Breaker (Unmasked #3)

49. Chapter 43

Chapter 43

Striker

A warm embrace. A gentle caress of fingers trailing over my jaw. Tracing my ear. Down the bridge of my nose.

“It’s okay. I have you.”

I recognize the voice, but it doesn’t match the feel of the fingers trailing along my cheeks, to my lips.

He never touches me.

“Are you really here?” My voice is weak, raspy. When I open my eyes, it’s so dark I can only make out his silhouette. Moonlight bleeds into the cavern around him, his uniform a ghastly blue hue.

“Yes,” he whispers. “Don’t die on me.”

I shake my head. No. I don’t plan on dying. Not when I’ve been fighting so hard to live. But his words don’t sit right. He didn’t say that to me that day he found me in the cave.

Someone else said it, years later.

On another day in this bloody place.

The day we lost a piece of our hearts.

He turns and moonlight hits his mask. I expect to see the all black mask like he wore that day, but it’s the one I’ve grown so used to seeing over the years.

But it’s not his.

I shake my head confused because time seems to be folding in on itself, mixing up days and events, when I realize my head’s cradled in his lap. Just like that day and the one before.

I’m so weak, I can barely move when I try to sit.

“No, don’t move,” he whispers. “I’m going to get you out of here. I promise.”

He helps me sit. Stand. Things happen too fast. I can barely see in front of me, but I can feel his heat. The rough Kevlar of his vest under my palm. The course material of his uniform. His hand on my lower back now, another on my neck, checking my pulse.

In my head, I tell him I’m dehydrated so my pulse is too fast, but that’s a lie. It’s racing because of the way he’s touching me.

“Did you get them?” I ask.

We did. We did. We did. His voice goes on like an echo.

His mask comes off and my chest caves in. I miss him so much. My heart picks up pace as I stare at his lips. We’re so close I can feel his breath on my face. Taste the air he’s exhaling, filling my lungs with spice and smokey sin.

When his mouth brushes mine, I freeze. It’s just a whisper of flesh against flesh, but it sends fire through my blood, and I feel suddenly alive.

Awake.

I bolt up in bed, my fingers brushing my lips, eyes blinking to focus in the dark room. Next to me Delilah grumbles and sits up, running her hand up and down my back.

“Are you okay?”

She’s comforting me. The thought sends a weird pang to my chest. The idea she’s trying to calm me, thinking I need comfort is a testament to her beautiful heart and to how much we’ve managed to manipulate her emotions.

That has to be it. She may trust us, may believe we have Cora’s and her best interest in mind, but can she really have feelings that are true? Her own? Fucking her, claiming her body, her mind, training her for our mission, is so vastly different from owning her heart.

Yet, I think we do.

“What’s wrong,” she whispers.

“Bad dream,” I lie, pulling her to my chest as I lay us back down. “Just a bad dream.”

“I have them too,” she says, lips brushing my bare chest. “About my mother.”

That pang returns but it’s harsher, more painful. More like a stabbing.

“It was my birthday,” she says. “Rune wasn’t even there. He didn’t see it happen.”

My stomach revolts. My eyes move to the crown molding.

“I hated him for a long time.” The confession leaves her with a rush of air, like this is the first time she’s said the words out loud, or even allowed herself the freedom to think it, feel it. “That he wasn’t even there, and it was more than likely his fault she was killed. It should have been him.”

I say nothing, letting her talk even though it feels like my heart’s being cut open with every word.

“As I got older, I told myself it was part of this life. This is what every family like ours deals with. Rivals. Death. Revenge.”

Another slice.

“It’s a constant scramble to maintain power and make more money, take more control,” she says. “But I didn’t get to choose my family. I was born into a world of power hungry men who kill and steal and commit atrocities every day. And that’s what made me even more angry. I didn’t have a choice, so I was forced to adapt.”

And then we came in and give her no choice. We snatched her away and destroyed her entire life. Now we’re asking her to follow us blindly into a war. And she is. And maybe it’s for Cora, the hope we’ve planted to get Cora back and away from Zane, but she’s still following us. She’s still in this bed with me, stroking my chest, familiar with my body now.

Familiar with me.

Like we already own parts of her heart.

The thought of what we’d have done to her if she’d not followed us, if she had refused us and the mission, makes me sick. What would we have done? If she’d refused?

There’s a part of me that tink’s we’d have tried, yet we failed that first day in every way. Instead of have breaking her down, bit my bit until she was so fucking ruined she’d do anything for us, exactly as Fallon intended, exactly as he wanted, we found another way and it worked.

“And now,” she pauses, looking at up me, her warm breath on my jaw. “Now I hate him all over again. Hate him so much, I want him dead.”

My heart punches against my ribs.

“What was your dream about?” she asks, changing topics so abruptly my head spins.

“The day I almost died for the second time,” I tell her. And the third , but I don’t say that. Instead, I move over her, laying her back down beneath me as I pull her thigh up, hooking it over my hip. She gasps when my cock hits her and I moan when I find her already wet and ready.

“Are you sore?” I whisper. I’ve taken her so many times today, so greedy in my lust to have all of her that she must ache.

A slow smile spreads across her perfect lips, and I swear I think my chest both exploded and calmly fluttered from the sweet, slightly naughty expression.

“Yes,” she whispers back, “but it’s a good sore. I want you again.”

Reaching between us, she notches my dick at her entrance, and I drive in hard and fast. Her back arches, breath escaping her lungs with a groan.

“Striker,” she whispers.

“Princess.” I drive in harder. Her palm shooting up to brace the headboard.

“Will it be Reaper who kills him?”

I pause my movements, trying to pull out, but she stops me, gripping my ass to keep me buried deep between her thighs. “You want to talk of murdering your father while I’m inside you?”

I stare at her face, one side highlighted with moonlight the other shadowed. That soft look is gone, replaced with something I can’t name. Maybe she’s darker than we realized. While Cora has experienced horrendous things, as far as we know the only real pain she’s experienced was her mother’s death. God knows what she’s witnessed that we don’t know about.

She tilts her hips, trying to get me to move again, her pussy squeezing my cock.

“Rune Gavin is not my father,” she says, using my ass to pull me in deeper, little nails digging into my skin. “I may share his last name, but that’s it. I want the man who hurt Cora, who runs that lodge, to die.”

My cock pulses at her bloodthirsty tone.

“You’re a constant surprise, Princess,” I tell her leaning down to take her mouth as I start to drive into her again. “A constant, delicious surprise.”

***

I find her asleep when I return with the rag to clean her, so I leave our girl in bed, and search for Reaper. He’s been hiding again, no doubt lost in thought, letting guilt chew him up over sending Cora away. When I don’t find him in his room, or any other room in the house, I finally accept what I knew all along.

My bare feet pad across the cold tile floor and I stop in front of the small door leading to the cellar. I know he’s down there, but I’m not sure how I feel about it.

With my stomach in knots, I open the door, the light from the little bulb at the bottom of the stairs confirming his location. When I reach the bottom step, my heart picks up pace, the dream filling my head with strange, confusing memories.

Hunter was the one who found me in the little cave that day all those years ago. I barely remember our time in the wilderness. Much like my life before the school, it’s just fragments and smells. Strange sounds. The only vivid memory my mind has clung to was when he found me passed out from exhaustion and hunger in the back of that alcove. Even when the others arrived, I started floating again. Then the next thing I knew I was back at the school, and it was life as usual.

I’ve spent the last fifteen years with that fragment of memory. Hunter dragging me out of that cave living in my mind, holding on to it, examining it and what it meant. I knew he loved me in the way men love something they aren’t supposed to want. Almost obsessively. Passionately. Even then, Hunter never hid his attraction for me, not even when I was a tad too young to be kissed by a man four years older than me.

Kiss. It was barely a kiss. More a caress of lips, full of relief.

“Are you going stand in the hall all night or come in?” Reaper asks.

I step into the room, but he doesn’t bother looking over. He’s sitting in one of the chairs lined up in front of the monitors, legs spread out, relaxed and arrogant.

Like he had a right to watch us.

“Did you watch us?” I ask. Something flares inside my chest. A strange sort of heat at the idea he’s been sitting in this room watching me take Delilah over and over. And before that, watching as Viper and I fucked her together. “The entire time?”

He nods but stays silent. His entire demeanor is off. A tad hostile. More so than usual.

“Then you know she asked for you,” I say coming up behind him. I grip the back of the chair, spinning him to face me, and lean over him. “And how sweetly she came for us.”

His jaw grinds as I step back. Reaper is a control freak, and we’ve never shared a woman without him. He directs us, and we follow him in all ways. I wonder which part is eating him up. That she wanted us so desperately or that Viper and I have changed.

After the last night with them, I am aware of how Reaper treats me differently. He always has. Especially when we’ve shared. I’m always near him, taking his commands, his attention. His touches. And he mine.

He still says nothing, his gaze moving over to the screen showing Delilah’s sleeping form, and the heat I felt turns to acid, anger making me tense.

“If you were watching us, why didn’t you come when she asked for you?”

Still nothing.

“Or did you not want to be in the same room when Viper sucked my cock,” I say, looming over him. “You didn’t seem to mind the idea of it a week ago.”

His eyes shoot over to me, narrowing, but then they trail down, over my bare chest to my waist. Lower.

I nod, taking a deep breath. My body lights up under his penetrating gaze. I’m used to Reaper. How he seems to see inside you, peeling back the layers and stroking all your dark pieces. How he seems to know you better than you know yourself. But this look is different. He’s looking at me. Not seeing me, like he’s seeing all my fucked up parts and trying to puzzle my motives or what I need. He’s looking, drinking in my skin. The scars. I think he sees something else too.

“Did you suck his cock too?” Reaper asks and my brows raise. “Did you like it? Did you like his cum in your mouth?”

My heart stutters. That heat flaring into something far more toxic than anger and desire.

The corner of my mouth tugs into a smirk. “Careful Reaper, I’m starting to think you want your cum in my mouth.”

Reaper unfolds himself from the chair, standing to his full height before me, our bodies just inches apart. He’s still wearing his all black training uniform and I wish he’d relax some. Put his regular clothes on. Get out of this mode he’s in. Mission. Training. Planning.

I miss seeing him calmer. Relaxed some. His eyes not so haunted. His jaw not so tense. He’s so stupidly handsome, it makes my chest ache. Especially when I see how tired he is. He needs sleep.

He’s giving himself away.

“I’m glad you two have worked your shit out,” Reaper says, throat moving as he swallows. Like he’s tasting the lie as he swallows it with the truth he’s refusing to speak. “Watching you pine for him has been painful.”

I quirk a brow. Right when I’m about to ask him why me with Viper upsets him now, and not before, he says, “Do not come into her room again tonight.”

Reaper shoves me aside and stalks to the door. My heart jumps. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe he wasn’t upset at me with Viper, and the reality that I want to share my body with another man isn’t what’s giving him that dark, haunted look. Maybe it’s something to do with her. Maybe he’s not jealous of Viper. It could be he’s envious she trusts me so much.

“Don’t hurt her in your need to own her,” I tell him.

He pauses and slowly turns to face me. “The fact you felt the need to say that, shows what little faith you have in me.”

“She asked for you Reap,” I say. “You know what that means.”

He says nothing because he knows it. We got what we wanted. Her body, her trust, and we’re well on our way, if not already, to possessing more.

“She’s fragile right now,” I say. “Bendable, breakable even. Her heart even more so.”

He steps forward, leaning closer to me, like he’s putting emphasis on his next words. “You don’t think I don’t know that? We’re doing that to her.“ He taps his chest. “ I’m doing that to her.”

Take her. Train her. Do with her as you please.

Just get her prepared and willing.

We did that. More too. We could have treated her horribly, broken her down far worse than we did. But as the days went on we couldn’t do as Fallon wanted. Not after years of being her shadow. Of learning everything there is to know about a person, and now we’re in her head and carving away at her heart.

Maybe what we’ve done is far worse.

She’s ours because she chose to be, and she doesn’t know yet what we want.

“At least you’re aware you’re an asshole,” I say. “Why she likes you, I’ll never understand.”

“No?” Reaper asks, cocking one of his perfect brows. “You like Viper.” His face turns cold. “And you like me.”

“You know why I do.”

I didn’t think it was possible to get under Reaper’s skin, but I just did. And I used a scalpel to do it. His jaw grinds, eyes flaring with an odd combination of anger and disappointment.

The statement was cruel, so I add, “You’re my favorite brother.”

He relaxes some and turns toward the door. “Striker you’ve never been my brother.”

I flop back in the chair, his words making my stomach dip.

When he’s halfway out the door he stops, looking over his shoulder. “Do not come into the room,” Reaper says again. “No matter how loudly she screams, no matter how much you hear her beg, do not open the door.”

As he walks from the room, I think I understand for the first time in my life how much we deceive ourselves on a daily basis. Reaper lies to himself constantly, hiding desires and his heart, but I lie too. I lied to myself for years about my want for Viper. For Breaker. And I lied to myself about Hunter. I loved him but refused to explore what it meant.

I won’t do that anymore.

Just like I won’t lie to myself and let my brain recreate memories to suit what I think I should remember.

It wasn’t Hunter who found me that day.

It was Reaper.