Chapter 22
The engines died, and the silence tried to fucking suffocate me.
I sat there with my grip still on the yoke and Patroklos on his knees behind my eyes.
Three shots. I could still count them on my trigger finger if I let myself, which I wasn't going to do, so I ran through the shutdown instead.
Fuel mixture, throttle, magnetos. The work kept my hands busy while my brain stayed back in Amritsar.
Through the windscreen, I could make out the empty airstrip in the pre-dawn gray. Dirt and scrub stretched in every direction. A single jeep sat at the far end, the one Luka had left for us.
My family had made it across safely. Luka's last message said the boats landed three hours ago.
I climbed out, and the heat slammed into me.
Jasper peeled off toward the jeep without a word while Rhadamanthys limped across the tarmac with Nevada under his arm.
Mr. Nobody disappeared toward the tree line like smoke.
Vihaan was already on his phone, probably yelling at someone about servers or some shit I had no room for.
I grabbed my pack and headed for the jeep.
The drive took twenty minutes through back roads that didn't exist on any map.
The resistance had carved their base out of an old limestone quarry, stone corridors with basic fixtures, voices echoing in Spanish and Romani.
People called out greetings as I passed, and I nodded, kept moving until I hit the communal showers.
I stripped, turned the water on, and stepped under.
Brown water ran off me at first, then pink, then clear.
I grabbed the soap and scrubbed under my nails where Patroklos's blood had gotten in deep. The water turned pink again and swirled down the drain. Soap and water, and the blood was gone, washed away like it had never been there.
Except Patroklos stayed on his knees in my mind. The sickle hit the dirt. His body jerked three times, once for each shot.
I scrubbed harder, working the soap over my forearms, my chest, anywhere the blood might've touched. The bar slipped, and I caught it, kept going. My skin started to burn, but I didn't stop. The blood was gone, but I could still sense it on me, a stain that had soaked through to the bone.
I dug my nails into my bicep and scraped, trying to get down to something clean underneath.
The other kills had been fast. A gun in my face and my finger on the trigger before I could think about it, and then it was over. Those kills had no faces. They lasted an hour, maybe two, and then they were just facts.
This one stayed.
I'd put three shells into a man already on his knees. I'd looked him in the eyes and pulled the trigger three times, execution-style, and now I couldn't scrub the image out any more than I could scrub out the blood.
The bathroom door opened.
Footsteps crossed the tile, and someone stepped into my shower stall. Water hit a second body in the spray. I barely tracked it, too busy scrubbing, too focused on trying to get the blood off even though I knew it was already gone.
It took me a full minute to figure out it was Jasper.
He stood in the spray, fully dressed, water soaking through his shirt and jeans. He looked at me with my raw knuckles pressed against my ribs and every muscle pulled wire-tight.
The sob came out of nowhere and ripped straight from my lungs. I dropped hard, knees cracking against tile, and I couldn't hold myself up anymore. The water kept running, and I shook and couldn't stop, couldn't hold my shit together.
Jasper dropped beside me. Water pooled around us both and he said nothing. He pulled me against his chest and held on while I fell apart.
I grabbed his soaked shirt and pressed my face into his shoulder, let it come.
The fear, the rage, the weight of what I'd done.
It poured out of me, and Jasper held on tighter.
He brought his hand up to the back of my neck and wrapped his other arm around my shoulders. He was solid. He was real. He was here.
"Breathe," he said quietly.
I tried but couldn't get air, tried again and managed something ragged that hurt going in.
"Patroklos deserved it," he said. "What he did to Eight. To those people. You made the right call."
I pulled back enough to look at him. Water dripped from his hair and his clothes clung to his body, soaked through from getting in the shower with me.
"I can't get it off," I said. "The blood."
"There's nothing there." He cupped my cheeks. "The blood's gone. What you're scrubbing at is in your head."
We stayed like that until the water ran cold. I'd scrubbed my hands raw. Jasper got me up, got me dry, and steered me down the corridor to our quarters, the same small room with two cots as before.
I sat down, still wrapped in the towel. Jasper stripped off his soaked clothes, pulled on dry ones from his pack, and came back and sat beside me.
We sat with the silence while I stared at my fucked-up hands.
"I'd do it again," I said. "All three shots. For Eight, for you, for myself. I'd pull that trigger a hundred times if it meant getting her back."
"I know."
"Doesn't make it easier."
"No." He shifted, pressing his shoulder firmer against mine. "But it was the right call."
I looked at him. Water still dripped from his hair. His shirt stuck to his chest where he hadn't dried off completely.
I swallowed around nothing.
His ribs rose and fell against mine, steady, and my breathing started to match without me deciding to.
"Jasper."
He turned his head. Our faces were maybe six inches apart.
"I need..." The words stuck. "I need to feel something else. Anything else. For a little while."
He brought his hand up to my jaw, his thumb brushing over my cheekbone, and I leaned into it. "What do you need?"
"You. Your hands on me. Need to feel alive instead of..." I gestured at myself, at the mess I'd been in the shower. "This."
"I can do that," he said.
He kissed me hard, took my mouth like he'd been holding back and I'd just cut the leash.
I grabbed his shoulders and pulled him closer, needing the weight.
His jaw worked against mine, his tongue pushed past my teeth, and I opened for him and took it, took everything.
The taste of him flooded in, and for the first time in hours, something besides Patroklos filled my head.
I yanked at his shirt, and he pulled back long enough to strip it off.
Then he pressed against me, chest to chest, and the shock of his skin on mine punched the air out of me.
He was so fucking warm. I dug my fingers into his back and dragged him closer until there was nothing between us but the towel bunched at my hips.
I grabbed for his belt.
"Diego." He caught my wrists. "Look at me."
I looked up.
"You want me to take over?" he asked.
“Dios, yes. Por favor. I just want to feel.”
He stood and stripped off the rest of his clothes. His cock was already hard, flushed dark against his stomach. I reached for him, but he caught my hand.
"Lie back," he said.
I lay back on the narrow cot. He climbed over me and kissed me again, all tongue and teeth, his weight pinning me to the mattress. I wrapped my arms around him and held on.
He kissed down my throat, my collarbone, the center of my chest. His mouth dragged hot and open against my skin, and where it landed the numb peeled back and left me raw. He bit down on the muscle above my hip, and my back came off the cot.
"Just focus on me," he said against my stomach.
Then he went lower.
He closed his mouth over the head of my cock and the sound I made bounced off the stone ceiling.
Wet heat, pressure, the flat of his tongue pressing up, and I grabbed the edge of the cot because my hands needed something to crush.
He pressed me back down with one hand flat on my hip and took me deeper, slower, and the warmth of it sank into places the scalding shower hadn't touched.
Muscle by muscle, the tension in my spine started to unknot.
I slid my fingers into his wet hair and gripped. He hummed around me, and the vibration dropped straight to the base of my spine and sat there, heavy, building.
"More," I pleaded. "That's not enough. I need you to wreck me."
He pulled off long enough to look up at me, lips slick, eyes sharp. "Get the vibrator from your pack. Left side pocket."
I stared at him. "How do you know about that?"
"I pay attention." He pressed his mouth to the inside of my thigh, sucked hard enough to bruise, and spoke against the skin. "Get it."
I leaned over the edge of the cot and dug through my pack. The small vibe was where it always was, tucked in the side pocket in its case. I tossed it to him, and he turned it over in his hand, studied it for a second, then handed it back.
"You know what you like," he said. "Show me."
I slicked the vibrator and reached between my legs.
Jasper went back down on me at the same time I pressed the tip against my hole, and the pressure from both directions at once pulled a groan out of me so loud it echoed off the stone walls.
I eased the vibe in, slow, and my thighs shook with the stretch of it.
Jasper's mouth stayed on my cock, steady, anchoring me while I opened up around the toy.
I clicked it on. The buzz hit my prostate and my whole body locked, every muscle clamping at once. I bucked hard against Jasper's mouth, and he pressed my hip down and kept going, hot and tight, tongue working me while the vibration pulsed deep.
"Joder," I said. "Fuck, right there, don't stop."
He pulled off just enough to speak against the head of my cock. "That's it. Stay with me."