Wilde Love (Forever Wilde 6)

But now he was panting and sweating with no obvious cause. Infection shouldn’t have set in this fast, so what else could it be?

“Steady on,” I murmured to him, settling into the familiar comfort of my training. “Slow breaths, Major.”

One of his hands came up and clasped mine on his chest. It was cold and clammy, dirty and rough. Large, capable hands full of healthy veins. My brain scrambled to determine what had caused the sudden decline in his condition. I checked his again, sweeping over his body, searching for something I may have overlooked but finding nothing.

“Liam,” he breathed, and the name clutched at me in a death grip, like we were Liam and Weston out there in the field instead of green second lieutenant and battle-hardened major.

“What is it, dammit? I need to know what’s wrong so I can fix it.” My voice was shaking almost as badly as my hands were.

“Liam,” he said again. The way my name sounded when he said it was unlike anything I’d ever heard before. It was the deep mournful groan of an old barn door and the high expectant trill of new baby birds. It was acres of golden Texas pasture land, herds of fat cattle, and three happy children sitting in the summer sun.

It was everything I’d ever thought of as home, and it centered me in an instant. I took a breath and let it out. He needed something to rally for.

“Let’s go, Major,” I said quietly but firmly. “I’m calling in the cavalry. Your men are counting on you back at the base, and there’s no way I’m showing up back there without you. Get your lazy ass up.” I knew talking to a superior officer like that was disrespectful, but I also knew he needed any energy the anger might give him.

He turned his head on my shoulder until we were almost nose to nose. “Let’s go,” he said, repeating my own words. “Get you home.”

After finding the radio in one of his pockets, I called and insisted on the medevac now. No more waiting. By the time the crew arrived, the sun should have risen enough anyway.

It took twenty minutes to go the remaining half kilometer through the tangled vegetation with the major draped over my back. But just as the sunrise turned the gray trees to green, we heard the familiar beat of the chopper blades. Major Marian reached for my hand and squeezed. “Home.”

It was strange to be on the receiving end of a medevac flight when I’d already flown a thousand of them. Granted, I hadn’t seen any hand-to-hand action before the crash, but it was still odd to be a passenger rather than a member of the dustoff crew.

The medic on board had a hard time convincing the major to lie down and be seen to until I finally got in Major Marian’s face and told him to stop being a horse’s ass and let the man do his job.

Major’s eyes went wide, but he shut his trap awfully fast nonetheless. The specialist and crew chief both dropped their jaws open in shock at the way a lowly second lieutenant had barked at a major. If only they’d known how the previous night had changed things between us.

The flight through the sunrise was shorter than the flight out had seemed, but then again, it always was. When we landed back at the base, the medic and crew chief immediately off-loaded the major to a medical crew waiting to take him to the base hospital.

It was the last I saw of the major for a little while. I’d asked around the hospital for an update, but all they would tell me was that he was still recovering and I’d done a good job suturing his wounds and caring for him in the field.

Over the next couple of days, I found myself missing the gruff man unexpectedly. His solid presence beside me that night, his quiet strength in a crisis. With ten years and three tours on me, Major had eons more life experience to draw on when facing the challenges inherent in Vietnam.

At the time, I chalked my new semi-obsession with the man up to wishing I had a kind of guardian angel. He was larger-than-life, a commanding officer who could handle a bad situation, who knew how to stay calm in a crisis, and who persevered even in extreme pain.

And he was all of those things. But after settling back at base when my head finally seemed to sink in about the events of that night, I realized it was more than that. He was someone I’d forged an unbreakable bond with in a way I never had before. He’d come to embody the ideas of protectiveness and security. In many ways, I now felt closer to Major Weston Marian than even my own wife.