Yes, she was beginning to think of his place as home, a safe haven. She only hoped it would remain one. How long could she hide from Lyle and her father?
* * *
Damián watched Dad clench his fist after he'd told him what had happened to bring Savi to his doorstep. Well, he'd shared as much as he'd been able to determine about what had happened. Getting Savi to talk about it was like pulling teeth from an shark. She'd much rather bite his head off than answer him.
"Bastard ought to be castrated."
"Yeah, well, stand in line for those honors. Listen, part of what I need to talk with you about has to do with these dos cabrones. I just got called back to the Harley shop part-time starting on Tuesday. I'm going to need some help keeping Savi and Marisol safe while I'm at work."
"You know we'll all do what it takes—Grant, Marc, me. Family comes first. Is she going to let us do our jobs, though? She looked like she was afraid I was going to tear her limb from limb when I first approached her on the porch."
Damián looked down at his hands. "Yeah, well, getting her to trust anyone—especially men—could be a problem. But until I know those shitheads have been neutralized, I want my girls under twenty-four/seven watch."
"I can contact a few retired Corps recon Marines and see what they can dig up in California." Damián knew Dad wouldn't bring any active-duty Marines into this operation. They'd have to answer to the Uniform Code of Military Justice, if they got caught, a system that would come down on them a helluva lot harder than the civil courts would on those no longer serving actively.
Dad continued. "Grant's the best when it comes to communications, or I wouldn't have had her up on that goddamned roof in Fallujah."
Dad had never forgiven himself for putting Grant through combat and its aftermath. Women were to be protected, not placed in combat, even if they had been trained as Marines. Dad and the chain of command had thought the worst of the hostilities were over at the time, but that hadn't been the case.
"I've already talked with Grant a bit. She's on board for whatever we need. I've also asked her to obtain some new identities and documents for Savi and Marisol, so they can start a new life here."
"Good thinking. We can pull in some discreet bodyguards. Besides us, I'm sure Victor would take a shift, if he can get away from Patti. Some days, he has his hands full with her. There are some others, too. Make sure Savi knows she and Marisol are under constant guard, so they won't think they're being followed."
Damián nodded. Dad had more connections than Damián would have been able to muster, evidenced by the retired and former military men who had attended his wedding. Knowing Dad could enlist help in putting up a safe perimeter around Savi and Marisol helped Damián relax for the first time in weeks. Even so, how the hell was he going to concentrate on work while he was away from them?
He felt out of control, and didn't like that feeling one bit.
"Aw, fuck. That reminds me." Dad opened the center drawer of his desk and pulled out something wrapped in pink tissue paper and tiny bows. "What with the wedding and honeymoon and all, this completely slipped my mind." He slid the package across the desk.
"For me?" Pink?
"Yeah. I stopped by to see Mrs. Miller and the kids in Illinois."
The blood pounded in his ears. He looked at the package as if it were…a grenade.
A roaring in his ears merged with high-pitched screams. He realized the screams were his own.
“Madre de Dios! No! Sergeant, don’t you fucking die!”
He knew Sergeant Miller was gone, but kept yelling at him as if he could bring him back by the sheer volume of his voice. He looked up and watched as Grant and Wilson, on either side of him, lifted the body off him. Damián turned his head away, watching in horrific fascination as Sergeant’s blood ran down the rooftop toward Damián’s feet, where it mingled with another pool of blood. The one forming around his own mangled foot.
"Damián. You're in Dad's office in Denver. You're safe now, son."
Damián drew several ragged breaths as he fought to regain control. He felt the pressure of Dad's hand on his shoulder rock solid and comforting.
"I'm okay." SNAFU—Situation Normal, All Fucked Up. Pretty much described his normal to a T.
"I didn't mean to spring that on you like that, but Tracy, Sergeant's oldest girl—God, she's sixteen now, if you can believe that. Anyway, she asked me to give this to the Marine who was with her dad when he…"
"Go on. Open it."
Damián stared at the pink package, trying to control the shaking in his fingertips, then reached over and picked it up. He tore away the paper to reveal a long, coiled piece of thin leather.
"She said there's an inscription."
Damián picked up the brown leather and stretched it out to about a foot long. He ran it between his hands a few times, warming it up. Stalling. He wasn't sure he wanted to see what the daughter of the Marine he was responsible for letting die would have to say to him.
"You can read it when you're alone, if you want."
No, he was going to do this in here, in case he went off the deep end or something. He turned the leather over and saw the marks where a message had been forever burned into the leather. Much like the image of Sergeant Miller on Damián's chest, bleeding out.
For Daddy. For Damián. Semper Fi.
The words swam in front of his eyes and he blinked. A tear splashed onto the leather before he realized he wasn't alone. Damn. He'd already messed that up, too.
Dad squeezed his shoulder and cleared his throat, too. "No one blames you, son, but you."
He returned to his chair, taking a moment with his back turned before he faced Damián and sat down. Seeing the sheen of tears in the man's eyes about undid him. Dad took the deaths of the three Marines who had died under his command very seriously.
"I think you're supposed to wear it on your wrist."
Damián took the leather and wrapped it around several times, entwining the strip of leather the way he and Sergeant's lives would forever be entwined.
Something else that had been bothering him came to the fore after that episode. He never shied away from asking Dad anything, but was a little nervous about this.
Dad reached over to pick up the tissue paper and bows and tossed them in the trash bin. "I think it's time to change the subject. Think it's about time you married her mama?"
Dad wasn't one to pull any punches. Damián sure had thought about it, but Savi didn't seem to want to have anything to do with him, other than as her protector. "Jury's still out on that one."
Dad leaned forward. "That kid needs a full-time dad."
Tell me about it. "Yeah, well, tell her mama that."
"Happy to, but she might go to ground again, if I issue a direct order like that."
"She's not going anywhere for a while." Not if Damián had anything to say about it. "I'll work on her, but she's got more baggage than this latest incident. She just needs time."
Dad waited. Normally Damián wouldn't reveal someone's personal story without permission, but Dad needed to know there would be some issues with triggers for Savi.
"When I met her over eight years ago, she was some kind of masochist-for-hire for some pretty sadistic bastards. They worked her over pretty good."
"What the fuck's a masochist-for-hire?"
"Hell, I don't know. Never got the full story, but the guy she was handled by seemed to be pimping her out to businessmen, setting her up with the clients, then disappearing and letting total strangers restrain and torture her." Images of Savannah tied to the bed in the hotel flashed across his mind's eye. "Money must have changed hands, although I don't think Savi saw any of it. Maybe she was a sex slave." Damián ran his hand through his hair. He wished he'd known how much deeper her problems were then. He'd never have left her. "I don't know that she's dealt with any of that trauma yet."
"What do you plan to do about it?"
Love her. Yeah, as if he was what she needed. "I don't have
any intention of letting her know what I've become."
Dad scrutinized him, and Damián sat back to put some space between them.
"Just what is it you've become?"
Why Dad needed him to state the obvious was beyond him. "A cripple. A sadist. A freak—and not the good kind, either."
"First off, I'm going to pretend I didn't hear you call yourself a cripple. That's bullshit. If I ever hear you say it again, you'll have one whip-wielding former master sergeant wearing out your ass with a singletail." He paused. "You know that's not an implement I'm particularly well-trained on, either."
Even so, Damián had no doubt the man would follow through on that promise—with predictable results. Fine. He'd just keep those thoughts to himself.
"As for being a sadist, you know you've never hurt anyone who didn't want or need the pain you've dished out. I've never seen a Dom with more self-control than you have."
Yeah, for Damián, sadomasochism had always been about control—regaining what had been taken away from him in Fallujah.
"Now, you want to tell me what you mean by a bad freak?"
Damián stared down at his biker boots and let the silence drag out between them. He'd never told anyone this before. He had no secrets from Dad; it just hadn't come up in the conversation before.
"What are you afraid of, son?"
Hurting her. He wasn't sure how to bring it into this conversation.
"Spill it."
Damián raised his head and looked across the desk. "I haven't slept with anyone since…" he looked down at his boot… "…before deployment." The blood pounded in his ears and he almost didn't hear Dad's response.
"That's a fucking long time for someone to go without fucking, but nothing wrong with a little discernment."
Okay, the man had missed the point, whether intentionally or not, Damián didn't know. Dad probably just wanted him to speak the words out loud. Take away some of their power, as Damián had tried to get Savi to do. Might as well spill it, because Dad wouldn't take silence for an answer.
"I didn't say I haven't had sex. I just haven't let a woman I've been…intimate with…sleep with me. For two reasons."
"Number one being?"
"My stump."
Damián didn't think he'd ever have caught Adam Montague off guard, but the look on his face clearly said he hadn't expected to hear that.
"Wait. Let me get this straight. I know you only play publicly with Patti, to help Victor out, but I've seen you go upstairs with some of the willing bottoms before."
Damián had topped fellow veteran Victor's slave many times in the great room, giving her what she needed, a level of pain Victor couldn't deliver. But there'd never been anything sexual between them.
"I only had sex with bottoms I knew there would never be anything more than a superficial connection. There haven't been that many."
"Sounds familiar." Damián looked up at dad, but he glanced away without elaborating.
Savi wouldn't meet his criteria, because they were way beyond superficial already. They'd formed a bond years ago that he'd never been able to break free from, even when he never expected to see her again. Now he'd discovered they shared a daughter. How did you keep something like that on the superficial level?
Dad found his voice after a few moments. "I thought you said Savi's been living in your apartment for the past couple weeks. How the hell hasn't she seen you without the prosthesis?"
Now it was Damián's turn to avoid eye contact. "I haven't taken it off around her."
Dad nearly came out of the chair again as he leaned forward. "What the fuck do you mean you haven't taken it off? It's not like you live in Marc's monstrosity of a house and can fumble around without seeing each other for a fucking week. You have to be living on top of each other in your place. Are you bucking to get the rest of your damned leg amputated when it gets infected?"
Dad was right, as usual. Damián was asking for trouble by not giving the stump a longer break every day than his half-hour or less of bathroom time. He continued to avoid looking directly at Dad, but tried to reassure him. "I had my own room in Aspen and had a chance to rest the stump a bit more there. And I check for signs of any problems a couple times a day."
When Dad grew silent again, Damián ventured a glance his way. The scowl on his face spoke volumes, but he added a few choice words, anyway. "Pride comes before the fall."
Who said anything about pride? He just didn't want to gross her out looking at a man who'd had his foot blown off. "Look, I don't think she's looking to have any kind of serious relationship."
"You share a kid together. Sounds fucking serious to me."
"That was one day at the beach eight years ago with two lost, horny teenagers."
"Bullshit, and you know it. That girl's been on your mind a lot, at least since rehab. I heard you scream out the name Savannah a few times during nightmares."
Dad had been the one to wake him from dozens of night terrors and bad dreams during that first year he'd lived here, and off and on for a couple more years before Damián had moved to his own place. The man had saved his life. Damián had been so fucking close to putting in place a suicide plan when Dad had come into that hospital room in San Diego the day before Damián had been discharged.
"Look, I plan to be a part of Marisol's life now that I know she exists, but that doesn't mean her mama wants to have any kind of relationship—kink or vanilla."
"Sounds like you to need to work on your communication skills." Dad looked a little sheepish and glanced away again.
Damián ran his hand through his hair, pulling some strands loose from his ponytail. "Look, I can barely touch her without setting off a dozen triggers."
"Give her time. Sounds like she's been to hell and back. Now, what's Number Two?"
He could never get anything by Dad.
He took a deep breath. "I'm afraid to sleep with her."
"I thought that was Number One."
"No, not sex—sleep. What if I have a bad episode? I could hurt her if she's lying in the bed next to me."
"Take that worry off your list. When I was home with Joni, recovering from that ambush in Afghanistan, I had plenty of nightmares, but never once lashed out at her. She slept beside me every fucking night. We didn't get to sleep together that often, so I wasn't going to meet any opportunities."
The man sure had loved his first wife, but had lost her to cancer after twenty years of marriage. Damián wondered what it was like to be committed to one woman that many years.
Dad looked at him again. "Just warn her not to touch you when you're sleeping on the couch or something. That's different. Have her call out to you first and make sure you're awake before she gets too close. That's just your training as a warrior, always on guard. But if you go to bed with each other, I think your mind continues to function on some level. It knows she's supposed to be there with you."
Damián nodded.
"Speaking of being there, or not in this case, I'm going to have to steer clear of the club a while. She doesn't know about that either, and it's nothing I'm going to talk about except on a need-to-know basis. Right now, she doesn't need to know."
Dad moved in on him again, leaning forward. "Fine. But if I hear any more bullshit talk about you not being good enough for her because of kink or your foot or whatever excuse you drum up, I'll blister your butt good. She won't find anyone more honorable and worthy as a husband or a father."
"Yeah, well..." Damián looked away.
Dad stood up. "Get back out there and figure out how you're going to win her over." Damián relaxed, glad this talk was over. "Besides, I have a bride in the kitchen who hasn't been out of my sight this long since our wedding day, so I'm getting a little itchy to get my hands on her again."
Damián smiled. There was a time when Dad would have hidden out in here to avoid Karla. "I'm glad you two have each other."
"Not half as glad as I am that she'd have me, after what I put her through."
"
No, I guess you aren't the easiest man to live with."
Dad came around the desk and slapped Damián in the back of his head. "Don't be insubordinate. I still outrank you."
Damián grinned. "That you do, Dad. You always will."
"So, tell me what fatherhood's like."
Damián grinned. "Well, I'm no expert, but hearing Marisol call me Daddy the first time was just about the sweetest thing ever."
"I'll bet it was. Can't fucking imagine it—but I guess I'd better. End of June there will be a little Montague running around here. Well, not here. We're going house hunting, but will probably stay here through June or so. Grant's agreed to move in after us, and she's finishing out her lease."
"She'll take good care of the place, I know."
"Yeah, but it's not like any of us are going anywhere. This place is home."
* * *
After tucking Mari into bed later that night, Savi felt a restlessness come over her that kept her from being able to sleep. She left the bedroom, easing the door nearly shut so as not to disturb her daughter, and found Damián thumbing through a motorcycle magazine.
Keeping her voice low, she asked, "Would you like something to drink?"
"Coffee sounds good." He tossed the magazine onto the coffee table and pushed himself to his feet. "I'll get it."
"No, I can do it. But let's make decaf, or I won't get any sleep tonight." She'd probably get damned little sleep as it was.
He followed her into the kitchen. They wouldn't have to be so quiet here. Ten minutes later, they sat across from each other, each with a steaming mug. Hers had a Harley emblem on it. Memories of the ride he'd taken her on to Laguna Beach tried to edge into her consciousness, but she tamped them down. Her heart pounded as she tried to decide how to start this conversation. Might as well just start.
"I don't know how I'm going to get Mari registered for school tomorrow. I don't have her immunization records, past school records, nothing."
He set his mug down and smiled. "Don't worry. Grant got the documents we need. They were in the mailbox when we got home. She even managed to enlist Father Martine's help in getting records from the school there and had them revised to reflect your new names."
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