Page 39 of Brave
Puppy wasn’t running to reach his car, but hers was a quick stride and a desperate eye and he’d be damned if that didn’t look like a bruise darkening her cheek from the corner of her left eye all the way to her jawline.
The woman behind her wasn’t running either. Long blonde hair gathered into a ponytail that bounced off her back as she chased after Puppy, it didn’t take more than a glance to recognize who Pony was. Tall and damn near skeletal, her longer legs still closed the distance fast between them. Before he could get out of the car, she grabbed Puppy by the dark hair and yanked her over backwards on the grass.
Leaving the car door open, Carlson ran to intervene. “Hey!”
He grabbed Pony’s arm, but for someone as starved as she was, she was remarkably strong.
“You’re ruining everything!” she screamed, yanking Puppy by the hair as if trying to drag her back into the house. “You can’t go! You can’t!”
“Let her go!” He forcibly pried Pony’s clawing hands open, putting himself between the two long enough for Puppy to break away.
Never once in his life had he ever physically struck a woman. Not outside of his role as a dominant and never when he was as angry as he was right now. But the temptation was there, booming up through his chest, pulsing molten in his veins and hot in his temples.
“Knock it off!” he told her, standing his ground protectively between her and Puppy, who he knew had made it to his car when he heard the passenger door slam shut and lock.
He pointed at Pony, a warning finger that was only one thin thread of will away from snapping into full-fledged assault. He bit it back, but only because looking into this woman’s eyes was just like looking into Puppy’s that night at Black Light when it had taken all her courage just to say hello.
He didn’t know what Ethen had done, but he could see Pony’s desperation, her franticness, the tears she couldn’t quite hold back. She was a woman so close to the edge of losing it all, she wasn’t even thinking anymore. She was just reacting, and he knew that feeling. He’d seen it so many times both on and off the battlefield—on the faces of fellow soldiers as they came to grips with losing yet another friend; on the faces of the civilians overseas, most of them just trying to survive in their own war-torn country.
Pony was just another of Ethen’s casualties. Carlson felt for her, he did. But if she put her hands on his submissive again, he wasn’t at all confident in his ability to hold back his own knee-jerk response and knock her on her ass.
“My submissive is not yours to hurt,” he told her, easing back a step. “Do not lay your hands on her again.”
For the first time, Pony snapped her desperate stare off Puppy, huddled in his car, and locked on him instead. Anger flared, burying the desperation behind it. “She is not your submissive!” Targeting Puppy again, she tried to go around him, but he grabbed her arm just long enough to block her way again. “Your disloyalty is going to be punished! You can’t go!” Anger breaking, her desperation resurged and her voice broke. “Puppy, please don’t go!”
That painfilled warble wasn’t enough to counter the bruise on Puppy’s face. It was manipulation, plain and simple, and it immediately brought out the drill sergeant in him.
“I said enough,” he bellowed, deep and sharp.
Pony jumped back, her attention locked solely on him now. Despair crumpled, melting back into fury. Her mouth flattened. What loveliness was left in her too thin, too pale, too hollow face turned cold and significantly less pretty. “This is all your fault,” she told him.
“You think I was interfering before?” Snapping a point back over her shoulder, he shouted, “Get your ass back in the house!”
Blinking back a rush of tears he had no interest in being sympathetic to, she turned and ran inside. He was a little surprised that she didn’t slam the door behind her. Glaring long enough to make sure she didn’t come back out again, he returned to the car.
Opening the passenger door, he hunkered down next to Puppy. She was every bit the mess he expected, gasping and crying and struggling to control her breathing. Catching the back of her neck, he tucked her head between her knees, as much to help her as to prevent her from seeing just how much angrier he got when he saw her bruised cheek up close.
“Calm down,” he told her, careful to keep all trace of temper out of his voice. “I’ve got you, honey. You’re safe now. You’re also spending the night at my house, so tell me now if there’s anything here you absolutely need before I leave.”
“Back… pack…” she cried between gasping breaths.
“Deep breaths,” he ordered, and she nodded. “Calm down.”
Her hands became fists on her knees as she nodded again. Gradually her breaths began to slow.
“Where’s your cell phone?”
“In… my backpack.”
“What else?” he asked, letting go of her neck now that she was in better control of herself.
“Nothing,” she sighed, slowly sitting up again. “Nothing else… is mine.”
Tucking a finger under her chin, he took grim stock of the bruise that darkened the corner of her eye and the puffiness that made her bony cheek look almost normal on that side of her face. It took real effort not to let himself get pissed off all over again, but now that he was up close, he could see other injuries—cuts and scratches on her forearms, as well as the palms of her hands.
He stroked her hair, wishing he knew how to soothe her hurts—both the physical as well as the emotional ones. “Are you hurt anywhere else?”
Her eyes shuttered. He could practically hear her inner walls slamming up between them. She averted her gaze, ducking her head as she touched her cheek. “I fell.”
