Free At His Command by Karen Anders Page B

She shoved at him, but he didn’t let her push him away.
    He knew she was tired, the kind of tired you didn’t get from one difficult day. But he had to be tough with Sia or he would lose ground with her. She was much too strong a personality to back down when she thought she was right. But he wasn’t perfect. He lost his grip a little, too. “You could severely damage your JAG career by being insubordinate.”
    “Is that a threat?” she shouted right back at him. “Are you going to write me up, Chris? For doing my job! Right now I care more about the truth then I care about my JAG career.”
    “That’s evident,” he shot back. “But you will heed my authority.”
    “I chafe at your authority. NCIS is a civilian agency. You don’t have anything but a fine thread of influence. This should have been my case. It all started with me and me alone. That’s where it should end.”
    “I was there when it started. Don’t forget that,” he said flatly.
    “How can I forget that? How can I? It destroyed my life.” Her words were precise, old fury barely reined in. “Not a day goes by I don’t think about it and how it eviscerated me.”
    He flinched and took a step back at the anguish in her voice. The pain was as sharp as ever, as sharp as a razor blade that had ended his dream of a Navy career, lost him the love of his life, deprived him of the best friend who’d been so like a brother to him, destroyed his hope for a family. It sliced at his heart, mocked him with its cruelty, tried to sever his strength.
    Regret burned like acid in his throat, behind his eyes. He clenched his jaw against it, whipped himself mentally to get past it. But it all came rushing back, breaking out of its six-year-old prison. And with it came the sound of his father’s voice. His father had been a mean, drunken, good-for-nothing bastard who had told him time and again he would never make anything out of himself. Never be anything. But he’d been smart, smarter than he’d let on, because his father would have taken away every opportunity he had to excel. He would make sure his father never saw his grades. Not that his father ever cared. As soon as he could, he applied to and got accepted into the Naval Academy in Annapolis with his eye on Top Gun and becoming a fighter pilot. The tests were a piece of cake, and the training fit him like a well-worn glove. He had owned the skies for a brief time, as fleeting as the burst of fireworks as they lit up the night sky. It wasn’t long before he plunged to earth.
    “Oh, God, Chris. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to say that.” She brought a hand to her mouth to hold back the cry that tore through her, but the tears still flooded and fell. He struggled with the burden of his guilt. He braced his shoulders against it, trembling inside.
    “Chris,” she said softly. “I lost so much and it’s built up for so long. I never got the chance to tell you how angry I was with you. How devastated.”
    He closed his eyes, the pain and longing had haunted him for so long, closer to the surface than they had ever been. She touched his shoulder, gripping him as if he were her lifeline, but he knew better.
    “You have a right to your feelings, Sia.” But God, it hurt, because she might not have meant to say it, but she was most definitely feeling it.
    Then she cupped his face. He opened his eyes and the glistening of her tears totally did him in. He wished he could go back to that day and perish with Rafe. It would have been so much easier to have just simply died.
    Her eyes softened as she stared up into his face, remorse as clear as the fine brandy color of her eyes. He wanted far, far more than either of them could give at the moment.
    He ran his thumb along her lower lip, watching her eyes darken under his touch, wishing like hell her dragons had already been slain.
    But he knew he was one of those dragons.
    “We have to keep everything in perspective. We just agreed up on the deck we were in this