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Now I was losing control on another level, bucking against her face, my desperation for release evident through the mews and whimpers I couldn’t help but let go.

“Ilsa…fuck.”

She moved up again, crushed her chest to mine, and continued to drive her fingers into me, the sound of my wet arousal filling the room. When she added the pressure of her thumb to my throbbing clit, I cried out again.

“Shh…” she hummed. “You can take it.”

“Yes,” I hissed as she added a fourth finger, spreading me wide with her hand and circling my clit with her thumb.

Ilsa screamed when I did. I couldn’t contain it.

The ribbon snapped as the headboard broke, and I wrapped my arms around her as I came over her fingers, driving my teeth into her shoulder.

“We did it, we actually fucking did it.”

But I couldn’t find it within myself to be happy because when I surveyed the scene in front of me, I saw more than the destruction of the terrorist center.

Because that limb, mere feet from me, didn’t look as though it belonged to an adult.

How many people were inside the targeted building? The hit had been direct, and it had taken months to find the exact coordinates of the base. They had hidden it in plain sight, and the exchange of weapons was done right in the middle of a once-thriving community.

A community that while quieter, was still active.

Full of innocent people. Innocent people who had copped the brunt of the explosion.

We had been sent in to make sure the threat had been neutralized.

It had been neutralized, all right.

The five men and two women in my unit surveyed the area, kicking over debris.

“No survivors,” Darren called.

No survivors at all.

None.

Sand takes on an unusual texture when stained with blood, and I didn’t think I’d ever be able to look at it the same again. We had spent a long time in the war zone, where explosions and the crumbling buildings around us were so common it became part of day-to-day life. But this silence was something else. An occasional shuffle as the wind shifted something, the crunch of shrapnel and debris under our boots.

But otherwise, silence.

Maybe this was overkill. Maybe it would’ve been better to send us in first or use snipers to take out the threats. Those who viewed these zones only through a computer screen from a desk, they didn’t want to take the chance that anyone would slip away again, and we’d have to spend more months and lose more lives trying to find them once more.

“There were children here.”

My voice was a monotone, unrecognizable even to me.

Vance slapped me on the shoulder as he passed, the strap from my weapon digging uncomfortably into my skin.

“Collateral damage, Ilsa. All part of the game… unfortunately.”

Collateral damage.

Part of the game.

Except this wasn’t a fucking game.

Was this the moment that would break me? Or was it a slow build of all the incredibly fucked-up things I had witnessed, and even worse, been a part of, finally getting the better of me? People weren’t meant to take this. We’re not designed to simply keep pulling the trigger without it eventually eating into our minds and souls.