Page 79 of Bound

Why did it feel like this?

Why hadn’t it felt like this when he’d walked out of the commissary earlier? Hadn’t his spine been just as stiff, his mind been just as firm about how everything had to be now between them? Nothing had changed about that. Any of it.

“Jayd! Goddammit.”

Oh, yeah. This was really knowing better, yeah? Screeching like a peacock as his hen declared his plumage unsatisfactory. Fuming like a mongoose who craved her vicious bite. Pouting like the douchiest Dom on the planet, unable to figure out why she wasn’t staying still like a good little submissive.

Because she’d never be that.

She’d always dance on the border between fiery and frustrating. Willing but questioning.

Always, always questioning…

Nothing he needed.

Everything her country needed.

A princess for their new age. A woman to set an example for so many others.

A female he could never call his.

A woman who affirmed exactly that as she kept walking, toward the opposite shore of the lagoon. Once there, she hoisted herself up and out of the water but stayed up on all fours.

Christ on high.

If this was her idea of rubbing it in about what he was giving up, she was sure as hell succeeding.

But as soon as her head dropped between her hunched shoulders, he saw things differently.

She wasn’t out to one-up him.

The woman was back on dry land but clearly struggled to keep herself from drowning.

“I…cannot do it anymore, Brickham. I…cannot even try.”

But she was going under anyway.

Fighting a tide of desperation, aided by an undertow of exhaustion in a night full of too much anxiety. Brick saw it all, through every strained striation of her neck and back, and hated himself for it. With every muscle in his body and synapse in his head, he longed for the chance to follow her onto that shore, grab her by the hand, and give her everything she wanted.

Except what she really wanted.

An escape from her life. A light to guide her to—what? Adventure? Romance? Sexy times abroad with the hot American guy? A simple path out of her tunnel?

Shit.

He didn’t know how to get out of his own tunnel. And the parts about light and adventure? Last time he checked, that only happened to warriors named Wilson and Rogers who carried shields with stars, or tap-dancing sailors from forties musicals. Too bad he hadn’t known it years ago, when he’d tried to be that unlikely success story.

Tried. And failed.

And because of that failure—because of the mirage in his mind of being SOCOM’s odds-defying Little Engine That Could—a woman had died.

A woman so much like the one before him now.

A human who gave to the world straight from her heart and deserved all of the same in return.

A person who didn’t need a guy like him moving in on her, exactly like he couldn’t control himself from doing now.

What the hell was he doing now?