Chapter 26
MIKEY
Kiss me .
Despite being covered in grime and blood, despite seeing the monster that I had easily become, she’d asked me to kiss her. I couldn’t imagine the horror that she’d been through. Yet, despite all that pain, she still asked me for comfort. She’d sought me for reassurance.
Kiss me.
I stepped back as the rest of the team gathered her in hugs, scanning over her to make sure she was mostly unharmed. Dom shot me a couple curious glances after seeing the random dick and balls skewered to the wall, but he said nothing.
Kiss me.
She’d given me verbal consent to kiss her. Maybe I should have kissed her lips, but something felt so much more intimate when I chose to kiss her forehead. Whether she was ready to admit it, even if she closed herself off and pushed me away again, she had feelings for me. I was certain of it.
Kiss me.
Scottie left the group to grab her gear that had simply been sitting in the corner. So odd that they didn’t try and discard it, or steal it, or get rid of it. I couldn’t tear my gaze away from her, running over the events in my head as the rest of the guys returned to my side. They had to be suspicious at least. I knew that. But I prayed that they chalked it up to spending some extra time together in that cave or something.
Kiss me.
Shit. There was no fucking way that I would be able to move past her. She was going to have to either accept my dumbass or she would have to kill me.
“It wasn’t Karimy-boy,” she muttered as we all turned to head down the stairs. My feet froze. Bernie smacked into my back as Dom whirled around.
“What?” he snarled. Her knuckles paled as she tightened her grip on her rifle.
“The man who kidnapped me said that he doesn’t work with terrorists and it wasn’t Karim who hired him,” Scottie explained.
“Fuck, that’s right, I should’ve thought of that on the way here,” I grumbled, and Dom closed his eyes as Ford turned and punched the dead body nearest him.
“That’s right? On the way here?” Scottie’s brows furrowed.
“The mercenary doesn’t come to the Middle East because of the major terrorist cells,” I said. She shook her head, still confused.
“Merlin?” Bernie asked.
“I know all that. You said ‘on the way here’?” she asked.
“You’re asking if we knew who the bitch with his dick and balls still hanging from the knife in the wall was before we came to get you?” I restated, and she nodded.
“Yes. How?” she exclaimed.
Dom nodded. “Thompson was able to tell us it was Merlin right before he died, and he suddenly jumped the list on priority. His file has popped up every now and then before, but Merlin doesn’t, or I guess now didn’t, work with terrorists.”
“Did he say who hired him?” Duncan asked.
She shook her head. “No. All he knew is that he was supposed to kidnap me so the guy could come and ‘rescue’ me.”
Rescue her? Some guy hired a mercenary so that he could come and rescue her? Who the hell would do something like that? And who the hell had that kind of money? Mercenaries are expensive as fuck.
She gestured to the mirrored confusion on all of our faces. “Yeah, I agree.”
Ford shook his head as Dom spoke, “Look, let’s go back and get Thompson’s body. We’ll drive until the sun rises, hold up until night, and then finish the drive back to base. Maybe by then we can have come up with something to make all of this shit fucking make sense.”
Scottie shot a glance my way. Slipping through her hardened mask, fear coated her wide eyes.
I gave her a gentle, reassuring smile before looking back at the group. Everything in me raged like a storm, desperate to make sure something like that never happened again. Even though I knew it might, especially considering her line of work—our line of work.
But there was a sense of reassurance knowing that even if it did, at least I’d be right here. And she wasn’t one to go down without a fight. She’d proven that. Damn, she was one hell of a woman.
One hell of a fucking woman.
We stashed the buggies between some rolling dunes. With them camouflaged out of the way, we trekked in silence to a small dip in the sand knolls and slid beneath an overhanging outcrop. At least this would provide some shade and shelter from the midday blazing sun in the middle of the desert.
Despite the lack of sleep we’d had, my mind had yet to calm down. Every nerve in my body still fired with adrenaline. So, when Dom asked for watch rotations, I quickly volunteered to be up first.
That was the best way to keep my mind distracted from all that I’d failed on. Or maybe it wasn’t a failure, but it sure as hell felt like one despite knowing that we’d rescued Scottie in time.
I settled back against a boulder. Scanning the empty and flat horizon, heat rippled like a wave across the endless sand. There was nothing but orange and blistering desert as far as my eye could see. For the first time, there was a part of my heart that missed the rolling hills back home. Or maybe it was the idea that someday, Scottie and I could have a moment of true peace that sent an ache through my soul.
Rain would be nice. Anything to mix up the continual failure and spark an idea as to who hired Merlin. We needed a win. Some sort of positive moment to keep us going. I sure did.
The sun stretched higher into the sky as unexpected movement stirred by the mouth of the outcrop my team was resting under. Squinting through the blazing rays of light, the tension rolled off of my shoulders as a familiar figure staggered silently toward me.
Maybe Scottie was all the hope that I needed.
As I kept watch around her, she climbed steadily up the pathway until she stood directly in front of me. Exhaustion crumpled her usually strong body. And without a word, she crawled right onto my lap. Shoving my arms open, she curled up into a ball and then pulled my arms back around her figure.
Her body heat made things uncomfortably warm, but I didn’t mention anything. Ignoring the sweat that dripped down my back, I glanced down at her. She tucked her cheek tighter against my chest, a frown slipping onto her lips. “Damn, stupid fucking vest,” she grumbled, trying to shove herself into a more comfortable position.
I bit back my chuckle as she shifted in my lap. Her own PPE—minus her helmet—created even more space between us, but right now was not the time to remove any of it, and she finally sighed, giving up the useless fight.
Leaning my chin against the top of her head, loose strands of disheveled hair tickled beneath my nose, reminding me of my own facial hair I hadn’t shaved in a while. “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, Scotch, but we can’t make out since I actually need to be on watch,” I quietly teased, hoping to relieve some of the burden that I knew weighed heavily on her shoulders.
She shook her head lightly. “Of course that’s what you think when all I did was innocently come over here.”
“Snuggling into my lap is innocent?”
“Oh, hush up, Blondie, and just hold me,” she grumbled in response.
Wrapping one arm tightly around her body, I scanned our completely still surroundings and set my rifle up beside me against the rock. With my now free hand, I quickly undid her terribly redone bun, and let the hair cascade down her figure.
“You’re not worried anyone else will see?” I asked, letting the strands slip through my fingers.
“They’re all asleep and I have watch next, so we’re fine,” she answered, her shoulders falling.
“Still think this is innocent?” I teased.
“As long as you keep your dick under control, it will be,” she quipped.
“How he responds is all up to you.”
She lightly slapped my arm but snuggled in tighter and didn’t answer. A gentle silence swept between us. With every passing second, every tick in time that steadily clambered on, her body relaxed more and more. I couldn’t lie to myself how much I was reveling in the fact that she sought me for more comfort. Especially considering how disgusting I had to look right now.
“You doing okay?” I whispered. But my voice didn’t break the gentle bubble that settled around us. She inhaled deeply, giving herself a moment to collect her thoughts.
“Not really,” she answered. “I…I…There was a moment where I almost gave up. Where I just knew that he won. If you hadn’t shown up when you did, he would have actually raped me, Mikey.”
Swallowing the lump forming in my throat, I pulled her tighter against my chest but remained silent. Fuck was I grateful I’d gotten there when I had.
“Tied up like that, absolutely helpless, I was terrified. More afraid than I’ve ever been, and growing up like I had, definitely wasn’t one for the faint of heart. Yet, I can’t even say that I was assaulted because technically he only got his dick in my mouth once, and I bit down on that nasty shit.” She paused and leaned back, glancing up at me. Doe eyes met mine, full of such innocent pleading. “So, why is his face what I see every time I close my eyes? Why is it that moment he nearly suffocated me to get his fucking dick wet just once in my mouth what keeps replaying in my head?”
Lifting my gaze from her eyes, I scanned the horizon again. “Just because he didn’t actually manage to get his fucking dick inside you, doesn’t mean you weren’t assaulted. That’s still trauma, Scotch,” I muttered. There was nothing out there. A nothing I wanted to escape to, away from reality, away from the little boy creeping forward from his cage in my mind.
“And next you’ll tell me that it’ll eventually go away completely,” she replied, almost hopeful. I hated to break her heart, but I refused to lie to her.
“No. But the amount of time between it showing up in your thoughts will eventually get longer. One day, you’ll realize it’s been a week since the last time you thought about it. Then a year. Then sometimes it’s every few days again, and then it’ll be a couple years. But what’s more important is every time those thoughts do come back, they’ll hurt less and less. It’ll control you less and less. That’s what matters more than how often you think about it or not.”
She scoffed. “Right, like you would know.”
Snapping my teeth together, I choked down the anguish that immediately surfaced. I knew she didn’t know. No one did. But her words didn’t torment me any less. Shame riddled my body, flowing through my veins. A shame that hadn’t caressed my mind in years. That lost boy I’d stowed away broke entirely free and stole what little peace I’d consumed.
I knew a moment in the near future would allow me the control I needed to cage him back up, to send him back to the darkest corner of my mind. But all that ran through my body right now was frustration and anger. She’d snapped defensively at me, and now I wanted to do the same. Everything in me begged to bite back at her.
She got on my case for being sexist, got on Reyes’s case and the entire military’s case for being sexist, yet wasn’t that statement of hers a bit sexist too? As if implying that men couldn’t be sexually assaulted like women.
Prying my arms away from her body, I gently slid my legs out from under her and she plunked sideways. Sand poofed up around her. She pulled her brows together, her eyes tracking me as I pushed upright from the ground. “You mind keeping watch for a minute or two? I’ve gotta take a piss,” I said, and I didn’t give her time to protest as I turned and walked around the boulder.
Staying would’ve resulted in me blowing up at her. Which I couldn’t do right now. Her trauma was much more recent then mine was. Her wounds were fresh. Mine were mere scars riddling my body and painted across my soul.
Part of me picked at the scab because it helped fuel the rage burning in me. Rage that I used to be effective out here, and I wasn’t quite ready to let that go. But there was a new bandage attempting to stick itself in place of the once again freshly opened scar. A different kind of fury rooted in a desire to never let something like that happen to Scottie again.
And I had to admit to myself that it burned blue—hotter than any wrath directed toward that pisshat of a man I once called father.