Wolf Haven. Lindsay McKenna
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her flared nostrils and she opened her mouth.
Gasping, Sky strained, trying to stop it, unable to move her head to avoid the water. The chains bit savagely into her wrists and ankles as she tried to escape. The water kept coming, funneling into her nostrils. Sky choked. She gasped. Coughed violently, water sputtering out of her nose and mouth. Oh, God, she was suffocating beneath that stream of water! Screaming, her spine arching upward, the chains biting deep into her flesh, she was drowning! Grayness began to move in front of her eyes. The water kept flowing into her nose. Oh, God, she was going to die!
* * *
GRAY WAS ROUSTED from sleep by Sky’s screams drifting across the hall. What the hell? Wearing only a set of boxer shorts, he staggered out of bed and threw open the door. What time was it? He saw milky streams of moonlight down the hall from the living-room area as he ran across it to Sky’s room.
Flipping on the light, he halted once inside Sky’s room. Jesus. Sky was on the wooden floor, her legs tangled up in the sheet and blanket. She was on her back, her eyes glazed and unseeing, fighting off an invisible enemy, arms flying, legs kicking outward. Breathing hard, Gray quickly crouched near her, but not so close to get struck by her flailing arms and legs.
“Sky,” he called. “Sky? It’s all right. It’s Gray McCoy. You’re not there. You’re here. Listen to me, will you?” Oh, he knew the virulence of flashbacks. Knew that Sky was caught up in her torture, saw it in the stretch and tension in her contorted face. His heart caved in with anguish. Gray wanted to scoop Sky up, hold her hard and safe. But that wasn’t how it worked. If he touched her, he could deepen the hold of the nightmare that had trapped her within its terrible embrace. She could think he was the enemy.
She was gasping and choking, jerking her head from side to side. If he had any doubts that she’d been waterboarded, they were gone now. Her reactions were consistent with that kind of torture.
“Sky? Sky, it’s Gray. Listen to me, will you? You’re safe. You’re not back there. You’re here with me in Wyoming. Come on. Listen to my voice. Let it lead you out of that nightmare you’re caught up in. Please? Listen to me?”
Gray spoke in a low, urgent tone to Sky, hoping like hell he could reach her, break the hold of the flashback that had her in its steel grip.
It hurt to watch her struggle. Her chest was heaving beneath her white cotton nightgown. The fabric had hitched halfway up her thighs, her lower legs caught in the sheet as she tried to kick out. Reaching out, Gray swiftly unraveled the tight bonds of the sheet from around her lower legs. Gray kept up the singsong litany. He wanted to kill those bastards who had done this to her.
Slowly, over ten minutes, Gray began to see Sky calming. Began to see the glazed look slowly leaving her wide, terror-filled eyes. Her hair was matted with sweat, the strands thick and twisted around her head. How badly he wanted to protect Sky.
“It’s going to be okay,” he said over and over.
Sky kept hearing a man’s low, urgent voice in the background. Finally, she recognized it. Instantly, she homed in on it as she fought, choked and screamed, trying to evade the water pouring down her nostrils.
Her legs were free! It broke the grip of the nightmare. She floated somewhere in between the paralyzing terror and Gray’s voice growing stronger, calling her back to safety.
Slowly, the adrenaline left her shaking body. She coughed violently, feeling the swell of water in her nose tunneling down into her throat, eventually receding. Sky stopped seeing the tiny mud hut room, stopped feeling the cold, wet wooden board beneath her body.
Blinking rapidly, she realized she was no longer there. She saw a crystal light in the center of a ceiling above her. She was warm. She sobbed for breath, raised her hands. She was no longer cuffed to the table. The pain, the blood flowing across her wrists had been very real. As she stared at her wrists in front of her face, she noticed the many long, pink, jagged scars around them.
“Sky? It’s Gray. Turn and look at me. Come on.”
His low voice was so close. Sky slowly turned her head, staring up into his worried, narrowed eyes. He was crouched near her head, his arms draped over his knees, watching her. There was anger deep in his eyes. Yet a sense of safety poured off him toward her; it was undeniable. Gagging, Sky fought the hold of the nightmare. She was here. She wasn’t there. She was safe! Hot tears jammed into her eyes. Tears of relief.
“Sky? I’m going to slide my arms around you. Can I hold you?” Gray watched the tears spilling down her tense cheeks. Her flesh was waxen. It ripped at his heart. He had to do something to get her out of that toxic nightmare.
She rolled slowly to her side and struggled to sit up. She pressed her hand against her tightly shut eyes. Terrible, gutting sounds tore out of her.
Gray didn’t wait for an answer. He moved in quickly, sliding his arms around her shaking shoulders and beneath her bent knees. In moments, he picked her up and carried her out of the bedroom and into the darkened living room. She collapsed against him, her face pressed and buried against his naked chest, her fingers digging convulsively into his shoulder, as if trying to hide. Gray understood.
The thin wash of moonlight gave him enough light to see where he was going. Sitting down in one corner of the leather couch, Gray settled Sky across his lap. He pulled a bright orange afghan from the top of the couch and hauled it across her, feeling how cold she was. She was a quivering mass in his arms. Her sobs serrated his pounding heart as he pulled her tightly against him, his arms around her, just holding her. Holding her safe in a world gone insane around her.
He tried not to be influenced by the sweet smell of her hair as he tucked her head beneath his jaw. Tried not to allow the soft firmness of her body against his to stir up his own male needs. Tears always made him feel so damned helpless, but at least Sky could release the terror.
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....”
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