Page 52 of Break Me Open
I found out what happened to him when I came back from leave. “Did you hear about Kolya?” Petrov had asked casually. We were in the smoking area, behind the motor pool.
“No,” I’d said. “What?”
“Shot on exercise,” he shrugged. “Accident. They say.”
I remember the exact feeling I had and the way my stomach dropped. “They say,” I’d repeated.
Petrov had glanced around, then leaned closer. “You know he was caught, in someone’s bunk, right?” he murmured. “After lights-out.” He’d made a crude gesture, like it was a funny story. “CO walked in. Two naked men, very surprised.”
I’d stared at him. “And then?” I’d asked, even though I knew.
“And then,” Petrov said. “Rumours. Suddenly he’s on an exercise he wasn’t supposed to go on. Mist in the trees, poor visibility, such a tragedy. Apparently, a stray bullet. Happens all the time, right?” He’d flicked ash, not meeting my eyes. He didn’t have to say the rest; no one in command liked having that kind of problem on their books.
Easier to let the forest solve it.
After that, Kolya’s name wasn’t spoken again. His locker was cleared fast, and his file was stamped in red with something bland and final. The official story was a training accident. The unofficial story was don’t get caught.
So, I don’t.
I have rules. Simple ones. No kissing where someone can walk in. No sex on base. No men who can’t walk away. No men I have to see every day in formation. And now here I am.On base. Kissing someone who sleeps two buildings away and walks past my brother every morning.
I promised Niko I’d be careful. The night he caught me drunk at eighteen, flirting with a boy in a bar in town. He’d hauled me outside by the collar, rattling with terror and fury, and told me in no uncertain terms what happens to men like me in uniform. He hadn’t used the slur everyone else uses — he never has — but the meaning was clear. “You want to get yourself killed, fine,” he’d hissed in my face. “But don’t make me stand over your body explaining to Maman why they can’t find your murderer.”
So I’d promised — for him, more than for me — I’d be careful. I’d be clever and keep any disasters contained to places without official paperwork. I stayed mostly true to that. Bars, apartments, fleeting strangers who only knew me as the guy who gave them the best fuck of their lives and left before dawn.
This thing with Caiden? This is not contained. And still, when I think about the way he looked at me in the armoury, like he wanted to hit me and kiss me and maybe do both at once — I feel that stupid, traitorous curl of satisfaction in my gut.
I like aggression, control, and knowing I can push someone to the edge and hold them there until they beg. But this isn’t just about sex. This is about who he is when the control cracks — how he looks when he realises he wants me, and how he sounds when speaking my name.
I scrub a hand over my face, hard, until my skin stings. New rule, then. No sex on base. No being an idiot. No dying for British dick. I snort softly at my own phrasing, but the humour dies quickly.
I realise I’m going to have to tell him, eventually. If this goes past kissing in dark rooms and verbal sparring in the woods, he needs to know the stakes.
He thinks he understands risk.
He’s a soldier, he’s seen people blown apart, shot, bled out. But that’s clean danger. Honest danger. Nothing like this quiet, hateful kind that looks like ‘friendly fire’ on a report and whispers ‘good riddance’ behind closed doors.
He grew up in the UK, where it’s... not entirely safe, but safer, where you can — in theory — live long enough to marry your boyfriend and argue over curtains. Here, a commander who doesn’t like the way you look at another man can just put your name on a list and let gravity and bad weather handle the rest.
I turn onto my side with my face to the wall, and stare at the cracked paint inches from my nose. Maybe it’s just heat and boredom, and in a month, all that will remain is a memory of his mouth and an itch under my skin when someone mentions his name.
Then I think about my cabin — the one an hour away, with no neighbours for miles. I think about him there instead of here — no chains of command, barracks, or weapons rooms that smell like state-sanctioned death.
Just him, me and a bed that doesn’t squeak when you breathe.
I close my eyes, replaying the armoury one last time, and the sound he made when I nipped his lip. He can’t stay away. Now we see how far he’s willing to go. My hand curls into the blanket to stop it from doing anything stupid, like sliding down my own body and making this even worse.
Tomorrow, I’ll be normal. I’ll spar too hard, call him names, look at Niko like nothing’s changed and roll my eyes when he nags me about diplomacy.
But tonight, in the dark, I let myself imagine his mouth again, but only for a little while. Then I picture Kolya’s easy grin, his file stamped ‘accident,’ and the imaginary bullet that could so easily have my name on it if I’m sloppy.
Somewhere between wanting and warning, I drift off, one thought looping stubbornly in the back of my mind.
You’re mine now, Caiden Varrik.
And I’m going to have to find a way to keep that from killing us both.
Nineteen
