Rhapsody (The Bellator Saga Book 5) (29 page)

“He’s not worth it,” she whispered. “He’s more useful to us alive than dead.”

“He hurt you,” Jack choked out. “You told me he hurt you.”

She brought her lips to his ear. “Stop, Monty. This doesn’t help anything.”

He let up his grip, just a little, and it was enough for Edwards to struggle to the floor, wheezing for breath.

Flaherty and Ballard were already helping the other man to his feet, so there was a good chance they wouldn’t let Jack go after him again, but you never knew. Caroline wrapped her arms around her husband’s shoulders. “Can I trust you to behave yourself?”

Jack straightened up, adjusting his collar. “No.”

Edwards coughed, glaring at Caroline and Jack. “I helped you,” he said. “I got you food.”

Did he think that made up for everything he’d done? Everything he let Murdock and Fischer and everyone else do to her? She wasn’t the only one he’d hurt. Who knew how many other prisoners had suffered by his hand? Gabe and six other soldiers had died during two separate rescue missions. Fuck him.

“Yeah, that dinner roll really helped me power through,” Caroline snapped.

Jack lunged at him again. “Do not speak to my wife. Understand?”

Fuck, if he got anywhere near Edwards he’d definitely strangle him to death. “Come on,” Caroline said. “We should get out of here. Clear our heads. All of us.” She turned to Flaherty. “Edwards is on house arrest until we figure out what to do with him. Until then, I want a full report of everything he told anyone in this room about his activities while working at The Fed, because I’m sure he left out a few important details.”

Flaherty shook his head. “Obviously.” He gestured toward Schroeder. “Get a couple of MPs in here to escort Mr. Edwards back to his apartment.”

“That’s my goddamn line,” Jack said. “I want an armed guard outside that asshole’s door at all times until we decide the best course of action.”

Caroline pulled Jack toward the door, just to be safe. His knuckles were bloody, and she didn’t want to think about who it might have come from. Still, he was injured. “Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. What about you?”

Well, I just watched my husband beat the shit out of a guy.
“I’ll be okay.” She glanced around the room. “I think your advisors might be a little afraid of you right now,” she whispered.

“What was that about us needing anger management?”

Caroline tugged a handkerchief out of his pocket and wrapped it around his hand. “Let’s scoot. We can deal with the fallout from this later.”

Jack looked over his shoulder. “Full reports tomorrow, gentlemen. If you take that man to the infirmary make sure he’s at the end of the line.”

Well, that didn’t seem fair. Caroline just wanted Edwards, or Powell, or whatever the fuck his name was, away from her as soon as possible. “Ignore everything Commander McIntyre is saying and use your best judgment,” she said.

It was hard not to let her deepest, darkest thoughts run rampant as they made their way back to their apartment. To prevent herself from feeling Edwards’s arm around her throat, his hand on her wrist. Seeing that fucking smirk on his face – because yes, he had practically goddamn
smiled
– when Fischer put that gun to Jenny’s head and pulled the trigger.

It had all happened so fast – Jack leaping on top of him, walloping him, beating him almost to the point of unconsciousness – and she felt no remorse. None. She felt a strange sense of weird unprofessional shame that Jack had done it in front of his advisors, but guilt? Not one tiny bit.

They didn’t speak. He rubbed his knuckles. She wondered if they hurt. Caroline told herself to be angry. To be mad at Jack for doing something so potentially damaging to the rebellion, or to the both of them as authority figures. But she couldn’t open her mouth.

“Are you upset with me?” Jack asked quietly.

“I’m torn.”

“How so?”

It didn’t hurt to be honest. “You beat up a guy in a wheelchair, Jack.”

“He had it coming.”

Of course he had. And she felt terrible for wishing that Jack had done more, that she hadn’t stopped him, that she had handed him someone’s weapon and told him to finish the man off and be done with it. She had to handle it the way she always did. With flip, grim humor. One of the few defense mechanisms she had left. Caroline shook her head. “So much for this movement defending the defenseless.”

Jack grabbed her arm, leaning in for a kiss. Oh, how very alpha. “I was defending your honor,” he said.

The handkerchief fluttered to the ground. She didn’t bother picking it up. They were almost back to the apartment. Just a few steps inside, up the stairs, and they’d be home.

She had never realized how secure his grip was. How the heat of his palm pressed into her skin. Or maybe she’d always known but never really focused on it.

His hair was a mess. There was blood on his hands. On his face. Scratches on his cheek. Defensive marks made by the broken man Jack had tried to thump into the ground. His shirt torn and untucked, his eyes wild. His battered hands raw.

She wanted to muss up his hair even more, rip off his shirt, lick his knuckles clean. Give herself to him completely. She started to drag him toward the door.

“Are you okay?” Jack asked. “Do you need me to call Natalie?”

“No,” Caroline said, marching inside the building. “We need to get upstairs.”

“Why?”

Really? He’d kept his mouth shut the entire walk and now he wanted to be a Chatty Cathy? He needed to stop
talking
. No time for the elevator. She started to run up the stairs. “Faster. Shut up.”

Jack pushed ahead of her, reaching the stairwell to their floor first. “Why?”

She shoved him into the hallway, kissing him hard. “Because I’m pretty sure it’s in very poor taste for me to blow you in public.”

He caught her lip in his teeth. “Jesus Christ, woman.”

She pressed up against him. “Let’s go.”

Jack grabbed her hand and ran down the hall until they reached their apartment, before reaching into his pants for his keys. He brought his arm across her shoulders, pulling her toward him until her back was against his chest. She could feel his cock against her ass. Points to him for being able to jog with an erection. How was that even physically possible?

“Oh, sweet Jesus,” she whispered.

He chuckled. “Do you want this?”

She leaned her head back. “Yes.”

“It won’t be sweet. It’ll be hard and fast.”

Bossy Jack had made an occasional appearance but never stayed for long. She hoped he’d return on a more consistent basis. Maybe if she asked ever so nicely, he would. “I understand,” she said.

“Once we get in there you’re going to drop your pants and bend over the couch.”

She closed her eyes and bit her lip.

“And don’t even think about getting your mouth anywhere near my cock,” he said, biting her ear. “You do that and I’ll stop, and I won’t touch you again for the rest of the night. I want to be inside you when I come.”

Dear Lord, where were his keys? She could hear them jingling in his hand. “Jack,” she whispered. “Please unlock the door before I rip your pants off in the hallway.”

He nipped at her neck. “You don’t get to rip my pants off. But I appreciate your polite request.” He placed the key in the lock, throwing the door open and whirling her toward the couch.

She untucked his polo. “I know it’s wrong to find thuggishness attractive but you’re so fucking hot right now.”

“Your compliment is appropriately solicitous but you’re shit at following directions,” he grunted, unzipping her jeans and yanking them down. He pawed at her shirt as she undid his fly.

“You need to get your pants off,” Caroline said.

“Calm down.” He pulled his cock out of his boxers. “They stay on. I know how much you love feeling them on your bare ass.”

She tugged her panties down. “I can’t – stop distracting me.”

Jack yanked them off the rest of the way and bent her over the couch, kicking her legs apart. “You’re one to talk.”

“Get inside me,” Caroline said.

He bit her neck. “I’m the one who gets to make demands, understand?”

Alpha and commanding as hell but with that mellifluous voice that wiped away any fears she’d ever had. She could change her tune if it meant she got what she wanted. “Yes,” she whispered.

“Good girl.”

It was quick and hard and fast, just like he promised. When he finished Caroline tumbled to the floor and burst into laughter. Jack tucked himself back into his pants and sat down beside her, rubbing her back.

“You want to tell me what’s so funny?” he asked.

It took a while before she got her giggles under control. Her sides hurt. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had that kind of ache from laughing so hard. “We’ve had a lot of adventures but this is easily the most perverted thing we’ve ever done.”

Jack shook his head, amused. “Me fucking you bent over the armrest of the couch isn’t that unusual, sweetheart.”

“It is when you’ve just beaten a guy to a bloody pulp. I think we have problems. We’re like a couple of wild animals or something.”

“Do you
really
think that’s a problem?”

“I don’t know. Did I break your cock?”

He grinned at her, and she noticed he hadn’t bothered rezipping his fly. “No,” he said. “But you can kiss it better anyway.”

So she did.

Darkness. Pain. Nothingness. For the first time in weeks, Caroline had a nightmare.

“I’m going to kill him,” Jack said, after he calmed her down.

“No, you’re not.”

“Let me get the light.”

She didn’t want his warmth to leave her just yet. “Stay here. I can handle it.”

He pulled her into his arms. “I’m going to kill him,” he repeated.

He’d practically done it earlier in the day. If it were up to Caroline, Commander McIntyre and their informant would never be in the same room again. “Jack, I haven’t even told you what he did.”

“He was there. That’s enough.”

“And you already got your payback.”

The hands wrapped around her curled into fists. “Not nearly as much as he deserves.”

She’d had time to calm down. Process things. Although it hadn’t been enough if her subconscious still went to its fearful default setting. “We have to find a constructive way to deal with this. In conjunction with our advisors.” Caroline let out a heavy sigh. “It’s time I told them what happened. Schroeder knows but that isn’t enough.”

“I’m not sure we need to have that conversation.”

“Jack, we haven’t been communicating properly with anyone and this is the result. If we had done our jobs instead of fucking around all the time, we would have known who Edwards was from the very beginning.” She sighed again. “Or if I’d just opened up to you to begin with, you would have known.”

His grip tightened around her. “I shoulder some of the blame too. I played a lot of stuff close to the vest during that debrief. Before we sent you to Nevada. If I had known who he really was-”

She knew how that sentence would end. And she couldn’t let him blame himself. Not for this. “You were doing what you thought was right. So was I. Now we know we have to do things differently. It won’t be an easy conversation, but we have to have it. Especially since we’re taking this operation in another direction. We can’t expect to succeed if we don’t lay everything on the table.”

He kissed her forehead. “I don’t know whether I should find your assertiveness sexy or annoying.”

She laughed. “Sexy, I hope.”

Jack moved his lips lower. “Are you going to be okay?” he whispered. “It’s been a while since…you know.”

The nightmare. He was worried. But she’d had worse. This one had just been a blend of faces and words and emptiness. “I’m fine.”

He kissed her cheek. “When I think of how close I came to losing you again, just so that piece of shit could be rescued. I-”

Caroline put a finger to his lips. “It’s in the past. Now we can hold him accountable for what he’s done.”

“I know.”

The concern was still in his voice. It would take a while and some reassurances for it to fade. “Everything will work out. And I’ll be fine, I promise.” She snuggled in closer. “I have you.”

*              *              *              *              *

“Edwards is not allowed in this room,” Jack said. “He is not permitted anywhere except his own apartment. House arrest.”

Flaherty frowned. “Sir, I-” He turned to Caroline. “Ma’am?”

What did he want her to say? Did he want her to comment on criminal procedure, when their movement effectively had very few policies aside from those dealing with minor offenses? “I agree with Commander McIntyre,” she said.

“It just seems that in the interest of getting the whole story, he should be here,” Ballard said.

None of their advisors had been particularly happy at the tone of the meeting thus far. Not that Caroline cared. Her goal was to get through it with as little emotional upheaval as possible. That was the funny thing about progress, both mental and otherwise; each tiny step forward meant that the slightest shift in the wind could send her hurtling backwards at any moment. And a few weeks of bliss and comfort with Jack couldn’t heal all those wounds, especially when so many of them remained fresh.

“Maybe Commander Gerard doesn’t want Edwards here,” Jack told him.

Oh, he was going to put that decision on her? “I have no issues with having him in the same room with me,” Caroline said. “I’m more concerned about how you might react.”

“I would be professional,” he said.

He sounded a shade too defensive. “Let me rephrase,” Caroline said. “I have no concerns about Commander McIntyre. I worry more about how my husband would behave.”

He shrank back a little. Good. He’d gotten the message. “Fine,” Jack said. “Let’s talk about where we go with this. What we do with his information?”

“I think we need to know exactly what he told the interrogators during his debrief.” Caroline turned to Flaherty. “Was everything transcribed?”

Flaherty pushed a thick report across the table. “It was. Of course, he left out some critical points, as we’ve recently discovered.”

Levity mixed with professionalism. She appreciated that. “I suppose you want me to fill in the blanks?”

It didn’t take much for the men to collectively stare down at the table. It was almost refreshing for them to tactfully show their discomfort with the topic. But they couldn’t shy away from it forever. And she didn’t see any point in sugar coating anything.

“He was reassigned to me a few days after I arrived at The Fed,” she said. “I don’t know why. I was told he had seniority. He was-” She took a deep breath. Caroline didn’t even realize she’d clenched her fists until she felt Jack’s palm brush the back of her hand.

“Keep going,” he said.

Jesus, by the time she was done spilling her guts they’d all be in therapy. Natalie would have her hands full for sure. “He assisted when the lead interrogator, Jeffrey Murdock, did his questioning.” She held up her hands. “When Murdock broke my fingers the first time, Edwards twisted my other arm behind my back and wrapped his hand around my throat. I-” She closed her eyes. “He threatened to break my arm if I did anything stupid, so I – I didn’t move and Murdock used a hammer to-”

“He broke fingers on both of your hands,” Jack broke in. “Was Edwards there for both incidents?”

“Yes.” She thought about holding back the tears. Fighting the memories. But she couldn’t do it all the damn time. She let out a little hiccup. “He laughed when I cried the second time.”

“He said he gave you food,” Ballard said. “Is that true?”

Jack glared at him but Caroline waved him off. Ballard didn’t mean it as an accusation. He was merely seeking information. “Yes,” she said. “And an ice pack for my hands. I thought – that made him a little hard to read.”

Jack shook his head. “That doesn’t discount his behavior.”

Ballard nodded. “I agree. It does not. It probably makes it worse.” He turned to Caroline. “What else did he do?” he asked gently.

Jenny.
Nope. Couldn’t go there. She could sidestep. She wiped her eyes. “He smacked me around. Toyed with my emotions.”
Mo. Feef.
Couldn’t go there either. Not without talking to Jack first. “He and one of the other guards taunted me along with Murdock. It was…complicated.”

Jack leaned back in his chair. “Doesn’t seem all that complicated to me. He’s just as complicit as anyone else in that place.”

“Not everyone who worked there was bad,” Caroline pointed out, thinking of Jonesie and Gabe.

“That’s true,” he said. “Your friends are able to back up your assertions, I’d assume. And contradict whatever faulty information Edwards might have provided.” He sighed. “I don’t know if we can trust any of the intel he gave us.”

“I’m sure some of it was legit,” Flaherty said. “We’ve been able to independently corroborate those records.”

“Only because of Caroline,” Jack said. “His credibility is a serious issue. To say nothing of his criminal culpability.” He glanced at his assistant. “Caroline and Captain Schroeder wish to contact The Hague about what she experienced at The Fed. I think that’s an option we need to pursue.”

“It might be a good way to get the international community involved,” Ballard mused. “Are you sure you want to do that, ma’am?”

She’d have to tell them everything.
Everything
. Including all the things she vowed never to tell a soul. A possibility she hadn’t really considered until she’d spent the last five minutes trying to block out the worst parts of her captivity. But if they could end an unspoken war without a single shot fired, she’d take it. “If it means we can go home, I’ll do anything that needs to be done.”

“Then we’ll step back a little,” Flaherty said. “I suggest we set the data release for shortly after the New Year. Hopefully that will help make your application more compelling.”

That sounded like a hell of a good plan to her. “Let’s do it,” she said.

*              *              *              *              *

Forms were to be submitted. Narrations drafted. All the ugly details of those few weeks of her life would need to be laid out for any number of eyes to see. But Caroline could do it. She had time. And her own office. And a promise from Jack that he wouldn’t read anything without her permission. But all those concerns faded when he was squeezing her hand in his.

“That wasn’t so bad,” she said.

He squeezed her hand a little tighter. “Could’ve been worse.”

“I commend you for keeping your temper.”

“Are you being sarcastic?”

“No, you showed impressive restraint.”

He stepped ahead of her to open the door to their apartment building. “I’m disappointed you didn’t get more self-righteous.”

Caroline laughed softly. “You like when I give my little speeches?”

Jack pressed the button for the elevator. “Makes me hard as a goddamn rock.”

Oh, that was interesting. She might need to hustle back to their apartment a little faster once they reached their floor. “Next time I’ll make more of an effort.”

“Why not now?” He put his arm around her waist and guided her out of the elevator before picking up his pace. “Give me a good lecture.”

“While we’re double timing it?”

“You can jog and talk. You’re a multifaceted woman.”

She gave him her best deadpan look. “Are you implying that not all women have nuance?”

He grinned, chasing her toward their apartment door. “More than that. Come on, sweetheart.”

“You certainly couldn’t be implying that females are merely simpering simpletons vying for your precious male attention.”

“Shouldn’t you be batting your eyelashes when you say that?”

She put her hands on her hips. “Oh, do
not
even start.”

Jack spun her around and pressed up behind her. “Get my keys.”

Caroline smiled as his teeth clamped her skin. She could feel his erection against her thigh, and reached around to shove her hand in his front pocket. “That barely took any effort at all,” she said, unlocking the door and stepping inside. “Maybe I’m the one who should be disappointed.”

He guided her toward the wall. “C for effort, B for execution. Better luck next time.”

In her mind, she’d earned at least an A- but wasn’t going to argue. “What’s my punishment? You gonna fuck the insolence out of me?”

“Jesus, baby. Gimme more of those big naughty words.”

She smiled as he slid her jeans down her legs. “Audacity. Effrontery. Impertinence.”

“I’m going to fuck that impudence right out of you,” he said softly. “But I’ll reward you for being so goddamn sexy about it.”

He caught on fast. She sighed when he bit her neck again. “Ladies’ choice?” she asked.

Jack laughed as she stroked his cock. “You’re right,” he said. “We’re goddamn barbarians.”

“But garrulous as hell.”

“Shut up,” he whispered, and leaned in to kiss her again.

They became a tangle of hands and mouths, with Caroline clawing at his back as Jack tugged at her hair. She didn’t care about the wall chafing her skin. All she cared about was him inside her, fast and intense, hard and quick, beautiful and destructive. When it was over he pulled out and looked at her.

“Was that what you wanted me to do that night in your apartment?” he asked.

She grabbed his shirt. “That would have been interesting. But honestly, right now I need you to guide me over to the couch because I don’t think I can stand up anymore.”

He pressed his forehead to hers. “I need a minute before I can move. I think I saw stars.”

She laughed. “That’s flattering. Are you going to have enough energy to make me dinner?”

He led her to the bedroom. “You may as well lay down a bit. And I think so. Will you put out afterward?”

Caroline let him tuck her into bed. If she didn’t watch it, all this pampering was going to spoil her rotten. But she could indulge it a little. “Probably. Doesn’t putting out beforehand count for something?”

Jack kissed her again before heading for the doorway. “Absolutely. Just remember I owe you one. More than one. Many ones.” He grinned. “I’ll get cracking on that meal.”

*              *              *              *              *