“Goddammit.” His utterance betrayed equal parts confusion and amusement. “What am I going to do with you?”
“I imagine whatever you feel…up to…Sir.” She swung up and over until she fully straddled him. Best and worst idea ever, since her most sensitive parts were now slotted so intimately—so perfectly—along his burgeoning length. “The monitor alarms are all off. If you go into full arrest, I’ll be right here for the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation efforts.”
She preened just a little, proud of her suggestive banter. But it was useless for wiping away the far-off scowl on Brick’s face: an expression that had been there since the end of his own growled question. It was so firmly implanted, she restrained another naughty comeback. And then fully dismounted from him.
Something in her instincts, now blaring in place of the silenced monitors, sluiced through her veins like ice.
She climbed the rest of the way off the bed.
“Well, I have provided a personal suggestion for your answer, but it seems you have your own ideas about how this conversation should be going, Sir.”
Brickham had the grace to shake his head. “Jayd? What the hell? What are you—”
“Some excellent queries,” she returned. “Perhaps you should now ask them of the man in the mirror. Maybe he can tell you what to do with me, since my very own ideas do not seem to be the right fit.”
She was grateful, however morbidly, that Brickham respected her enough not to hide how accurately her comment had landed. He floundered not for some stuttered apology either. The man was direct until it hurt, complete with his unblinking gaze and folded hands. But how did he make the pose look so forceful and alluring, while she still felt like a fidgety school marm?
“Jayd.” The supports beneath his tone were as stern as his posture. “I’m sorry, okay? This is all just…unexpected. And complicated. Really complicated.”
“Complicated.” Letting him off the hook for that last mumble was not a mercy she felt like granting. “Of course. I understand.”
And if he believed that, she would toss aside princess duties and become an actress. Gold statuette, here I come.
Oh, why did she not understand?
He had not asked to be brought here. So maybe he truly did not want to be here. Maybe he would have preferred being left behind on the tarmac at Bourget, taking his hideous chances with several battalions’ worth of the French Gendarmerie. And maybe—all right, quite possibly—he would have survived and escaped.
Which meant complicated was probably an understatement in his book.
Which meant she had to accept the truths tucked so conveniently into the corners of her mind.
One: the only reason they met at all was that the man was a contract soldier in the right place at the right time.
Two: he had been treated like a visiting nobleman at the kink club where they went hiding. The club in which he had played her body like a musician with an instrument he knew all too well.
Three: he had not had an easy upbringing, nor even a peaceful adulthood. He carried the mental scars from both. Scars that, in certain places, tore his mind away from reality.
She even wondered if this moment might become one of them—until he uttered, “No, Pixie. I don’t think you do understand.” His lips twisted. “And if you ever really did, I’d be terrified.”
Thankfully, the man was not hoarding all the grimaces in the room. The frustration in Jayd’s soul swiftly spread across her face. She unfurled it in full, letting him see every inch as she fought to construct a diplomatic reply to his noble words.
But her heart was nowhere near a benevolent bend. Not when another truth daggered its way into her conscience.
“Terrified.” As she paused, waves slammed along the beach below the palais. Funny how similar they sounded to the disappointment drowning her heart. “Well, we cannot have that happening.”
“Damn it. I’m serious, Jayd.”
“Of which I am well aware, Brickham.”
“So what’s the problem?”
She shifted her weight before nervously tapping a foot. What is the problem? Besides how he had pulled her so close, making her beg for more of his addicting touch, before shutting her down with his cryptic crisis of conscience—or whatever this was? Besides how he tried to cover for it with his overprotective puffery instead of his heartfelt truth? Truth he had already given to her, in so many beautiful ways, during their hours in Paris?
But not in every way.
She knew that already. Three nights ago, she had even accepted it. Had signed off on that clear but silent condition, just as Brickham had signed off on hers.
That while they were together, in every way fate had gifted them, they could step free of themselves. Live free of their boxes. Feel everything they craved. Be anyone they wished. She had not just given him her virginity. She had surrendered all her inhibitions and limitations. All the boundaries in which she had been stuffed her whole life by her parents, her brothers, her people.
The box he was now jamming her back into. As fast as he possibly could. She could nearly see his mental packing tape too, at the ready to box her in. On the top of the thing, he might even scrawl a hasty mental note.
Paris Princess Rescue. Clingy. Crazy. This End Up. Keep Sealed!
Well, she would save him the effort. By doing it for herself.
By taking all her hope and anticipation and turning it into packing shreds.
By ripping out her heart and nestling it in the center.
By quickly closing the box around it and sealing it with long lengths of mortification.
Emotion that she somehow managed to strain from her breeze of an answer to the bonsun.
“There is no problem, Brickham. Everything is fine. Just…fine.”
“Fine?” But he was at a full spit, causing her a mental double-take. “Jayd, damn it.”
But not enough of one to go back to square one with him. To listen to more of the puffery and shallow excuses. She was back in the box now. Could he not see that? And why was it not making him happy? It was what he wanted, right? It was what everyone wanted.
She just had to convince her soul of that now.
“Mayhap you should get some rest, Brickham.” She congratulated herself at that strong keel, as well. “The afternoon grows long, and the evening will be chilly. I should get out of this dress.”
And after that, she would burn it.
Chapter Four
“Fuck.”
It had earned the repetition on Brick’s lips. Probably a hundred more too, but he reined it in to the single spew.
“Real slick, asshole,” he grumbled to himself.
That had all gone as well as a night mission with broken goggles. Replaying it all in his head was no salve for the feeling. If anything, it made things worse.
Everything is fine, Brickham.
Oh yeah, she’d really gone there. But goddammit, he’d been the one to lead her to that path first. He could sit here and fume about that, deflecting blame to his painkillers as well as the three-day nap from which he’d just roused, but he wasn’t that brand of dickhead.
But how he had handled it was just as shitty.
Jayd hadn’t missed a whiff of the stench, either.
“Fuck.”
All right, only ninety-nine repetitions now. His frustration was worth the ration. And who was he kidding about that? He was conscious now, which meant the panic was just getting itself dolled up for this tasty feast. Every ingredient was here. A strange new setting. A room he couldn’t easily leave. A situation he didn’t have a shred of control over. A lot of miles between here and his meds. A lot of miles.