Page 31 of K-9 Guardians

Scarlett didn’t want to think about any of that. About what had happened after she’d woken soaked in her own blood. She wanted to be in this bed. With King. He’d told her they hadn’t slept together, but this somehow seemed far more intimate than mutual pleasure. As though she’d allowed him to dig through the scar across her stomach and peek inside. She’d never forget these moments. No matter what happened.

“How did you make it out of that alive?” he asked.

“I don’t remember.” It was the truth. She should’ve died from her wound. Part of her did and was continually trying to convince her none of this was real. That she’d been sent to purgatory to fight an impossible opponent for the rest of eternity. If she believed in things like that. Her brain provided the memories she’d tried to shove into a box at the back of her mind for over a year. “I remember my CO coming at me with the blade. I fought him off. As hard as I could. But it wasn’t any use. I remember the knife going in. It burned more than I expected. I’m sure you can relate.”

“A little.” His thumb followed the length of her scar, back and forth, back and forth. Trying to hypnotize her. And it was working. Keeping her in the moment. Giving her an anchor when it would be so easy to let go and fall into the past.

She’d never had that before. Someone to hold on to. During her military career, she’d believed deep in her core that her unit would have her back. No matter where she was assigned. But that belief had been cut out of her. Literally. “He left me to bleed out. Stood over me until I lost consciousness to make sure, I guess. But next thing I knew, I was waking up in a small hospital room barely holding itself together. I was off base. I could tell that much right away. The surgeon who stitched me back together didn’t even speak English. The army took my being off base as an act of treason. I was branded AWOL within hours.”

“They charged you?” Distinct lines deepened between his eyebrows.

“After my unit was sent to find me, yeah.” Her pleas echoed through her head as the scene played out like it had happened yesterday. “I tried to run, but the hospital I was brought to didn’t have the resources to give me any pain medication. It hurt too much to move. I could barely stand on my own after what happened. So I was court-martialed. Dragged back to base. My CO stood in front of the judge, the attorneys and everyone in that room and told them he’d uncovered a smuggling operation within his own unit. That I was the ring leader, and he’d tried to stop me.”

“And most likely used the fact you ended up in an off-base hospital to prove you were a flight risk,” King said.

He was good at this. Putting the pieces together. It was what made him such an excellent agent, and she couldn’t help but admire that. Maybe if she’d been as committed to looking at the people closest to her as she did for outside threats, none of this would have ever happened. Maybe she could’ve seen the end of the tunnel before the train hit her.

King’s breathing had grown shallow, matching hers, and Scarlett wondered if his heart was threatening to pound straight out of his chest like hers. If his hands were sweating like hers. Probably not. This wasn’t his story. It was hers. Dark and violent and full of secrets she’d hidden inside herself. But King made her feel safe. Good, even. Like someone worthy of being in his and his son’s orbit. That feeling called to something deep and closed off inside of her. Something she’d left untouched for...forever.

“I was sent to the base hospital. Under guard. Handcuffed to the bed. No matter what I said, no one would listen. Not even my defense attorney. I didn’t have any proof of my claims, and my CO knew it. And having me in custody gave my unit enough time to slowly shut things down in case someone else caught on. Lucky for me, I was isolated. No chance for them to slip by and finish the job.”

“The investigators had to have found evidence somewhere. Someone must’ve come forward with information.” King slid his hand along her hip, and instant defensiveness carved through her. But she was more convinced than ever he wasn’t the threat. It was her own vision of herself. The crystal clear version of the woman who failed to bring Julien home as she’d promised. “You’re here. You’re with Socorro instead of in some prison the military keeps off the books.”

“It was Granger.” A chill tremored through her as she realized King had gotten closer. Mere inches between them.

He was absolutely beautiful. Impossible to look away from. Dangerous in his own way, but only to her sense of mission. Even so, she didn’t want to pull away. She wanted to taste his mouth and didn’t even care if that was weird. Had she ever wanted to taste someone before?

“We were stationed overseas at the same base,” she said. “Overlapped by a few months as he worked counterterrorism in that part of the world for a brand-new private military contractor that hadn’t gotten on its feet yet. I didn’t know about him until I was being released from custody and handed my discharge.”

“He’s the one who brought you to the hospital. Gave the judge proof you weren’t involved in the ring?” he asked.

She didn’t really know how to answer that. Not with so many pieces still missing. “I know he found me in that hangar. If Granger hadn’t been there, I would’ve died. He told me later he was already aware of the smuggling ring. He’d been closing in. And that made my CO desperate. Granger had gone in to that hangar to find the confiscated goods my unit stashed. Instead, he found me. Later, when he offered me a job working for Socorro, I took it without looking back. And here I am.”

“Here you are.” King’s voice softened. His fingers brushed against her lower back and dug into the skin there. “Keeping your team and everyone else you care about safe.”

“Almost everyone.” She expected the past to rush into the present, to take these electrically charged moments from her, but it didn’t. It stayed where it was supposed to. Firmly behind her. And left her all too aware of the hole consuming her from the inside. Which shouldn’t have been possible as long as King held on to her.

“We’re going to get them back, Scarlett. Both of them. Julien and Gruber. Together.” Before she had a chance to argue, King crushed his mouth to hers. Claiming her. Fiercely. Intensely. As though he needed her as much as she needed him. And it didn’t make sense. But his kiss was slick and hot and sweet, and all common sense had gone out the door the moment he touched her.

He angled his head, accessing her more deeply, and Scarlett had the impression if he hadn’t been holding on to her waist, she would’ve fallen right off the bed. Heat charged up her neck and seeped into her face.

She’d kissed a few good men in her lifetime, starting at fifteen when her mouth had been full of braces and her boyfriend’s bad breath. None of those compared to this. Her body responded as though she’d been waiting months—years—for this moment. Maybe all of her life for this kind of desire, and parts of her body she’d never fully engaged with were starting to wake up.

She met him stroke for stroke, with each ferocious pass of his tongue, and managed to keep the pain in her nose from taking over. Her heart thundered in rhythm with his, her whole body shaking for release as she clamped a hand onto the back of his neck and refused to let him separate from her. She was supposed to be in control, on alert for any kind of threat, but King made her feel desperate. Wanted. Whole.

Her body pressed against his from chest to toes. She was ready. For this. For them. For his forgiveness.

A knock punctured through the pounding in her temples, and King broke the kiss. “Expecting someone?”

“Not unless that’s the breakfast I asked you to get.” The pressure that’d tried to suffocate her since being forced to get King to the hospital last night had lightened. To the point she was able to take a full breath for the first time in hours.

“Can you have food delivered here?” he asked.

“Only if you want to traumatize poor delivery drivers.” She released her hold, hating the emptiness in her gut that followed. But as much as she wanted to pretend these walls could protect them forever, reality didn’t play that way. Hernando Muñoz was still out there. Still terrorizing the people of New Mexico, increasing his reach by merging with an unknown partner and holding a ten-year-old boy against his will.

Scarlett left the warmth of the man in her bed and padded to her bedroom door. Every muscle in her body ached with a reminder of her failure. She opened the door to Granger on the other side. “You have something for me?”

The counterterrorism agent handed off a single piece of paper. “You were right. We were able to trace the signature in the fentanyl pills you recovered from that warehouse back to a supplier.”

---