Overture - Skye Warren Page 0,42

eyes as I watch her, and she seems to know it—if not the exact contents, at least the spirit of it. She takes another step closer, and then another, until the only thing between us is the steamed glass of the shower door.

She puts her hand on it, her palm toward me, fingers spread.

I touch her hand through the glass, as if I can feel her.

My forehead rests on the glass, needing the connection, every part of me straining to break through the tempered glass and touch her, how soft she would be, how warm, as I come with a shout of forbidden pleasure, my whole body convulsing, hips fucking the air, my cock in agony as it comes in the warm, humid air instead of her tight cunt.

My head bows as I catch my breath, panting like an animal in the aftermath.

When I look up again, she’s gone. The doorway is dark. I can almost believe that she was part of my fantasy, not a real person who watched me come, except for the small handprint breaking up the steam on the other side of the glass.

God, she’s probably run back to her room—and no wonder. I should never have kept touching myself when she walked in. Then again this is my bathroom. My shower. The lines between right and wrong have blurred so much that I don’t know where to begin.

The only thing I know for sure is that I want to fuck her so bad it hurts.

Dressing quickly, pulling on a T-shirt and briefs over my wet skin, I head into the bedroom. I’ll have to find her in the house and make sure I haven’t scared her. Except she’s lying in bed where I left her, her dark eyes catching light from the bathroom and throwing it back to me in the dark.

“Are you okay?” I ask, my voice low.

“Yes,” she says. “Why wouldn’t I be okay?”

So she doesn’t want to talk about it. I should tell her to go back to her room. It isn’t appropriate for her to be here. Except that she wasn’t lying about having nightmares. Sometimes she cries out in her sleep. Remembering the night her father died?

Part of me wants to rage at her for leaving. Part of me wants to push her out of the fucking nest, to let her fly or fall, not to catch her on the way down. It isn’t in me to make her leave, so I climb back into bed with her. She curls herself against me, her hair dampened from standing in the bathroom, steam rising from both of our bodies.

LIAM

I’m asleep when the call arrives, but my body is trained to come fully awake at the first sign of trouble. I suppose I would have cultivated that skill in the military if I needed to.

I had it the day I enlisted. That’s what comes of growing up with a man who believed the devil resided in you. My childhood was a study in wild opposites, the intense high of an exuberant, loving father, and then the inevitable turn that came at night. He would charge into my room because of some nightmare he had, a sense that the devil was inside me, determined to drive him away. Anything that had happened during the day, a phrase I had used or an expression on my face, could be caused by the devil. My father would do anything to drive him out—press my hands onto the lit burner of the stove, choke me until I passed out. Throw me into the well so the cold and damp would drive away evil spirits.

The red light blinks on my phone, which means it’s coming in from a secure line. We have servers set up so that teams on deployment can reach us from anywhere without our location, and thus their identity, being compromised. “Hello,” I say, my voice hoarse as if I’ve been shouting in my sleep. I didn’t even realize I still had nightmares about the well until Samantha woke me up. She’s sleeping soundly in bed right now, and I take a few steps away, toward the bathroom, so I don’t wake her up.

A female voice identifies herself using a nine-digit alphanumeric code, her latitude and longitude, and an abbreviation that means she’s not being coerced to make this call. Laney’s mother. That’s a fucking relief. The last thing we need is another orphan around here.

“Sitrep,” I say, already pulling on my jeans. I