Page 52 of Thorne
THORNE
I workout in the gym until I'm too tired to stand. Only then do I head for the shower. The water is a needle-sharp assault against my shoulders. But it isn't cold enough. It's never cold enough to freeze out the rot.
I lean my forehead against the tile. Eyes closed. I try to drown out the oppressive silence of this safe house.
But the silence has a voice, and it sounds like Stratton.
It's the precise, clinical way she says accounting. It's the phantom sound of her breath in that safe room, a presence vibrating through the monitors even when the volume is muted. I've lived my entire adult life in environments designed to break men. I've survived high-stress environments, interrogations that lasted days, extractions that turned into bloodbaths, and high-altitude drops that made most men vomit.
I've always known how to compartmentalize.
My mind was a system of drawers: steel-reinforced and lockable. You file the mission. You file the damage. You close the drawer and move to the next task.
But Stratton isn't a drawer; she's a leak. A slow, corrosive one that's working its way into every sealed compartment I've ever built.
I drag a hand down my face, water running off my fingers. My jaw clenches so hard that it aches. The heat should relax muscles and ease tension. Instead, it makes the restlessness worse, the agitation under my skin sharpening instead of dulling.
The steam isn't thick enough to drown out the image of her. The woman whose spreadsheets turned my daughter's life into a rounding error.
This shower is built for two, a luxury of the safe house that feels like a mockery. There is enough space for her to be pinned against the opposite wall, her heels scraping the tile as I lift her, but instead, it's just me and the ghost of her crimes.
My hand closes around myself, a rough, calloused vise that offers no comfort, only friction. I'm not seeking a reprieve; I'm seeking an exorcism. My breath hitches as the physical reality of my arousal pulses through me like a fever.
It's a heavy, dragging ache that feels like a betrayal in my very marrow. Every stroke is a punishment. My palm, scarred from years of service, drags harshly against the sensitive skin of my shaft. There is no slickness here, only the punishing spray of the water, making the sensation raw and biting. Tension coils at the base of my spine, a jagged electrical current that tightens with every hateful memory of her.
I picture her here, in this space, her skin slick with the same water hitting my back. I imagine my hand not on myself, but around her throat, forcing her to look at me, to see the wreckage she oversaw with such clinical indifference. My knuckles turn white, my thumb pressing hard against the head of my cock with a blunt, demanding pressure that mimics the violence inmy chest. My balls are pulled tight, a heavy, throbbing heat that beats in sync with the hammering of my heart.
It's a localized, suffocating pressure, a demand for release that feels like a physical invasion.
The build-up is agonizing.
The self-loathing acts like an accelerant, pushing my body toward a ledge I don't want to cross.
The muscles in my thighs and lower back seize, and that copper taste at the back of my throat grows stronger as I bite my lip to keep from shouting her name like a curse. I want to break that stoic silence of hers. I want to feel her shatter under the weight of what she's done until there's nothing left but the same agonizing submission I'm currently forcing upon myself.
As I peak, my body arches violently against the tiles. It's a jagged, messy explosion of sensation that feels less like an orgasm and more like a wound ripping open. I don't let up, my hand grinding against the sensitive flesh until the friction turns to a sharp, stinging pain that finally cuts through the fog.
I slump against the wall, chest heaving, my hand trembling and slick. The water is turning lukewarm now, splashing over my shoulders and washing the evidence of my failure down the drain, but the image of her stays burned into my retinas. Broken, repentant, and utterly devastating.
Every time I close my eyes, I see her.
Not the sanitized version. Not the one I should see.
The woman kneeling on concrete in that cell. The oversized charcoal shirt I gave her slipping off one shoulder, exposing the pale arc of a collarbone that looked too fragile for the kind of violence that room was built to hold. The curve of her spine when she shifted. The way she didn't beg.
Didn't plead.
Didn't even bother trying to lie.
Most people break when they realize what they're facing.
Stratton just—absorbs it.
Like suffering is familiar terrain.
I stay in the shower until the cold starts to seep into my bones, knowing that in an hour, I have to walk back into that room and look at the monster I just used to find a moment of sick, twisted peace.
I dry off, the towel rough against skin that feels raw, and pull on my tactical gear. The fabric is a second skin, a suit of armor I don't feel I deserve. I moved back to Seattle for this: for the stability of Cerberus, for Pop and Mom's help, for a chance to raise a daughter who beat cancer.
