At first, her answer was a leap of brows to match his. The expression exploded into a gasp once he grabbed hold of her ass and squeezed.
Holy God. He was immediately enthralled. So much so, he repeated the brutality with twice the force.
Goddamn. Her second cry was sexier than the first. When she finished it by chomping hard on her bottom lip, he had to clench his buttocks to prevent his pre-come from erupting into the lagoon’s waters.
Shit. Shit. Oh, fucking shit.
Thank her damn Creator, the woman finally decided to comply with his command.
“What happened?” she grated, her breath brushing his mouth like airborne honey. “Between you and Evrest? What did he say, Brickham? What did he tell you?”
By the time she finished, the words were wobbly with tears.
It took closing his eyes for long moments to fend off their stabs down to his heart. “Nothing I didn’t know already, Pixie.”
He braced himself to receive some new ravines in his skull, courtesy of her fingernails. What he got was a thousand times more agonizing.
Her face washing into a total blank.
Her hands splashing limply to her sides.
Her back etched beneath her soaked shirt as she turned away from him.
“Jayd.”
Nothing answered but the waters around him, smacking against each other like a bowl of goddamned tears. But even the metaphor felt wrong. Undeserved. He didn’t get to have this moroseness. Not when he’d pretty much brought it on himself.
“Pixie!”
But something inside him didn’t listen. The same part that already bellowed like a butchered animal, miserable and incomplete, with more of its flanks sawed off every time she took another step away.
Why did it feel like this?
Why hadn’t it felt like this when he’d walked out of the commissary earlier? Hadn’t his spine been just as stiff, his mind been just as firm about how everything had to be now between them? Nothing had changed about that. Any of it.
“Jayd! Goddammit.”
Oh, yeah. This was really knowing better, yeah? Screeching like a peacock as his hen declared his plumage unsatisfactory. Fuming like a mongoose who craved her vicious bite. Pouting like the douchiest Dom on the planet, unable to figure out why she wasn’t staying still like a good little submissive.
Because she’d never be that.
She’d always dance on the border between fiery and frustrating. Willing but questioning.
Always, always questioning…
Nothing he needed.
Everything her country needed.
A princess for their new age. A woman to set an example for so many others.
A female he could never call his.
A woman who affirmed exactly that as she kept walking, toward the opposite shore of the lagoon. Once there, she hoisted herself up and out of the water but stayed up on all fours.
Christ on high.
If this was her idea of rubbing it in about what he was giving up, she was sure as hell succeeding.
But as soon as her head dropped between her hunched shoulders, he saw things differently.
She wasn’t out to one-up him.
The woman was back on dry land but clearly struggled to keep herself from drowning.
“I…cannot do it anymore, Brickham. I…cannot even try.”
But she was going under anyway.
Fighting a tide of desperation, aided by an undertow of exhaustion in a night full of too much anxiety. Brick saw it all, through every strained striation of her neck and back, and hated himself for it. With every muscle in his body and synapse in his head, he longed for the chance to follow her onto that shore, grab her by the hand, and give her everything she wanted.
Except what she really wanted.
An escape from her life. A light to guide her to—what? Adventure? Romance? Sexy times abroad with the hot American guy? A simple path out of her tunnel?
Shit.
He didn’t know how to get out of his own tunnel. And the parts about light and adventure? Last time he checked, that only happened to warriors named Wilson and Rogers who carried shields with stars, or tap-dancing sailors from forties musicals. Too bad he hadn’t known it years ago, when he’d tried to be that unlikely success story.
Tried. And failed.
And because of that failure—because of the mirage in his mind of being SOCOM’s odds-defying Little Engine That Could—a woman had died.
A woman so much like the one before him now.
A human who gave to the world straight from her heart and deserved all of the same in return.
A person who didn’t need a guy like him moving in on her, exactly like he couldn’t control himself from doing now.
What the hell was he doing now?
Drifting nearer to her side of the water instead of attempting to swim the hell out of here? Helping himself to another push from the tide in order to lurch up to the ledge himself? Murmuring her name as a guttural plea while crawling up behind her—and then over her?
What the living crap?
No, no, no, no!
But every chamber of his mind resounded with the opposite. Every voice in his senses screamed like a different demon of the unholy possession she had over him. The unignorable bond. The connection he couldn’t refuse, as long as he could reach her. Touch her. Flatten his chest along her back and form his lips against her neck…
“Do. Not.” The words reverberated up her throat before forming a tangible bubble of fury around them.
“Can’t. Stop,” he finished with a hiss as the heat at the center of his body softened the fabric encasing the center of hers. “Can’t…be away from you.”
“Brickham.” It was a cry and a breath together, a plea like none other she’d ever given him. “Please.”
“Can’t. I’m sorry, Pixie. I can’t…”
The appeal in his own rasp was just as strident now. Not far behind was a stronger jolt of his self-loathing. You’re not that guy, damn it.
“I’m sorry, sweetheart. I’m so sorry. I just…can’t…”
Help myself.
Because apparently, he was that guy. The pussy-whipped clown who had no idea where his cock was leading. The stricken fool now consumed by the female beneath him. She wasn’t even trying. But damn it, what she was doing. Her smell, musky and potent. Her sounds, airy and inebriating. Her movements, small yet intense.
Stroking against him even more.
Tying him to her even tighter…
But not close enough.
As he reached around, finding one damp nipple and then the other, Jayd set another couple of cries loose on the air. Again, they echoed a thousand times—revealing the high pitch of arousal beneath her snarling anger.
“I’m sorry,” Brick mumbled into her neck again. “I’m so sorry.”
“Liar,” she bit out.
“Guilty.” He dug his teeth into the bottom of her ear. Another whimper from her. Heavy gasps that shoved her erect nipples back against his fingers.
“I hate you.”
“I need you.”
“Brickham. Please. Oh…please…” Her syllables slurred together, a cocktail of carnality that infused his blood better than any drug. But was it her rage still doing the talking? Or something else that boiled through her blood? It made her breathe harder. Had her fully trembling now.
And him too.
“Brickham. Damn it! Oh…ah!”