Why hadn’t she told him about her thesis?
He knew the answer.
Because he had pushed her away, by making him take a break. He couldn’t even fully regret that decision, not when her future was at risk. No, it was only their future as a couple at risk. Didn’t she trust him? She agreed to become his wife. He’d thought that would sate him, but it seemed that nothing would be enough when it came to her.
She grinned. “Do you think I’d let you go either? Not a chance. So get comfortable, mister. You’re going to be mine.”
Ah hell. No way was he leaving her in peace today. He pulled her from the chair, flush against his body, molding his hands to her curves. “God, I already am.”
He kissed her again, debating whether they could make it upstairs to the bedroom. But then she kissed him back—actually nipped his lower lip—and he stopped thinking at all. He surrounded her, body and heart; he sank into her, finding refuge in her sweet acceptance and limitless love.
There were no boundaries on what he would do for her. He would climb mountains, slay dragons—but all she’d ever asked of him was a promise. And so he had always been hers, before he’d even known it, stumbled upon in a moment’s base weakness, claimed by a wholehearted acceptance, and made new by a love he would work to deserve each coming day.
He only vaguely remembered some hint of scandal while he’d been in basic training, but he’d assumed it was an affair. A consensual affair. His throat tightened imagining what could have happened to a young woman in a vulnerable position, what an unscrupulous employer might do. Proposition her? Touch her?
Hit her?
It made him sick that it could happen to anyone, but even more so because Erin had been in just as vulnerable a position when she’d cleaned his home. The thought of anyone harming her made him see red.
Chapter Ten
Blake
It sounded
like thunder and felt like an earthquake, vibrating right down to his bones.
Not anything natural like a storm, not with the smell of burnt air and fuel left behind. Two F-22 Raptors had swooped low to the ground, right overhead, their presence just a blur in his retina. He squinted through the leaves, waiting. Even the trees seemed to shudder, holding their breath. The blast came two miles to the south, on the other side of the low mountain range.
“What the fuck are they doing?” Ricardo’s voice was strained, high-pitched. He had his hand on his helmet as if that would somehow keep it on, keep him safe.
Blake knew they were fucked, helmets or not. “We gotta get to the checkpoint.”
But he wasn’t about to tell his teammate the truth. It wouldn’t help to panic. It wouldn’t help to know they’d die anyway. The military had decided they were expendable. In that moment they were just as much the enemy as the terrorists hiding in a damn cave. Like the civilians here, the women and the children and the hard-working men, they were fucking collateral.
“We’ll never make it,” Ricardo said, panting.
No, they wouldn’t. “We get to the checkpoint and we get out. We stick to the damn plan.”
His teammate nodded—too fast, too frantic. “Okay. I can do that.”
“I know you can,” Blake said, low and fierce. Even young and green, Ricardo toed the line. Their entire team was a fucking powerhouse—or they had been until they’d been picked off one by one by snipers on the ridge.
The ridge should have been cleared and the birds should have waited until they were clear to strike, but none of that mattered now.
Ricardo’s face twisted in grief, a thin wet track through the thick layer of dirt on his cheek. “I won’t let them die for nothing.”
Blake took the man by the back of the neck and pulled him in. Forehead to forehead. They were close. Teammates. Brothers. The last two fucking men on this godforsaken patch of earth. His chest seized tight. “No matter what, they didn’t die for nothing,” he said. “No matter what, it meant something. Now we’re going to get to the goddamn checkpoint like they’d want us to do.”
“Yeah.” Ricardo’s voice got stronger. “We’re going to get out.”
Blake wasn’t so sure about that, but there was no better plan. No plan at all except the one that had already gone to hell.
They fought through thousands of feet of dense jungle, wary of an ambush at any moment. They ran over exposed flat rock, expecting a bullet from an unseen shooter to take them out all the way.
And somehow—an actual fucking miracle—they made it to the checkpoint.
“Empty,” Ricardo breathed.