Chapter Thirty-Six #2
“Fuck that. I made an oath to protect you, and protect you I will.”
“You no longer work for my mother.”
“No, I do not, but I still love you.” I feel my breath catch in my throat.
A weird pain frazzles me, and I know it’s the emotions that’ve been swimming in my chest for way too long.
Emotions I’ve had to swallow down and hold back every goddamn day for the last five years.
“I still love you, Bri. Through it all I will love you, but I will not stand by and let your husband hurt you. That means fucking you with no goddamn emotion behind those black eyes of his. You may have married a monster, but I still expect him to be a man beneath all those stupid fucking layers he’s got.
While I’m in the vicinity, he will respect you.
The only tears you cry for me are from pleasure, not pain—unless you want pain.
Then I got no issue dabbling,” I ramble as I walk us out.
“Parker.”
“What?”
“This is very awkward, please unhand me.”
I’ve barely made it three feet from our bedroom door when I do as she asked.
Naked, hair a fucking nest, green eyes simmering with both fury and something like respect, she tips on her toes and kisses me.
“I adore you. From your head to the soles of your feet, I truly believe you are the one I was made for. Selfishly I dragged you into this mess because I love you and I want you for myself. If he were any other man, anyone else I did not love, anyone else I have not bared my soul to, would not walk through hellfire for, I would not ask this of you—”
“Then don’t ask this of me—”
“—If I didn’t think I could handle it.”
I shake my head while peering into her eyes. “He ain’t the only one who’s been changed, Bri. He ain’t the only one who’s been hurt. And he ain’t the only one living with survivor’s guilt.”
“Survivor’s guilt?”
I lift my hand and start counting off fingers.
“He self-isolates, is irritable, depressed, having nightmares, hardly eats, has headaches… insomnia…” I lower my hand.
“I’m not a doctor, but I know the signs.
He’s not alone in it, either, babydoll. I’ve made promises I didn’t get to keep and not by choice.
” I let out a sigh then put my hands on her shoulders.
“I love loving you, baby. I love waking up and getting to fuck you first thing in the morning or waking up to you getting fucked and joining in. I love every sound you make, from your giggles to your ferocious little snores—”
“For the last time, I do not snore—”
“—But the thing I love the most is watching you fall apart for me, for him. My favorite thing in the world is making you come. My least favorite thing in the world is seeing you cry because you’re hurting.” Damn it, we had such a good day yesterday.
She opens her mouth but I shake my head again.
“I know the difference between your real tears and your sex ones.
Those were real. My job was to protect you.
Bodily. Somewhere along the way, the lines were blurred, and I started caring for you mentally and emotionally, too.
But it was never a burden, baby. Loving you has never been a burden…
It's an honor. An honor I hold higher than any other. And that fucker should feel the exact same way, baby.”
“Do you trust me?”
I search those jade eyes of hers touched by the moon. “With every fiber of my being.”
“Then trust me when I say I can handle him.”
I cup my dick and turn around, ready to head down the stairs to my old room I haven't had to use in months. “Then I won’t be witness to that. And if he hurts you, Bri… I’ll fucking kill him. Our husband or not.”
She clears her throat. “Erhm, Savage?”
“What?” I turned my head to face her.
“The door, please.”
I tilt my head to the side, noticing her arms are still bound behind her back and there’s no way for her to open the door. I scrunch up my face and take a step down the stairs. “Nah.”
Maksim finds me in the library reading the latest Lela Martin book, Beautifully Shattered, which I picked up in October and never finished due to…
well, being shot. Also, I’m glad I didn’t take it on the plane on our way to Wales because that woman can write some intense shit.
I close the book with an irritated snap when he takes a seat on the sofa opposite me, two cigars in his hand, and stare at him.
"She's resting,” he informs me with a smug grin, taking a seat on the blush pink sofa, then offers me a cigar and I take it. Dark eyes blink at me as we light up and he inhales. He squints as he exhales, the cloud of smoke rising. “You want me to tell you how she begged me to fuck her?”
I really wish I didn't have the visceral reaction I’m having right now, but I don't reply, just lean back and watch as he settles into the cushions even more.
“With her consent, of course,” he adds.
The fact is, I do. I love knowing when Sabrina gets the attitude fucked right out of her.
Mostly I love hearing it come from her pouty, plump lips.
Again, I don’t reply, just rub my thumb on the underside of the cigar before I take my next drag.
I let the smoke swirl around my lungs and blow it out.
Maksim clears his throat. “You… were missed.”
I take another drag and let it out slowly, letting words form on my tongue.
“You know, before I was discharged I went through a few rounds of burn care in the intensive care unit.
I was staring out the window of a clean hospital in Greece.
The military had transferred me out of the Middle East, an area where all I saw for weeks or months at a time was beige.
Sand. Sandstorms. The roads. I swear some days I looked up into the sky and the clouds seemed to be tinged orange.
“I don't exactly know how long I was out. But it was long enough they were able to transfer me over a strip of water and into a different country and work on me. I’m told shock can do that to a person. I woke up and it was so bright… and quiet. No gunfire. No Marines chirping at each other, fighting over snacks or MREs. I thought I’d died until I remembered what happened.
I knew I was in a hospital; I mean, shit, I was bandaged from my left shoulder to my ass cheek.
It doesn't take a genius to figure that out. But it was so… blue. From my window I could see the ocean. The sandy beaches, the cliffs, and the neighborhoods along that cliff with their terracotta rooftops. It was beautiful. The most beautiful thing I’d ever seen in my thirty-one years of life.
“Then my commander came in. A motherfucker I hadn't seen in almost three years while I was out doing his bidding.
I took one look at him and knew everything, Maks, everything I had worked so goddamn hard for…
was no longer within my grasp. I asked him what happened even though somehow I felt I already knew the answer, and he told me.
His mouth started moving, and there was this slight ringing that started in my ears.
One long, monotonous ring that grew so loud the longer he talked until something broke through that barrier.
Something tiny, but it was enough. I dragged my sight from my commander, followed the trail of bright white along the walls ‘til I got to the blue. My sight creeped just a bit more until I spotted this little baby bird in a nest just outside my window. It had fire-red feathers on its chest. It was the first colorful bird I’d seen in a while, and I latched onto it.
The way the red on its chest faded the closer it got to its little black feet.
I came to when my commander informed me I was being honorably discharged.
“I was the only one who survived the mission. The only other survivor was DOA on the hospital’s helipad.
Dead on Arrival. I made it all the way here, and she…
she didn’t make it past what would be the border.
She died there… and her soul stayed there.
Then he congratulated me on completing said mission, shook my hand, told me to ‘get better soon,’ and walked out.
” I shake my head, but don’t tear my gaze away from Maks.
“I survived because a group of kids pulled me from a burning, collapsing building. They died going back in to pull out more of my brethren.” I glance down at the cigar, then back up to the window behind Maksim.
“I’m man enough to admit I cried after he left.
Then, when I was discharged from both the hospital and the Marine Corps, I fucked everything in sight.
If you had a pussy and could take a pounding, then I made sure you were banged like a screen door in a hurricane.
I was doing everything I could so I didn't feel anything. Didn’t go to any more funerals or wakes or whatever had to deal with saying goodbye again. ”
Maksim takes a hit of his cigar. “What made you stop?”
“One day I was balls deep in this chick about the same age as Sabrina. She had used her safe word, but I dissociated so hard I didn't hear her. It wasn’t until I looked down, saw the blood, and felt her nails clawing at me that I stopped. I let her beat the shit out of me, too. I deserved it.” I look back up at him.
“Tears ‘cause I’m gagging her so hard—I love that shit. Tears because I won't let her come and she’s not used to not getting her way? Fucking adorable. Tears because you make her sad or unhappy? Unacceptable.”
“You punched me.”
“You were fucking her like a dissociated zombie. Blank expression, vacant eyes. I called your name and you didn’t hear me. What would’ve happened if I hadn't been in the room, Maks? If she would have called out to you to stop and you didn’t?”
He doesn’t answer.
“You’d be dead, Maks,” I educate him monotonously with the same goddamn blank expression he’d had on his face.
His nose does that weird little twitch.
I stand, put out the cigar on a small ashtray, then straighten my spine.
“I know what it’s like to live with survivor’s guilt.
I’ve dealt with it every day for the last six years.
The only reason I even got better is because Tildy saw something in me and made me undergo an evaluation five years ago in order to be hired.
Now, maybe you went through something I can’t relate to, but you ain’t alone in the way you’re feeling.
Not like I was. My brethren died, but it didn’t feel like I survived. It felt like I got left behind.
“You didn’t get left behind. You were saved by the very woman who loves us so much she killed the men that killed me, concocted the worst extraction plan with a murder of mafiosos, crossed an entire ocean, willingly let the man who raped her kiss her, pissed on him, and then ran into a goddamn battlefield with bullets flying—” I pause and loom him over once more.
“Did she even tell you, Maksim?” I ask even though it ain't my business to tell him the secrets she shared with me, but now that he's bein’ a damn reckless fool with my woman, fuck it.
“Tell me what?”
“You know how badly Sabrina wants to be a mom?”
He blinks at me and arches a dark brow in confusion, telling me she's kept him oblivious. “What does that have to do with this?”
“Sabrina thought she was pregnant, Maks. Whole time she was trapped there, she thought she was pregnant and still ran into a warzone for you—us—with a smoking, glittering, hot pink gun and not a backwards glance, knowing the consequences. Knowing the possible outcome.”
That any of us could have died… that she could’ve lost the non-existent child in her womb.
A look of guilt crawls over his dumb handsome face and his hand balls up into a fist on his thigh.
I turn to leave the library, but I pause and speak over my shoulder, “Act right, Maksim. ‘Cause that duchess of yours don’t deserve less than the supposed king who claimed her. Everything she said was right, Maks. You fucking her like she’s nothing to you is exactly how your downfall begins.
Soon, it won’t matter who you’re fucking because hey, at least you feel bright…
right? Now, if you’ll excuse me, I got shit I gotta do. ”