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“Coop?” she whispered.
“Get down! For God’s sake, get down!”
“Coop?” she whispered again, knowing he couldn’t hear her.
He was somewhere far away, caught in some kind of hellhole from his past, triggered, she surmised, by the crash and chaos of the pot rack falling. She wasn’t sure what to do. When he reached her, he jerked her down to the floor.
“Keep your head down. Maybe that was just a random strike. Did you see if anyone else was hit? Where’s the rest of your unit?”
“I don’t know, sir,” she answered, praying that was the right answer.
Suddenly the haunted look she’d seen in his eyes a few times made sense. He had experienced and seen horrific things during his time as a SEAL; he was most likely re-living one or all of those. Anabella thought about calling for help, but did the people he worked with know about this? Would he want them to?
She inhaled, slowly drawing in enough air to calm her own fear. She knew she couldn’t leave him—even to get help—even if it meant he inadvertently hurt her. Deep in her heart, she knew he wouldn’t. She had to help him. She had to find some way to reach him.
“Coop,” she said his name in a normal tone of voice. “Coop.”
“Goddamn it! No! Why won’t they listen? They’ve got us pinned down. We have to call for help.”
Her heart broke for him. He was stuck in some hellhole that lingered in his mind.
“Coop. It’s Anabella. Baby, I need you to come back to me.”
He dragged her toward him, shielding her body with his own from some long ago enemy. “Stay down. I’m not going to let them kill you.”
She’d seen the white scars on his back. She had guessed they were from his days as a SEAL. What had happened to him? Whatever it was, she had a pretty good idea that it had happened when he was trying to save somebody.
“Coop, I’m okay. So are you. It was just your klutzy girlfriend and the pot rack.”
She tried to squirm away, and he dragged her backward aggressively so that she was pinned beneath him.
“You need to be quiet. If you aren’t, they’ll kill us all. You pansy-ass, cowardly sonofabitch. I am not going to let you get these people killed.”
It was bizarre. His eyes were open and yet he could see nothing of this reality. His hand reached up and circled her throat. He was serious about not letting whoever it was get others killed.
“I’ll get you out of here, but you have to keep quiet and stay down. If they find us, they’ll torture you until you tell them everything. You won’t be able to hold out. Just stay quiet and my team will find a way to get to us.”
Anabella was unsure what to do. She hadn’t been there, she didn’t know what had happened, and she sure as hell couldn’t put him on his ass. As his angry face hovered over hers, it occurred to her that whoever this person was, he wasn’t a woman—and especially not one he’d enjoyed kissing earlier in the evening.
Bringing her hands up to clasp his head, she dragged it down so that her lips met his in an angry fire of passion and fear. He struggled, but as she continued to kiss him, she could see the horror of whatever was beginning to fade. She intensified the kiss, connecting them more intimately as she now wriggled to get under him.
“Anabella?” he asked as reality descended, and with it embarrassment.
She wasn’t having that. She kissed him more deeply, allowing her tongue to surge into his mouth to stroke his and bring him all the way back from the demons that threatened to consume him.
* * *
COOPER
The flashback, the one he hadn’t had in so long, had come forward in full force. Anabella had seen it. How was she going to trust him to be her Dom? To keep her safe? As the shock and residual horror of the daymare began to fade, all he could hear were hallelujahs and something akin to the choirs of angels and all he could feel was Anabella’s soft, yielding body and kisses. She was pressed hard against him. He had dragged her beneath him. She hadn’t freaked out; she hadn’t screamed. No, instead she had stayed with him and tried to help him find his way back to the surface.
That’s what it was like. It was always as if someone had pushed him under the surface of a murky pond and tried to hold him under. It was odd that he thought of water as it had happened in an area of the world where water was scarce.
“Did I hurt you?” he asked moving his hands over her body to check for himself.
“I’m fine. Are you okay? I didn’t know what else to do…”
“You were perfect. How long was I gone?”
