Page 84 of Broken Trust
They were alive. They were together. They were wrapped in competence and care of their team.
She felt safe and loved—but the sight of Liam’s pallor kept the tang of fear in the back of her throat.
She pressed her forehead to his temple. “We’ll get you patched up,” she whispered. “We’ll get through this.”
He squeezed her fingers once, faint but sure.
As the chopper cut a path through the darkness, she let herself believe—fiercely—that they would.
SEVENTEEN
Mason had never been on bedrest before, but he could say with one hundred percent certainty that he hated it. Though he had to admit that being bored beat bleeding out.
He lay propped against too many pillows, shoulder bandaged. The dull throb of the wound was a drumbeat he could tune out when he focused on the important things.
Like the way the room smelled subtly different now—like Elin’s shampoo on his pillow and the faint citrus of her hand cream on the nightstand. Not to mention the ghost of dark coffee because she refused to work without a mug within reach.
She’d set up the corner of his room as a mini office, with laptop and a half-dozen cables running in one neat bundle. It looked as if she’d always planned to take over his space.
He fucking loved it.
“Stop pretending to sleep,” she murmured without looking up, fingers gliding over the keys.
“I was pretending to be good. Entirely different.”
Her sweet lips tugged into a smile she tried to hide. She stood and closed the distance between her desk and his bed, and it was impossible not to note the way her long cardigan opened in the center to reveal the twitch of her curves.
She leaned in to adjust his pillows, the action so intimate that it made it hard to swallow the lump forming in his throat. If he reached for water, his hand could accidentally land on her hip and draw her down on the bed with him.
But he didn’t do that because she reached for it first. Early in his days of recovery, he’d been tended by medics, Dr. Patirand his teammates. But being fussed over by Elin felt like being claimed.
The base moved around them with a quieter hum than usual. He still picked up the sounds—the footsteps in the hall, a scrape of a chair below.
Every so often, laughter drifted up from the kitchen, the deeper voices of his brothers-in-arms mingled with the women who kept the base warm and alive.
He had to admit that he was starting to feel like the women—Sophie, May, Alyssa, Kennedy and Izzy—were his new sisters-in-law. Especially since they’d been taking turns simmering pots of soup for him that Elin poured down his throat.
Elin’s warm gaze loomed close to his. “How are you feeling?”
“Ready to get up.”
She didn’t look away. “Dr. Patir said a week of bedrest.”
“I’ll give you bedrest.” He slipped a hand around her nape, tugging her close enough to catch her mouth with his. The first brush was unhurried and deep. The kind of kiss that made time stop and wait its turn.
She purred softly against his lips, a sound that arrowed straight through his restraint. He slipped his hand into her hair, careful of his shoulder, and drew her down with him.
She braced a knee on the mattress and placed a palm on his thigh so she wouldn’t jar him as their tongues tangled in an endless torment.
Breaking away, he murmured, “When we were in that chopper, all I could think about was joining the mile-high club with you.”
Her eyes blinked open, and she sucked in a gasp. “You weren’t!”
“Maybe not then, but I’ll work on the arrangements.” He kissed her again, because now that he could, he didn’t want to stop.
She shifted closer. When she moved her palm up his thigh to brace her weight, her fingers found his stiff cock through the sheet.
A rough groan ripped out of his chest. Heedless of his shoulder or doctor’s orders, he grabbed her and pulled her down next to him. Twisting hurt, but he didn’t care about anything beyond loving this woman.
