18
Tamed
Brody, May 21, 2236, The Woods Outside Waller
“I need to show you something,” Laurel said, smiling, standing right next to him. He didn’t even hear her walking through the woods. She moved like Drake in that way, silent like a ghost. Nice skill to have, he thought, the soldier in him. She turned the ray on, holding it out in front of her, and took him by the hand. They walked on a tiny trail that looked brand new, the brush and the grass not nearly packed in enough, and after a while they were in a small clearing, no birches, just elms and oaks.
She shined her ray around them, and then stuck it in the ground and turned it on high. He didn’t know what he was supposed to be looking at. There were just trees and grass. She walked over to one of the trees, and pointed, and he saw it: scorch marks and bullet holes inside circles drawn with a burn pen, and a few, very few marks and holes outside the circles. She was showing him a target. “I can do this from twelve meters away with either gun, the old ones, or the stunners. I know it’s not much, but Trelix told me it was pretty good for a beginner. I am getting much better with the knife, too, but I need a bit more time with that.”
He didn’t know what to say to this. Had no idea this girl was coming out here learning to shoot. It didn’t make sense for her to want to do that, not unless she planned on going into battle, and she couldn’t possibly be planning that.
She walked back towards him, a smile on her face. “Well, what do you think? Trelix says we are not going anywhere for a few days yet, so I’ll get much better with the knife by then, and I’ll keep practicing with the guns too.” And he knew for sure she meant to come with them then, that she was indeed training for battle, and he suddenly wished he could do to her what Riley had done to him, grab her tiny wrists and put a band around them, keep her safe.
“Laurel, you can’t come. I am sorry, but you can’t,” he said softly, quietly.
The smile was gone now, eyes watchful. “I don’t remember asking you that, Brody. I asked you how you thought I did on my shooting. Answer the question I asked, please.”
She did well. Too well for someone who’d never used these weapons before. The girl was a great shot. He could tell how she compensated and her grouping got tighter. If it was one of his new recruits who did that he’d be thrilled for them. But it wasn’t. It was this tiny, blue-eyed girl, a girl he really wanted to keep safe. “Trelix is the worst shot I’ve ever seen, so don’t take this the wrong way, but he doesn’t know what he is talking about. This wouldn’t get you into the worst crew. You couldn’t hit a person in a crowd right now. I am sorry,” he said and turned away from her, back to the trail.
“You really are terrible at this, Brody. I’ll make a deal with you. You can teach me to shoot better and I’ll teach you to lie better, so it’s not written all over your face like that.”
Brody stopped, facing her again, feeling not a little embarrassed.
“I know what you are trying to do, but it won’t work. I have a feeling all of us are going, whether you like it or not. And if you think about this the way you are supposed to, you’d realize that Ams and I can get you right into the lab without anyone so much as putting their hands on any of us, and the last thing they’d expect is us being able to shoot at them. Ams and I might be the only chance all of you have of actually getting out of there alive.”
She walked back to the clearing to grab her ray. He didn’t know what to say to her. She wasn’t wrong, and if it had been anyone else, someone he didn’t know, he’d be fine with it. He just wasn’t fine with it being her, or Ams, for that matter. Riley would never forgive him if he got his Ams hurt or killed, even if they were fighting now. He leaned against a tree trunk, waiting for her, watching her examine her targets again. She looked serious when she did that, tilting her head to the side, measuring the distance between the holes with her fingers.
He closed his eyes, thinking of something he could say to her to make her not want to do this, anything at all he could swear on or promise her, and suddenly he felt her lips pressing against his, softly at first, and he couldn’t open his eyes to look at her, couldn’t even breathe. He felt her hands on his chest, and froze.
Her lips finally let go and he felt her hands on his back, and then on his sides, moving down. He felt a small breeze tickle his skin where Laurel lifted his shirt up, her hands brushing softly, warmly against his naked skin, and he couldn’t bear that touch. He looked at her, her face flushed, eyes throwing glitter at him. He gently put his hands on hers and moved them away from him, just holding them, this touch much more bearable than what she was doing before.
“I am sorry, Laurel… I can’t,” he whispered, and put his head down, letting her hands go, waiting for her to leave. Only she kept standing there in front of him, not moving.
“I know you can’t, Brody, but I also know you want to. I can feel it. I won’t touch you again if you don’t want me to. I just wish I knew why you find my touch so unbearable,” she said, and walked off onto the trail, silent as a ghost.
He couldn’t let her go like that, feeling sad and hurt; had to find a way of explaining it to her somehow so she wouldn’t feel bad for it. He caught up to her and took her by the shoulders.
She jumped, so he quickly put his hands behind his back, scared that he really did hurt this girl.
“I am sorry, Laurel. Please, look at me. I won’t touch you.”
She did, and he could tell she’d been crying, eyes still wet, and he wanted to wrap his arms around her, tell her that it wasn’t her, that he just couldn’t get close to anyone like that, not after Trina, that he couldn’t stand to lose anybody again. She stepped right up to him, looking at his face. “Just spill it, Brody. I promise I won’t get offended or hurt by it. I can take it, whatever it is. I just need to know, so I am not driving both of us crazy.”
And he did, because there was no way out of it for him now. He liked this girl too much to want to hurt her again, so he told her how unbearably good it felt when she ran her hands through his hair that night, comforting him, how he didn’t want her to ever fall asleep, so she could keep doing it. How he hadn’t had anyone touch him like that in years, and he just finally got used to the idea that he didn’t miss it anymore, but how he knew even then that he shouldn’t have let her do it. That it was wrong of him to not stop her. Told her that it scared him more than anything to let anyone care about him in that way, and that he wasn’t lying to her when he said he was a coward when it came to this, that he couldn’t let himself get close to anyone like that, because it would either get them hurt or killed, and he didn’t have it in him to go through that again.
She didn’t move through it all, still looking at him with those impossibly blue eyes. “I am going to put my hands in your hair, Brody. Please don’t jump.”
He clasped his hands tighter behind his back, trying to stay calm, trying to not scare her, and nodded. And her hands were on his face then and running through his hair and he was breathing much too fast, but he couldn’t help it, and it didn’t feel comforting. It felt like she was melting his insides, but he felt he had to let her.
She moved her hands down to his back, watching his face, eyes serious, and then she pulled him down to the ground and made him lie on the grass and he let her, keeping his hands in fists at his sides. She leaned over him and unzipped his shirt, still looking at his face. He felt himself flinch. Her hands slowly tracked across his chest, making his flesh burn wherever she touched, and down his naked sides and he could feel himself shaking after a while, couldn’t stop it either. She was trying to tame him, trying to get it to not hurt so much anymore, trying to get him to not be so afraid.
She had tears in her eyes, and he wanted for this to be over. Wanted to just hug her to his chest and let her cry, so he could comfort her instead of whatever this was, but he promised not to touch her, and whatever she was doing now it wasn’t his to stop. It was something she was doing for her. He closed his eyes and let her, and it d
idn’t get any easier for him, but he didn’t move, and finally, she stood up and shook her head at him, sadly.
“I am sorry I hurt you, Brody. It won’t happen again,” she whispered through the tears, and ran from him, a full-on run, and there wasn’t a thing he could think to do or say to make it alright for her after that. He couldn’t go after her, so he stayed where he was and finally fell asleep in the damp grass, hands still in fists at his sides.
Drake’s giant hands shaking him gently woke him up. The sun was beating through the branches as if it’d been up for a while. Almost noon, he gathered, judging by all the light. He finally registered words: “Thought I’d find you here. Want to talk about it before we go back? I hate prying, Brody, but whatever happened with you and Laurel last night, I don’t think she stopped crying, and she wouldn’t say a word about it to nobody, not even Ams.”
He didn’t. He never wanted to talk about it.
She wouldn’t look at him when they made it to the fire, so he kept his head down, letting her be. He washed up in the stream and made himself a cup of that awful bitter stuff Riley drank on occasion, gulping it down without tasting it. He needed to start making plans for Crylo, needed his crew, only he couldn’t find them anywhere. Nobody was at the flier or at the fire when he got there. It felt as if they all deliberately left him alone and he couldn’t figure out why they’d need to do that. And then he saw her walking back into the clearing from the stream, face still splotchy from all the crying, and he knew why everybody was gone, and he hated them for doing this to him.
He walked over to her, slowly, carefully, and stopped in front of her, hands behind his back.
“I wouldn’t blame you in the least if you wanted to hit me, Laurel. It would be a relief.”
But she just shook her head at him. “I am going to try very hard to not like you from now on, Brody, because anything else will either hurt you or hurt me, and I don’t want that. I’ve never liked anybody before, but from everything I know, it’s not supposed to feel like that, how you felt… like I was hurting you. I never want to do that to you again, or to anybody. I still want to come with you, and I’ll do what I have to do when we get there, but I can’t like you anymore.”
He felt like a total idiot then. He never even thought that she’d be blaming herself for this, that she wouldn’t know why he felt the way he felt when she touched him. He would have, of course, known it, if he just thought about her life for a bloody minute, but he was too damn busy with everything else. Too busy to learn anything about this girl.
“Laurel, what you did last night… It only felt like that to me because I like you. It wouldn’t have bothered me at all if I didn’t. I don’t know how to explain it right or anything, but you didn’t do anything wrong. I am sorry you left thinking that. It’s not like that. It’s the opposite of that. I know I am probably not making any sense, I am sorry for that… I can’t promise you that I won’t freeze or flinch next time you touch me, if you ever want to again. Can’t promise that I won’t be afraid of it anymore, but I’ll try, if you want me to.” He dropped his head, embarrassment making his face hot. He felt her arms around his neck, and he didn’t flinch, didn’t freeze either.
“Can I hug you back?”
She nodded, and he did. Hugged her for a long time, and it felt good to have this girl pressing against him, feeling her breathe into his chest. It didn’t feel like his insides were on fire or that his heart was going to explode. He lifted her face to his, looking at her eyes, and put a tiny, soft kiss on her lips, and he felt her shiver under his hands, so he kissed her again, harder now, and for the first time in years, he wanted to keep kissing, wanted to not let go. Her hands were in his hair and on his back and it didn’t make him want to jump out of his skin. It made him want to keep pressing her closer and closer until there was no space between them at all, not even space for air to move.
But he couldn’t do that, so he disengaged, as softly as he could. She was looking at him as if she thought she did something wrong again.
“I can’t keep going. I won’t want to stop if we do. I am sorry,” he said quietly.
She blushed, hands still on his back under his shirt, making him want to keep touching her. “I don’t want to scare you, but I am pretty sure I don’t want to stop. I am pretty sure I want to keep going. And if you are right about Crylo, this might be all the time we have left. If we don’t get to come back, I want to at least have this; know what it’s like to be with someone, as stupid as it sounds.”
“Does anyone else use your target place?”
She shook her head.
He took her by the hand and walked her back to that trail. She looked afraid when they got to the clearing, face serious, not a trace of laughter in it.
He didn’t want her to be afraid, so he leaned her gently against a tree, and took her face in his hands, looking into her eyes. “Are you sure you want to do this?”
A nod.
“You can stop me at any time. You won’t hurt me if you do, I promise. I don’t need to know why or anything. Okay?”
Another nod, her eyes so big now, he was feeling shaky himself.
He leaned in and kissed her, softly, and her arms wrapped around his neck, and he couldn’t help himself. He needed to feel her skin that was all hidden under her shirt, so he pulled it out of her jeans and put his hands on her naked back. She was pulling his shirt off of him, so he had to disengage for a moment to let her, and he could feel the air and then her warm hands on him, and it made it burn like it did last night, only it didn’t scare him, it made him want to kiss her deeper, so he did. He could feel her breathing hard, panting, her face flushed but she was still looking at him, as if she needed to see everything on his face, to make sure she wasn’t hurting him.
“I am okay, Laurel, I promise I’m okay,” he whispered and went back to kissing her, and after a while, he pulled her down with him to the grass, laying her gently on her back.
He could feel her shaking, but she didn’t move. He slowly lifted her shirt up over her arms, exposing a tiny waist and a black bra covering her breasts. He knelt next to her, and she was staring at him, eyes large, and slightly unfocused, looking very much afraid. He stopped, had to stop, with her looking at him like that.
“We don’t have to keep going. I am okay with it either way, I swear.”
She shook her head, a small smile curling her lips. “It’s not that. I like looking at you,” she put her hand on the top of his chest, moving it down slowly, making it burn again, making him blush, the way she was looking at him, “you happen to be very nice to look at, Brody. And I like the rest of it, too. I like you touching me.” She took his hands and put them on her stomach, breathing hard. “Do you trust me?”
He did, he knew he did, so he nodded.
“I want to, Brody. I really want to,” she whispered, and closed her eyes, leaning her head to the side, tiny shivers going down her skin wherever he touched her.
He pulled her bra off, looking at her face, her eyes open now and large, too large. He kissed her on the lips, putting his body on hers, touching her skin with his, not looking at anything but her face, not wanting to scare her. “Still okay?”
She grabbed him by his hair and pulled him closer to her, kissing him back, hard, and then running her fingers all the way down his back, and he knew he was losing what little control he had left. That she did tame him after all, and he was strangely okay with it.
They lay next to each other afterward for the longest time, not saying anything. She was running her fingers softly down his chest, tickling him. He hugged her close to him when the dark came and the air got cold and damp. She said she wanted to spend the night under the stars, and she wouldn’t let him move away from her for long enough to make a fire, so he hugged her closer still and watched her finally fall asleep. She had her head on his chest, and her arm around him, hair tickling his skin.
He covered her the best he could with his shirt, but he could tell she was still shive
ring, and he spent half the night just trying to keep her warm, not wanting to wake her. He made a small, quick-burning fire when he got up, and dried the cold and the dew out of her clothes.
She smiled at him when he brought those over, a sweet smile. “Please, don’t ask me if I am okay. Don’t ruin this.”
And he didn’t. He could tell she was okay just by the way her eyes were – full of crinkles – and she kept on smiling that sweet smile at him, not blushing now. They were both definitely okay. And he hoped he could hold on to this for more than a few days, that they could postpone going to Crylo until he got enough of this girl, enough of her smiling at him like this. And suddenly, he had it, knew how he could hold on to this for a while longer. Ams would need to learn to shoot if she insisted on going with them. That would buy him at least a week with her smiles. He could live with that.
They were almost at the fire when she stopped him, taking his hands in hers, making him look at her, all the smiles gone from her eyes. “Do you still want to die?”
He blanched. “No, Laurel. I don’t.” For the first time after Riley ran out to him at that damn fire, he didn’t want to die, and it felt good knowing that.
Maybe there was a chance they could pull this off without any of them needing to die. The soldier in him needed to make sure this girl came back, and the man in him wanted, more than anything, to come back with her. And he knew it was like that for Riley and Drake, too, and now that they insisted on going, for the girls. He had to find a way to keep them all safe. It was his burden now, and he thought of the strain Riley must have been under this whole time, and felt not a little guilty for making it that much harder for his friend.
He saw him sitting alone by the dead fire when they got there, his hands wrapped in bandages for some reason. Laurel just pushed him forward and ran into the flier. Riley wouldn’t look at him at first, and he could tell when he stood up that he didn’t sleep last night.
Alliance: The Complete Series (A Dystopian YA Box Set Books 1-5): Dystopian Sci Fi Thriller Page 32