“Don’t do it! Don’t!” Will’s voice screamed through the coms, but I ignored him, racing through the rocky valley, the ground speeding by us.
“Walker, was his life worth both of ours?” Captain Trivette asked, just before blood began to drain from her helmet, covering her face in rivers of red.
My heart slammed against my chest as she hit the controls, putting us into the dive I knew I couldn’t recover from. We plummeted to the earth, and she reached up with her crushing embrace, welcoming us home as we made impact.
My body jerked, air rushing into my lungs, and my eyes opened to total darkness. My right arm reached for my weapon, only to find my arm trapped, immobile. Panic rose in my throat. We were sitting ducks out here. My left hand flew to my vest to find it missing, my skin bare. What the fuck?
There was a pillow behind my head. Wait. Bed. Right.
I turned onto my left side, a jarring pain screaming from my thigh, and swept my hand under my pillow. Gone. My weapon was missing. “Fuck!” I growled. “Where is it?”
“Josh?” Her voice broke through, and I paused.
December. Here? I blinked through the disorientation and saw her form rising next to me in bed.
Our bed.
“Baby?” she asked, slowly reaching across the small distance that separated us, as if I were a wounded animal—as if I would attack her. “You okay?”
Her hand made contact with my cheek, the touch soothing, bringing me into reality. A nightmare. It had been a nightmare. I was home, in our bed, not in Afghanistan. That’s why there was no weapon.
“Yeah,” I replied, leaning into her touch. “Yeah, I’m okay.”
“Another nightmare?” She moved forward, pressing her body against mine as if she’d instinctively known that was exactly what I needed. She was my anchor, holding me to reality, to our life.
I nodded, my chin rubbing against her hair. She smelled like the citrus shampoo she used, bright and alive, and I breathed her in, pushing the nightmare away. Will hadn’t blamed me. He’d whole-heartedly agreed to go after Jagger. So had Captain Trivette.
But when I closed my eyes, I still heard their blame, felt it reverberating in every cell of my body.
“Do you want to talk about it?” she asked, her hand tracing a light pattern on the side of my rib cage, just under my sling.
I shook my head. She couldn’t get into my thoughts. Not yet. Not until I had my shit straight, or I’d lose her. There was no way a woman like Ember, with her father’s morals, would stay with someone who had traded one life for another, not when it cost her a friend. Not until I’d figured out how to pay back Will’s sacrifice.
God, I didn’t deserve her. Not after what I’d put her through…what I would undoubtedly put her through again. But I was too selfish to let her go.
“What can I do?”
“I…” I couldn’t find the words. I just needed her wrapped around me, holding me together. Just her. I needed the haven only she could provide, the moments where nothing existed besides us, where I was lost in her soul, her mind, her body—so deep that I forgot everything else. “Just let me touch you.”
She tilted her head up for a kiss, and I took it, an edge of desperation chasing me that I’d never felt before. My hands were too insistent, my kisses a touch beyond passionate, but she met me with the same driving need. Urging her on top of me, I used my mouth and hands to bring her to climax, savored the cry of my name on her lips. Then I sank into her, burying my demons with each thrust, losing myself in everything she was, as if by loving December some of her goodness would wash into me and cleanse the dark away.
Afterward, she fell asleep against me, her body as spent as mine. I contemplated the bottle of pain medication she kept in the nightstand to ease the throbbing in my thigh, the dull ache in my chest, but knew, just like my orgasm, its relief would be only temporary.
So I slept…and waited for the nightmare to claim me.
This time it was Ember’s voice in my head, accusing me of killing Will, and her blood on my hands.
“Dude, you look like shit,” I said, crutching into Jagger and Paisley’s townhouse the next day. He was stretched out on their sectional, pillows under his legs to keep them elevated.
“Take a look in the mirror, asshole.” Jagger grinned. “At least my complexion doesn’t make me look like a ghost. Can you touch your fiancée with those hands, or do they just slip right through?”
I laughed, since his skin was paper-white, still recovering from the massive blood loss. “Oh, yeah, you’re Miss Tropicana over here.”
He chuckled and smacked the seat next to him. I took it, lifting my leg to the coffee table. Paisley would kill me if she saw, which I had no intention of letting happen…or seeing her in general. “Where did your wife run off to?”
Jagger tossed me an Xbox One controller. “She went to fill the prescription for my meds.” He adjusted, grimacing as he shifted his weight back with his arms.
“How are you feeling?”
“Like I crashed my fucking bird and have six pins in my legs. You?”
I nodded. “Yeah, about there.”
The home screen flashed on the TV, and Jagger sighed. “I don’t remember seeing you in Landstuhl.”
“Yeah, well, you were pretty out of it.”
“That’s what Paisley said. Did she tell you we’re having a boy?” Jagger’s grin was contagious.