Bound to Submit

He’d changed his mind. He’d changed his mind and come for me. He’d loved me?

“Oh, God,” she said, her mind all jumbled, her heart painfully racing. Everything might’ve been so very different. All the heartache. All the loss. All the pain. It all would’ve been different.

Master Griffin rose, too, a wariness in his posture and his gaze. “I’m sorry that I hurt you five years ago, Kenna. I’m sorry that I made us miss out on what we might’ve had.”

She shook her head on a halting exhale, and finally sat heavily on the other couch. “I can’t believe this,” she said.

He sat right in front of her, close enough that their knees touched. “What? That I loved you? The only thing I can’t believe is that I didn’t know it the minute I felt it. I didn’t recognize and appreciate it like the fucking precious thing it was.”

Loved. Past tense. Was that what he meant? And did it matter? And why was she so pissed at him right now? Because she felt like she might vibrate out of her skin, and she wasn’t even sure her anger was justified. Just that she felt it. “God, and I was sitting in boot camp trying not to cry my eyes out.” She gave a little humorless laugh.

Master Griffin frowned and deep furrows marred his brow. “Are you saying you left Baltimore and joined the Marines because of what happened between us?” His dark eyes blazed at her.

“Not entirely, Griffin,” she said, realizing she’d dropped his title but not able to reel herself in. “But in part, yeah. It wasn’t like I was running away, though, if that’s what you’re implying. Being with you—serving you—were the only things that had meant anything to me in my life back then. I hated my job, didn’t want to go to law school, and didn’t know what to do to make me feel like my life counted or mattered. To myself, let alone anyone else. And then I met this woman, this Marine, and the way she talked about her life. Man, I wanted that. And since I couldn’t have us, I made a leap of faith that serving my country might be able to give me something equally meaningful.”

He sat straighter, and his gaze dropped down to where her prosthetic arm lay in her lap. And when his eyes lifted again, there was a devastation in them that Kenna didn’t understand. It was on his face too, in the unusual pallor of his skin and slackness of his jaw. “Right. Of course,” he said, nodding. But his voice was flat. “That’s very admirable. I really am proud of your service.”

“Why are you talking like that?” she asked.

“Like what?” He rose fast and rounded the table, his knee catching the tray and knocking it onto the floor before he could catch it. A crash indicated that not everything had survived the fall. “Damnit.”

Kenna went around the other side and sank to a crouch. “Let me help.”

“There’s broken glass,” he said.

She reached out with her prosthetic, with which she’d managed to master some pretty fine motor skills thanks to hours and hours of physical therapy. “It can’t exactly cut me, Griffin,” she said with a rueful chuckle.

His gaze whipped to her. “That’s not fucking funny, Kenna.”

She froze. “What?”

He shook his head, his actions suddenly brimming with agitation.

She grabbed a big piece of the broken plate.

“Jesus, just leave it!” he snapped.

Kenna backed off and then rose. And then she took another step backward. Because Master Griffin never lashed out like this. She didn’t know what was going on with him, but she didn’t like it. On top of the weird stew of anger, sadness, regret, and confused hope bubbling in her gut, his anger was one emotion too many.

I wanted to feel less, not more.

Oh, God! It’s too much!

She made for the door to the playroom, and then she was jogging across the space, trying not to see the ropes still piled in the center of the floor, trying not to remember exactly how much Griffin had made her feel.

Because what he’d done to her had been amazing. It had left her blissful and free and shattered. In all kinds of ways, apparently.

“Kenna?” she heard from the lounge.