Surrender A Section 8 Novel

Chapter Sixteen





Grace stood, brought her plate to the sink so she didn’t have to face Dare. She’d been wondering if she should simply tell him about what happened earlier, about her gift sputtering on and off like a faulty lightbulb.

But what if . . .

That what if was why she kept her mouth shut. She was valuable to Rip, with or without her gift. At least she had been at one point. She’d spent so much time with his precious group, he might think differently now. But Dare . . . who was she to say that, even if he didn’t leverage her to Rip, he wouldn’t try to use her gift the way Rip had, defective or not?

For now, she’d keep that secret to herself. Maybe forever.

She ran the water and Dare came up behind her.

“I’ll take care of it,” he told her.

“Least I can do.”

“You can’t pretend Marnie’s death didn’t happen,” he said.

“I can—for as long as I want. Sometimes, it’s the only way to get through things.” She glanced over her shoulder, looked into his eyes and then down at his hands. “I have a feeling you know exactly what I’m talking about.”

She wondered if he’d yell at her again or simply walk away. That last one would be the worst. She wanted him to understand.

She turned around and found herself so close to him. Maybe he’d planned it this way or maybe it was happenstance. It didn’t matter. The wildness in her was so raw—she wanted to break through to this man. Had to, the way he’d already broken through to her.

She didn’t know how to deal with a man like this. Darius had been powerful, yes, but he’d kept his distance, let Adele deal with her most of the time.

She’d still been so broken, a surly teenager prone to sneaking out of the house and drinking with men who were bad for her to prove she could never be hurt again.

She’d been so goddamned wrong; she knew that now. But Adele never scolded. For four years, Grace traveled with Adele, but Grace always thought of this as her home base. This was where she’d first begun to heal.

His hand came up to her cheek. “You’re flushed.”

She felt hot all over. A little dizzy, but a different dizzy than she’d felt earlier, when the vision broke through. She swallowed the tightness in her throat away, wanted to tell him the flush was because of him.

“I’ve been thinking about you for years,” she confessed finally.

“Why’s that?”

“Your picture . . . the way Darius and Adele talked about you. You’re a good man, Dare O’Rourke.”

“A good man who kidnapped you.”

“For your father . . . he told you to.”

Dare reached a hand up and brushed her hair back over her shoulders. Tucked it behind an ear, stroked her earlobe, and she shivered. “You knew he would.”

“He told me he might have to one day. He said . . . ‘Dare will do the right thing, but I’ve never been the type to tell him what he has to do.’”

“True. No one tells me what to do.”

“No one?”

“No one.” He leaned in and kissed her, and she soared, as she had earlier. The threat of danger had dissipated. So had the anger. It was replaced with heat, and she gripped his shoulders to try to gain some quarter.

But there was none in this situation. Her head began to spin, her nipples tightened and she was done fighting him. And that hadn’t ever happened to her.

She wasn’t sure how long they kissed for, lost track of time because he just continued kissing her like that was the most important thing in the world. He’d picked her up at one point so she was sitting on the counter and he was standing between her legs.

He pulled back, murmured, “Something’s wrong.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

His hand was on her forehead, his eyes full of concern she wished would disappear. “I think you have a fever. You’re burning up—I’ll get a thermometer.”

“Don’t bother—it’s well over 101,” she told him. She got these fevers less regularly than she had when she was young, but they tended to come on fast and raise the mercury high. She was growing woozy, and then Dare was carrying her, putting her into the big bed she remembered so well. Darius would send her to bed with tea when they first got here, and it was like having a guardian angel. She’d never had anyone like that before, although she’d longed for it.

But Dare—he would be either her savior or her destroyer. It was yet to be determined.

If she was in her house—she’d been careful never to think of it as home—she could prepare something for the fever. But there was no garden here, no supply of herbs that were as interchangeable as medicines to her and people like her.

She and Momma had grown up in Mississippi, which was why she hadn’t returned there. The community had run them out of town after discovering some of Esme’s scams, and Grace cursed the fact that Momma had run right into Rip instead of continuing on to New Orleans, like she’d originally planned.

Grace’s life would’ve been so different.

But her mother had always believed in what was meant to be. That there was no escaping her destiny, her fate.

Grace longed to escape, and she had, if only for years rather than a lifetime. She was not opposed to fighting for her freedom—she valued freedom over peace; she’d never been convinced it was possible to have both concurrently.


* * *

Grace was mumbling something about peace and freedom, and Dare had no idea how this fever had come out of nowhere and spiked so goddamned high.

He found a thermometer; her temperature was close to 103 now. He grabbed Tylenol and brought it to her, would find something stronger as soon as he got her more comfortable.

She shivered under the heavy quilts, despite the lack of AC. The fans were only pushing humid air languidly. She looked like she couldn’t get warm enough, and he was tempted to take her to a hospital.

But he couldn’t shake that what had happened to Marnie wasn’t over, that the same people who’d hurt Marnie were now after Grace. With that in mind, he knew what he was going to do.

“I’m going to get you help,” he told her.

“No—no hospital.”

“I’m calling someone to come here,” he told her. She nodded; there was nothing else she could do.

The sun was just about to rise—and Dare didn’t like anyone coming here during daylight hours. Especially not now. And Gunner would be the only one he’d call. Gunner had been a medic, and he was better than a doctor any day and a hundred times more discreet.

He made a quick call to Avery and spoke with Gunner. Avery sounded so damned worried—probably because he sounded worried himself—and he made a mental note to apologize to her when she got here.

He wasn’t used to dealing with the kind of family who worried about him. Hell, he wasn’t used to dealing with anyone like that.

“Get that fever down, Dare,” Gunner told him.

“I don’t have much here.”

“Read me the labels,” Gunner instructed, and Dare went through the medicine chest, which Darius had always left well stocked. “Okay, give her two of that antibiotic—separate them by four hours. I’ll continue with an IV antibiotic that’s stronger when I get there tonight, even though I’m betting it won’t do shit. And get her into a cool bath or shower, or at the very least, wipe her down. And give her the narcotic to knock her out only as a last resort if she fights the bath or if she’s in pain.”

“I’ll do it,” he told Gunner, then shoved the phone into his pocket and followed Gunner’s instructions.

He filled the old claw-footed tub with cool water and went back into the bedroom.

Grace was so hot, her skin was burning. He attempted to cool her down with a cool washcloth along her face and neck after forcing several Tylenol down her throat. She’d tried to push him away but calmed once he showed her the bottle.

But she was still so restless. Moaning a little in her sleep—and if she dreamed, they weren’t pleasant. Because of that, he’d do anything he could to make it better until Gunner and Avery got here. And then she began to curl into a ball and cry out as if she was in real pain.

He had to get her out of her clothes. She might hate him for it, but it was the best plan for now.

As if she knew what he planned, she turned away from him onto her stomach, buried her face in the pillow, and the T-shirt she’d put on after they’d come in from the rain rose up to reveal bare skin. Bare skin that was abraded with scars.

They were made purposely—someone had beaten Grace—a whip, belt, it didn’t matter. The marks had never healed, and he hissed in a breath when he first saw them. And then, as he ran a finger along them, he realized he was clenching his jaw so hard his head ached. He lifted the shirt higher so he could see how far up they went. And then he noted that the scars went down past the waistband of the sweats.

His throat dried. Carefully, he pushed the T-shirt up over her head and off her body. She’d stopped protesting—too weak maybe, or embarrassed, but he wasn’t about to stop his exploration.

Her back was like a road map of pure pain, made with some kind of leather switch. One of the straps had caught on the tender flesh of the back of her upper arm. When he pulled off the sweatpants, he noted that the scars ran down past her buttocks. This was torture. Nothing less than—meant to be a lesson.

He wondered if she’d learned it—told himself this kind of woman was too strong to bow down to anything.

He wouldn’t use her. He’d have to find another way.

“Did he do this to you? Powell?” he asked quietly, not expecting her to answer.

“Rip,” she reminded him softly. “He had one of his men do it.”

“Why?”

“I wouldn’t cooperate.”

“When you’re better, I’ll take you back to your house—your garden.”

She turned to him, her eyes hazy with fever, her cheeks flushed hot. “I can’t go back there. You’re not the only person coming for me.”

“I’ll keep you with me until I figure something out.”

“You won’t get an argument from me. But why am I naked?”

“Have to break this fever,” he murmured, and whether she heard him or not, he didn’t know, but she stopped fighting for the moment. He took that opportunity to pick her up and bring her into the bathroom. He lowered her into the tub, and she clung to him; the water must’ve felt like ice on her blazing skin. But gradually, she let go of him, more from exhaustion than anything, and he used a cloth to cover her forehead, gave her small sips of water to keep her hydrated.

He couldn’t help but glance down at her body, lush and perfect. Her nipples were the color of a blush, breasts round and high. The dark curls between her thighs made his cock harden.

He could still taste their kisses and wondered if he’d pushed her too far, taken advantage of her without realizing it. “Grace, about the kiss—”

“Wonderful,” she murmured. “If I wasn’t sick . . .”

“Yeah.”

She reached up out of the water to hold his hand. She seemed comfortable being naked in front of him, but maybe she was half-delirious. “This is better. Don’t feel as cold.”

She was actually starting to sweat a little, which was great. He took her temperature again. It had gone down significantly.

“I get fevers like this,” she told him. “Spike really high. Happened when I was a kid but I never outgrew it.”

“Will it come back again?”

She nodded. He gave her the water bottle and she took a big sip.

“Why don’t we get you back into bed? You can sleep, and by the time your fever spikes, my friend will be here with the good stuff to help you.”

She agreed. He helped her out of the tub and wrapped a towel around her. Held her steady while she dried off and got her into one of his T-shirts, which went down to midthigh. He lowered her into the bed, covered her with a sheet and watched her drift off to sleep.

He’d been up for nearly forty-eight hours straight. Good way to keep the ghosts at bay, but this was the best opportunity to rest he was going to get. He set the alarms and prepared to wait the day out.

He lay on the bed next to her, careful not to wake or crowd her. His Sig was on the table next to him, and he flicked through the channels on the TV restlessly.

The last time he was here, he’d been twenty-eight and on R&R from the SEALs for a month. He’d been wounded, and his shoulder still ached when he thought about it. Now the pain in his hands overrode pretty much any other pain he had. He flexed them as he watched the old black-and-white western and thought about how much his life had changed in the space of two months.

At some point, he slept—too soundly, because when he woke, Grace was tossing and turning next to him. Shivering again. Mumbling too.

“Hang on, baby, help is coming,” he told her.

The fever was spiking higher than before. She was resisting everything. He hated having to drug her but didn’t really see a choice. He injected her with the dosage of morphine that Gunnar told him to give, then put her back into the bath, despite the fact that she was shivering uncontrollably.

Shivering while simultaneously mumbling that she was fine. Jesus Christ, she could’ve gone through Hell Week in BUD/S with no problems.

Beyond her fever, she was grieving underneath it all, for her life here, for Marnie.

He was more tied to S8 than ever, through Avery and through Grace. There was no getting around it.