Page 23 of Damaged

My ass that only had the benefit of thin boxer shorts between it and Silver.

“Wha—?” was all I managed to get out.

The next thing I knew, Silver was leaning over my back, but he didn’t put any weight on it, which I was supremely grateful for. I felt his whisper-soft breath against my ear. “Do you trust me, Dalton?”

“Yes,” I said without even thinking about it. It had to be the drugs talking because I shouldn’t be trusting anyone to be sitting on my nearly naked ass while I was in a drunken stupor.

I had no idea what to expect and part of me didn’t care because the pain pills had started to kick in. It wouldn’t be long before I’d escape the pain entirely. Despite not knowing what was coming, I jumped when Silver’s hands covered my shoulders.

I swore I heard the younger man shush me like I was nothing more than an agitated toddler, but a few seconds later, I didn’t care because Silver’s fingers gently pressed into my skin. He continued the moves over and over and eventually began to roll his thumbs along the back of my neck.

He was massaging me.

It felt like heaven… and hell.

While his moves made my muscles tighten in pain, I could also feel them ultimately relaxing every time he repeated the move.

By the time his fingers left my shoulders and began to work on my back, I warned, “Silver.”

“Just trust me, Dalton.”

My body began to feel heavy, and I wasn’t sure if I answered him or not. I tried to keep my attention on Silver’s fingers as he massaged the muscles running alongside my body, but it wasn’t long before I lost track of his touch entirely and let myself fall into the lovely darkness of sleep.

“Copy that,” I whispered, knowing that the communication device attached to my ear would pick up my hushed words. My head was pounding and my stomach began its familiar cramping as I used my scope to track the target.

“Command is a go,” I said softly to Jace. I began calling out all the information he’d need to make the shot from his high-powered rifle. It would ultimately be his decision when to pull the trigger, but I knew he was reliant on the data I was feeding him, so my part in the mission was far from over.

Sweat dripped down my face as I kept my eye on the target. I knew the fact that the man was holding a young child in his arms would have no impact on our orders. Jace would do everything he could to miss hitting the kid, but the men we were sent to take down often used their kids or wives as shields from sniper attacks.

Such was the case today. We’d already been tracking the target for nearly half an hour, so between the camouflage that covered our bodies and the hot sun, we’d need to take the shot now or scrap the mission.

I was lying close enough to Jace on the rocky ground to hear him softly exhale. The action had me holding my own breath because I knew what was coming next. The blast of the gun wasn’t overtly loud as the bullet left the rifle’s chamber, but it may as well have been a cannon going off next to me. Jace and I held our positions only long enough to see if the bullet hit its mark.

“Thank fuck,” I heard Jace whisper as the target’s head exploded in a volley of blood and brain matter.

I quickly updated command via the communication device. Our mission had been a success, but it wasn’t the image of the man’s head exploding in front of several women and children that was stuck in my mind as Jace and I scrambled to gather our equipment and stealthily make our way to the extraction point where a helicopter would be waiting to pick us up.

No, all I could see was the crying child covered in blood in the man’s arms fall to the ground as his dead father’s lifeless arms released him.

And then the screams.

They never stopped.

They never stopped…

“Dalton!” I heard someone shout. The voice was both familiar and not.

“Dalton, wake up!” Strong fingers wrapped around my forearm as the words were spoken. Within a matter of seconds, I had my assailant on the floor and that same forearm was now pressing against the windpipe of my attacker. He scrambled beneath me, but he was too small to put up any kind of real fight. I could have simply shifted my body so I could use my hands to snap his neck or my fingers to strangle him but since he couldn’t fight back, I kept the pressure of my forearm on his neck and waited for him to take his last breath.

It was a move I’d done endlessly in whatever war zone I’d been deployed to, and while I knew countless ways to take a man’s life without the benefit of a weapon, a secret shame always crawled through me as the men struggled to survive.

I never looked them in the eye.

I wasn’t man enough to look my prey in the eye as I took their life. I had no idea why and it didn’t matter. It wasn’t something any of the other guys in my unit had ever commented on and I doubted they’d even noticed. Everyone’s experience with taking a man’s life was both the same and different. We’d all been trained in the art of hand-to-hand combat, but I suspected not one soldier experienced the exact same thing as he watched or listened to or felt another human being’s life being taken from them.

“Dalton.”

My name came out in the tiniest of whispers and it was more of a wheeze than anything else.

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