I contemplate my answer. Do I tell him or not? If I do, I risk the chance of him opening his mouth to Jade, letting her know he knows. Or worse, telling someone of rank that could ruin my career and hers. If I don't, he'll go after her. He's a man like me, who goes after what he wants, and we both know he wants her for more than a quick fuck. She's the only one who is blind and can't see it.
She sees him as her friend. A friend whom, thank god, I stopped before they fucked. Before he used that fuck to get under her skin. The difference between Harris and I is, I went after what I wanted the first chance I got. Where he's had years to tell her how he's felt about her. Years he wasted. He fucked up.
This woman lying in my arms, sleeping on my shoulder, is right where she is meant to be. With me. I'm going to have to fight tooth and nail to make her see it. I may have fought hard on every mission I've been on, every deployment I went to and I know damn well she'll be worth the fight.
There is nothing I will fight harder for than her. I need her as much as she needs me. And I'll be damned if a man who isn't man enough to tell a woman how he feels about her will stand in my way.
"You want the truth, Harris? Here's the truth. She's mine." I growl the words through a whisper, hoping she doesn't wake up. He's somewhat shocked, but his expression is angrier than anything.
"It's funny how she doesn't seem to acknowledge that herself." He leans closer, making sure I hear him. "She's not something that I'll walk away from, and she's sure as fuck not someone I'll let get into something that's going to hurt her. Let me ask you, Commander, why exactly was Jade's back full of bloody scrapes and scratches?" I look toward the stewardess coming down the middle aisle, not wanting to get into it with him. Why can't he just understand that I'm not fucking around here?
"What Jade and I do is none of your fucking business."
"That's where you're dead fucking wrong. If she gets hurt, I feel obligated to find justice in who wronged her. If you're some fucked-up asshole who gets off on making people bleed, you just need to walk the fuck away from her. Consider it saving your own life."
"That's not how it is." I look down to her sleeping peacefully on my shoulder. Christ. I really don't give a shit what his opinion of me is. It's her I care about. Her opinion matters. She has to know I want more than sex with her. I've told her this.
"Look, I have nothing but respect for you as a leader and a soldier, but Jade is not an area I'll settle on. She deserves happiness. If you're what causes that, then you'll have my full support, but if I see one fucking tear in her eye that you caused … . Be prepared to meet me for your day of reckoning."
"I can work with that." Because the last thing I want to see is another tear escape her gorgeous eyes.
"And don't fucking claim her like a piece of property. She's a human being, a strong one at that, who can make her own decisions. And until she tells me she's taken, I'll be right beside her, just being me."
I want to like the man who went to battle with me to take down one of the most notorious terrorists of all time, but this guy is choosing to go to war with me now.
"Harris, don't kid yourself, you don't stand a chance in a war with me. I'll ruin you. I'll make you disappear into the depths of hell on a fucking mission you'd rather die than finish."
"And I'll climb out of that hell to come find you if you so much as put another fucking scratch on her porcelain body." We may disagree on who should hold her at night, but we agree on Jade's safety. I want her happy too, and I will do my best to make sure she recovers from the nightmares she's bound to have." I swallow hard and take in the words he's saying. If she comes with me, I'll do everything in my power to make sure she's not hurt.
"I can respect that," I say truthfully.
"Good. I'm glad we could see eye to eye." He sits back finally, looking straight ahead at his monitor, and stuffs those earbuds in his ears. Keep them there, asshole; and you will stay the hell away from her.
CHAPTER NINE
JADE
The jolt of the plane landing wakes me up. I'm incredibly warm and definitely not sleeping on a soft pillow. No, what I'm lying on is hard, but damn, I'm right where a part of me wants to be though. His smell gives him away. He's all man. Rough, rugged, and tough man that's easy to feel safe near. When I open my eyes, I see one of my legs is curled up underneath me, my inured arm is sprawled across his chest, and my head is lying on his shoulder. God, he feels good with his arm wrapped around me, caging me in tight to his body. I go to move, my body aching to stretch. I'm pulled tighter into him. My mind wonders how I went from falling asleep on Harris's shoulder to Kaleb's.
"Hey, sleepyhead." His voice is raspy. He must've fallen asleep too.
"Hey." I jerk out of his hold, realizing what I've done. My eyes dart to Harris, who is sleeping. I hope he missed just how sprawled across Kaleb I was. I roll my neck around and stretch my legs out the best I can, trying to regain feeling in my limbs from this long flight.
"Those must be some killer pain pills. You were out and you snore." They must be. I still wonder how I went from Harris to him. Kaleb chuckles as he stretches his arms over his head, those tattoos pulling taut when his muscles flex in his upper arms. Right now, I don't care how I shifted my body in my sleep. He's a distraction. One I'm not sure if I want to eat off of, or choke on.
Shit. I would love to finally get a close-up of every one of those tattoos. I wonder if he'll ever tell me the meaning behind them. And don't even let me forget about those damn abs. His thin t-shirt doesn't leave a damn thing to the imagination, not that my mind will let me forget them. They're hard, defined, and bulging through his t-shirt, and I can still feel the ripple on my fingertips from when I was sprawled across him like a desperate magnet.
In spite of sleeping for the most part of the flight, I'm still exhausted. All I want to do is go home, take a long, hot shower and sleep for days. Then wake up and figure out what in the hell I'm going to do with my time off. I need a distraction, anything to help me keep my troubled mind off of that boy.
"He's right, you do snore. Loud." My head swings around to Harris.
"What the fuck ever. Like the two of you don't." I roll my eyes at him.
"I will the minute I hit my bed, that's for damn sure." JJ leans forward, stretching. He looks worse than I feel, which says a lot, because I feel like shit.
"Won't we all." Harris looks at me, then to Kaleb. The way he glares at Kaleb has a red flag instantly waving in my face. Something happened while I was sleeping, I can feel it. The tension between these two has hardened. Damn them. I'm not in the mood for whatever kind of bullshit these two have going on between them, and if Kaleb said anything about what happened between the two of us, he'll wish to god I didn't save his ass, because I will kill him myself. Even though it will be a long time before I even think about having sex with another man, there could never be anything between the two of us. We're entirely different.
I'm not a prude, that's blatantly obvious by the way I let him fuck me in every hole he could, but we aren't even on the same page when it comes to sex. The cheeks of my ass clench together when I think of the way he roughly took what he wanted, his demanding ways making me submit to him. God, I'd be lying if I didn't love every minute of it. The way he touched me, fucked me like he could never get enough.
I need to get the hell away from him and have some me time. I could hit the clubs with my girlfriend Mallory. Anything to make me forget him. It's been way too long since I've done something for myself, but when the Army is your life and you've done nothing but train for the past few years to set goals to fulfill your dreams, going out is the last thing on your mind. I haven't had time to myself in I don't know how long.
"Let's get out of here." Kaleb extends his hand out to me as soon as the airplane comes to a stop. He helps me stand, and I stretch more, holding my sore arm tight against me. The pain has faltered some, leaving me with a slight discomfort, but it's nothing I can't handle. The pain pills will help. I drop his hand the minute I step out into the aisle, making him frown.
"Just go," my cranky ass tells him. I watch him and chastise my stupid hormones the entire way off the plane, all the way down the hallway. Stupid woman. Why did you taste the forbidden? He's ruined you for a long time.
"You're riding with me." He grabs my hand again like we're a damn couple as we walk through the airport after saying goodbye to JJ and Harris.