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Unable to understand anything about what he saw, an image rose in his mind. A photo that Forest had shown him, the snapshot of his family taken right before he left for the Navy.
They stood on the front porch of their home, a backdrop of log exterior behind the four of them. Their mother was missing from the unit, but Forest still had a family left to go home to.
Hunter clung to the memory of that picture while a medic hovered over him. Before he delivered a dose of morphine for the pain, Hunter held that image of Forest’s family in his mind, gripping tight to it because he didn’t have one of his own to bring him back from the edge of death.
With a jolt, he sat up on the bunk and smacked his head on the ceiling. Pain rocketed through his skull, but it woke him too.
Grounded him.
Pain, he knew. Family, not at all.
The room was still dark with night, but in Germany, it was the time when the nurses made their early morning rounds to hand out painkillers or medication to dull the mental anguish of losing everything in one blast.
Going into that fight, the entire squadron had known Forest was dead. They were trained to stuff down those emotions, compartmentalize them to the point where they couldn’t think or feel—only act.
After a drone dropped a bomb on them, few men were left alive. Hunter was one of the lucky ones. At least they told him that.
When he eased out of the top bunk, Marks, sleeping below him, wheezed a light snore and rolled onto his side. The cool floor under Hunter’s bare feet woke him even more.
His parched lips felt too much like the blood dried on them after that hellish night when a bomb blew him right out of his boots. The only thing that had saved him was the force that threw him out of the way.
Hunter knew he was lucky as hell, but knowing it and feeling it were two separate things.
Quietly, he moved to the kitchen, guided by a small light left on over the stove. He looked in the fridge for a bottle of water, but it only held beer. He grabbed one and cracked it open. After a long swig of the earthy brew, the dream lingering in his head washed away, leaving him clear enough to remember other things.
Like what happened at Badlands just hours before.
Without willing his feet to move, he drifted out of the bunkhouse. There was no porch to speak of, only a small roof overhanging the door to offer a bit of respite from the weather. He paused there for a moment, filling his lungs with deep breaths of the fresh mountain air and the tang of rain driving the breeze across the ranch.
He stepped out into the yard, enjoying the cool earth under his bare feet and the cold beer in his hand.
No chill could erase the fire in his gut when he looked to the house and saw a light on in the window on the far corner.
Only someone still running on European time would be awake.
Ivy.
Goddamn. The last person he wanted to think about. It was bad enough they were forced into each other’s company on the ranch, but he’d made things so much more awkward when he spanked her.
Chest tight, he raised the bottle to his lips and sipped. Icy beer slipped down his dry throat.
Had she woken up thirsty too? Was she easing out of bed right this minute to go find a drink of water?
He pictured her in that sexy sequined skirt. Those long, trim legs were the stuff of dreams for the lonely men serving their country. Legs a woman could wrap around a man and hold him tight while he drove his cock deep inside her.
Only Hunter did not want Ivy that way.
So why was his cock stiff and tenting his boxer briefs?
Fuck. She wasn’t just the wrong woman, she was completely off-limits.
Even if he could take her for a roll in the hay so conveniently placed twenty yards away from where he stood, it wasn’t as if he could do a hit-it-and-quit-it like his days when he was on military leave.
And he definitely wasn’t in a position to have a relationship. He didn’t even want one.
He stared at that small square of light in her window, willing his body to behave, for his cock to stop surging with lust for a woman he could never touch.
Tonight he’d head down to Badlands again, solo this time. He’d take a seat, with a drink in hand, and find out what he could about the attacks taking place on the ranch.
