Chapter 12
EMERY
Tomorrow we’re being shipped out to the trials.
A deeper connection has formed between me and Cameron since Wraith tried to kill me. The early morning trainings have been absolute hell, but I’ve gained a wealth of knowledge and confidence when it comes to close combat.
Cameron is responsible for every bruise, cut, and sore muscle, yet I find myself yearning for more time in the dark with him.
More time in our intimate silence as he proves to me just how easy it is for a trained Dark Forces soldier to terminate me.
How easy it is for him to take my life if he wanted. When he wants to.
I wonder how many people have fallen at his hands? How many more will fall after me? The thought is distasteful. It forces dreadful images of people I’ve also betrayed in the past. The look in their eyes when they know you on a personal level is always what lingers the longest.
Though I’m grateful for his personal training sessions, I worry about how our dynamic has changed. How I’m knowingly letting my guard down when I’m near him. I only wish the lingering looks and stolen glances he takes wouldn’t stir an ache in my chest the way they do.
Over dinner, the drill sergeant notifies us that we’ll be transported first thing in the morning. The first trial won’t begin until sundown once we’ve all reached the remote location.
Wraith still has to participate, even with his ruined arm.
Nine days in a cast isn’t enough time to heal from a wound like that before being thrown into the trials, which I’m assuming are going to be outdoors and somewhere here in Alaska.
There are plenty of vast landscapes and mountains where no one would know these events are even happening.
I’m already dreading how cold it’s going to be and brainstorming ways to keep warm without a fire.
One way involves sharing body heat, which I doubt will be an option.
I side-eye Cameron as he settles onto the cot.
Dark circles ring under his eyes and allude to his shitty night’s rest. I don’t know how he keeps control as well as he does for all the deficiencies he’s had.
At least his bloody noses haven’t been as bad as the one in the bathroom.
I’ve never seen someone collapse and nearly pass out from one before.
He said it’s a common side effect of the pills, but that doesn’t make me feel any better about it.
“Did all your time in the library make you feel more prepared for the trials?” Cameron murmurs behind me, and there’s a hint of sarcasm in his tone.
Every spare moment down here that isn’t in the weapons room, I’ve spent in the library stuffing my mind with knowledge on everything from psychology to killing to survival.
He brushes his hand through my hair to keep it out of his face, I think.
I shut my eyes and savor the endearing feeling of it while I can.
I stare into the darkness, knowing everyone else in here is probably lying awake and dreading tomorrow as much as I am.
We’ve been left completely in the dark about what to expect.
Cameron told me it changes every year, so he wasn’t sure what to expect either, but he certainly doesn’t seem concerned about it like the rest of us.
“Maybe, it depends on what the trials entail,” I whisper back. We both know we’re on our own out there; everyone else down here wants us dead. He only nods and doesn’t speak for a few minutes. So I change the topic. Nerves always make me chatty. It helps keep anxiety from building up.
Reed told me that when I feel the anxious demons building inside my chest, instead of trying to push them away, I should welcome the fear they bring. That the rejection of the emotion led to worse things, such as panic attacks.
He was always right, of course. So I talk my anxiety out instead of ingesting it.
“What did you want to do with your life? You know, before it took a turn for the worse,” I ask. We’ve successfully managed to dance around our personal lives. Well, past lives in our case, since Dark Forces soldiers are dead to the world above.
A soft chuckle escapes his lips and warms my neck.
“I was going to school to be a professor. I moved to the States when I was seventeen and always wanted to teach at an old university. It didn’t matter where, I only cared that the buildings were old and had a wealth of history.
A nearby forest and mountains to walk through.
A home hidden away from everything.” He brushes his fingers through my hair again and this time I know it’s not to keep it from his face.
The image he painted blooms through my mind like watercolor on canvas. His dreary, quiet life would’ve been lovely.
“It sounds charming,” I murmur softly.
“And what of you?” His accent is richest when he whispers. My toes curl with the flutter of his voice.
“I pictured myself writing stories.”
His fingers stray from my hair and trace the curve of my neck. “Happy ones? Or sad?”
I inhale sharply at his touch, the pads of his fingers causing chills to spread across my skin. My thighs press together with need. Don’t think about the shower incident. “You know they would’ve been sad. Likely violent. Perhaps some romance. I find I like those stories best.” My voice is raspy.
Cameron’s fingers pause, surely feeling me squirming this close to him, before he leans forward and presses his lips to my ear.
“Is that why you burden me with those longing, haunting eyes? Do you find my story to be a sad one? What are you yearning for, Emery? Tell me, and whatever it is, I will give it to you.” He sets his hand on my waist where it dips deepest into my abdomen.
My heart beats faster, and my lips part at his touch. “I want for nothing,” I say with as much resolve as I can conjure. My thighs rub together shamelessly.
He closes what little space there is between our bodies and nudges his knee between my legs. A soft gasp escapes me as his hand smooths over the crest of my hip and stops with his thumb dipping below my waistband. I arch my back at the contact and push my ass into his crotch instinctively.
“Nothing?” he says sardonically, moving his hand agonizingly slow under the rim of my underwear and down to my clit. I let out a small moan as he slips two fingers between my folds and finds me soaking wet. “This is far from nothing, love.”
I should tell him to stop. I shouldn’t give in to his self-destruction. But God I want to, and I don’t think I have the strength to let this moment slip by. My moments were numbered the second I entered the cell with him.
“Cameron, wait,” I whisper.
He stops moving his hands and presses a kiss against my neck. “Do you want me to stop?” His words are like drops of lust on my skin.
“No, but…what exactly is this between us?” I want him to say it’s more than fooling around.
More than just getting off before the horrors of the trials coming, because there’s a weight that seizes a part of me behind everything he does.
Every heavy stare and loose grin. It’s unsettling, but I need to know.
He pushes his fingers inside me, rewetting them before he starts circling my clit in a lazy rhythm that makes my eyes loll to the back of my head.
“There will never be anything between us,” he says callously.
My chest sinks at his words, but he doesn’t stop his teasing swirls.
“You’re just the next partner to me. Nothing more.
I want to give you a good time while you’re still around.
You might as well be satisfied until the end, don’t you think? ”
Coldness seeps back into me as I remember myself.
“Yes. Of course,” I murmur. I don’t allow the sting of those words to linger. The pleasure and soft moans that follow as he sinks two fingers deep inside me take any thoughts I had left. Cameron nips at my neck and rolls his hips against my ass as he finger-fucks me into oblivion.
He groans as my breaths get shorter. His shirt rides up and his bare skin rubs against my back. I let my head tilt back and muffle a moan by burying my teeth into my lower lip.
“You make me lose myself, you know that?” He breathes up the back of my neck, angling his finger deeper inside me until he has me trembling in his embrace.
My orgasm peaks as he grinds his boner against my ass. I cover my mouth to keep in the whimper that rises up in my throat as I come on his hand.
Cameron smiles against my nape and presses his lips there before he slowly withdraws his hand from my pants. I wish he wouldn’t offer such soft kisses so easily. It almost feels mocking.
“Get some sleep, Emery.”
When I don’t respond, he turns onto his side so our backs are pressed together. I stare out into the darkness of the barracks. After almost an hour, Cameron’s breaths even out and I know he’s fallen asleep. He must be exhausted because I haven’t heard his breathing this rhythmic before.
Restlessness ails me. No matter of lying here will soothe me into sleep.
I decide to walk the maze of the Under with only my fingertips gliding against the wall as my guide.
There’s a possibility I will never see this place again.
Right after it started to feel like home.
My mouth firms as I pass the weapons room.
I know we won’t be getting up at four a.m. to practice tomorrow, but I can’t help but yearn for one more morning of Cameron’s critiques and jabs.
A small cry sounds through the hallway and catches my attention. I follow the sound into the infirmary. There’s a dim light in here like there is in the bathroom, and it’s enough to reveal Bree sitting at the center of the floor with her knees pulled up against her chest.
There’s no reason why I should even try to comfort her. I’m pretty sure she and Damian will try to kill me first thing tomorrow, but still, I linger. It’s not like any of us asked to be down here.
“Are you okay?” I ask quietly, trying not to scare her.