Chapter 873
His jaw was a hard line of granite, his grey eyes a turbulent storm she couldn’t begin to decipher.
He spoke first, his voice a low, rough rasp. “Are you hurt?”
It was a question of concern, but to her, in that moment, it sounded like the height of hypocrisy.
A bitter, humorless laugh escaped her lips. “Wouldn’t you know, Colonel?” she spat, the title a deliberate insult. “You had a front-row seat through your telescope.”
His pupils contracted, a flicker of shock in the grey depths. He hadn’t expected her to know.
Her words, sharp and precise, had found their mark. Seeing his reaction only fueled her pain.
“You watched,” she accused, her voice trembling with a rage she could no longer contain. “You watched her humiliate me, you watched her try to starve me, you watched her try to injure me. And you did nothing.”
“Then you send your man to clean up the mess, and you have me dragged in here like a prisoner, and you have the audacity to ask if I’m hurt?”
She slammed her fists against his unmoving chest. “Why? Why would you do that? Was it entertaining for you? Watching your old flame torture your new wife?”
The jealous accusation hung in the air between them, raw and ugly. It struck him with the force of a physical blow.
“She’s not—” he started, trying to deny it, to explain.
“Don’t!” she screamed, cutting him off. The dam of her control finally broke, and hot, angry tears welled in her eyes.
“You’re a liar, Jarrod Romero!”
The words were torn from her throat, a raw cry of absolute betrayal.
“You lied to me. You hid her from me. You let me walk into this blind, like a fool, while she played her games.”
A single tear escaped, tracing a hot path down her cheek. It felt like acid on her skin. That one tear was his undoing.
The soldier, the commander, the man who faced down death without flinching, was completely and utterly disarmed by the sight of her crying. All his plans, his strategies, his cold, hard logic, it all shattered into a million pieces.
A look of raw panic crossed his face. He pulled back slightly, the pressure of his body easing. He raised his splinted left hand, his thumb moving with clumsy, uncertain tenderness to wipe the tear from her cheek.
“Don’t cry,” he rasped, his voice thick with a desperation he didn’t know he possessed.
She turned her head sharply, flinching away from his touch as if it were fire.
Her rejection sent another visible shockwave through him. He was lost. He had no protocol for this, no training. He couldn’t explain the mission, the secrets, the brutal necessity of his plan. The words wouldn’t come.
So he did the only thing his instincts screamed at him to do.
He lowered his head and crushed his mouth to hers, a kiss that was not gentle or tender, but a desperate, punishing act of possession, an attempt to silence her pain, and his own, with raw, physical force.