The Guardian (A Wounded Warrior Novel)

by Anna del Mar

  I stared at the miracle and blinked. He wore a prosthetic! His foot had been blown off, but not here, not today. It all went to prove that nothing was ever as it seemed. Never in a million years would I have guessed Matthias Hawking was an amputee.

  I had to put my surprise on hold because a barrage of bullets found us again. I took cover behind the trees, aimed the AK-47, and shot a few rounds into the edge of the clearing. The poachers neared. Kumbuyo’s deep voice commanded them forward. I should’ve shot the fucker when I had the chance. Okay, well, I hadn’t had the chance, but now I really wished I had.

  Matthias took cover next to me, firing his M4. “We need to get the hell out of here.”

  “Go ahead,” I said, between pulls of the trigger. “I’ll cover you.”

  “I meant you.”

  “Seriously?” I glanced at him. “Are we gonna do this now?”

  He shot me a scathing glare. “Don’t argue with me.”

  “Fine.”

  I left him firing his weapon and retreated at a crouch. No point in having an argument in the middle of a firefight. I crawled over to the spot where my camera and my backpack lay, retrieved my stuff at a run, and fell back another twenty yards. I found cover in a ravine, went on my knees, braced my weapon and fired a steady stream of bullets, laying a cover for Matthias until he slid next to me like a batter stealing home base.

  “Where the hell did you learn to shoot like that?” he rasped between breaths.

  “The Corps taught me.” I fired some more.

  “What the hell?” His eyes widened. “You were in the Marines?”

  “It’s the twenty-first century,” I said between shots. “They take girls, you know.”

  Matthias narrowed an eye behind his scope and loosed several shots. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Not big on chitchat and you didn’t ask. And by the way”—I checked my magazine— “I’m out.”

  He handed me his Sig Sauer, which he must have retrieved from the poachers after the fight. “Do me a favor.”

  “What?” I said, checking the chamber.

  “Button your shirt, will you?” He tapped on the trigger, releasing a spray of bullets into the night. “Can’t shoot straight with distractions like yours.”

  Distractions? It took me a moment to realize what he was talking about. I looked down at myself and realized that, in the heat of the firefight, the girls peeked in and out from under the shirt. I buttoned my shirt quickly. Then I aimed the Sig Sauer and, careful not to waste ammunition, began to pick my targets among the moving shadows in the bush.

  I wasn’t sure how much time passed as we held back the poachers, but they’d taken casualties and I was almost out of bullets again when Matthias cocked his head.

  “Hold your fire.”

  I stopped shooting and turned my ear into the wind. Shots rang in the distance. Within seconds, Matthias’s radio came alive and he began to bark directions into his handheld. His rangers had finally arrived.

  The poachers stopped firing and retreated in a rush. When I next looked, Pot Belly and his crony had disappeared from the clearing. Crap. I wished I’d had time to secure those SOBs before all hell broke loose. Moments later, a group of rangers stepped out from the bush and took off in pursuit.

  “Wait here,” Matthias ordered, assigning two of his men to me with a jerk of his chin.

  “You don’t need to waste your rangers on me,” I said. “I can take care of myself.”

  “Stay put,” he spat in a tone that allowed for no discussion. “And I mean, park your ass right here, marine, and don’t move. Did you get that?”

  “Aye, aye, sir.” I gave him a mock salute.

  He rolled his eyes in a way that said I was a lost cause and then trotted after his men with confidence that denied injury or disability. How had he lost his foot in the first place?

  The last traces of adrenaline drained out of my veins. Fatigue clobbered me all at once along with a case of the shakes, a common response—combat aftershocks. When was the last time I’d been in a firefight? A while, given that I’d been out of the Marine Corps for four years now. But it was like my true dad liked to say, once a marine, always a marine.

  I rubbed my limbs and walked off the shakes. It took a few moments before I stopped shivering. Flanked by my silent guardians, I aproached the scene of the crime. My throat tightened. The poor giraffe looked like Jack the Ripper had gotten a hold of it.

  I steadied my shaky hands and began to take pictures. Click, click, click. They were gruesome, disgusting pictures, but they needed to be taken. When I was done, I backed out of the crime scene and sat down by a cluster of acacias. The scratch on my arm burned and my stomach growled. When was the last time I’d eaten anything?

  I reviewed my shots on the camera screen. The pictures looked murky. It was hard to tell if I had anything worthwhile. I wiped the dirt off my camera and stowed it in my backpack. With my body cam destroyed, I really hoped I’d gotten some good still shots.

  Matthias returned with some of his rangers in tow, barking out orders and giving instructions to gather the evidence. He wanted everything that could possibly help in identifying Kumbuyo’s poachers, down to the last bullet casings. I guessed he was also chief detective around here. I wondered if, as game warden, there was anything he didn’t do out here.

  He slung his gun over his back and went about his work with curt efficiency. I had a new respect for him after tonight, and there were a lot of things about him that I really liked, his passion to protect the wildlife, his defiance in the face of danger, and his sense of duty—not to mention his fine ass, his eyes, his well-formed lips… I groaned quietly. I was doing it again. Stick to your assignment, Jade.

  Matthias sauntered over, relieved my guards from duty with a silent nod, and crouched down next to me. His gaze scanned me from head to toe, as if making sure I was all there. He handed me a water bottle.

  “Thanks.” I swigged a great big gulp and handed it back. “Anything?”

  He shook his head, swished his mouth with a gulp, and then spat out the balance. It was a ritual I’d seen often after a firefight, warriors rinsing the blood off, washing off the flavor of death.

  “The bastards got a head start on us.” Matthias wiped his mouth on his shoulder. “I barely have enough men to keep an eye on things, let alone to mount a safe pursuit. Besides, I have no jurisdiction beyond Pacha Ziwa.”

  “That sucks.”

  “No shit,” he said, keeping his gaze on his men. “Story of my life out here.”

  I narrowed my eyes on him. “How on earth did you get this fine job?”

  He shrugged. “Can’t a guy be a ranger?”

  “You’re the game warden,” I said. “In Africa, where locals are perfectly able to do the job and much preferred over foreigners. You’re good. Oh, yeah, you’re top-of-the-line, shit-hot stuff. But you’ve got to have some awesome connections to get to be top dog around here.”

  “I guess I got lucky, if you can call it that. Hang on.” He put his radio to his ear and listened. “You’re getting picked up in twenty. Zeke will take you back to the station.”

  “You?”

  “I’ve got work to do here.” He took another swig at the bottle. “I’ve got a case to build, if we can ever take those fuckers to court somewhere.”

  What were the odds of that? Less than eleven percent of poaching crimes ever went to court in Africa, and most of them were thrown out due to lack of proof and/or corruption.

  He sat down next to me and puffed out a long breath. “Man, that shit you pulled today? It could’ve gotten you hurt real bad, right before you got killed.”

  “I had to get us out.”

  His glare burned like a flamethrower. “I was going to get us out.” He pulled a Ka-Bar knife out of his boot. The blade gleamed under the moonlight. “You didn’t need to do any of that crazy shit.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said. “I had no clue you carried that sweet girl in your boot. Was I suppo
sed to read your mind?”

  “I told you I had a plan.”

  “No, you told me I wasn’t included in your plan.”

  “Jade…” He scrubbed his face with his hand. “We’ve got some serious shit going down here. You needed to let me do my job.”

  “I was trying to buy us time,” I said. “And I wasn’t going to let that thug get to the herds. I just wasn’t.”

  He puffed out a long exhale. “Me neither.”

  For once, we agreed on something.

  “Did you go to Iraq?” he asked out of the blue.

  “Afghanistan,” I said. “You?”

  “I specialize in hellholes,” he said. “So if it was a hellhole, I was there. Rank?”

  “I was a captain when I got out,” I said. “You?”

  “Lieutenant commander,” he said in a tone that tacitly reminded me he was the higher ranking officer between us. “So did you ever follow orders or is insubordination a recent development?”

  I let out a snort of a laugh. Truth be told, I’d never been stellar at shut up and do it, but I wasn’t going to fess up to that. “I’m a civilian now and so are you,” I reminded him with a grin. “That makes you a very bossy human at the moment. Let me guess. Academy grad, and after that, special ops. You’re a SEAL.”

  His eyes studied me closely. “That’s a pretty specific guess.”

  “Your weapons. Your style. I’ve worked with guys like you. I can spot your type miles out, plus you just admitted to specializing in hellholes.”

  “You’re a pretty sharp cookie.” A smile pulled at the corner of his lips. “What did you do after you went to officer training?”

  “I had a communications and media degree, so naturally, they put me in charge of the morgue.”

  “Ouch.” He grimaced. “Brutal.”

  “Yeah, there’s only so much of that one can take.” My stomach clenched with dread whenever I recalled that duty station. “I requested a transfer. Went over to community relations. The SEALs were looking for volunteers. Since you all couldn’t deal with Afghan females directly, me and a few others got to hang out with the guys when you went out on missions.”

  “Wait,” he said, eyes wide, eyebrows high on his forehead. “Were you one of the original lionesses?”

  I smiled at the nickname. “I was a CST, yes—a Cultural Support Team member—an enabler for Special Forces, including the SEALs.”

  He whistled aloud. “So you’ve seen action and you’ve had some heavy-duty missions.”

  “I liked working with special ops,” I said. “I’d rather be out there running with the living than at the morgue, stuck with the dead.”

  “Excellent point.” He inclined his head in approval. “I’m curious. Why did you get out?”

  “You train, you go out there with special ops, you do your job, and then they want to park your ass at a desk. Desk job? No thanks, not for me.”

  “Me neither.” His lips curved down in an expression that told me he knew what I meant. They’d probably offered him a desk job when he lost his foot. He and I? We were similar types.

  It was my turn to ask questions. “Did you lose your foot in the Middle East?”

  He nodded but didn’t elaborate. Foot and leg were by far the most common injuries of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but Matthias? He wasn’t going to talk about it.

  “Why won’t you tell the people you work for about your injury?”

  He flashed me a surly look.

  I guessed. “You don’t want pity from anyone.”

  He pointed a straight finger at me. “And that includes you.”

  “Whoa, back off buddy,” I said. “You’re not getting any of that from me. I haven’t lost a limb myself, but my agent, my best girl, Hannah? She lost her arm and leg in Afghanistan. I took care of her and we had to get through that shit together. These days, she’s married to a whole man—that’s what she calls her hubby—and has two kids, which is way more complicated than war. She runs freaking marathons on her time off.”

  “She sounds badass.”

  “She is badass,” I said. “So yeah, no, unless you’ve got to change the diapers of a toddler and a newborn at the same time, no pity from me. Honestly? After seeing you in action tonight, I doubt anybody would bother questioning your capabilities. You’ve got skills, man. Any idiot could see that.”

  “Maybe,” he said, but he grew quiet, another sign that he was as private as they came.

  I let it go. I liked my privacy too, and I’d learned that people treated you differently when you were missing a piece, whether it was a chunk of your heart or your body. They looked at you as if you were a defective product. Matthias wouldn’t have any of that.

  My stomach growled. Matthias groped through his cargos, velcroing and unvelcroing his pockets until he found a chocolate bar. He handed it over to me. I split it and gave him half. He needed a sugar kick as much as I did, if not more.

  I broke off a chocolate square, popped it in my mouth, and savored the sweetness on my tongue. I leaned my head back and closed my eyes. “Mmm.”

  “Jesus.”

  I opened my eyes and found him staring at me. “What?”

  “You make a piece of chocolate sound like a mortal sin.”

  I grinned. “Gluttony?”

  “More like lust.”

  The look he gave traveled through my body like a long, lingering caress, curling several key parts of me, including my toes. He reached out and wiped the dirt off my cheek with his thumb. His touch delivered a 911. His body called to mine in urgent tones that had me leaning toward him. His strong, defined lips commanded me to come closer, closer still, tempting, promising, daring me. How the hell did he do that?

  His eyes met mine, blunt and full of intensity. God help me. Intensity was a quality that I found irresistible in men. His irises were bright with orange flecks that fueled the flames in me. And those thick, long eyelashes? They framed the spark in his eyes perfectly. The heat between us flared. A fine tingle sizzled on my skin. Oh, my God. He felt the attraction too.

  All I could think about was that in less than a second our lips were going to meet in order to realize the enormous need to kiss him burning inside of me. On day one, I was going to break my rules, because even though my mental alarms were blaring, even though I knew this was a bad idea, I couldn’t resist the enormous pull that drove me to him. And then my lips landed on his mouth, or did his lips land on mine? Didn’t know, didn’t care. The world vanished and I got lost in the perfect pleasure of kissing the game warden.

  5

  Matthias

  The moment our lips met my heart struck my breastbone with a sonic boom. Every molecule in me came online. It was as if my body had been on an extended blackout and suddenly a generator had kicked in, a massive voltage surge. A switch flipped inside of me and I went from off to on, from zero to a hundred.

  The kiss marked the difference between before and now, activating my will to live beyond existence’s basic functions. I was no longer breathing for the sake of surviving, but rather getting high on the heady scent of Jade, gorging on her exotic flavors, getting a fix on a woman who had proven she had all the makings of a dangerously addictive fix…for me.

  Jesus Christ. This wasn’t happening, couldn’t be happening, not here, not now, not with this woman. This was wrong, for the mission, for me. And yet this was also right, so right I couldn’t stop it, so pure and exquisite that it demolished the logic that usually ruled me, bulldozed right over my carefully constructed defenses and blew my shields into splinters.

  I seized on her lips. I drank her up as if I had a right to flirt with pleasure and happiness. Good, so good. She tasted like chocolate and salted caramel, wholesome and true.

  Her mouth responded to me, eager, passionate. Our tongues entwined in a mutual exploration that unleashed the storm within, joy and hope I thought I’d never feel again, and lust, a hunger so raw and violent that it roared through my veins and threatened to destroy not only my
control, but my life as I knew it.

  Images flashed in my mind, visual effects of the emotions jarring me. Jade, cool under fire. Solid. Reliable. True. Jade, calm, smart and composed as she confronted Kumbuyo. She hadn’t lost it once, not even when that son of a bitch went at her. She was as brave as they came, bold, daring, fearless. The memory of her standing half-naked under the moonlight had me throbbing with need. She was a woman built for a warrior, a warrior worth fighting for; a goddess who’d stepped out of some ancient African legend to right my fucked-up world.

  But I couldn’t endanger my mission and I couldn’t betray all that had been entrusted to me. I was trained for duty, which meant I had to pull out of this catastrophic trajectory, now.

  It was hard, maybe even impossible. I was trapped in the feel of her mouth. I forced myself to think rationally. This was Jade Romo for Christ’s sake, the woman who had the potential to out me and destroy everything I’d built, including the reserve. While she was here, she was also my responsibility. Another thought hit me, one that killed the joy in me. She’d been seconds away from being raped and moments away from being killed. If something had happened to her under my watch, I’d never forgive myself.

  How I ripped my mouth away from hers, I’ll never know. It took all my willpower. My senses reeled. When her eyelids lifted, her eyes glittered with questions and her hand hovered over her mouth, as if her lips stung as much as mine did.

  “No, negative, we’re not doing this,” I muttered, mostly to myself. “We can’t. We won’t.”

  Her spectacular green eyes gleamed with surprise, confusion, and a million questions. I almost lost it. The vulnerability that dimmed her gaze kicked me in the gut. Then the hurt transformed into anger and her stare steeled with bravery that assaulted my senses.

  I gritted my teeth and fought the reflex to kiss her all over again, to surrender my will to the call of her lips, to gorge on her until I’d tasted every single corner of her body. I chalked up my strong reaction to my long deployment in Africa. Plus all that adrenaline. Some soldiers got turned on after a fight. It wasn’t usually the case with me. Until Jade Romo.