Dungeon Games (Masters and Mercenaries #6.5)(26)

“By having sex with me? You really know how to help a guy.”

He was an ass. She got off the floor and got into his space. He needed to understand that he couldn’t intimidate her. “Well, I had two choices in how to deal with you. I could kiss you and hope that brought you out of it because I’m betting Jones wasn’t someone you would exchange saliva with, or I could have brought my knee up and made sure you could taste your own semen. I know which one I’ll pick next time.”

She turned to go, but he gripped her wrist. “I’m not done.”

With two sharp twists, she was out of his hold. “I am. Good night, Brighton. Sweet dreams.”

She slammed the door between them and immediately the tears started. She turned and put her back to the door, sliding down. There was zero point in getting back in bed. She wouldn’t sleep.

He was such a bastard. Screw him. She didn’t need him. She was perfectly fine on her own. She would keep the door closed between them and in the morning they would go right back to being somewhat chilly strangers. That was the only way to deal with him.

She would ignore the heat between them because he couldn’t possibly feel it. If he felt it, he would be kinder, want more from her. He wouldn’t bat her away like a wounded bear.

“It was Afghanistan.” His voice was quiet, but she could easily hear him through the door. She felt it the minute he put his back to the door on his side.

She didn’t care. Not a bit. Nope. She didn’t give a shit that he’d been in Afghanistan and served his country and apparently still had nightmares about it. “Did you get pinned down?”

Yes, she was just a little curious. No more than that.

There was a long sigh from the other side of the door. “Yeah. We were close-quarters fighting. We got into a firefight in Fallujah and me and Jones got cut off from the rest of the team. You got to understand. The streets are really narrow and when your adrenaline is up, you just kind of react. It was a part of the city we hadn’t been in before. Taliban held.”

“So you were surrounded?”

“Not exactly. It was just the two of us and he’d taken some fire. I had to get him out of there. I thought I remembered the way back, but I just took us deeper in.”

She closed her eyes, not wanting to think about how horrifying that must have been. On the run without the rest of his team, Brighton would have felt a deep sense of responsibility for Jones. “How bad off was your teammate?”

“He’d taken a couple to his right leg. By the time we could stop, he was bleeding pretty freely. I found an abandoned building and we slipped inside. It was rat infested, a real pit, but I didn’t have another option. I had to stop the bleeding.”

“And keep him quiet. He was probably in a lot of pain,” she guessed.

“Yes. I had to put him in worse pain because I had to dig the bullet out. He screamed. God, I can still hear it and I couldn’t do anything but stuff a rag in his mouth because they were everywhere. I could hear them moving around, shouting at others to look for us. They actually came in at one point. I hid us under some garbage. I kept my hand over his mouth so he couldn’t cry out. I damn near suffocated him. Do you know what I felt like in that moment?”

Powerless. He would have been utterly out of control and praying to anyone who would listen to save him. How humbling must that have been for a man like Derek? She couldn’t help it. She was stupid. Utterly ridiculous. She knew it was dumb, but she softened toward him. Her heart was an ignorant thing. It just kept reaching out.

“How did you get out?”

There was a long moment where she worried she’d lost him. He would go back to his couch and she to her bed, both in their respective corners, and the fight would begin again in the morning like nothing had happened the night before.

“He bled out.” The words sounded hollow, utterly haunted. “I tried to tie the damage off. I tried to stay up so I could watch over him. But I f*cking fell asleep and when I woke up he was dead. He was twenty-three years old. I’d promised to get him back to his family.”

“I’m going to open the door now.” She couldn’t just sit there when he obviously needed affection.

She heard him shuffling, moving even as she opened the door. And then he was there, his muscular body seeming to shrink in on itself.

“You can’t be around me when I’m like that, Karina. I could have hurt you.”

She followed her instincts now and walked right up to him. He didn’t move as she folded her arms around him, tucking her head under his chin. “I wasn’t going to let you hurt me, Derek. I had a plan.”

It took him a couple of seconds, but his arms wrapped around her, squeezing her tight. His big palm came over her head in a protective gesture that warmed her. “What was your plan?”

It felt so good to be in his arms. The man knew how to hug. He enveloped her, surrounded her. She couldn’t help but cuddle closer. “I kissed you because I figured the dream was from your Army days. I’d tried to talk you awake, but I figured you probably hadn’t kissed your Army buddy a whole lot.”

He chuckled and she felt it all along her spine. “No. I hadn’t even kissed Jones once. It was effective. You stayed calm, didn’t you? I didn’t really worry you at all.”

She would bet he’d freaked the hell out of other women. “It takes a lot to panic me, Brighton. I know you don’t like it, but I can handle myself. And I can handle you. You weren’t going to hurt me.”