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I’d hoped it would eventually subside, but I was still just as uncomfortable as I’d been on day one after the kidnapping.
I didn’t doubt that stress had triggered my sleepwalking after years of no incidents at night.
I’d talk to the specialized counselor to see if I could break out of my cycle of anxiety.
“I think you owe me now,” I mused as I laid my head on his shoulder.
“How so?” he queried in a lighter tone.
“You know a lot about me. I think I should get the answer to at least a hundred questions about you in return. And nothing should be off-limits or too personal to answer.”
“Deal,” he said huskily. “We can start now. Question one?”
I closed my eyes and let myself absorb the feeling of being physically close to Brock.
His enticing male scent…
His warm skin…
The almost irresistible urge to crawl inside him and never come out again.
Generally, I wasn’t the kind of woman who really needed or wanted to snuggle, but the inherent need to get as close to this man as I could get was overwhelming.
“I think I’m going to use one through five right now,” I considered. “We can start with the basics. Birthday?”
“April twentieth,” he told me immediately.
“Hmm…” I hummed. “Taurus. Fire element?”
“Yep. Are you that into astrology?”
“I don’t really believe most of it,” I admitted. “But it’s kind of fun to read about sometimes. Favorite color?”
“Don’t have one,” he answered.
I pulled back and sent him a questioning look. “Really?”
He nodded. “Really,” he assured me.
Satisfied, I put my head back on his shoulder. “I know you were a foster kid, but do you have any family?”
More than likely, he already knew that I had no family.
“No,” he replied patiently. “I could probably find a few distant cousins, but I prefer my team and the people I already call friends. I trust them. Sometimes it’s better to pick your own family.”
That was definitely true. Obviously, blood family wasn’t important to me since mine had all been criminals.
“What made you want to leave Delta?” I asked. “You obviously loved your job there.”
He was quiet for a moment before he finally answered. “It’s complicated. I loved my job, but I guess you just get a sense when it’s time to move on. I spent a lot of years in special forces, but the mission that left Seth scarred hit all of us pretty hard. We weren’t captured and tortured like he was, but we saw things that will probably haunt all of us for the rest of our lives. Let’s just say it sucks when kids are used as nothing more than weapons. We’d seen that before, but not on that kind of scale.
“Seth was never quite the same after that mission. He functioned, but he wasn’t the same man. I think we all knew it was time to get out. I can’t say getting out was because of Seth, but we knew he wasn’t going anywhere unless we all did. Gage’s contract was up first, and we followed him one by one as our contracts expired. Thank fuck that Seth’s contract ended next, not long after Gage’s.”
I blinked back the tears that sprang to my eyes.
I knew Brock’s job had been difficult, but I could probably never imagine some of the horrors he’d seen in his adult life.
“Do you think Seth is better now?” I asked solemnly.
