Dominant Predator (6 page)

“Fucking breathe, Merq. Breathe,” he reminded me as he locked his gaze to mine.

His eyes were blue in the low light. Dark. In shadow.

His lips set in a thin line. Frowning. As he studied me.

There was pity in the set of his features and that, more than any other emotion, I wouldn’t stand for.

I broke away and pushed him off me. I stripped my clothes off as I moved. I needed to fuck him. To regain control of my jangled nerves. To wrest this thing between us into something I could understand again.

Nothing in my life made sense and I didn’t deal well with uncertainty.

“On the bed,” I ground out, daring him to challenge me.

Armise lifted his shirt off and tossed it to the side. He rolled his shoulders and slowly unbuttoned his pants, his eyes never leaving mine.

I dropped onto the bed and unlaced my boots, discarding them with a thump against the dresser.

Armise appeared in front of me and positioned himself between my knees. He carded his hand through my hair and to my neck, drawing my cheek to his stomach. He was naked and the hair of his legs and stomach rasped against my skin as I trailed my hands over his hips and down his thighs. I inhaled, taking in the scent of him, a smell unlike any other man I’d ever been with—exotic, intoxicating, heady. A scent that would forever be associated with dirty floors, back alleys, foreign beds, stolen minutes and rebellion.

His skin was cold—as it always was—chilling me, comforting me.

Fuck. When had I become this deeply entwined with him?

I wrapped my arms around his waist and pulled him to the bed, turning him onto his back, slotting my body over his. I moved roughly against him, my hands grasping, digging into his muscles, my lips and tongue seeking out the taste of his skin. He pushed at my waistband, sliding my pants over my hips. I stood, dropping my pants to the floor and stepping out of them, as I surveyed his massive frame—naked, vulnerable, stretched out and taking up the width of the bed. I licked my lips and watched him stroke himself.

I couldn’t deal with the slowness of his movements, with the deliberate teasing of his hand over his cock. My body vibrated with the need to pound into him, to be inside him. To conquer him and quiet the demons stirring in my head.

“Turn over,” I ordered through clenched teeth.

His lips curled into a snarl. “No.”

I stopped undressing, anger flaring inside me.

He sat up and brought an arm around me, toppling me into the bed. He flipped me over and put his full weight on me, pinning me.

“Just stop,” Armise commanded. “Shut the fuck up. Be still.”

I fought the urge to move, to push him off me. He held onto me tighter, bringing his body in line with mine. He let go of my arm and brought his left hand to my face—that hand with the missing finger I’d taken from him—and traced the line of my lips.

“Breathe,” he said again, this time with quiet force.

I relaxed my muscles and sank into the mattress, letting the familiarity of his touch envelop me. It was only then, as the minutes dragged on and there were no further vibrations radiating from the floor, that I realised the bombs had stopped.

“How long has it been this quiet?” I ventured.

His features relaxed. “Not long.”

“Do you think it’s over?” I asked, knowing the answer even before the question was fully out of my mouth. I cringed. I sounded like a fucking child. This was war. And it was only beginning. I would take the respite while it lasted, even if the quiet likely meant a rallying of Opposition forces.

“For now,” Armise answered distractedly and pushed himself off me, rolling to the side.

I ignored the defiant set of Armise’s shoulders and the way he purposefully kept any part of his body from touching mine. Whatever was going on in Armise’s head was more than I could handle at the moment. My body and mind were wrecked. The stress of the last two days came crashing down on me all at once as silence filled the room.

I was naked and he was naked. But I was too tired to care. Too exhausted to move.

I threw my forearm over my eyes and took a deep breath.

I didn’t know what time of day it was and wasn’t sure if it even mattered. The days leading up to the Opening Ceremonies felt like eons ago. Another lifetime. So much had changed in such a short time that I was struggling to keep up. A mission years in the planning and it had taken one fraction of a second to end. With the death of the leader of the Opposition I had set the Revolution on its crash course with history. I’d reignited the Borders War and signed my own death warrant. I knew with the certainty of the damned that I was the most wanted man on the planet at this very moment.

My name and my face were known worldwide and I would be a target for the mere fact that I’d been doing my job. My death would be a prize coveted by those who wanted to see the Revolution fail. And I had to consider that there might be some Revolutionaries who would want to see me dead as well. A martyr to the cause. It was an undeniable fact of war—nothing brought people together more than a death to mourn and avenge.

I was going to have to be infinitely more careful now. I was relatively sure who I could trust—the President, Neveed, Jegs, Simion. And Armise. Him more than anyone else. But even as the thought crossed my mind it left an unsettling wake of emotion.

The mattress dipped and bounced back as Armise got up. I lifted my arm and watched him prowl out of the bedroom and into the en suite. I scooted back on the bed and lifted the blanket, crawling under the soft grey material. I needed to sleep while there was time. But my brain wouldn’t shut down.

Armise emerged from the bathroom wiping his hands on a white cloth. He stopped at the edge of the bed, threw the towel into a corner and climbed in next to me, burrowing under the covers without a word. He turned on his side, baring his back to me.

My eyes trailed over the thick, black lines of the tattoos criss-crossing his skin. Loops and whirls of a language I couldn’t read. Jagged edges that framed battle scars. Most of Armise’s back was covered in ink.

I reached out and traced the thickest line—a solid black slash, almost like a lightning bolt—that marked the spot where I’d cut him in the DCR standoff. A violent struggle that I’d nearly died from. A confrontation that had ended with Armise saving my life. He had three permanent marks from that encounter—his missing finger, the scar and this tattoo.

Armise didn’t respond to my uninvited touch. I could see the rise and fall of his shoulders as he breathed in and out slowly.

He was covered in external marks that documented the years of his life. And I couldn’t help but think back to his words that he wouldn’t go on without me anymore.

Perhaps I had marked him in ways that couldn’t be seen with the human eye.

I didn’t know what that meant for us. There was some part of me that recognised the weight of that statement and heard the ferocity of his proclamation. But I couldn’t—or maybe wouldn’t—put a name to who he was to me.

The only other person in my life who dared to show any similar depth of emotion towards me was the President. He was a father to me more than my own.

“I don’t love them,” I whispered before I even realised I was speaking the thought out loud. I drew my hand back and waited for Armise to respond.

Minutes went by with Armise’s back still to me, and I began to think that he was possibly asleep, then, “They’re your parents.”

Of course Armise would know what I was talking about, even when I wasn’t sure. I flopped onto my back and stared at the ceiling.

“It doesn’t matter,” I stated.

Armise sat up against the headboard and stared down at me, his steely eyes boring a hole through me. “It does. People need love, Merq. Why else fight?”

I scoffed. “Duty? Loyalty? Pride? There are many reasons that have nothing to do with that emotion.”

Armise frowned.

I threw the covers off me, sat up and put one foot on the floor. I was ready to bolt. I didn’t know what was happening in Armise’s head and I had zero interest in trying to pick apart his words. Nothing good could come of this conversation. Why had I even brought up my parents?

“Like I said, it doesn’t matter.” I dismissed the thought with a wave of my hand. “If the President wants me to bring them back then I will.”

“A soldier first,” Armise answered dryly.

I could feel the frustration coiling in my gut. I turned on him, letting loose a sneer. “What else is there?”

Armise crossed his arms. “You’ve spent so much time in the dark that you forget what the light looks like.”

I pointed at him. “And you remember?” I accused. “Don’t bullshit me, Armise. You are a product of war as much as I am. We were thrust into this existence, but that doesn’t mean we weren’t made for it. That darkness isn’t just a part of us—it’s who we are. I’ve seen you kill. I know what you’re capable of. Both of us, Armise—both of us—are more animal than human.”

Armise tipped his chin in a defiant stance. “I know what I am.”

“A soldier first,” I spat back at him.

Armise shook his head. “My skill with a rifle doesn’t define me.”

I pushed off the bed and faced him, satisfied that anger was overtaking me. This I could understand. “So what does? Your ability to survive? That you breathe and move and think? None of that makes us human—it just proves that we’re alive. Able to go into battle one more time. Again and again until death finally releases us from this hell. Don’t fool yourself. We exist to kill. To be the darkness that descends and wipes out hope. Others are meant to be leaders and to strive for a greater good, but not us. We cover our hands in blood so the righteous can disavow any knowledge of the evils that must occur for there to be peace. And in our world, if you’re not behind the rifle, you’re in front of it.”

My body shook with the fury of my words. How could Armise not see this? I didn’t love my parents because that emotion wouldn’t help me on the battlefield. I wasn’t human. I couldn’t be if it was this easy to take another life. And my darkness was the only part of myself that I fully understood and accepted. That darkness gave me purpose.

Without a purpose I was nothing.

I ran my fingers through my hair and spoke out loud, more to myself than to him. “Fuck. I can’t do this.”

I dropped back onto the bed, turned my back to him and threw the sheets over my still-naked body. I closed my eyes and repeated my mantra until the images on my eyelids were a jumbled menagerie of Chemsense clouds, a desperate grip on Armise’s arm, sonicrifle pops, the
click-thunk
of a chambered bullet and a weeping child with battered legs whom I lifted and carried from the swirling dust of a reverb explosion…

There was a knock at the door that woke me from sleep, my dreams wiping away, disappearing into the ether, as my eyes flew open.

I didn’t know how long I’d been asleep—minutes? Hours?—but I wasn’t any more rested than I’d been before collapsing into the mattress in frustration. I was alone in bed, a sheet thrown haphazardly around my hips. Armise sat in a chair across from me, the white light of a BC5 screen illuminating his face.

“What is it?” Armise answered the knock in an annoyed voice.

The door opened and Neveed stood in profile, the light from the hallway shadowing his face as he said, “The President wants to see you, Merq.”

Chapter Four

I knocked on the dark wood panel door—so out of place amid the stone, concrete and synthetic materials in this wing of the bunker—and waited for permission to enter. Instead, the door creaked open as I tapped my knuckles against it, revealing a room with low lighting and wood walls the same texture and shade as the door.

“Come in, Merq,” the President’s voice came from the part of the room still hidden from my view.

I stepped into the room and surveyed the surreal interior.

“Is it real?” I asked. I couldn’t resist running a hand over the wall. It was unlike anything I’d seen before, with a depth and richness of colour—shades of brown and gold too vivid to be manufactured—that I’d never seen in faux panels.

The President nodded. “Reclaimed. You’ve never seen wood before?”

“In person? No.”

The President cocked his head and studied me.

“I’ve never been here,” I reminded him.

He made a gruff noise of acknowledgement. “I forget just how deep you’ve been under for most of your life.”

My eyes were drawn to the wall next to where the President sat behind a desk of moulded synthetic polymaterials—in stark contrast to the warm and antiquated feel of the rest of the room. Over the glossy material of the desk, the President’s BC5 screen flickered.

I moved without thought to the object on the wall, drawn to study it further. Framed under a dim light, one sputtering with the effort to stay illuminated, there was a long rectangular press of rusted metal, the paint faded, a cross nearly untouched by the wear of time. The words across the surface were raised as if they’d been punched into the fragile material from the back.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

I ran my fingers over the metal relief, the edges sharp, catching on the tips of my calloused fingers.

“It’s where you got the name from, didn’t you?” I observed, immediately connecting the age of the relic with the term the President had given to the soldiers for the States.

Out of the corner of my eye I could see the President nod. “But not out of respect.”

I snorted. Of course it wasn’t. The President had reformed the military branch after taking over power over thirty years ago. The Peacemakers, his real soldiers—the ones he trusted the most and relied on—were like me. Soldiers for the Revolution, not the forces assembled from civilians to protect the borders and interest of the country.

“You’re too intellectual for this job,” I mused. I stood at the end of his desk, studying his black uniform with the bright orange sunburst on the shoulder instead of the traditional States’ insignia. “New uniform?”

“You’ll find yours in your closet.”