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My body doesn’t understand why I’m protesting, so my brain takes over. Oh yeah. You’re about to police a raid on a hostile group and then scare any possible opportunists away from a shit load of cash. Being sexually frustrated isn’t going to help your impartiality.
I relay my concerns to the beast before me, but he just grins again. “We can’t have that, can we?”
Oh shit.
Maxen yanks my shirt free from my pants and shoves his hand inside, his skillful fingers sliding into my drenched slit. “I didn’t mean—”
“Shh,” he orders before claiming my mouth again. Maxen’s fingers work their way lower until he sinks two thick digits inside me, leaving his thumb with the job of teasing my clit.
The intensity of his touch has me trying to lift onto my toes, but my restrictive boots keep my feet on the floor, forcing me to absorb every sensation.
Voices sound in the hall nearby, and I lift my hands to push against Maxen’s chest. Laughter rumbles the solid muscles under my fingertips, but I gain enough space to put myself back together.
As I’m tucking my shirt back in, I glower at Maxen. I can’t exactly blame what almost happened solely on him. I could have stopped him at any time, but dammit, he started it. And dammit, I’m worse off now than I was sixty seconds ago. “Fucking great,” I mumble.
“I’ll make it up to you. Just consider it as something to keep your mind occupied when you’re bored out there.”
I finish with my shirt and grab his crotch, rubbing suggestively. “So you’ll have something to jerk off to in the shower.”
His response is a booming laugh. “Oh, Fate, I’ve been jerking off to fantasies of you for months.”
Cheeks flaming red and maybe doing a little happy dance inside, I turn for the door and rush out of the room. Thankfully, I still manage to reach the Sentinel before Aaron. He slides into the driver seat and inspects my face using the truck’s interior lights. “Why is your face so red?”
Still off-kilter by Maxen’s surprise attack, I fire back absentmindedly, “Why are your lips moving?”
My face reddens further, realizing I answered as I would have done with one of my brothers. I’m saved from what would likely have been a brutal comeback by the rear passenger door of the Sentinel being opened. Colonel Heathman’s next in command, Captain Morrison, jumps in the back, apparently planning to ride with us.
The captain doesn’t say much during the hour-long ride to our staging point. I don’t know if it’s because he’s shy or if he’s the type that doesn’t much care for paramilitary types. Whichever it is, I’m glad for it. He’s preventing Aaron from tormenting me over my flustered state.
The convoy comes to a halt at an abandoned warehouse on the outskirts of a tiny village. Despite its small size, the town boasts several multi-story buildings. Yet, our headlights reveal that many are heavily damaged by past conflicts.
The sky is still dark, the sun almost two hours away from rising. That should mean civilian contact will be minimal, if not completely nonexistent. I hope. Truth is, because we arrived mere minutes before go time, my knowledge of this first raid is virtually non-existent, a situation that puts me on edge.
The plan, as it was laid out to me, is that Aaron and I will breach with the raid team but on the back end. All the action is supposed to be taken care of by Heathman’s team before we even reach the target. Aaron and I are to be on hand to pose as lookouts and then guard the stockpiles of cash alongside two army grunts.
Aaron and I exit the Sentinel, joining up at the back where our MK-18 rifles are secured. Our weapons are retrieved and checked before we follow Morrison to meet with the colonel.
“You two,” he says as we approach. “Your people will be better read in next time. For now, I’ve got you going in with Sergeant Avara. He’ll be your sole connection to me until the site is secured. After this, we’ll get your team’s radios patched into ours.”
He dismisses us to give last orders to the raid team, and Aaron turns to me, shaking his head. “Can’t say that I like this,” he whispers.
“Can’t say I blame you.”
This will be the first time in my career that I’ve gone on a mission with zero radio communication. Aaron and I don’t even know where we’re going except that it’s somewhere within the borders of this so-called town. And for this first raid, at least, no one has any plans to clue us in.
Colonel Heathman gives the word for the raid team to go, with Aaron and I tagging along in the back. Making our uncomfortable situation worse is that no rules for engagement have been established for my team. Not that we’re supposed to actively participate, but we’re in hostile territory, about to rush into a hornet’s nest.
My hope is that these army guys are thorough. Surprises among players with no clear boundaries sometimes end with someone being hurt by friendly fire and almost always end with multiple someones being supremely pissed off.
A quick glance at Aaron tells me he’s thinking the same thing. His gaze meets mine, and he tips his chin toward me. His gesture reminds me that the two of us are the best-trained people going in and that we have each other’s backs, just like always. My helmet goes on my head, and I set my feet to follow the grunts into the dark.
Sergeant Avara holds us back thirty feet from the crew scratching their way from one structure to another. We’ve gone about five hundred yards from where we started when Avara stops next to a makeshift water tower.
With the help of my night vision goggles, I watch the raid team leapfrog the final fifty feet to a squatty block building. I scan upward and find one guard circling the top of the structure who’s currently on the opposite side, not paying attention. Since he’s on his feet, the guy has to be awake. It wouldn’t take much to catch his attention. At least these grunts are quiet.
All of the GIs situate themselves at the building’s openings, and then two of them hoist a man up high enough to clear the short parapet at the top. Muzzle flare from a suppressed M17 loaded with subsonic rounds flashes green in my NV. The sentry on top falls over the wall barely a second later.
A ground crew catches the man, and the raid team simultaneously breaches from all sides. The staccato of gunfire is loud, and I fight to keep my comments about strategy to myself. What I can’t help is looking around to see if the disturbance draws out men from the surrounding structures.