by Megan Crane
“I can’t do this.” His voice was lower, harsher. And it broke her heart. “I spent my entire adult life making sure that I was without vulnerabilities. Without weaknesses. Anything less than total commitment to the job and I’m a danger to myself. To my brothers.” She could see the emotions all over his face. Emotions she knew he would deny having. “I should never have touched you. That’s on me. I knew better and I did it anyway.”
“I was there, too,” she whispered fiercely. “You can tell yourself any story you have to, I guess. But don’t tell me it wasn’t magic.”
His breath left him then, as if she’d landed a blow to the gut. Or lower still.
“I’m not the man you think I am,” he insisted after a long moment. “I’m not a man at all. You might not believe me now, but I’m doing you a favor.”
She let out another laugh, but this time it was hollow and dark. “You can’t let yourself have anything unless it’s a hair shirt, can you? You pride yourself on it. But love isn’t about pride, Griffin.”
He made a sound that seemed to be ripped from inside him, as if he’d been hurt fatally, bleeding out from within.
“You don’t love me,” he growled at her, and his grip on her shoulders tightened. “It doesn’t matter how many times you say it. It doesn’t make it true.”
“Fine,” Mariah threw at him. “Then I’ll show you.”
She surged against him, out there in the dark. She pressed her mouth to his, and they were far, far past that achingly sweet kiss that had melted her and broken her heart when he’d caught her after she’d escaped the barn.
This was heat. Fire.
Pain, and proof of the depth of her feelings for him, whether he wanted to believe it or not.
This time, they were the ones who exploded, as surely as that Mercedes had.
Their hands moved against each other in the dark as Griffin angled his head and took control.
Mariah wrapped herself around him, lifting herself up and knowing without a doubt that he would hold her when she climbed him like he was another one of the trees that rimmed the property.
He kissed her and she kissed him, scalding and impossible kisses, tasting of magic and mourning, all wrapped up in the wild, insane heat that grew and grew between them with every sweep of his mouth against hers.
One moment they were standing, and Griffin was holding her against him. The next they were on the ground, and he was pressing her down into the sweet, fragrant grass.
Mariah didn’t wait for an invitation. She pushed him until he rolled, and then she sat astride him, reaching down to the hem of the dress she’d borrowed from her sister. She pulled it up and over her head, then dropped it beside them.
He muttered a curse. His big, hard hands slid around to her back, pressing her until she arched toward him and he could take her nipple in his mouth.
It was better than she remembered. It was better than anything.
Her hands were clumsy and her mouth fell open, because she couldn’t keep all those greedy noises inside. She reached between them, struggling with his fly.
He lifted his hips and she pulled his jeans down, then lifted him free, panting as if she were running again.
She was wild with greed, pure and simple.
And for a moment, slick and hot and breathless, she caressed his hard satiny strength, like a kind of prayer.
But she wanted more. She wanted everything.
Mariah flowed over him in the dark, the stars washing over her like a benediction. She leaned forward, found his mouth with hers, and settled the core of her against the hardest part of him.
Then twisted her hips and took him deep inside her.
She exploded instantly, shaking and shuddering. And she heard him mutter yet another curse—or maybe it was a prayer—there against her mouth.
But he didn’t wait for her to come down. Instead, he started to move.
She shook and she shook, and the way he stroked in and out of her threw her from one fire deep into the next.
Mariah was sure she would die if he made her wait the way he had before. If he played those games.
But this was too intense. Too wild. Neither one of them was playing.
Griffin wrapped his arms around her, holding her as close as he possibly could, and then everything went white hot.
There was no finesse. There were no games.
Just the sheer, glorious madness of the endless fire between them.
And Mariah knew then.
She finally knew what he looked like when he was as out of control as she was, as lost and as wrecked.
Griffin pounded into her and she met him, thrust for thrust, until they were both hurtling over that edge together.
This was love. Mariah knew that with every fiber of her being.
But as they lay there together afterward, wrapped so tightly around each other that it was like they were one, she also knew that she deserved better than another fight she couldn’t win.
She was the one who disengaged, then felt around until she found her dress. She stood and pulled it on. And when she tugged her head through, he’d stood, too, and was already finished buttoning himself up.
And maybe she’d had too much of that dangerous hope in her heart. Maybe she’d imagined that this would make a difference.
But she could already see the way he went still as he faced her. The way his face changed into armor.
And all the distance he put between them without having to move away.
“I love you, Griffin,” she told him, and she didn’t care if she sounded husky. If her voice shook. Or even if she did. “It’s not going to fade away when the adrenaline wears off. But I’m not going to spend one more second of my life begging a man to love me. Wondering if I’m worthy of it. Tying myself into knots in the hopes that if I work hard enough, I’ll deserve him someday. I won’t do it.” She swallowed. “Not even for you.”
And the crack in her voice on that last word was louder than the shot he’d taken to save her.
When he spoke, he sounded as wrecked as she did, and all she could wonder was what it cost him. “I never asked you to do anything for me.”
“Believe me, I know.” She felt as if he’d taken one of those stones he was made out of and heaved it onto her chest. Then strapped it to her, leaving her to figure out how to breathe. “That’s part of the problem.”
And Mariah had done too many hard things to count recently.
But the hardest thing, the absolute hardest thing she had ever done in her life, was make herself turn her back on Griffin when she could still feel him all over her like a brand.
And then walk away.
Leaving him there in the dark, because one way or another—with him or alone—she was heading for the light.
Twenty-one
“I’m fine,” Griffin growled at Templeton.
For the nine hundredth time. That morning.
It had been two months since that night in the Georgia dirt, surrounded by the woods and the war inside him he knew he’d lost. Two months since Mariah had left him with the taste of her on his mouth and nothing but emptiness inside.
A man could get used to the emptiness. He kept telling himself he could. Any day now. All he had to do was commit to it.
He’d spent years swept clean of emotion. He’d turned himself into a machine years ago, then had gone even deeper into it after he’d left Arizona. He didn’t know why it was taking so long to get there this time.
Rory had come back to work and workouts after the first month, still pissed some loser had gotten the drop on him, but even more coldly determined to prove himself. Earning Jonas’s high opinion of him, as far as everyone else was concerned.
Everything and everyone was fine.
“News flash, brother,” Templeton barked at him, half a shout and half that bo
oming laughter of his. “You’re not fine.”
They were out on a partner sandbag carry after an early morning session of hand-to-hand combat and grappling that had left everyone bruised and amped up. Griffin and Templeton were sharing the weight of a two-hundred-pound sandbag along a nasty mile-long loop down by the water. Every time one of them dropped the bag, they had to bang out ten burpees before they could continue.
“The workout sucks,” Griffin bit out while the bag crushed his chest. “I don’t have to like it, but I will survive it, and yeah, that makes me perfectly fine.”
Templeton made no attempt to hide his skepticism, making Griffin wish he’d hit him harder during the hand-to-hand drills. “If you say so.”
The carry went on forever, because a measly little mile was never longer than when a man was staggering beneath extra weight for the length of it.
Worse than the physical discomfort, which Griffin was good at ignoring, was the time and space the mile gave him to note all the ways he was a failure to himself.
He couldn’t find his breath. He couldn’t lose himself in the workout the way he liked to. And as much as he pretended otherwise when anyone asked, he couldn’t seem to build back up all those compartments inside him.
He compensated for it by reinforcing the boundaries around him instead, hoping that if he armored up, it would all work out the same. That he could fake it until he made it.
But so far, all it had done was make everything worse.
After the workout, he went back to his cabin, showered, and found himself staring off into space, the way he often did these days.
It was that weakness, he knew. It was taking him over.
Griffin couldn’t tell anymore if there was anything left in him but that weakness.
He was late to the morning briefing, and he knew that he was in for it when no one said a word. They all just exchanged glances, like he’d accidentally stumbled into a lunchroom filled with teenage girls to discover they’d all been sitting around talking about him. Terrific.
But no one approached him to get in his face about anything, not even after the meeting.
Griffin told himself he wasn’t the least bit let down. That he didn’t want to pick a fight with anyone.
He pushed his way out onto the lodge’s wide porch, pulling in a deep, settling breath—like that might work this time, when it hadn’t in two months. He paused when he saw he wasn’t alone in the crisp morning.
Everly was out there, crooning sweet nothings to Isaac’s dog, Horatio, as the moody cloud cover surrendered to the sunshine out over the far mountains. And Horatio was smarter than most humans, so he didn’t bother to turn around and look at Griffin. He leaned in to Everly’s hands instead, his tongue lolling out.
She was the one who straightened and smiled. And didn’t stop when he stared back at her.
“Come on, Griffin,” she said, mildly enough. “We’re friends, right? You can smile back at me.”
“I don’t . . .” He stopped. He considered the fact that this woman made Blue happy. He’d never really understood that before, and he didn’t want to think too much about it now, but it made him feel a kind of grudging gratitude. “I don’t dislike you. Particularly.”
Her smile widened. “High praise indeed.”
At her feet, half of his butt on those strange bright slippers she called shoes, Horatio straightened. Then whined slightly.
That was how Griffin knew that Isaac had appeared behind him. Without making a sound.
“Since we’re friends,” Everly said, in her warm, irreverent way—maybe it was just friendliness, now that he considered it—“I wanted to give you advance warning. The way friends do.”
“What do I need to be warned about?” Griffin asked coolly.
But he already knew.
Because there was only one topic he could imagine Blue’s woman would think she needed to consult him about. Much less warn him about.
He tried to feel the emptiness. He reached for it, wanting to clear out all of the things that made him distressingly human before they were the end of him, but all he could find were memories of hot, sweet nights and a drawl like honey and fire.
“I have a friend coming into town,” Everly said. And it was the fact that her voice was so kind that bothered him the most. He wasn’t some child who needed news broken to him gently. “I guess I’m neck-deep in friends these days. Anyway, she’s visiting. She’ll be here awhile. A week. I thought you should know.”
He didn’t insult them both by pretending to wonder who was visiting.
“I don’t know why you think I need that information.”
Everly opened her hands wide. “Maybe you don’t. My bad.”
Griffin didn’t watch her as she walked away, headed back toward the cabin she shared with Blue. He was too busy waiting for whatever sucker punch was coming at him from behind, as surely as night followed day, even in the light-soaked Alaskan summer. Eventually.
“You can relax, brother,” Isaac said in that low, easy way that only made wise men more tense.
Griffin wheeled around. “But I can’t relax, can I? Not with all of you clucking around me like a bunch of hens. I’m fine.”
“Clearly.”
“If you doubt that, fire me.”
He hadn’t known he’d meant to say that. But once he did, it was out there. Done.
And thrown down between them like a challenge.
When Isaac wasn’t the kind of man a sane person challenged. Ever.
But Griffin didn’t back down.
Isaac stared at him, a hint of his legendary temper—the one he kept under wraps for obvious reasons, such as everyone else’s safety—in his gray eyes.
But then he shook his head slowly.
“You’re bound and determined to cut off your nose to spite your face. What’s that going to get you?”
“There seems to be some concern that my performance is slipping.” Griffin sounded like the machine he’d always tried so hard to become. Stiff. Distant. But he didn’t feel clear inside. At all. “You want that rectified, say the word. I’ll be gone within the hour.”
Again, that flash of temper, and a whine from Horatio to underscore it, in case Griffin might have missed the danger he was in.
“First of all, dumbass, no one is concerned about your performance.” This time when Isaac shook his head, it looked a lot like he did it to keep from reaching out with his fists. “I don’t know what the word brother means to you, but I know what it means to me. And to everyone else. When we say family, we mean it.”
“Now you’re defining words for me?”
“You’re not right, Griffin,” Isaac threw at him, almost as vicious as his punch. “I have no doubt that you can and do perform in the field at one hundred percent capacity. If I had any doubt about that, you wouldn’t set foot in the field, and you know it. What I’m worried about is off the field.”
“I am—”
“If you tell me you’re fine one more time, I’ll kick your ass myself.”
It wasn’t an empty threat.
They glared at each other. Griffin could feel his blood kicking through him, the way he did much too often these days. Wild. Ungovernable.
Out of control. Still.
“You? Or you and your entire personal army?” Griffin demanded, because it turned out that maybe he really did have a death wish. “Maybe look at yourself, brother. I’m not the one tangled up into some crazy knot over a woman. For years.”
He expected Isaac to deck him. Maybe he wanted it to happen.
Instead, the other man laughed. “Aren’t you?”
“No,” Griffin growled. “I get that you and everyone else wants me to feel something. But I don’t. I’m not built that way.”
Isaac was quiet. The moment stretched out. Isaac reached down to scratch Hora
tio’s ears and took his time doing it. But when he looked up again, his gray eyes were intense.
“You can’t carry all the weight all the time, Griffin. Sometimes you have to put it down.”
“You don’t—”
“Don’t tell me I don’t understand.”
And maybe if he’d said that with any heat, Griffin could have used it. He could have gotten angrier, meaner. Tried even harder to blow this up so he could fight it with his fists. But Isaac had been so quiet. Calm, even. With entirely too much understanding in his gray gaze.
“There’s a reason I decided a long time ago that it was much, much better to be a machine than a man,” Griffin heard himself say, as if from far away. He shifted his gaze to the water. The mountains. What was left of the morning fog. Anything but Isaac or the conversation they were having. “Not only for my sake. For everyone around me, too.”
“Funny thing about that,” Isaac said in that same quiet, devastating way. “You can call yourself a machine all you want. But no matter what you do, no matter how good you are at cutting yourself off or pretending you don’t feel anything, you can’t get away from the fact that you’re a man. Flesh and blood, brother. Whether you like it or not.”
And he didn’t stick around to hammer in that point any further, which only meant Griffin was left to do it himself.
He threw himself into work instead. There were mission parameters to plot out, and current active situations to run support on. There were always logistical issues that needed sorting, and the Alaska Force arsenal to practice with and master.
Griffin reminded himself—repeatedly, and ferociously—that he loved his life.
This was the life he had built, the one that gave no quarter to anyone else and didn’t require him to put on his civilian costume, even for a day.
He was a man of routine. Of competence, accuracy, and focus in all things.
He had never needed or wanted anything else.
Griffin had spent the two months since he left Georgia—since Mariah had walked away from him in the soft darkness, leaving him there without a single glance back—reveling in his life. Glorying in it, in fact.