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SEVENTEEN
Talon
I wokefirst as I often did, my muscles stiff from a night on the hard floor with only a sleeping bag for padding. I couldn’t say I’d sleptwell, having jolted awake a few times at distant sounds that sent a peal of warning through me but had proven to be nothing of concern, but I was used to operating on minimal rest from my time in the military. What we’d faced so far had nothing on my most intense special ops missions overseas.
But that didn’t mean the stress couldn’t weigh on us all the same. I sat up quietly, glancing across the sprawled bodies of my sleeping comrades—Julius’s spot empty while he took the current watch by the front of the building—to where Dess lay.
She looked almost peaceful in sleep, but there was still a tension to the way one of her arms was drawn up to her chest, her hand balled against her collarbone. A slight furrow marked her brow.
She’d set her sleeping bag a little apart from the rest of us, halfway between our cluster and the door that led to the room where we’d imprisoned her brother. For most of the evening, I’d sensed her pulling away from us, withdrawing into her own head.
The situation was obviously getting to her, stirring up more uncertainty than ever before. She’d had to kill almost her entire family, for fuck’s sake. She’d found out that even more of her life had been manipulated by outside forces than she’d already known. How could it not be bothering her?
I didn’t like the idea that she might feel she couldn’t turn to us for support, though. We were hard men, yes—and I was the hardest of us all—but I’d thought we’d shown her how much she mattered to us. Imagining her leaving set off a burning sensation all through my chest.
My instinct was to suppress the emotion and push it aside. This once, I didn’t let myself. I absorbed the full impact of the discomfort, feeling out what it meant to me. As I gazed at Dess, the sensation gradually transformed into something softer.
I knew this emotion. That was the feeling that had driven me closer to Dess over the months—the feeling that had convinced me to allow myself to feelanything at all again.
And if I was honest with myself, I didn’t hate it. It seemedrightfor Dess to hold this special place in my heart, to have opened it up in a way no one ever had before.Shewas special, after all.
Did she understand how much?
An unexpected impulse rose up inside me, but I didn’t hold myself back. I eased out of the sleeping bag and padded across the floor to where Dess was nestled. She’d opted to use her entire sleeping bag as a mattress and pulled a blanket over her. It’d slipped partway down her torso as she dozed.
For a second, I grappled with how to handle the moment. Then I sank down behind her, stretched out on the edge of the sleeping bag, and tugged the blanket up to her shoulders and over my own in the same gentle motion. I tucked my arm around her waist and lowered my head against the soft waves of her hair.
This was some kind of bliss right here, feeling her body aligned with mine, soft with sleep. Other urges woke up inside me along with a surge of heat to my dick, which was positioned against her ass. I forced myself to ignore those desires for now, simply breathing in the delicately sweet scent in her hair. She needed her rest, as much as she could manage to get.
I dozed a little more myself, only snapping awake when Dess stirred against me. Her ass brushed my groin in a way that had me rising to attention in an instant, which obviously didn’t go unnoticed.
“Someone is having naughty thoughts,” she murmured in a voice raspy with sleep.
I couldn’t resist stroking my hand over her stomach. “I plead the fifth.”
She snorted and rolled over to face me, meeting my eyes with her still drowsy ones. The flush of her cheeks with her increasing alertness and the softness of her gaze had my heart racing in an instant. I reached out and smoothed a few stray strands of hair behind her ear.
“Did you have trouble sleeping?” she asked in a lightly teasing tone. “I don’t mind being used as a teddy bear, but I wouldn’t have figured you needed one.”
I opened and closed my mouth, grappling with the best way to put my thoughts into words. Finally, I simply said, “I wanted to talk to you.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “You want totalk?” She sounded both amused and a little concerned.
“Yes,” I said firmly, holding her gaze. “I know that you’re dealing with some difficult crap right now. And obviously you’re going to deal with it in your own way. But I want you to remember that I’m ready to support you with whatever you need.”
“Talon,” she said, shaking her head as if to tell me that I didn’t need to say that.
I kept going anyway. “The crew and I will be here for you no matter what, Dess—if you need help or just a person to talk to. We want to see you make it through this mess as the powerful woman you are.Iwant to see that.” I paused, my chest clenching up for a second before I said the final part, maybe the most important part. “I love you.”
Dess stared at me, startled into silence. I wasn’t sure what response I’d have wanted, but a second later, she wrapped her arm around my shoulders and pulled me into a kiss. There was so much eager passion in it that I couldn’t have asked for anything more.
My erection was straining against my pants now. I pressed into her, and she ground against my hips in return, making me ache with hunger. As I swallowed a groan, she let out a light laugh. Then I pushed into her harder, rocking against her clit through our clothes, and she muffled a whimper of her own against my mouth.
I flicked my tongue between her lips where it tangled with her own. My hand slipped under her shirt and rose to cup her breast. As I swiveled her nipple beneath my thumb, I brought my mouth to the side of her neck. Her breath was already breaking into those little gasps I loved to hear.
“God, Talon,” she muttered. “You’re—”
The front door banged open so loudly we jerked apart. As we both scrambled up out of the blankets, the other guys heaving to their feet nearby, Julius strode into the room. His expression was so tense that all lingering heat from my encounter with Dess fled my body.
