Avenged (Hostage Rescue Team Series) (Volume 5) (17 page)

Off to the side Taya slumped into a sitting position, her expression dazed as blood continued to pour from her neck.

Nate shuddered, closed his eyes for a moment. O’Neil was gone, beyond saving. He knew that. He could still save Taya.

A blessed kind of numbness flooded him as his training took over.

He took his hands from O’Neil’s body, hopped over him to kneel beside Taya and clamped a hand down over top of hers. “Lie down.”

She did as he said without a word, her wide, frightened eyes focused on him. He could feel the pulse in her neck pounding against his palm through the bandage he pressed there, the column of her throat so fragile beneath his hand. One of the SEALs finally reached them, knelt down and started digging through his medical kit.

Over the ringing in his ears and the grief screaming in his head, Nate caught the faint sound of rotors approaching the LZ below, less than two hundred yards away. In his peripheral he could see one of the other SEALs tending to O’Neil, then backing off. Nate didn’t look. If he looked at his friend’s body another second he would fucking lose it.

He swallowed the boulder-sized knot in his throat, gazed down into Taya’s dazed gray eyes.

“Are th-they b-both…” She trailed off, her whole body trembling, jaw jerking with the force of her shock.

Nate leaned over her, got right in her line of vision and refused to allow her to look away. “Don’t worry about them, you just look right here at me. I’ve got you. You hear me? I’ve got you, and I’m not gonna let go. You’re gonna be fine.”

She swallowed and gave a tiny nod, her gaze locked on his as though she was afraid to look away, her blood-slick fingers gripping his wrist tight. Her resolute silence and the unspoken plea in her eyes killed him.

Please don’t let me die.
Her eyes conveyed it as clearly as if she’d spoken aloud.

She knew he was her only chance. If he loosened the pressure, if he didn’t keep his hand where it was and get the bleeding under control, she’d never make it to Bagram alive.

Nate opened his eyes and raised his head, sucking in a deep, shaky breath as the horrific memories scattered. The hot water continued to course over his body and he wished it could wash away the memories as easily as it had the sweat.

He’d straddled Taya’s torso in the helo, started a large bore IV and kept pressure on the wound in her neck as he pumped her vein full of the whole blood the onboard medics had brought. That entire flight he’d been vividly aware of O’Neil’s body on the other side of the hold, already zipped into a body bag.

He missed his buddy every single fucking day. Sometimes so much that his chest ached.

Taya had kept gazing up at him for most of the flight, until finally her body had given into the shock and blood loss. Ten minutes out of Bagram her fingers had slipped from his wrist, her eyelids falling closed as her body went lax on the bloodstained stretcher. For a moment he’d thought he’d lost her, but her pulse had still been palpable beneath his searching fingertips.

Somehow she’d held on through the surgery, and the long healing process—both physical and mental—that had come afterward. Nate had no idea how she’d made it through all that, because he sure as hell hadn’t.

It hadn’t been until the next day at Bagram, after his second debriefing that he’d learned the truth about who she was and what had happened to her. It seemed incredible that she was here now, in the room next to his.

Her sudden reappearance in his life had made his inner demons even more visible, yet he couldn’t stop thinking about her. No, he didn’t
want
to stop thinking about her. She was the only good thing that had come out of his time in Afghanistan. Physical proof that he hadn’t let everyone down that day. That there must be a reason that he’d lived and O’Neil hadn’t. It was the only thing saving his sanity.

The old pipes groaned as he shut off the spray. He climbed out of the shower and toweled off, then put on jeans and a fresh shirt. But he was way too twisted up to sleep.

He still didn’t understand why he’d walked away from that mission with barely a mark on him. Survivor guilt, they called it, but for Nate it was more than that. He and O’Neil had gone through Superman school together in the Air Force, and by the time they finished the pipeline to become pararescuemen, they’d been closer than brothers. Brothers who would do anything for each other, including give up their life for the other if necessary.

That’s what killed Nate the most. Given the chance, he’d have swapped places with his buddy and died that day instead.

O’Neil had been engaged to an awesome girl back home in Michigan, and they’d just had a child together. At the funeral Nate had held the baby while O’Neil’s fiancée clung to him and sobbed her heart out against his shoulder. He’d never forget that, either.

Nate started for the door with the intention of escaping outside for some fresh air, made it three steps before he stopped. Vance was downstairs right now. There was no way Nate was up to even a friendly conversation in his current state.

Against his will, his gaze slid to the door connecting his and Taya’s rooms. He imagined her curled up beneath the patchwork quilt, him twisting the knob soundlessly and crossing to her bed, then sliding in beside her and drawing her into his arms.

She touched a place inside him that no one else ever had.

He wanted to touch her so fucking badly right now it was a physical ache in the center of his chest. He wanted to hold her, feel her alive and whole in his arms, feel her curl trustingly into his body.

But he knew if he did he’d never be able to stop there. Taya wasn’t like the others. He’d been using sex as a form of self-medication, but he’d never use her like that.

Closing his eyes, he exhaled hard and turned around to face the window. He’d left one side of the curtains parted slightly when he’d gone to bed just over an hour ago. Now he crossed to the window and sat on the window seat built into the wall.

Pulling the curtain a few more inches away from the edge, he stared out at the ocean. The moon was brighter tonight. The waves were restless, their white, foamy fingers clawing at the beach each time a breaker hit the shore. It should have been peaceful.

There was no peace for him tonight.

He stiffened at the sound of a doorknob turning behind him. Looking over his shoulder, he barely made out the knob on the door between his and Taya’s room turning. His heart began to pound, hope and panic meshing in a chaotic mix. And when the door pushed open slowly and Taya stepped inside, dressed in the same clothes she’d been wearing at breakfast, he couldn’t move.

In the dimness he couldn’t see her face but he could feel the strength of her gaze on him as she stood there watching him for a long moment. Then she shut the door behind her.

His heart lurched, twin bombs of relief and dread detonating deep in his chest. His entire body tensed, the instinct to order her from the room nearly overpowering. But he couldn’t force the words out. His throat was locked up.

Tense seconds ticked past as she stood there, not saying a word, and finally he couldn’t take it anymore. Smothered by shame and the guilt he’d never been able to shake, he turned back to the window, part of him wanting to escape and part of him knowing he couldn’t run from his demons anymore.

Her soft treads sounded on the hardwood floorboards behind him. His muscles drew tighter with each step, so taut he felt like he might shatter if she so much as laid a hand on him. “You shouldn’t be here,” he finally managed to grate out. “Go back to your room.”

She didn’t leave, instead stopping behind him. Nate clenched his jaw. He could smell her cinnamon-vanilla scent now, hear her gentle breathing and braced for what would come next.

Talk to me, Nathan. Tell me what’s wrong.

Except she didn’t ask him what was wrong. She didn’t say a word.

Instead she sat behind him on the bench and leaned into him, slipping her arms around his waist. Her palms came up to rest over his thundering heart and she laid her cheek between his shoulder blades.

No hesitation, no tentative stroke of her hands. Just her soft, warm weight pressed to his back, her arms holding him, enveloping him in comfort and…acceptance. He felt it in her touch, in the way she nestled against him so naturally.

Accepting his silent struggle even if she didn’t understand it fully. Because she’d been through hell herself and had emerged on the other side a stronger person for it.

His muscles loosened in relief. But as the tension faded, the knot in his throat expanded. The prick of tears burned the backs of his eyelids.

Goddamn it, no.

He sucked in a shuddering breath and swallowed, tried to fight them back, but it was no use. They rushed to the surface and flooded his eyes in a hot torrent of grief. Nate bowed his head and squeezed his eyes shut as they began to fall, the tightness in his chest painful.

Taya stayed with him, unmoving. She didn’t murmur useless words of comfort or whisper for him not to cry. She simply held him in silence while he vented five years of pain and self-blame for the first time.

And he was so pathetically fucking grateful to her for it that he leaned his forehead against the cold glass and let the tears flow.

He didn’t know how long they stayed like that, but by the time he was done his eyes felt swollen and his throat was raw from holding back the unmanly sobs he’d trapped inside him. He was leaning against the window frame now, his forehead still on the cool glass because he was too drained to move.

Gradually he became aware of a reduction in pressure in his chest. His lungs seemed to expand more and more with each inhalation as he got his breathing back under control.

That was when he realized he was naturally responding to Taya’s respiration rate. Her palms were still flat against his chest, her cheek resting on his back. But she was drawing in slow, deliberate breaths, holding them for a second, then releasing the air in a long, steady exhalation. Almost coaching him.

Instinctively he followed, eventually matching the almost hypnotic rhythm. Within a minute he felt lighter. Warmer. Strangely at peace, at least for the time being.

Taya shifted against him, finding a more comfortable position for herself, then began to hum softly. Nate didn’t recognize the tune, but the soft sound of her voice and the gentle caress of her hands over his chest were incredibly relaxing. Long minutes passed as she hummed the song and rubbed his chest ever so slightly. His heart began to swell, his chest now aching for a different reason.

She was a fucking miracle to him, so sweet and giving. Brave, and stronger than any other woman he’d ever met, maybe even stronger than she realized.

Wiping a hand across his eyes, Nate reached up and placed his hands over hers, holding them against his heart as he sat up. Taya fell silent and eased away from him. He missed her warmth immediately.

Don’t go.

He released one of her hands to turn on the window seat and face her. The moonlight coming through the gap in the curtain illuminated her face, her smooth golden-toned skin and eyes sparkling like silver. She accepted him, and was so warm and caring it turned him inside out.

Unable to stop himself, knowing it was probably a bad idea but not caring at the moment, he gave into temptation and cupped the side of her face the way he’d been thinking about for the past five years. Taya searched his eyes, leaned into his touch as he swept his thumb across her cheek, down to the corner of her mouth. He heard her soft intake of breath, saw her pupils expand with desire.

Smothering a groan, he brought up his free hand to frame her face and slid his thumb ever so gently across her lower lip. She pressed harder into his hand and parted her lips to kiss the pad of his thumb, and he swore he could feel himself drowning in her eyes.

“Why did you cover O’Neil like that, after the missile hit?” he asked, his voice sounding rough as sandpaper. He’d always wondered what had motivated her to do it.

She stilled and lifted her face slightly. “He was wounded.”

“So were you.”

A slight frown wrinkled her forehead as she considered it. “I don’t know, I just saw how badly he was hurt and knew he wasn’t moving so I tried to keep anything else from hitting him. I didn’t think about it, I just reacted.”

Nate shook his head in awe. “Do you even know how brave that was? How selfless?” She’d literally covered O’Neil’s body with her own, despite bleeding from a serious wound and facing the threat of more incoming fire.

Her lashes swept down as she lowered her gaze. “It was reflex. You guys had come there to save us. I wanted to help him, so we could get out. I wanted to live.”

God, she was breaking his heart and didn’t even realize it. “I think part of me fell for you right there and then,” he said. That image of her had been permanently seared into his mind, along with the way she’d stared up at him while he’d held his hand to her neck.

Taya’s gaze flashed up to meet his, surprise in those silvery-gray depths. “You did?”

Nate nodded, stroked his thumb along her cheek.
I’m still falling.
“I’ve thought about you so many times over the years, wondered how you were.”

A soft, almost shy smile spread across her face. “Glad I wasn’t the only one.” Her hands came up to frame his face in return, her thumbs sweeping away the traces of the tears on his cheekbones. And Nate was done for. He was done lying to himself, trying to pretend his feelings for her weren’t real, or that they’d go away.

The truth was, they were only going to get stronger.

Tilting her face up to his, he lowered his head and kissed her.

Heat punched through him at the tiny sound of need she made and the hungry way she pressed her lips to his. His fingers traced over the sides of her face, moved down to follow the line of her jaw as he kissed the corner of her mouth. Sipping, tasting with a gentle flick of his tongue. Taya hummed in approval and parted her lips for him, tilting her head to get closer.