Page 86 of Damned
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Kee-rist!His arms and legs were heavy as shit. Felt like they’d turned to concrete. Kruze could breathe, just couldn’t move. Not even enough to twitch his nose or lift a finger. Voices whirled around him like fog, some deep and masculine, some professional and concise, others light and feminine, almost motherly. But only one voice fell soft and lovely into the cords of his heart, more than just into the funnels of his ears. Like calligraphy, the music it created flowed with beauty, grace, and promise.
He basked in those few rare moments of her rapt attention to him. Every atom in his body responded to her sweet clarion call to return. It was so quiet, and he so dull-witted and drugged, that Kruze doubted what he heard was real. He had to be dreaming. The voice seemed otherworldly. It must belong to the same one shining a light on him, thinning the foggy darkness around him.
Deep in his psyche, he knew. He was sure. Ardently positive. Somewhere in his past, those dulcet vibrations had etched themselves into his soul. Which was why they felt familiar and why they called to him now. Why he almost, very nearly, recognized them. Like sound waves etched into the grooves of vinyl records, they were meant for him to follow. He knew!
But he was the ruined, broken, bouncing needle. Not even a diamond-tipped needle at that. Forever searching for that heavenly song from his past, yet continually skipping over its alluring, feminine soundtrack. Forever distorting the purest notes. Forever missing the point.
If only he could keep his damned eyelids cracked open long enough to see who was calling him. But every time Kruze drifted close to the warmth of that particular, so, so familiar woman, a shadow leaned over him, and back he fell, into slumber so deep, he lost the thread of her perfect music.
Yet even in the mellow, dark place where he landed, Kruze never quit trying to get back to her. He bobbed to the surface again and again, striving for that one pure note of yearning. Earnestly fighting to regain all he’d lost.
Until, at last… crisp, cool air replaced the fog.
Kruze groaned, his body pleasantly pain-free, but still too lethargic to open his eyelids. He was barely awake, but enough to notice the much smaller, more delicate hand nestled inside his callused, work-worn palm. He squeezed it very gently, in case he’d already hurt it, then was instantly offended that he might have trapped the sweet spirit now caught in his fingers. Like a delicate butterfly, it wasn’t his to keep. He had to let it—her—go.
“You’re awake,” a soft voice murmured, squeezing his fingers back.
Thank God. He hadn’t crushed her. Hadn’t thrown this one last, perfect chance away. “You,” he whispered, at least he tried. Sounded more like ten miles of a newly graveled road. But the voice was hers. Finally, he had her. He had Bree.
“Me,” she answered, the single word a sugary confection that might melt in his hand before he got it to his tongue.
Kruze tugged his one, new lifeline up to his dry, parched lips and pressed a single kiss to her knuckles. Too weak to offer anything else, he anchored her hand to his chest. Darkness still weighed heavily on him, but he’d found what he’d been searching for.
“Stay with me, sugar,” he rasped. “Please. Don’t let me go.”
“I’m never letting you go. I’ll be here when you wake up. Go back to sleep, honey.”
“Promise?” he demanded like a petulant child.
The sweetest breath whispered over his face. A soft warm kiss fluttered over his lips. “Signed. Sealed. And delivered,” Bree breathed into his mouth.
He nodded, this dream-like adventure tiring as hell. But Bree and sleep? Yeah. He could do both of them.
*****
Bree held Kruze’s hand until, at last, his fingers went limp and his breathing evened out. Only then did she smooth her palm up the inside of his arm to his elbow. There she snuggled her thumb into the crook of that muscular arm and held on, thankful he’d finally come to enough to recognize her.
To say the last few days had been stressful was like saying elephants were big and birds could fly. Even saying she’d been stressed was a phenomenal understatement, considering the frightening plane crash they’d survived, the damage that damned screwdriver had done, and Kruze’s initial injury. Then the betrayal of that despicable Damon Vick and theeasyclimb up those basalt columns. The tips of her fingers still hurt from the tiny cuts she’d gotten from those rocks, not that she’d complain. By the time they were both out of sight in that volcanic bubble of a basalt cave, she’d been too exhausted to care about anything but Kruze. Her cuts and scrapes were nothing compared to the serious infection he’d suffered. If only she’d known then how bad it was. How sick he was.
Yet after she’d fallen asleep, he’d still climbed down and gone after Vick, then Josephus and Berfende, all to keep her safe. Bree had Kruze’s brothers to thank for tracking Kruze and saving his life. For helping him get to her in time and for ending Harvey Lantz. The stamina of her very stubborn man amazed her. It was a miracle Kruze was still alive.
With her head on his biceps, she breathed in the slightly antiseptic scent on his skin. If she had any doubt they were meant for each other before, Bree didn’t anymore. Kruze was her drug of choice, her sweetest addiction, and her one true North. As much as she’d tried, when it came down to walking away from him, she simply had no resistance. She hadn’t in France, and she didn’t now. All he had to do was look at her, and she melted into a gooey puddle. He didn’t have to talk her into anything. Heck, he didn’t have to talk at all. They were like matching salt and pepper shakers, meant to be together. They fit. Always had, always would.
As soon as he came to, she had another secret to tell him. Wouldn’t he be surprised?
Bree startled out of a deep sleep to a soft knock. Swallowing hard, she realized she’d dozed off. A handsome, older, silver-haired man peered around the door. “You must be Brianna Banks.”
“And you must be Senator Sullivan,” she replied, her hand still snug in the crook of Kruze’s arm. “Please, come in, sir. It’s a pleasure to meet the man who talked me down from the ledge I was about to jump off a few days ago.”
“Just doing my job, ma’am. What kind of a boss would I be if I didn’t take care of my guys’ womenfolk while they’re off saving the world, where and when I send them? How’s he doing? I thought he’d be raring to get out of here by now.” Sullivan pulled the other chair in the room alongside Bree and settled in. He was a handsome man, extraordinarily tall, with a silver mustache and neatly combed gray hair. Power radiated off him, or maybe it was just his silvery-gray business suit, crisply pressed white shirt, and the red tie that gave her that impression.
Bree let go of Kruze to shake the senator’s hand. “He’s had a hard time with the infection in his side, but he’s on a super drug now. He’ll be fine. Thank you for sending that specialist from Washington, DC. Dr. Lister is now on my Christmas card list for the rest of his life.”
Senator Sullivan chuckled. “Jim’s a good man, one of the best in his field. Sure has been singing Airman Jared Lock’s praises. Jim was a PJ, too. Served in the first Iraq war, then the gawddamned second.”
“I had no idea men like them existed,” Bree admitted. “I haven’t been around many soldiers, and the media tends to portray them all as psychotic killers. But the Sinclair brothers are… They’re…” She swallowed hard. There were no words good or big enough to describe all that Kruze, his brothers, and Jared did for their country, or who they were.
