“Until we take her to Bristow. I’d rather she awaken in a bed and not immediately know her . . . fate.”
It was delaying the inevitable, but he wanted to give her these last moments. As long as he could grant her. It was cruel, he supposed, to give her that much more hope. But if she could have just a few hours more devoid of fear and the horrific sense of betrayal she would feel the moment she learned the truth, then he’d give those hours to her.
Conrad scowled again but drew more of the medication into the syringe.
“She’ll be out for a while,” he said as he gently inserted the needle into her hip.
When he was done, he put away the supplies and then hauled himself over into the backseat without another word.
The atmosphere was tense in the vehicle. No one spoke, but then that wasn’t unusual. They weren’t a chatty group by any stretch of the imagination. Most of their communication wasn’t verbal anyway. They’d worked together too many years. They could anticipate each other’s moves without needing to be told. And they had their own set of hand signals.
But this silence was different. It wasn’t the silence embraced by the men who lived and breathed the team. It was a pissed-off, surly, helpless silence, and none of them were happy about it at all. They were pissed that they cared. And they were pissed that they’d considered, even for a moment, aborting their mission to save one courageous woman.
? ? ?
HONOR had slept, as Hancock intended, for the remainder of their hazardous trek over the desert to the airfield where the plane waited that would take them to Bristow. He never moved from her side, and in her sleep, she’d sought out his body heat, snuggling into his hard frame, her softness melding seamlessly. Like they fit. It was an absurd, stupid thought, but he couldn’t prevent it from flickering through his mind. Just as he couldn’t deny the comfort her closeness gave him. Comfort he didn’t deserve.
Instinctively he knew she needed this. Human touch. Comfort. Contact. She’d been through a horrific ordeal and he was delivering her to worse. There was nothing he could do about her fate, but he could at least offer her a little peace, respite from the inevitable storm. And it wasn’t nearly as distasteful as he would have thought. The idea that he could offer anyone, especially a woman, any measure of comfort was something he would have thought not only impossible but not in the least bit . . . enjoyable. That he would like it.
There was something about this small, fierce woman that got to him. And that pissed him off. Nothing got to him. Not when it came to the mission. To the greater good. He couldn’t afford to be human, to feel emotion. Emotion could get him killed. It could get his men killed. And he owed them more than that. They were fiercely loyal to him and to one another. They’d put their lives on the line for him, just as he had for them, many times. Allowing a distraction such as the woman lying nestled in his arms would be a . . . disaster.
As he lay there, definitely not resting as she did against him, he realized he was even more pissed that she trusted him. Maybe she hadn’t even acknowledged it to herself, but her actions defied whatever thoughts she had concerning his trustworthiness. She relaxed with him when she was vulnerable. Hurting, afraid, alone. She instinctively sought out his comfort and strength, clinging to it when she had nothing else in the world to hold on to. He’d become her anchor. In her mind, he was her savior, when he was the very worst sort of bastard.