Solomon (Club Sin #6)

2. The Amazon Is, Like, Big

the amazon is, like, big

Scarlett

S eeing Sol in such bad shape is fucking hard.

He was always superhuman. No matter what happened, he never slowed down. Never fell behind. Never let anyone take point.

Which means that what he's told me he's been through is probably just the tip of the iceberg.

Deep inside my chest, locked within a very hard, dense, impenetrable, unbreakable shell, there's a part of me that loves this man with wild, tender ferocity. I know it's there. It's been there for a fucking decade. What's more, I think he knows it. I think he has something very similar locked away inside himself.

But neither of us has ever been able to let it out or express it. God knows I can't start now. We're in the fucking jungle, for fuck's sake. Chased and hunted by who knows how many very bad men. Miles and miles from anyone or anything. No food. No water. He doesn't have any fucking shoes. He's been tortured, starved, beaten, and who knows what else that he hasn't bothered to mention.

Plus, I’m pissed off at him.

Yet, here he is, passed out with his head on my lap, and I can't seem to stop my fingers from playing with his hair.

What a fucking pickle.

I let myself rest a little bit, eyes closing, body loose, rifle at my side. It's not sleep—my ears and other senses are on high alert, and I can go from resting to killing faster than a snakebite. Sol always joked that he was checking his eyelids for holes.

I still can't believe he's alive.

Three, maybe four hours pass and Sol is dead asleep. Maybe "dead asleep" is the wrong turn of phrase, but the man is out for the count.

My mind is still trying to make sense of the whole situation. Somehow, Solomon survived six gunshot wounds to the torso. Liters of blood lost. Clinical death. I mean, if anyone could have survived, it doesn't surprise me that he did. There's a reason we called him WindWalker. But he disappeared, lived in some club, left for his parents’ funeral, and was promptly captured by what seems to be an extremist faction of the FARC—The Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—People's Army, a Marxist-Leninist guerilla group, originally. It was officially militarily disbanded in 2017, but a host of smaller breakaway groups mixing political and military agendas have cropped up in its place. The question is, why do they want Solomon Cabot? I mean, sure, he's done his fair share of bloody work all over Central and South America, so it stands to reason plenty of people hate him. But he's an operator so far off any books that he doesn't officially exist on any government record. Very few people even know his name. And why torture him but ask no questions? And why are these rebel dissidents from Colombia hiding out in the Brazilian jungle?

There are no answers from where I'm sitting. More intel is needed to even form a hypothesis. I'm not sure he knows. And honestly, right now, it doesn't even matter. Getting us out of the jungle is the first problem. Avoiding his captors is another.

He needs food. He needs medication. He needs electrolytes. He needs a week of rest.

None of which are gonna happen any time soon.

I don't even know which way to go—where the nearest thing like human civilization is.

And this is some of the most brutal and unforgiving terrain on the planet.

Quite a fucking pickle, indeed.

I hear a stick crack off to my left and come instantly alert. A murmur. Rustling.

I tap Sol on the shoulder twice, and he's awake and on a knee with his right to his shoulder in a split second. Fuck me, the man has not lost his edge, that's for damn sure.

Another crack of a stick—to my right. Sol points at me and to the left and then to himself and the right. I nod. Creep toward the sound. Put Sol out of my mind—even in his current state, I'd rather have him at my back than all of SEAL Team Six.

I tug my second favorite knife out and let my AK hang by the strap at my back as I sift silently through the jungle, ducking under low-hanging fronds and stepping over rotting trunks.

I catch a glimpse of movement out of the corner of my eye—a tango. Two. Three. Shit. They're coming toward me in a line abreast, six or so feet between them. Sunlight shifts and dapples through the canopy, shedding twisting shadows.

I lay on the jungle floor in the cold, wet, slimy mud, wedged against a fallen tree they'll have to step over. I take a moment to smear mud on my face, hands, and arms—protection against bugs as well as further camouflage.

I hear them now. One hisses something to another in Portuguese, which I neither speak nor understand—I don't have Sol's facility with languages. He can speak several fluently, and Brazilian Portuguese especially he can speak like a native. I am a native Spanish speaker, however, so I can blend in pretty much anywhere south of Oklahoma.

One steps over the log and his bootheel bumps off my knee—I chomp down hard to keep from expressing the pain verbally. He doesn't even look down, assuming he stepped on something natural.

I wait. He’s over, and then his companions.

Now for the tricky part—eliminating all three without firing a shot or allowing a shout.

I ease to my feet and creep up behind the rightmost target, noticing a nice big fixed-blade hunting knife sheathed at his waist. Helpful.

I reach my hand around his face, clap it over his mouth, and cut his throat, slicing deep. Grab his knife from the sheath, flip it so I'm pinching the blade, and hurl it at the farthest left target. It buries in the side of his throat, sending him gurgling to his knees. The middle tango spins, rifle lifting, mouth opening to shout, but I've already brought my blade up under his ribcage into his heart. He gasps, blinks at me in wide-eyed confusion, and then hits the ground. The guy I threw the knife at is still thrashing around like a fish out of water, so I finish him off and then retrieve the extra blade, as well as the sheath, from its original owner. I find a few more spare mags for my AK in their pockets, as well as four protein bars and a half-full canteen. Score.

I give Sol our old signal, a whippoorwill call; a few seconds later, I hear him return it and follow the sound to him. He's laid out three of his own and now has a handgun holstered low on his left thigh, a canteen, and a battered but functional and fitting pair of combat boots on his feet.

He's panting heavily, which tells me he's still struggling physically. He, too, has covered himself in mud, including his once-blue jeans.

He grins at me, teeth white in the wet, caked mud on his face. "That worked out."

He tosses me a sheathed machete, a match to the one strapped across his back over the now-crusted mud.

I toss him a protein bar. "Eat, Sol."

He catches it, and I don't miss the relief on his face. "Thank fuck."

"Name is Scarla, not fuck," I quip.

He unwraps the bar and takes a very small bite, chewing it thoroughly—he knows from both training and experience that if you try to eat too fast after extended hunger, you can cause yourself a world of hurt.

He digs his hip pocket and produces a compass. "This'll be useful. Not that I know which direction to go."

"Me either," I say. "We can back-track the route I took to get here, which'll put us within a few days’ walk of the Colombian border, but that's three days through the jungle from that camp. We gotta find the river first, though."

He shrugs. "As good a plan as any, I guess."

I jut my chin at him. "How you feel?"

Another shrug, of which he has many. "Meh, I'm decent. Rest, water, and this," he lifts the protein bar he's slowly eating, "will help a lot. Sleep deprivation, hunger, and dehydration were the worst of it. The rest is just mission-usual aches and pains."

"Sol, you were beaten and tortured for three weeks."

He stares at me, gaze hard. "And?"

I know better than to push him when he looks like that. I snatch the compass out of his hand and orient myself facing northwest. "Border should be this way. Let's go, tough guy."

He gestures with a broad sweep of his hand. "After you, m'lady."

I flip him off. "I'm no fuckin' lady." I push past him, machete in hand.

"Maybe not, but you’ve still got the tightest ass I've ever seen."

I stop, turn, and glare at him. "No."

He grins. "Yes."

I put the point of the machete in his face. "No. Meaning, you don't get to do that with me, Solomon. Hands off, eyes off. No jokes. No comments. Just fucking no." I turn and hack with unnecessary violence at an unoffending vine that was not in my way at all.

"Fuck that vine in particular, huh?" he says. A few moments later: "You know, we're gonna have to talk about this, Scarlett."

"I hate it when you call me that, and you fuckin' know it."

“Yeah, I know."

"So stop calling me that." I hold up my machete. "I'll cut your dick off."

He just laughs at my threat. "You will not. You love my dick. You used to call him Megatron, remember?"

My core pulses because I do, in fact, remember. All too well. I haven’t had a dick even half as amazing as his since he died, and believe me, I've looked.

His jocular insouciance fills me with unreasoning rage, however. Does he not understand the agony I've endured the last three years?

I whirl, and only his lightning-fast reflexes save his life—he rears back as the blade of my machete slices through the air where his head was. " Fuck you, Solomon ." I put my nose in his space, glaring up at him, annoyed as always that he's so much fucking taller than me. Makes it hard to stare him down when I have to stare up. " Fuck…you ."

His eyes spark with anger of his own, and that makes even me a little nervous. "Scarla, babe, you get that one for free. Next time you swing a blade at me, you better kill me, or I'll take it from you and paddle your fine little ass with it. Hear me, sweetheart?"

I seethe at him. "I'd like to see you fucking try."

"Don't tempt me. I've dreamed about that ass of yours every single fucking night for three fucking years, woman."

Fucking hell. My anger and confusion and hurt are all tangled up with a scorching, boiling arousal. Memories of the last time he and I were together uncoil in my mind and take root in my belly, my pussy.

Caracas, three years ago. Twenty-four hours before the mission. A shitty little hotel a few blocks from Ciudad Universitaria. It was a hundred degrees and humid, a clear, cloudless day. We'd spent the whole night drinking cheap rum and smoking primo Venezuelan weed because we knew the mission was fucked from the jump. The city was a seething, violent, angry time bomb, and we were in the middle of it. It was doomed from the start, and we fucking knew it, so we decided to spend what we assumed would be the last day of our lives partying like goddamned rock stars. He fucked me so good that night. Jesus—so good. We slept till noon, and he got up and found us coffee and breakfast, and then he hauled me out of bed and bent me over the railing of the balcony and fucked me in full view of anyone who cared to look. He had such a death grip on my ass that I had bruises in the shape of his fingers for a week. I walked funny for three days.

Best sex of my life.

I think about it every goddamned day.

He gives me a hot, arrogant smirk. "You're thinking of that day in Caracas, aren't you? Yeah, you fuckin' are, sweetheart." He sidles closer, huge and hard and violent and primal and lethal. "Remember what I said before I ripped your clothes off you?"

I can't help answering. "'I'm about to give you the hottest fuck of your life, Scarlett. I'm gonna fuck you so good you'll dream of it after I'm dead and gone.'"

"Damn right." Closer, body to body, brilliant emerald eyes boring into mine. "I'm a man of my word, Scar. So do not tempt me. I recognize that you're pissed off, and you have every right to be. But I'll only let you punish me for so long. Hear me?"

I don't give him the verbal answer he wants—I’m not ready to let him force me into submission yet. He's gonna have to work for that. And work damn hard. I stare up into his eyes and give him a hint of the rage and the pain and the sorrow I've felt.

"Did you know?" I ask.

"Did I know what?"

“That you'd die."

He turns away, pacing two steps and stopping. Head hangs. "Sorta. I had a bad feeling. We both did. The intel was fucked. The mission directive was fucked. We had no business being there. We should've…I don't know. Gone AWOL. Refused to obey and take the consequences. Something. Anything other than go through with that FUBARed piece of shit mission. But I guess, yeah, I did. I had this…dark, heavy pit in my stomach the moment we were in-country. A sense of foreboding."

"I would have gone anywhere with you," I whisper.

"I fucking know, Scar. I know."

I shake my head and go back to hacking my way through the jungle. We leave the conversation hanging between us like an antipersonnel mine.

It's slow going, but we make progress; Sol wasn't lying, either. After a few hours of rest, some water, and some protein, he's a new man, trailing behind me with something close to his usual unflagging vigor.

Around midday, the sky clouds over and then opens up into another torrential downpour that slowly washes the mud off of us both, leaving us soaked and miserable. Again. Or still.

I don't know that I've been dry in almost a week at this point, and I'd cut off my right tit for a change of clothes, a hot meal, and a real bed.

I can't imagine how Sol must feel.

After a few hours of unrelenting rain, it tapers off and then stops, leaving the jungle ripe and thick and clean. The sun returns, now close to setting.

"Scar, stop."

I halt, glance back. He points with his machete down the ravine on our right—several trees have fallen across the ravine in a tangled web of trunks and rotting foliage, creating a natural cave-like opening beneath it.

"We could probably have a fire down there," he says. “Dig in-ground and the leaves’ll dissipate the smoke.”

“Sounds good— if we can find dry wood," I say. "You go down there and check it out. I'll look for something that'll burn."

An hour later, I managed to find a few armloads of small sticks and deadfall that should be dry enough to ignite. Sol has cleared out the space beneath the fallen trees to make a cozy little den just big enough for the two of us to sit. He even dug a Dakota firepit—a hole in the ground about twelve inches deep, with a horizontal tunnel directing the smoke away. Motherfucker even has a lighter and cigarettes, somehow.

Within fifteen minutes, we have a small fire going, and the small space heats up quickly. We both remove our boots and socks.

He lights a cigarette and takes a puff, making a face at the taste. "Fuck, that's shitty. But a smoke's a smoke."

I take it from him and draw on it, coughing. "Jesus, no kidding."

Neither of us smokes regularly, but in situations like this, it's a coping mechanism of sorts. We share the cigarette in silence.

"Sleep," I tell him. "I'll take first watch."

"Scar—" he starts.

I put my hand against his face, the heel of my palm against his chin, fingertips on his forehead. "Nope." It's another old thing between us, and like the other old familiar habits, it just comes back on its own.

He laughs. "Fine. Have it your way. Three, four hours, yeah?"

I nod. "I know how it works."

"No shit. My point is, don't take the whole watch because you think I need it. I don't. I'm fuckin' fine. I can pull my weight."

"Sol, you not pulling your weight is never the issue. The issue is that you tend to pull your weight and everyone else's until you're half dead."

He lays back and shuts his eyes. "Glad it's you who rescued me, Scarlett."

I don't answer. I just watch him fall asleep—I know his tells. His left bicep and his right hand twitch sporadically when he's falling asleep.

Am I glad? Yes. And no. I'm still pissed at him for fucking abandoning me, the bitch. I don't give a fuck if contacting me puts my life at risk—I'm an operator, for fuck's sake. That's the whole job. But also, it's Sol. The only human on this godforsaken planet I've ever fully and completely trusted. The only person I've ever loved—not that we ever said it. I came close that day in Caracas. Impaled on his big fat cock, staring down at his deep green eyes, feeling seen, feeling safe in a very unsafe place, I just knew. I love this man. But I couldn’t say it. Too chicken.

The moment passed, the mission started, and then went way the fuck off the rails and he died and I almost did, and I never saw him again.

Which brings me to the burning question: if it wasn't Sol who emailed me from our private email addresses, who did? His boss, or someone named Inez. Questions for him for later, I guess.

It's a quiet night, only the ambient sounds of the jungle. I resist the urge to touch him—not like that, just…put a hand on his shin or his arm. We did that a lot back in the day. We'd sit in the jump seats of a C-130 on the way downrange and hook pinky fingers between our legs. None of our team ever said anything about us being together, but I always wondered if they knew. We did our best to keep it platonic and professional around anyone else—not because it was against the rules for us to be together because it wasn't, but because we didn't want any drama. We didn't want to make it weird for the others. So we kept it a secret. I think also it was just in our natures at the time to be secretive.

I'm not sure I could keep him a secret anymore. When he died, I ran out of fucks to give. I started taking the most dangerous ops. Took risks—sometimes stupid and unnecessary ones. I didn't, and don't, have a death wish; I just didn't give a single, solitary, flying fuck. About anyone or anything. Not without Sol at my back. Off-base and away from the ops and the team, I did what I wanted. Fucked who I wanted. Drank more than ever. Put up big-ass walls, thick, crunchy, crusty, frosty walls of don't-give-a-fuck, don't-fuck-with-me attitude. I got harder, darker, and even more dangerous. My temper got worse.

I nearly got court-martialed and did get busted down a rank for nearly killing a new guy who thought he could put the moves on me at the bar. Before, I’d just kick him in the nuts and call it a day. Now? I had to be restrained by Dougal and Cope before I cut his dick off. The little shit did walk away with his dick intact, but he wasn't as handsome as he used to be, not with a nice scar on his stupid face.

The brass called it "uncalled-for aggression against a fellow team member" when they busted me back down to sergeant first class. Whatever.

No, the issue isn't keeping Sol a secret. It's figuring out how I feel, what I want, and how to get it, assuming we make it out of this fucking jungle.

Which isn't a given, even for us.

The Amazon, is, like, big.