Wolf Haven

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Rocking her gently in his arms, he rasped against her ear, “It’s all right, Sky. You’re safe now. You’re with me. I won’t let anyone hurt you now, baby. It’s all right. You’re safe....”

CHAPTER SIX (#ulink_0c559848-6605-5399-b369-040da7cfbc54)

WITHOUT THINKING, GRAY began to run his hand across Sky’s tangled, damp hair in an effort to calm her. He felt so damned bad for Sky as she cried in his arms. Her warm tears moistened the hair across his chest. Her fingers spasmed, opening and closing against his flesh. If anyone ever thought that waterboarding wasn’t torture, they were so full of shit. The proof was huddled in his arms. Sky physically shook, emotionally and mentally broken by the torture. Gray had no idea how many times it had happened, either. The more they did it, the more broken the human being became, splintered and fractured.

“It’s all right, Sky,” he murmured against her ear. “It’s going to be okay. Get it out. Let it go.” And then Gray grimaced. He was the last person a woman would want around when she was crying.

When Julia cried, which wasn’t often, he’d get up and leave the hut at the Peruvian village. He just couldn’t handle it then. But now... This was different. He’d matured, fast. And Sky was a military vet like himself. She’d paid the ultimate price of war. She was a nurse, someone who helped save people’s lives, and she should never have been put in this situation in the first place. But she had been. There was no defined front in Afghanistan, and that left all women serving in the military just as exposed as the men. Gray knew the statistics, that a hundred and fifty women had died in combat in Iraq and Afghanistan, untrained and yet out on the frontier of combat.

Gray smoothed her hair, allowing his hand to trail across her hunched, trembling shoulders, moving slowly down her long spine. Every time he caressed her, Sky relaxed a little bit more against him.

Sky needed a lot of care right now, and Gray didn’t mind giving it to her. What would have happened if he hadn’t been here to interrupt her grisly nightmare? How many times had they occurred and Sky had had no one to help her or talk her down?

Without thinking, Gray pressed a soft kiss to her hair, tightening his embrace a little, absorbing the continued trembling of her body. Sky’s weeping slowed and she finally grew quiet within his embrace. Gray could feel her naked vulnerability, her trust. It humbled him, since he couldn’t help but want her in other ways. She didn’t deserve that kind of reaction from him at all. Instead, Gray forced himself to focus on giving back to Sky, not taking. Too much had been taken from her already.

Sky finally unclenched her hand against his chest and wiped her face with her shaking fingers. Gray caught her hand, holding it within his own. Her hand was so small and white against his large, darkly tanned one. Pressing her hand against his chest, he whispered, “It’s going to be all right, Sky. You’re past the worst of it. Just rest. I’ll be here. I won’t let you be alone right now. I’ll stay with you as long as you want....”

Gray’s roughened words spilled through Sky’s fractured emotional state. Eyes tightly shut, her cheek resting on the damp, silky hair across his chest, she felt his male strength gently surrounding her, making her feel safe. His voice soothed her, and with each ragged breath she took, this new calm chased away the virulent terror still holding her in its invisible grasp.

Gray’s presence brought her back. They shared a common military background. Somewhere in her fragmented mind, Sky wondered if Gray had ever been tortured. It was as if he understood on levels she could never give voice to. And he was here for her. Present. Like a big, bad guard dog.

He was a large man, and she felt so small leaning against him. Gray was holding her gently as he might hold a hurt child. The PTSD, the waterboarding, had stripped her of her own internal strength. Whereas before she had always been the calm, quiet, strong one in charge of the E.R. at Bagram, she now felt as if she were constantly unraveling. Sky had been unable, thus far, to put up boundaries on her wild, rampant feelings, to stop them or not allow them to run her life as they did now.

If she’d been worried Gray wouldn’t understand, or that he’d be disgusted with her as her father had been, she was relieved. Sky had had several episodes of the same nightmare at home, her father aggravated with her, but she didn’t feel anything exuding from Gray right now except care and protection. Sky never thought in a million years she’d ever be the recipient of a SEAL’s guardianship. Right now she was like a starved animal lapping up anything Gray could give to her in the way of emotional support. There was no judgment emanating from him. Every time Gray’s large hand gently trailed across her hair and down her back, Sky felt a little more stable. A little more calm. His mouth lingered near her brow, the warmth of his moist breath flowing across her face. There was such tenderness in this man. She’d never experienced it quite like this. Gray was not only soothing her, but Sky also felt as if his presence were actually, in some miraculous way, feeding her strength she presently didn’t have. Feeding her hope. Tending to her torn soul.

“Better now?” he asked, feeling her sigh in response in his arms. Gray felt her head bob once, felt her unclench her hand and her long fingers smooth out across his upper chest. His flesh leaped and burned beneath her hesitant, innocent touch. He knew Sky wasn’t sexually coming on to him. She was lost in the ugly morass of her injured emotions. Gray shut his eyes tightly, resting his jaw against her hair, holding her a little tighter for a moment.

Sky cleared her throat that ached with tension. “I—I’m sorry....”

“Hush. It’s okay, Sky. I know what you went through. I’m just glad I was nearby when the flashback happened.”

Sky frowned, her mouth compressed. Shame flowed through her. “You shouldn’t have to see this. Or hear me...” In the hospital when she had the nightmares, they gave her an antianxiety drug to calm her down. Her screams woke up everyone else. She shared a six-bed unit with other wounded vets. If she didn’t have the nightmares, then one of them would. No one ever got quality sleep in that unit.

A chuckle rumbled up through Gray’s chest. She hungrily absorbed the sound of it, felt his hand slide along her jaw, tenderly smooth strands behind her ear. God, how pitiful she was. She was so starved for his continuing light caresses. So utterly needy, it shamed her. She was a nurse, the one to bestow care upon those who so desperately needed it. Now she was in their position.

“Hey, we’re vets. We’ve seen combat. SEALs never leave anyone behind, baby. I’m not leaving you behind. Okay?”

Baby. The endearment renewed her hope. A broken sigh escaped from her taut lips. Gray continued to shower her with his attention. How many times in her life as a nurse had she done similarly for her vets who lay broken and hurting in her hospital ward? So many that Sky had lost count.

Gray eased back again, no doubt seeing the tears. “Good tears this time?” he asked, his throat tightening. She looked up at him, feeling her world shift. The corners of his mouth lifted. “Talk to me, Sky.”

Her throat ached with tension from the rawness of her earlier screams. “Y-yes, good tears.” His dark eyes changed and grew kind. Sky leaned against his chest, the soothing sound of his slow heartbeat continuing to calm her. She had no strength with which to move. She didn’t want to anyway.

“How can I help you, Sky?”

His words sank into her heart, and she swallowed hard. “What you’re doing right now,” she whispered brokenly.

Gray nodded and slid his hand down her back. “It helps to talk about it, Sky. Maybe not right now, but later. I’m a good listener. I’ve been in combat. I’ve had friends captured and tortured. I know a little bit of what you’re going through because of them.”

Something broke inside Sky. She realized Gray cared deeply. The low tenor of his voice vibrated through her, giving her the courage she’d lacked for a long time. Opening her eyes, Sky stared out into the darkened living room. Thin, milky streams of moonlight made the window and other areas where the beams struck look gray instead of dark. “I was in a Black Hawk crash. They were flying me and a surgeon to a forward operating base near the Pakistan border. An Army soldier had acute appendicitis and needed immediate emergency surgery.” Sky swallowed and emotionally gathered herself. She told him about the crash, being captured and of Aaron being shot in the head. When she got to her torture, she rasped, “They threw me on a board, covered my face with a cloth and poured water into my nose.” She felt his arms tighten around her, as if trying to protect her from the terrifying torture. Words failed her. The shame and humiliation were right there, eating away at her.

Gray closed his eyes, battling his rage. He forced his emotions deep, opened his eyes and asked in a low tone, “Do you know how many times you were waterboarded?”

Sky shook her head. “I was a captive for two weeks. Th-they would come in two days between each waterboarding bout and do it again. They’d cuff me to that damned table... I lost count. All I know is that by the time the SEAL team came, I was a shadow of myself. They found me quivering in a corner, no clothes on... I—I really don’t remember much after that, Gray. Someone put a blanket around me. The next thing I knew, he lifted me up and carried me in his arms. He got me out of that horrid room. I could breathe fresh air. I heard a helicopter nearby, and that’s the last thing I recall. I woke up in Landstuhl a few days later.”

Sky swallowed hard tears in her voice. “Gray...I didn’t even get to thank the SEALs who rescued me. I feel bad about that. Those guys risked their lives for me....”

“I can find out for you,” he reassured her, pressing a chaste kiss to her brow. “That’s ST3’s territory you were in. I’ll make a call and get the intel. I know you’d probably like to email them, and they’d feel good hearing from you. Okay?” Because it could be part of her ongoing healing process.

Sky wearily nodded, pressing her cheek against his warm, hard chest. The soft, silky hair tickled her chin and nose. Gray’s scent was evergreen soap and his own unique male scent. Inhaling it, Sky felt as if she were inhaling life. “Th-thank you. It would mean so much for me to do at least that much for them. They’re all heroes in my eyes.”

Gray stared into the darkness, his mind moving at light speed. Sky had been waterboarded a lot. It was an ineffective way to gather intel, that he knew. It had been proved that when a prisoner thought he was dying of suffocation, he would say anything to get the waterboarding to stop. And Gray was sure Sky had told them what they wanted to know. God, she was only a nurse! She wasn’t privy to black-ops movements. She didn’t carry a security clearance. All that was above her pay grade. Then why the hell had they done this to her? To what end?

“You went from Landstuhl to Balboa Naval Hospital to heal up?” he asked.

Nodding, Sky opened her eyes. “I spent six months there. The first month—” she grimaced “—I was on a cocktail of drugs. Emotionally, I was a basket case.”

“Baby, anyone who’d gone through what you did would be, too.”

“It tore me apart.” Shaking her head, Sky sponged in Gray’s quiet strength, his warmth and his attentiveness. He understood. All SEALs went through SERE, where they were all waterboarded to show them what it was like. But because of her military classification, she never had to take that dreaded course. Maybe if she had, she’d have been more mentally prepared, not taken by the shock and terror of it. Maybe...

“You’ve come a long way in a short time, Sky, with those kinds of experiences behind you.” Gray held her desolate gaze. “You realize that, don’t you? You’re functioning at a high level despite it.”

“I feel so damn weak, Gray. I feel like I’m set back every time I have that same flashback.”

“That’s going to change,” Gray promised her quietly, curving his fingers against her cheek. “You’re with someone who knows the score. I’m here for you. I won’t walk away from you, either, so don’t think you’re taking advantage of me.” He smiled a little as he watched hope flare to life in her shadowed eyes. “We’ll take this one day at a time. What you have to do is tell me when the stress is getting to you. I can take you out of the line of fire, and you can come back here to the house and rest. Ramp down.”

“But won’t Iris be upset if that happens? She’s paying me for eight hours of work a day.” She saw Gray give her a very male smile.

“Technically, Sky, you work for me. Iris cuts the paychecks every two weeks. If I tell you to go back here to rest, you do it. Iris would understand anyway. She’s hired a number of returning vets from Iraq and Afghanistan in the past. She’s no stranger to PTSD and what it does to us. I know she wouldn’t be upset with you, so don’t you be.”

Sky nodded. “Okay. I get it.”

“Feel like moving? I can make us some tea. Or you tell me what you need.” Gray didn’t want her to leave him. She fit beautifully against him, her soft, womanly curves meshing against his hard angles. He didn’t want to stop touching her here and there, but he knew he had to. There was a difference between care and making love to this woman. He couldn’t cross that line with Sky.

Stirring, Sky sat up, pushing her tangled hair off her face. “I need to get a bath. I reek.” She wrinkled her nose and gave Gray an apologetic look. Touching the damp nightgown she wore, she added, “I’ll take a bath, change into a dry nightgown and then I need to try to go to sleep. Thank you, though, for the offer of the tea.” Thank you for saving my life tonight. Without thinking, Sky placed her hand against his square jaw, leaned over and pressed a chaste kiss against his sandpapery cheek. And then she forced herself to her feet, her knees mushy from fear. Gray held her arm until she got steady enough to walk slowly toward the hall.

He watched her slow progress, worry clouding his expression. His cheek tingled hotly in the wake of her lush lips kissing him. It took everything he had not to enclose her with his arms once more and turn and trap that mouth of hers. He watched her move robotically, her stride tentative, unsure of her balance. Once she reached the hall, Sky put out her hand, using the wall to help guide her toward the bathroom.

Gray wanted to help her, but he understood her need to try to get stronger despite her injuries. And he didn’t want to enable her. It was a fine balance to walk with her.

The door to the bathroom opened and then quietly closed. With the sound of water running in the bathroom, he sat there, elbows resting on his thighs, hands clasped between them. Gray shook his head, feeling the rage and injustice of her torture by the Taliban. He’d contact the senior chief of ST3 and find out the SEALs who were involved in Sky’s rescue. And he’d talk to the men who had found her. She wasn’t telling him everything. If he was going to help her, he had to know the whole story.

Gray slowly got to his feet, very aware of his erection. When Sky had unexpectedly kissed him, he’d gone hot and burned with sudden need for her. Only seconds later did he realize she’d kissed him out of gratitude, not out of desire. His body had its own miniature brain, and sure enough, he’d hardened beneath her entirely innocent gesture. What Gray didn’t want was for Sky to feel he was a sexual predator, using her flashbacks as a way to get to her. She hadn’t said she’d been raped. But he needed to know one way or another. Tomorrow morning, he’d place that call to his old SEAL team in Coronado.

CHAPTER SEVEN (#ulink_da859642-e613-5d86-a6c0-28cdd7c56d0a)

“GRAYSON, HOW ARE YOU, brother?”

“Hey, Jag, good to hear your voice.” Gray smiled as he stood near the door to the wildlife center. It was nearly 8:00 a.m., and he had put in a call to the senior chief of ST3 at Coronado. The senior had given him the contact number of the SEAL who had led Sky’s rescue mission. Gray knew him well, Petty Officer First Class Ryan Stark. He had been a shooter in his squadron, and Gray had been with him when Kell Ballard, the LPO, had headed up the team. When Kell left, Ryan took his place. Everyone knew him as Jag, for jaguar, because Stark was as silent and deadly as the legendary South American cat.

“How’s life in Wyoming? Last email I got from you was two months go. Did you get snowed in?” Jag teased and laughed heartily.

Gray could feel his stomach knotting. “No, just busy putting the final touches on the wildlife center I’m running. Look, I got permission from the senior back at Coronado to ask you about a rescue mission you headed up.”

“Sure. What do you need to know?”

Gray knew all their ops were top secret. But ex-SEALs or retired SEALs were sometimes cut some slack if there was a personal stake in needing to know. “Your rescue of Lieutenant Skylar Pascal. Do you remember it? It was about eight months ago?”

“I couldn’t forget it if I wanted to,” Jag growled. “How did you get wind about this op?”

Mouth quirking, Gray walked around the corner of the building where he was out of sight of everyone. No one was around on the cold, sunny morning, but he didn’t want this conversation being overheard. He filled Jag in that Sky was going to be his assistant.

“Now, I know a couple of things,” Gray went on in a quiet tone. “She was in a Black Hawk crash, and there were two survivors. The doc was shot in the head later in a cave, leaving her the lone survivor. The Taliban held Sky for two weeks and she was waterboarded.”

“You know a whole helluva lot,” Jag muttered.

“Not enough, though. I need your eyes on this, Jag. You were there. You pulled the op. What else can you tell me about that mission?” Gray held his breath, trying to prepare himself.

“It was a nightmare, man. Me and my team took down four Taliban guarding that Afghan house. We captured two others. The Taliban was hiding her in plain sight in a border village. We got inside the house, found this small room locked. I shot off the lock and kicked the door open. It was dark and smelled bad. Real bad. I aimed my rifle around with the light beneath it and spotted something in the corner of the room. At first, I thought it was just a pile of old, ratty wool blankets. There was a table in the center of the room with chains on each corner of it. I flashed my light around and there was blood all over the freakin’ place. There was vomit, shit and urine. The place smelled bad, man. When I went over to the blankets, I used the toe of my boot to nudge it, and it moved. Scared the hell outta me. I leaped back, ready to fire at it, thinking a Taliban was hiding under it.”

“But it was Sky?” Gray pressed grimly, his eyes narrowing, his gut knotted so tight it hurt.

“Yes, it was. She was naked, hair matted and filthy dirty. I tried to ask her name but she was dazed and in deep shock. All she could do was huddle, arms wrapped around herself, shaking. It was really bad, Gray. Never seen anything like it.”

Mouth tightening, Gray rasped, “What else? I need to know all of it.”

“I knelt down beside her and put my rifle aside, told her who I was. Told her we were there to rescue her. I saw her one wrist, Gray, and man, it was ground up like fresh, raw hamburger. And then as I slowly pulled the blanket off her back to examine her for other wounds, I caught sight of her left ankle.” Jag blew out a breath, his voice deepening. “She had blood poisoning from those chains they were wrapping around her ankles and wrists. Red stripes were running halfway up both her calves. She had a high fever, shaking with chills, and was completely out of it. She didn’t respond to me. They fucking broke her, Gray. And I mean in the worst kind of way. One of my other guys, a combat medic, came over and he about lost it as he quickly examined her for other wounds. She was so filthy, bloody and was sicker than hell.”

“Had she been raped?” Gray closed his eyes, steeling himself.

“We didn’t know at the time. When we got her to Bagram hospital, I talked to one of the doctors in the E.R. who admitted her. He said she hadn’t been raped. Shit, they’d done just about everything else to her. The doc wasn’t sure she was going to make it. Lieutenant Pascal had a fever of a hundred and five degrees with a very advanced case of sepsis, blood poisoning. She was severely undernourished and dehydrated, Gray. Literally, nothing but skin over her bones. I don’t think those bastards fed her at all. The corpsman gave me a clean blanket from his rucksack, and I wrapped her up in it and picked her up, got her the hell out of there. She went unconscious on me while I was carrying her toward the helo. The corpsman put an IV in each of her arms on the flight into Bagram. None of us were sure she was going to make it. She was in pitiful condition, Gray.”

“Did you get the bastards who did this to her?”

Jag laughed darkly. “Sure did. A little fat man and a tall, skinny bastard. We took ’em prisoner. Later the CIA boys at J-bad, Jalalabad, took them in custody. And after the spooks learned what they’d done to Lieutenant Pascal... Well, let’s just say those two got what they doled out to her in spades.”

“I’d like to kill them,” Gray snarled.

“Hey, man, no worries. I heard about four weeks later that they were found dead from trying to escape. I didn’t ask how. It just made me feel good those two sonofabitches were dead for how they treated that Navy officer.”

“Anything else?”

“No, that’s it. It’s enough,” Jag said wearily. “You say she’s with you now? How is she?”

Gray snorted and started pacing the length of the building. “Considering everything you just told me, she appeared normal to me and to everyone else around here.”

“Man, that’s unbelievable she’s rebounded like that. She’s got a real set of balls.”

Gray wasn’t so sure. “She had a flashback last night, screamed and woke me up. I eventually talked her awake, and she told me about her capture. But I knew there was more. Sky is a very strong woman to have handled everything that’s happened to her and still be able to function in society.”

“Man, I’ll tell you, busting into that room and the rank odor that hit us, the smell of her rotting, infected flesh...”

Nausea burned in his throat. Gray swallowed hard, his voice hoarse. “Did the spooks ever tell you if they learned anything from those two bastards? Why they did this to her?”

“Yeah. I met one of the spooks about six weeks later over at the J-bad chow hall. We were flown up there as part of a task force on an op going down that night. I asked him the same question. The little fat guy said they thought she was a spy.”

Grunting, Gray halted and took a deep breath. “Lying bastards.”

“Hell, yeah. The spook said they’d tortured Lieutenant Pascal just to get even with all Americans. One American was as good as another, as far as they were concerned. Didn’t matter if it was a man or woman.”

Rage flowed through Gray, his hand tightening on his cell phone. “Hey, I owe you on this, Jag. Thanks for letting me know the rest of the story.”

“No problem, man. It’s good to hear she not only survived, but she’s thriving, too. I’d never have believed it myself, seeing her in that state.”

Nodding, Gray said, “It gives me a lot of hope I can help her walk the rest of the way.”