Taming the Wildcat (Sargosian Chronicles) (12 page)

Finally, after long moments, Summer found the will to break off the kiss so she could gaze into his beautiful, stunned eyes, as though he didn’t believe what he saw. Bringing her hand up to caress his face, she smiled at him, drinking in the sight of him.

“Roz…” she breathed, losing herself in his kiss as she twined her arms underneath and around his neck.

He groaned deeply and wrapped her up in his arms. His embrace was so tight she could barely breathe, but she didn’t care. Finally, he broke the kiss to bury his face in her neck.

“Lady’s teeth, I thought I’d lost you. Don’t you ever scare me like that again,” he breathed against her skin.

“Roz Taren! Get your ass—oh for fuck’s sake. Someone get him off her!”

Saarday’s voice shattered the silence on the bridge as the Fleet Commander stormed out of his office. His eyes, so like Roz’s, widened as he saw the pair of them on the floor.

Instinctively, Summer tried to curl closer to Roz as several members of the security team moved in to pull them apart. She was the one on top of him. Hell, she had tackled him. Hard hands clamped down on her upper arms and someone grabbed her around her waist. When they pulled, she flipped over without warning and struck out at them wildly, connecting a right hook with the man who had tried to drag her off.

“No! Don’t you touch him,” she snarled.

“Let go of her. King. My office. Now!”

Her commander’s voice was a sharp snap that brought her back to reality. Glaring at the security officers who’d laid hands on her, and daring them to try something else, she rolled to her feet. Her gaze shot briefly to the man who had called off the security team. She realized with a sinking feeling she had probably just stepped into a big, steaming pile of shit with the stunt she’d just pulled.

Keeping herself between Roz and those who were too stupid to know what a mistake it was to try to grab him, she had the odd thought she hadn’t protected him, as much as she had
prevented
him from tearing into anyone. He might have been off his game momentarily by the shock of seeing her alive, but she guessed it had worn off by now as he sprang to his feet.

“Lay a hand on her again and you’ll not only lose it,” he promised, stopped by her hand in the center of his broad chest, “but I’ll take it off at the shoulder. Understand me?” Anger radiated from him, his body stiff with tension.

“Roz—in there—now,” she half ordered, half begged, pushing on his chest until he backed up through the office door.

He pulled her against him; at the same time, he reached out to slam the door shut with such violence and power the picture frames on the walls rattled. For a moment, she was right where she wanted to be again and forgot about everything else until Saarday cleared his throat, in a less than gentle reminder they weren’t alone.

Turning her head, she found her CO glaring at them, his arms crossed over his broad chest as he waited for her to extricate herself from Roz’s arms.

He’s going to throw me in the brig for punching that guy. Shit.

The large Commander looked from one to the other for a long moment. His expression more forbidding than she’d ever seen it. Finally, he narrowed his gaze on Roz.

“Would you like to explain yourself?”

Roz shrugged. “Not particularly. It’s none of your damn business.”

For a second, she thought she saw amusement in Saarday’s green eyes. Green eyes like Roz’s.
Shit.

Dragging her gaze away from the man several feet away from them, she looked up at the one she held on to. The man who still refused to loosen his hold on her. The shape of their eyes was slightly different, but the color was almost an exact match. Too close to be a coincidence. Her brain replayed the first thing she heard him say when she saw him crossing the bridge: “You know what, Dad? Screw you.”

She couldn’t move. Shock held her still as she waited for someone to break the silence. Roz’s mouth twisted in a sneer, but he stubbornly wasn’t speaking. Looking back at Saarday, she saw he smirked at the two of them, but his gaze watched her as she put the pieces together.

“Someone please tell me what is going on! Explain what?”

The note of uncertainty in her voice rubbed at her rapidly fraying nerves. Tilting her head back, she looked up at the blond man who had become her entire life.

“Roz?”

He looked down at her for a second, and she read the frustration and uncertainty there. He didn’t get a chance to speak; instead, Saarday broke the silence.

“What my son is struggling to explain is why he’s gone and gotten himself married without telling anyone. Including his bride.”

Summer’s head whipped around so fast her neck cracked. She felt lightheaded, getting that odd feeling she was stuck in a dream. Things had gone from wonderful to surreal in the span of a matter of minutes.

Married?

While she wanted nothing more than to spend the rest of her life with Roz, this had to be some sort of a joke.

“You’ve got to be shitting me…I think I’d remember something as important as getting married.”

She looked at Roz, but he was too busy glaring at his father, and she was still trying to reconcile her Commander being anyone’s father much less Roz’s to notice.

Saarday didn’t reply. Instead, he stripped off his uniform jacket and undershirt with a quick, angry movement. She didn’t know where to look. She’d never been in a situation where her boss, and if she were to believe him, her father-in-law, had stripped right in front of her.

Her jaw hit the ground. Father–in-law or not, he was ripped. Heavily toned muscles covered his body. Hell, even his muscles had muscles. A delineated six pack rippled down toward—

She cut her own thought off, right there.

“How about this…” Saarday stabbed a thumb toward the intricate design that covered most of his chest. She froze. It was in exactly the same place Roz had asked her to draw on him. “Does he have anything like this? Did you draw anything like this on him?”

By her side Roz growled, a sound of anger and frustration. “Put. Your. Fucking. Shirt. Back. On.”

Her brain stuck on two things. One, Saarday’s muscular body looked like that of a Greek god. It wasn’t that she thought he had a better body than Roz’s, it was just more mature and filled out. She looked at Saarday and didn’t see her Commander, instead, she saw what Roz would grow into. It wasn’t hard to see the same strong lines and coiled power in their frames.

One—he was every inch his father’s son, but better. Her very own Heracles, her hero. Her angel. Two—he really was Saarday’s son and she’d have to come to terms with that. It blew her mind at the way the universe had aligned to bring everything together, as if it were always meant to play out this way. Kismet. Fate. Destiny. She didn’t know if she should thank God or the Lady for planning things out this way, so she thanked both of them.

Three…oh hell, she thought there were only two things her brain kept churning over and over again, around in her head. The list probably went on and on indefinitely. Three—that was the same sort of design she had drawn on Roz’s chest. She wanted to know exactly what it meant, even if she had already put it together for herself. She thought back to how he had looked so serious and intent while he had bent over her, running the tip of the permanent pen along her skin.

Slowly, she nodded her head at Saarday. Next to her, still in the circle of her arms, Roz seethed with anger. Anger and something else.

“Yeah…yes, I did. Why?”

He was going to punch his father’s lights out. Roz stood stock still as he fought the urge. He’d always had a temper, the same temper that radiated from Saarday’s eyes. He had to learn to control it, he wanted to learn to control it, for the slender woman who stood protectively in front of him.

He spread his hand over her lower back where the marks he’d drawn on her were no doubt gone by now. In his heart of hearts he wanted them to still be there, wanted her to have mirrored the feeling in his heart and soul and made them permanent. He knew that was too much to ask for, though. There was nothing to say she felt the same way about him as he did for her.

She was his sun, his moon and his stars. His universe. His only reason for living and breathing.

Even if she wanted nothing more from him than a quick fling…she was alive. It would kill him to walk away when they were done, but he’d manage. Somehow. Nothing mattered to him more than she did, and if what was best for her wasn’t him…he’d find the courage to walk away.

“She did. And I drew on her. A warrior’s marriage before battle.”

His hard expression dared his father to argue with him. It was his right, as Saarday himself, knew well. Roz might not carry his father’s name, he’d been disowned by his mother’s family, but he’d blazed his own trail without a name.

“I didn’t tell her, because it was my choice to pledge to her. She has her own choice to make. She’s not…shouldn’t be…constrained by the rites of a species she doesn’t belong to.”

His father’s gaze shifted to Summer and he tensed as he saw the calculating look. “So King…what do you have to say about this? Since it’s obvious you didn’t have any clue what my idiot child scribbled on you, or you on him…you can walk away.”

Forget punching him. Roz wanted to pulverize him. Before he could act on it, he felt her shift slightly. She had moved closer to him by backing against him, and he felt the tension in her.

“I think I don’t have to explain a damned thing to you about this. What is between Roz and I is none of your fucking business. You have no say in it.”

Holy shit, she sounds pissed.

“If you think I’d walk away from him, then you just proved once again you don’t know shit about me…and I swear to God and the Lady both if you call him an idiot child again, I’ll knock your teeth down your throat.”

At her words, Roz forgot about his father. Hell, the entire Wildcat company could have been crowded in here with them and he wouldn’t have noticed. With gentle, but unrelenting hands, he turned her toward him. Hope coiled in his chest, and blossomed outward with unstoppable force.

“You won’t walk away?” he queried, trying to crush the pathetic note out of his voice. He wanted her to stay with him so badly he physically ached with it. “Do you mean that, baby? You want to stay with me? We don’t have to be married…my culture works differently than yours—”

“Shhhh…”

She reached up and placed her fingers over his lips, effectively stopping the words that tumbled out of his mouth. The look in her eyes as she looked at him stole his breath away. Before he could even start to decipher what was in them, she spoke again, but her words were soft and meant for him alone.

“Of course I mean it. I don’t care if our cultures are different. None of that matters to me.
You
matter to me.”

She seemed to hesitate for a moment as if she were unsure of something before she said the words he never thought he’d ever hear from anyone, let alone someone as special as Summer. “I can’t walk away from you…ever. I love you, Roz.”

Triumph roared through him. Dragging her into his arms with more force than finesse, he kissed her. With no preliminaries, he parted her lips with a forceful sweep of his tongue and drove in. She tasted like heaven and the strawberry cheesecake she’d made for him and the Wildcats. She felt like coming home.

* * *

Roz sat on the edge of her bed while he listened to the sounds of her in the shower. They had left his father’s office and come straight here, but not for what he thought. At least not yet. Summer had kept him at arm’s length with a stern order to sit there while she cleaned up. He had been looking forward to something entirely different when she had pushed him toward the bed. He’d expected to peel the clothes off her and get reacquainted with every single inch of her. He snorted in frustration and shifted again. Dear Lady, help him. She wanted to
talk.

Part of him wanted to bolt, to yank open the door and run. The idea of “talking” about how he felt was not high on his list of priorities. He wasn’t one to examine his inner feelings too much.

Looking around her room, his gaze settled on several drawings on the wall. His eyes widened in wonder. He looked at himself through her eyes. Several different drawings of him, some of only his face, others of him shirtless and showing him from various angles. In awe, he got up to get a closer look. The amount of detail was incredible. She’d even captured his tattoos correctly, which boggled his mind. How could she have memorized so much about him in such a short time?

He found a sketchbook on her bookshelf and flipped it open. More drawings, but not just of him. Jei, Mikko, Kes and many of the other warriors. There was even one he knew
had
to come from her imagination alone, of all of the Wildcats together, as if they had posed for her in a group. Unbidden jealousy rose sharp within him. Had she spent that much time looking at his men she could render their images as well as she had his own? Turning the page, he found more drawings of people he didn’t recognize. He was about to throw the book because it was clear she had spent a lot of time on this one, the same as the ones he had seen of himself. It was just he couldn’t stand the idea of her giving that kind of attention to anyone else but him. She was his.

Shutting the book, he tossed it back on the shelf as his gaze settled on a picture, a captured image of Summer…surrounded by four large men. Picking up the framed photo in his large hands, he stared at their faces. In his mind, he committed them to memory, so he could keep them away from her if they ever showed up again. He’d never been this jealous or possessive over a woman before, but then again, she was his wife now. Everything he felt about her was beyond reason or explanation.

“Those are my older brothers.”

He hadn’t heard her come out of the bathroom. Was there anything worse than being caught red-handed, looking with murderous intent at…her brothers?

Dressed in just a black tank top and low-rise, soft flannel-like lounge pants slung low on her hips, she was still just as stunning to him as she’d been that first night when she had “dressed to the nines” in that sexy purple dress.