Ice (Elite Forces #1)(28)
“What Jade and I do is none of your f*cking business.”
“That’s where you're dead f*cking wrong. If she gets hurt, I feel obligated to find justice in who wronged her. If you're some f*cked-up * who gets off on making people bleed, you just need to walk the f*ck away from her. Consider it saving your own life.”
“That's not how it is.” I look down to her sleeping peacefully on my shoulder. Christ. I really don’t give a shit what his opinion of me is. It’s her I care about. Her opinion matters. She has to know I want more than sex with her. I’ve told her this.
“Look, I have nothing but respect for you as a leader and a soldier, but Jade is not an area I’ll settle on. She deserves happiness. If you're what causes that, then you’ll have my full support, but if I see one f*cking tear in her eye that you caused…. Be prepared to meet me for your day of reckoning.”
“I can work with that.” Because the last thing I want to see is another tear escape her gorgeous eyes.
“And don't f*cking claim her like a piece of property. She's a human being, a strong one at that, who can make her own decisions. And until she tells me she's taken, I'll be right beside her, just being me.”
I want to like the man who went to battle with me to take down one of the most notorious terrorists of all time, but this guy is choosing to go to war with me now.
“Harris, don't kid yourself, you don't stand a chance in a war with me. I'll ruin you. I'll make you disappear into the depths of hell on a f*cking mission you'd rather die than finish.”
“And I'll climb out of that hell to come find you if you so much as put another f*cking scratch on her porcelain body.” We may disagree on who should hold her at night, but we agree on Jade’s safety. I want her happy too, and I will do my best to make sure she recovers from the nightmares she's bound to have.” I swallow hard and take in the words he’s saying. If she comes with me, I'll do everything in my power to make sure she's not hurt.
“I can respect that,” I say truthfully.
“Good. I'm glad we could see eye to eye.” He sits back finally, looking straight ahead at his monitor, and stuffs those earbuds in his ears. Keep them there, *; and you will stay the hell away from her.
CHAPTER NINE
JADE
The jolt of the plane landing wakes me up. I’m incredibly warm and definitely not sleeping on a soft pillow. No, what I’m lying on is hard, but damn, I’m right where a part of me wants to be though. His smell gives him away. He’s all man. Rough, rugged, and tough man that’s easy to feel safe near. When I open my eyes, I see one of my legs is curled up underneath me, my inured arm is sprawled across his chest, and my head is lying on his shoulder. God, he feels good with his arm wrapped around me, caging me in tight to his body. I go to move, my body aching to stretch. I’m pulled tighter into him. My mind wonders how I went from falling asleep on Harris’s shoulder to Kaleb’s.
“Hey, sleepyhead.” His voice is raspy. He must’ve fallen asleep too.
“Hey.” I jerk out of his hold, realizing what I’ve done. My eyes dart to Harris, who is sleeping. I hope he missed just how sprawled across Kaleb I was. I roll my neck around and stretch my legs out the best I can, trying to regain feeling in my limbs from this long flight.
“Those must be some killer pain pills. You were out and you snore.” They must be. I still wonder how I went from Harris to him. Kaleb chuckles as he stretches his arms over his head, those tattoos pulling taut when his muscles flex in his upper arms. Right now, I don’t care how I shifted my body in my sleep. He’s a distraction. One I’m not sure if I want to eat off of, or choke on.
Shit. I would love to finally get a close-up of every one of those tattoos. I wonder if he’ll ever tell me the meaning behind them. And don’t even let me forget about those damn abs. His thin t-shirt doesn’t leave a damn thing to the imagination, not that my mind will let me forget them. They’re hard, defined, and bulging through his t-shirt, and I can still feel the ripple on my fingertips from when I was sprawled across him like a desperate magnet.
In spite of sleeping for the most part of the flight, I’m still exhausted. All I want to do is go home, take a long, hot shower and sleep for days. Then wake up and figure out what in the hell I’m going to do with my time off. I need a distraction, anything to help me keep my troubled mind off of that boy.
“He’s right, you do snore. Loud.” My head swings around to Harris.
“What the f*ck ever. Like the two of you don’t.” I roll my eyes at him.
“I will the minute I hit my bed, that’s for damn sure.” JJ leans forward, stretching. He looks worse than I feel, which says a lot, because I feel like shit.
“Won’t we all.” Harris looks at me, then to Kaleb. The way he glares at Kaleb has a red flag instantly waving in my face. Something happened while I was sleeping, I can feel it. The tension between these two has hardened. Damn them. I’m not in the mood for whatever kind of bullshit these two have going on between them, and if Kaleb said anything about what happened between the two of us, he’ll wish to god I didn’t save his ass, because I will kill him myself. Even though it will be a long time before I even think about having sex with another man, there could never be anything between the two of us. We’re entirely different.