Running Fire

by Lindsay McKenna

  “Hard day?” she asked, drinking.

  Kell tried to ignore her tipping her head back, exposing her slender neck. Groaning inwardly, he felt his erection stir. There wasn’t anything that wasn’t graceful or beautiful about Leah to him. He was completely under her spell even though she had no clue how much he cared for her, wanted her. And maybe, Kell thought, drinking his own bottle of water, it was best that way. At least he wasn’t seen as a threat to her like Grant was.

  He’d had all day and half the night to think about Clutch’s sister, Tracy, and to realize Leah had the very same actions and reactions as she’d had after being raped. Though unable to prove it, but with his gut screaming at him, Kell now knew that the “abuse” was most likely spousal rape. Though maybe Grant had beat the shit out of her, instead. Or worse, both. His gaze moved to the bump on Leah’s nose. It was a bad break, and it had never been properly fixed. Had Grant hit her? Rage flared in him every time Kell thought about it.

  And tonight, he’d found Leah sleeping in the fetal position. It was a position of protection a rape survivor often curled up in when asleep. Tracy had for years after her rape. Only with Kevin in her life had she eventually stopped sleeping like that.

  Kell ached for Leah. He wanted to help her, but he’d done a damn bad job of doing it. She’d just about gone catatonic on him last night. The crash, the shock of her friends dying in it and now Grant haunting her from the past, it had just been too much for Leah to cope with. Hell, it would be for anyone. The fact she looked normal tonight was a testament to her inner strength and amazing resilience.

  “What do you think Khogani’s doing?” Leah asked, capping the bottle. She rested against the wall, filling her eyes with his hard, rugged-looking face, knowing how gentle his hands had been on her. Even now, Leah yearned for Kell’s touch. She had been dreaming of him holding her just before she woke up.

  Wiping his mouth, he shrugged. “No clue. Just have to wait and watch. He has twenty more men, so it looks like he’s calling in favors or, more than likely, throwing cash around, buying more horse soldiers.”

  “He’s an opium drug lord, he should have plenty of cash on hand.”

  Snorting softly, Kell nodded. “You up to me changing that dressing of yours? It’s time.”

  Her heart leaped. “Sure. Where do you want me to sit?”

  He rose. “Stay where you are. I’ll get my ruck.”

  She watched him walk away; that lithe grace and yet that sense of protection he wrapped around her. Leah knew Kell could be a warrior in a heartbeat. She’d seen it yesterday morning. Why did she want his touch when she’d wanted no man touching her since Hayden?

  He returned with the medical items and knelt down next to her. As Kell’s fingers grazed her arm, positioning it against his thighs, Leah felt her lower body contract. It was a feeling like a gnawing of an animal deep within her wanting out, wanting freedom. She closed her eyes, relaxing and absorbing his quiet nearness. Sponging in his gentle ministrations.

  “I’m sorry I melted down yesterday,” Leah said softly, keeping her eyes closed. She didn’t want to see Kell judging her, to see what he really thought about her abnormal behavior. His fingers moved against her flesh with knowing ease, removing the dressing.

  “It was my fault,” Kell muttered, holding her lower arm, looking at it beneath the light. The stitches were holding well and her skin was seamed and a bit red, indicating scar tissue was building around the area.

  Leah frowned, moved her head to the left, looking at him. “No, it wasn’t.” She saw him lift his chin, his gray eyes flat and unreadable. “It was me.”

  “I triggered it with a really badly timed question,” he admitted. Kell struggled. Why the hell was Leah shouldering the blame? He was the one who had initiated the questions about abuse. Had Grant beat her down that far? Made her think the reason he hit or raped her was that it was her fault to begin with? That she deserved any type of punishment he decided to mete out to her?

  Kell didn’t want to get into that discussion tonight because he was too damned exhausted. He wanted to shove some food into himself and then get some desperately needed sleep.

  She watched Kell quickly add antiseptic with his gloved finger across the healing cut. Just his tender care fed her breached soul. Did Kell know how much he was helping her? “I don’t remember much from last night. Did you sleep with me? Did I scream out during the night?”

  His mouth pulled in at one corner as he finished placing a clean, waterproof dressing on. “I didn’t try holding you last night,” Kell admitted, finishing taping both ends of the dressing. “I lay close enough so that you’d know I was there, but that was all.” He met her calm gaze, excruciatingly aware of her vulnerability. “And no, you didn’t have a nightmare last night. Or—” he tossed the gloves into his ruck “—if you did, you didn’t scream out.”

  Relieved, Leah whispered, “Good.” She lifted her hand from his thighs. “Thanks. It’s feeling better every day.”

  “It should.” He looked at her head. “How about your head injury? Headaches?”

  “Less headache today,” Leah said, giving him a half smile, touching the stitched area beneath her hair. “You’re a healer, Kell.”

  He wished. Unhappy with how he’d pushed Leah over the edge last night, he gathered up the medical items and put them in his ruck. Getting up, Kell asked, “Have you eaten yet?”

  Nodding, she opened the water bottle. “Yes, earlier.”

  “I’m going to get something, then,” he told her, walking toward the other cave. Kell honestly didn’t know how Leah was keeping herself together. He’d always known women were a hell of a lot stronger than men. He saw it in his mother, who was the center and hub of their family. It was in their DNA.

  Grabbing an MRE, he moved back to the other cave. Always alert, Kell keyed his hearing. The Taliban could still discover them here. He never took these caves as a completely safe place. Ever.

  Sitting down opposite Leah, he crossed his legs and opened the MRE, a foot away from where she sat. “I talked to Master Chief Axton late today,” he said.

  “Giving him your daily report?”

  “Yes.” Kell tried to brace himself internally for what he was going to tell her next. He had no idea how Leah would react. Would it be another nail in her mental coffin like Grant was? Hell, he didn’t know, but he had to tell her, anyway. Kell held her green, shadowed gaze. “Your father is asking to speak directly with you,” he said. “He wants to make sure you’re all right.” He saw her eyes go wide with surprise. And then, she frowned. The feeling around Leah was like a small earthquake of surprise followed by happiness. But he didn’t see it in her eyes. Just a blank look. “Are you all right with that?” Kell demanded, his voice deepening because he wasn’t going to force her into talking to him if she didn’t want to. She’d damn well been forced into enough things by men in her life.

  “Seriously? My father asked to talk to me?” Leah’s world tilted a little. She saw Kell scowling, felt his fierce protectiveness wrapping around her as never before.

  “Yes. I told my master chief I’d leave it up to you. I was ordered to tell you, but you weren’t ordered to do it.”

  Taking a breath, she murmured, “I’ll talk to him.”

  “Do you want to?”

  Leah gave him a slight shrug. “I rarely speak to my father when I’m not in a jam like this, so yes, I guess if he cares enough to see how I am, I’ll talk with him.”

  Wincing internally, Kell had made several decisions after that sat phone confab with Ax. The master chief warned him that Major Grant was blaming Leah for the crash. That they needed to retrieve the black box from the bird to prove or disprove the Army major’s charge.

  Kell was angry and upset about the false charge. He had seen Leah egress out of the copilot’s window. He talked to the master chief about getting the black box recording from the crash site, via SEAL stealth, to prove who was on the radio. Because if Leah had been on the radio just befor
e they landed, it proved conclusively that she hadn’t been flying the helo. If Larsen was at the controls, that would also be on the recording.

  Ax gave him permission to try to retrieve the black box. He warned Kell that Major Grant was gunning for Leah, for whatever reason. He wanted to destroy Leah and Kell could feel it. That was why he’d gone back to the crash site under the cover of darkness last night, searched and finally dug into the ruptured soil around where the helo had burned and located the black box.

  He’d also found five scattered bone fragments from what he thought might belong to the two crewmen or the pilot’s femur, as well as two half-melted dog tags from the hapless crew. He’d had to be very careful, exposed in the valley, no place to hide if Taliban came by.

  Kell had relentlessly scoured the wreckage. Only when he was walking around the front of the destroyed helo had he seen the partially visible hole in the ground. Kneeling down, he’d dug into it farther. And there was the badly scratched black box. He had no idea if the information on it was intact or destroyed.

  Tomorrow, he’d let Ax know what he’d found. But right now, he wasn’t going to tell Leah anything about it, or about Grant’s desire to implicate her in the crash.

  “What are your dreams, Kell?”

  The question completely shook him out of his train of thought. Kell stopped eating and stared over at her. There was no guile in Leah’s eyes. Just curiosity, maybe? People didn’t ask questions like that out of the blue. There were reasons behind them and he knew it. Leah’s expression was pensive.

  “Well,” he drawled, “when I was a skinny little kid, I used to lie out in one of the dairy-cow fields and look up at the clouds and imagine shapes in them. I always saw myself as a knight on a white horse, slaying all those dragons in the clouds.” He grinned a little.

  “So even then, you were a dragon slayer?”

  “I guess so. My pa loved the classics, especially about King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table. He used to come in every night when we were little kids and read us a chapter from a book about knights, dragons and damsels in distress.”

  Warmth flooded Leah’s chest as he gave her a boyish look. Kell stole her heart with his soft Southern accent, the kindness in his eyes when he held her gaze. She wanted to know everything about this man. He was so different from Hayden. Kell invited her trust. When he looked at her with those gray eyes of his, Leah felt herself melting, wanting and becoming sexually awakened. Even needy. As her gaze fell to his well-shaped mouth, that boyish grin spread across it, she felt an ache building in her. A starving, gnawing sensation that always leaped to life whenever she was around him.

  “Did your dreams change after you grew up?”

  Finishing the MRE, Kell put it aside and wiped his mouth with the napkin. “No. I always saw myself protecting weaker kids. In grade school one of my best friends, Bobby, got picked on by some bullies. I took them on.” He gave a dark chuckle. “Came home that afternoon with my best white shirt torn, which upset my ma plenty. And when she saw the blood on the shirt and around my nose, she figured it out. She asked me what happened and I told her. That night, Pa found out about it and he told me I’d done the right thing, that there were people who were weaker in our world, and sometimes, they needed protecting.”

  “So you didn’t get chewed out for the torn shirt?”

  “Nah. My pa is a very strong person, believes in right and wrong. Doesn’t put up with lies or deceit. We boys learned early on to be truthful even if it killed us.” Kell smiled fondly, holding her warm gaze. “The SEALs are the same way. At least in my platoon. No one lies to anyone else. We lay our cards out on the table. It’s just a better way to live and survive.”

  Lies. Yes, Leah knew about lies. Hayden had been the consummate liar and she hadn’t even fully realize it until after the divorce. She’d been so young, so gullible. Maybe the word was ignorant. “And what are your dreams today?”

  Kell fell silent, thinking his way through the softly asked question. “Find the right woman, settle down and have some kids.”

  “You’d leave your SEAL family?” she asked.

  Opening his hands, Kell said, “I’ve seen a lot, done a lot, Leah. I’ve seen the belly of the beast since I was eighteen. I’m twenty-nine now. And I’m tired of always seeing the dark side of humanity. Loving a good woman, loving the child she carries in her belly, loving the little tyke when she or he is born. Those are the good things in life.”

  “That sounds like a wonderful dream,” she whispered, touched by his honesty and sincerity. Leah didn’t think Kell could ever lie. He had always been open with her. She could feel his vulnerability, and something else, but she couldn’t define it.

  “What are your dreams?” he asked.

  “Mine?” Leah gave a ladylike snort. “I stopped dreaming when I was eight years old. I really miss dreaming because I used to have beautiful, colorful, happy dreams before that.”

  Kell remained silent, weighing the emotion in her voice. “Well, maybe things will work out here and you’ll start dreaming again,” he told her. “We aren’t meant to go through life without dreams.” Because if a person didn’t have dreams, it meant they were technically dead inside, no hope, no vision, no wanting to reach for that brass ring life gave everyone a chance to grab.

  Leah studied his shadowed face in the silence. She felt no anxiety, no worry when Kell was here. Why? She always felt safe with him around. The first and only man to make her feel like that. Getting up her courage, she whispered, “Would you sleep by me tonight?” She saw his mouth soften.

  “Anything you want,” he promised, unwinding and picking up the empty MRE. “I’m going to wash up and then I’ll join you.”

  “Yes,” she said, “I’d like that.”

  *

  BY THE TIME Kell joined Leah, she was asleep. This time, she had turned on her left side, her back to him. Turning off the penlight, he brought the blanket up over them. He didn’t make the mistake of holding her. There were six inches separating them. Kell could feel her body heat, the fragrance of her. Inhaling it, he felt his entire body begin to relax. And very quickly, he slid off into an abyss, physically exhausted from the ten-mile run he’d had to undertake to get to that crash site and retrieve that black box.

  His last thought was of the sweet fragrance of Leah’s hair, so close to his face. Did she have any idea of the woman she was? He wanted to be the man to show her just how sensual, how beautiful, she really was.

  Leah felt darkness eating at the edges of her sleep. She felt it was Hayden, like the predator he was, stalking her, watching her, wanting to kill her. A whimper escaped her as she turned to run away from him. She couldn’t see him, but she sensed him. She could feel him wanting sex from her.

  Kell felt Leah turn over, seeking shelter. His arms automatically curved around her shoulders as she snuggled closer. Dragging himself out of badly needed sleep, he heard a whimper escape her, her face burrowing into his neck, her left arm moving over his rib cage, drawing herself up against him, as if he were a shield that she could use to protect herself from the nightmare she was captured within.

  His whole body flooded with heat as she curved into his long, lanky body. Groaning, Kell knew she wasn’t looking for sex even if his body was reading her signals wrong. Silky strands of her hair fell across his jaw and chin. He could feel her breasts against his chest, rising and falling sharply. She was caught in a nightmare.

  Forcing himself to full wakefulness, Kell felt her quiver, her breathing going erratic. “Shh, Sugar, it’s okay,” he rasped, sliding his hand across her hair, stroking her shoulders and back. “Nothing’s going to hurt you. It’s all right…just hold on to me and you’ll be okay…” Leah clung to him, as if he were her last hope on this planet. It tore at Kell. She was breathing irregularly, almost hyperventilating. Dammit!

  He’d give anything to be inside her head, to find out what was scaring her out of her mind. Wrapping his arms tightly around Leah, he hauled her against
him, tangling his legs among her own, just trying to protect her from whatever was chasing her.

  He kept moving his hand slowly up and down her back, feeling how damp the T-shirt she wore had become. It reminded him so much of the flashbacks he’d get from time to time. How real they were. He’d be completely transported to the violent event, the present no longer existing, utterly imprisoned in the past, just as she now was.

  Kell whispered her name against her ear, kissing her temple, pressing small kisses across her wrinkled brow. Leah whimpered again. Feeling helpless, he knew he couldn’t have her scream. Not now. Not tonight with the Taliban so close. He rolled Leah onto her back, trying to shake her awake. Maybe that would pull her out of it. But she didn’t awaken.

  She’s trapped in the event.

  Kell’s heart was pounding with urgent concern for Leah, wanting her safe but being unable to give her any safety at all because the monster was in her mind, from her past. And then, Kell followed his heart, which had never led him wrong. He curved his mouth against her lips, inhaling a cry that tore out of her. He felt Leah jerk awake in the middle of the scream, felt her suddenly freeze against him. He moved his mouth gently against hers, feeling the softness of her lips, the cry fading away in her throat. His nostrils flared, dragging in her scent.

  As he moved his mouth more deeply, rocking her lips farther open, tasting her, he felt her suddenly relax, felt her arms slowly ease around his shoulders. She felt so damn good beneath him, her lips responding shyly to his.

  Kell felt her heartbeat change, strengthen, and then she melted into his arms as he moved his mouth teasingly across hers. Now, her breathing became shallow, her fingers digging into his shoulders, telling him she liked what he was doing. Had she ever really been kissed? Because Kell could feel the subtle shift of her entire body beneath his, felt her awakening, wanting, asking for more without quite knowing how. Somewhere in his deteriorating mind, he knew she was innocent…