to them.”
“But you’re not…”
“No,” he agreed. “I’m not.”
We spent the rest of the afternoon making sure everything went smoothly. By the time everything broken had been fixed, and all the messes cleaned up, we were left alone just as darkness fell. The only sound in the house was the constant whine of the big dehumidifiers, which needed to run for the next day or two.
“Let me take you out,” Briggs said. “Might be good to get out of here for a little while. We can get something to eat.”
My stomach rumbled. It sounded amazing.
A quick cleanup and a shower later (not that I could ever take a shower again without thinking of last night!) we were heading into the city. On the way out of the driveway I didn’t notice anyone watching the house. I mentioned as much to Briggs.
“You’re not supposed to notice them,” he said. “And if you did notice them I’d be cataclysmically disappointed.”
“You’d fire them?” I joked.
“Shit, they’d probably fire themselves.”
I let him drive, let him pick out the restaurant. I didn’t want to think after last night, really. I just wanted to be close to him. Physically and emotionally.
We ended up seated in the far end of a beautiful Thai Fusion grill. Briggs started ordering the moment we sat down, and they never stopped bringing small, almost sample-sized plates of sizzling meats and sauced noodle. Everything set before us was as delicious as it was spicy. It was starting to look like my new boyfriend had spent significant time in Thailand. It could’ve also been that I was just ravenously hungry.
“So how’ve you been getting along with the guys so far?” h
e asked.
It was an odd question, considering the circumstances. Sort of like a first date asking about your ex boyfriends… who you happened to still be dating.
“Swimmingly,” I said around a mouthful of coconut rice.
“Oh you’re definitely swimming in something,” he chuckled.
I opened my mouth in mock indignation. Pretended I was going to hit him with the back of my hand.
“It’s no big deal,” Briggs said, seeing my face flush. “We knew this going in — that it would be like this. That we’d have to share you, every aspect of you, both home and away.”
It was crazy how casual they could all make it sound. Like co-dating a woman was something that happened every single day.
“Who’s your favorite?” he asked nonchalantly. “Besides me, of course.”
“Think I’m really gonna answer that?”
“You’d be crazy to,” he agreed. “Although I guess you don’t really have to pick a favorite. Not when you can have all your cake… and eat it too.”
His eyes met mine at the double-entendre, causing my breath to catch in my throat. God, he was so fucking good-looking! So dark and yummy and delicious — just like cake.
And he fucks like a beast…
Of course the devil on my shoulder couldn’t help but mention that part. Up until last night I’d gone nearly a month without sex. I was horny. Beyond horny, really. Shit, I was now used to getting laid whenever and wherever I wanted, and usually by two or more people at the same time…
“You wanna get out of here?” I asked, crossing my thighs. There was already a familiar tingle starting between my legs.
“Don’t you want dessert?”
Beneath the anonymity of the table, I slid a foot up his leg. “Wouldn’t you rather be dessert?”
Briggs’ mouth curled into a sexy smirk. “Point taken.”
I thought more about it on the way home, my hand in his lap, slowly manipulating the bulge between his legs. As guilty as it sometimes felt doing things without Kyle, or Dakota, or Ryan… I had to remember I was being shared. As a girlfriend I belonged to all of them.