by Tasha Black
The ref called her down and she went willingly. He lifted her hand to signal her victory.
Meanwhile, Brooke hadn’t even taken her gloves off.
Jade was tough, but Brooke had expected that, anticipated it with pleasure, truth be told - it would be good to rumble with someone she didn’t have to hold back with.
But it was the professional polish that threw Brooke. Jade hadn’t been thinking hard out there to win that way. She’d been going through the motions.
She was a natural. Fighting was like breathing to her.
Jade would eat Brooke Singleton for lunch if Brooke wasn’t very smart and very careful.
“She is ferocious,” Conan whispered, sounding a little awed.
Brooke nodded.
“This will be a magnificent battle,” he proclaimed.
“I sure hope so,” she agreed, her heart pounding with equal parts fear and exhilaration as she settled in to watch the rest of the fights.
An hour later, the team was packing up to head home for the night. Brooke and Keisha had progressed to the final round as had Leo, one of the teenaged boys. The others fought admirably and Brooke was proud.
“I can’t believe it,” Keisha was still repeating, shaking her head and hugging herself with pleasure over her good luck.
“You were amazing,” Brooke told her sincerely.
“No, I can’t believe how happy I am that you are fighting Jade St. Vincent tomorrow,” Keisha said. “It’s literally a dream come true. Plus, there’s the fact that the fight could save the gym. I mean, my life is pretty much like a movie right now.”
Brooke felt a pang of uncertainty.
She shouldn’t count on me to come through for her…
She pushed the thought out of her mind and reached for the last bag of gear, which was precariously close to toppling off the changing room bench.
“Oh, I’ll get that,” Keisha said.
“Nah, I’ve got it,” Brooke said, leaning a bit further to snag it off the floor.
Her body was so warmed up and loose, and she was still riding so high on the day’s adrenalin, that she didn’t even think about her arm.
When she lifted the bag in that position, with her shoulder extended out as far from her body as it could go, a stab of excruciating pain shot through her.
Brooke let the bag go and closed her eyes against the white-hot agony, clenching her jaw with the effort not to scream. She couldn’t show her weakness in front of the kid. It would ruin everything.
“Butterfingers,” Keisha laughed. She leapt over the bench to grab the bag. “You ready?”
Brooke nodded and followed her out of the changing room.
She tried rolling her shoulder just a little on the way out.
Even the small motion made her want to throw up.
Her whole arm felt like wet cement. She might as well have been trying to move the desert with a toothpick.
Her shoulder wasn’t going to work at all.
She focused on putting one foot in front of the other as the world fell out from under her.
She had made her peace with the fact that she might lose in the ring, however difficult it was. But she hadn’t been prepared to be defeated by a duffle bag.
Brooke Singleton’s one big shot was over before it could begin.
20
Conan
Conan knew instantly that something was wrong.
Brooke came out of the changing area with a smile plastered on her face, but he could see the pain in her eyes.
She came right to him, as if he had activated a tractor beam.
“What happened?” he whispered into her hair.
“I’ll tell you at home,” she murmured.
Her assembled students cheered and hugged her.
Brooke smiled, more genuinely now, and complimented each of them on their efforts.
“I can’t wait for tomorrow,” Keisha crowed.
“Get some sleep,” Brooke advised her.
Keisha nodded and dashed off to see her dads, who had just arrived to pick her up. They thoroughly supported her martial arts training, but had decided last year that it was better for everyone involved if they didn’t attend any more of her competitions. They had a tendency to get a little… passionate when a call didn’t go Keisha’s way.
The others slowly dissipated, off to greet their friends and family.
At last Conan and Brooke were left alone with their own friends.
“Are you okay?” Veronica asked, wrapping an arm around Brooke.
Conan observed that Veronica was a good friend, as she had also noted that Brooke was upset about something, in spite of her efforts to hide it.
“My shoulder,” Brooke said. There was a note of flat defeat in her voice.
Conan’s heart sank.
“During the match?” Veronica sounded horrified.
“No,” Brooke said. “Afterward.”
“You re-injured your shoulder?” Conan asked.
She nodded.
He opened his mouth and then shut it again, pressing his lips together. He couldn’t say it now. But he suspected the problem with her shoulder was not physical.
And if that was true, he knew he could help her. He knew it to his bones.
Brooke looked away but he caught the sadness in her eyes before she did. He realized belatedly that she must think he had buttoned his lips because he was disappointed in her.
But there was no use in trying to explain, because he knew if he started talking he might not be able to stop. And he shouldn’t share what he was about to say with anyone but Brooke.
And maybe not even with her.
“Let’s head home,” Trinity said. “I brought the hatchback. I think we’ll all fit.”
“Veronica can sit on my lap,” Lobo said quickly.
“That’s generous,” Trinity quipped.
Veronica giggled.
Brooke smiled and Conan felt marginally better.
It would be a squeeze in Trinity’s tiny car, but Conan was very glad to have a quick way home so he could talk with Brooke.
The six of them made their way out to the parking lot. Everyone was chattering except for Brooke. And Conan.
“Oh shoot,” she said suddenly. “I should go back in. Let them know I can’t fight tomorrow, that way at least Noreen can have her chance with Jade.”
“Not yet,” Conan said, breaking his silence.
“But—” she began.
“Not yet,” he repeated firmly.
Brooke gave him a stunned look, but she allowed herself to be led the rest of the way to the car.
The ride home was sweet torture.
Brooke was pressed close to him. Her warmth and the clean scent of the shower she must have just had conspired to destroy his body, while his need to help her destroyed his mind.
The light from the street lamps strobed in as the car moved, giving him teasing glimpses of her pale cheek, her wet hair, her pouting mouth.
The others spoke but he could not have said what they were discussing. His whole focus was on the woman beside him.
At last they arrived back at the dorm and scrambled out of the car.
“I need to talk with you alone,” he said, catching Brooke’s hand.
“Okay,” she said, studying him quizzically. “Want to go up to the other suite on the third floor?”
“Perfect,” he told her.
She followed him upstairs and the others didn’t even ask what was happening.
Conan was pretty sure that Trinity and Veronica assumed they were going upstairs to be intimate.
And he hoped that his brothers didn’t realize that he was going upstairs to reveal his gift.
Dr. Bhimani had warned them not to reveal their strange powers until after they had been accepted by their new mates.
The trouble was that Brooke needed his help now.
At last they reached the top of the stairs. To the left was the suite that Lobo and Veronica now shared, though the t
wo of them were now downstairs with the others and likely would be for some time.
Conan led Brooke to the suite on the right.
This set of rooms must have been for someone special, maybe the captain himself. Instead of three small bedrooms surrounding a common living area, this suite featured a large living room and an enormous round bedroom in the turret with views over three sides of the property.
Because no one was staying in the suite, the living room was empty.
But the bedroom contained a hand knotted rug, a stone fireplace and a huge four-poster bed.
Conan led Brooke to it and gestured for her to get in.
She looked a bit surprised.
“I want to help you with your shoulder,” he said.
“Oh. I thought…” she trailed off, her cheeks turning pink.
A picture of what she thought formed in his head and a shiver of lust trailed down his spine.
Brooke slipped off her shoes and climbed into the bed, lying down on her belly.
Conan climbed in too, commanding his heart to slow, his body’s hot lust to cool.
It was no easy matter with her sweet body laid out before him, knowing he was about to touch her.
He took a deep breath then straddled her and smoothed his hands along the muscles of her back, allowing his thumbs to sink in slightly, tracing the outline of her spine as she relaxed under his touch.
“Oh wow, that’s fantastic,” she sighed.
“Do you want me to work on your shoulder a little now?” he asked.
“I’m not sure,” she tensed a bit.
“That’s okay,” he said. “We can work our way around it and then try when you’re ready.”
“Thanks,” she said, her voice slightly muffled by the pillow.
She was obviously enjoying his efforts and the knowledge filled him with pride and tenderness.
He concentrated his work on her middle back, close to her spine but between the two shoulder bones that reminded him so much of wings. The human body was strange, yet elegant.
Brooke moaned a little with satisfaction and he felt it in his groin.
“This is the beauty of the physical form,” he said, as much to distract himself as to begin their conversation. “It can withstand so much pain and sustain such pleasure - the tension of discomfort and the deliciousness of relief.”
Belatedly he realized that what he had said could be interpreted as sexual in nature.
“When I assumed my body, I brought my own essence, of course,” he began quickly. “But I also brought something else. My brothers and I, we each have a… special ability. And I want to tell you about mine.”
“A special ability?” Brooke asked.
He felt her tense beneath him and he stopped massaging and rolled next to her.
She rolled onto her side to face him, propping herself up on the elbow of her good arm.
“Yes,” he said. “I hope it doesn’t frighten or offend you. But I can do something that my brothers cannot. And since there is no word for it, we do not believe other humans can do it either.”
“Wh-what is it?”
“Hawkeye calls it dream walking, and that seems to be an accurate enough name for it,” he explained.
“Oh,” she said, looking relieved. “That’s called sleepwalking. It’s common for children to get up and walk around in their sleep, but plenty of adults do it too. It’s nothing to worry about.”
“No,” he shook his head. “This is something different.”
“Okay,” she said, gazing at him with her eyes as blue as the old moon of Parth-12.
“I can visit the dreams of the people I care about,” he told her carefully.
“What do you mean you can visit their dreams?”
“Usually when I go to sleep, I dream, just like you do. But sometimes,” he explained, “I end up in someone else’s dream.”
A look of horror crossed her face.
“It doesn’t happen every night,” he said. “And it’s not something I do on purpose. At least it hasn’t been before now.”
She nodded and bit her lip.
“But I’m beginning to think that you may have a gift as well,” he said. “Or maybe it’s a curse.”
“What do you mean?” she asked defensively, her blue eyes suddenly piercing.
“You have a dream about a place of brown rocks and dust,” he said. “You were a soldier once. I think the place where you fought was like that.”
She nodded slowly.
“The dream upsets you terribly,” he went on. “But I cannot enter it fully. As soon as you go into that courtyard I’m… ejected from it. Are you doing that on purpose? Can you sense that I’m there?”
“No,” she said.
And then she burst into tears.
Conan had read in books that men did not know what to do when women were crying and were immediately filled with awkwardness and resentment at the first sight of female tears, but he had never been faced with the situation himself before.
Now that he was, he had no question at all what to do. His arms went around her of their own accord.
“We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want,” he told her calmly. “But I have a theory about your shoulder. I think that the trouble with it may not be entirely physical. I think it may have something to do with that dream.”
“That’s what the doctor said,” Brooke said quietly. “Not about the dream, but at the VA hospital they told me the shrapnel was all out and there was nothing structurally wrong with my shoulder.”
Conan held her close and listened.
“They thought maybe it was nerve damage, but it’s inconsistent,” she went on. “Maybe you’re right.”
He waited for a few moments, unsure if she would continue.
“Something happened in Afghanistan,” she blurted. “That’s what I have nightmares about. I made a horrible mistake and a lot of people died.”
There was silence in the room. Conan listened as her breathing returned to normal.
“I’m so sorry,” he told her.
“Don’t be sorry for me,” she said bitterly. “I’m the one who should be sorry. But all the apologies in the world won’t bring them back. I was careless and those amazing people paid the price.”
“You are not a careless person,” Conan observed.
“The courtyard you saw in my dream, I was supposed to sweep it for bombs,” she told him. “And I did, but not carefully enough. The explosion took out everyone except me. One of them died to save my worthless life.”
“You have been left all alone with such a feeling of guilt,” Conan said. “That is terrible.”
Brooke sobbed against his chest.
“I have heard many times that to err is human,” he told her. “And to forgive is divine. Can you not forgive yourself?”
“Forgiving is for God to do,” she said. “That’s what the phrase means. And no, I don’t think I can forgive myself. Each of those people had a family, a life, a future. Now all that is gone. They counted on me and I let them down in the worst way imaginable.”
“So you feel that you missed seeing something you should have seen?” he asked.
“Yes, we’re supposed to do a visual sweep whenever we enter a space like that,” she said.
“What does that mean?”
“It means we look for anything suspicious,” she said. “The obvious, but also any overturned dirt, any people behaving strangely, that kind of thing.”
“And you didn’t look?”
“Of course I looked,” she said. “I performed a standard visual sweep twice. But when you’re over there long enough, you get a kind of sixth sense about a place. I didn’t get it that day or I would have searched a hundred times, or a thousand, to protect my people.”
“So maybe you dream of going back because you want to look harder,” he suggested. “In your dream do you ever find it before they get hurt?”
“No,” she said, shaking her head. “In my dream I can
’t do anything other than what I did the first time. It just repeats and I’m powerless to do anything to change it.”
“Would you like me to take a look around?” he asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I want to try something,” he said. “Something I’ve never done before. I want to enter your dream on purpose.”
“Are you serious?” she asked.
“You don’t believe me,” he said, crestfallen. Dr. Bhimani had warned them of human resistance to things they didn’t understand.
“You knew about the dream. I believe you,” Brooke said. “It’s just… I don’t know. I wouldn’t want to be there on purpose. It’s terrible, Conan.”
“I want to help you,” he told her simply.
“What would we do?”
“We would go to sleep, right here,” he said. “And I would try to join you in your dream. And you would try not to block me out.”
“This is crazy,” Brooke said.
“Please,” he whispered. “Please let me help you.”
He counted his heartbeats while waiting for her answer.
“Okay,” she said at last.
He felt the tears prickle his own eyes at her reply.
“Are you comfortable?” he asked her.
She nodded against his chest.
“Then let’s go to sleep,” he said. “Let’s see if we can do this.”
“Mmm,” she agreed.
He held her, trying to memorize the weight of her, the scent of her hair, the drum beat of her heart slowing to a lazy pace as at long last she drifted into sleep.
21
Brooke
Brooke was standing in the desert.
Her heart lurched with trepidation for what she knew was coming.
Please, no, not again.
But something was different this time. A dark figure approached.
Brooke waited, not daring to breathe.
The figure came closer and she saw that it was Conan.
A vague memory came back to her.
I want to help you.
But there was no time to discuss, her feet carried her past the low adobe wall, as always, and Conan followed.
Her eyes swept across the undisturbed ground, taking in the quiet courtyard.