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He was damn good at it, too. Until his last mission in Haiti. They’d been sent in to rescue an American diplomat when things went FUBAR. The hostiles not only took the man we were sent to rescue, they also took an entire village of hardworking Haitians hostage.

While Dom’s team had been organizing and planning everything, the insurgents had been raping and torturing woman and children. Tying the men up to poles and forcing them to watch. His team had never been informed of anyone other than the diplomat, so they had no clue they were about to walk into something nightmares were made of.

Heading in to rescue their target, the scene that greeted them had made even the hardened soldiers sick. They were supposed to be the baddest of the bad but seeing so many small children chopped up and bloody, violated; they had all been shaken to the core.

When they’d contacted their unit leader, he told them to stick to the mission. Nothing else was their problem. That hadn’t sat well with any of them. They’d successfully completed their mission, though. Once the diplomat was on a plane back to wherever he was so important, they’d defied orders and gone back to the village to see if they could rescue any of the people left alive.

In the twenty-four hours it had taken to get the man they’d rescued on the plane, a lot, they learned, had happened.

The village had been burned to the ground.

Its people burned alive.

The smell of burning flesh was something etched into his brain’s synapses for life.

*****

The silence was a welcome relief from Casey’s inquisitive questions. She had a hard time fully explaining where her head was at when she’d decided to leave, so hearing the hurt in his voice was painful. She’d caused it, though, so she owed him the small explanation she gave.

Spending a lifetime trying to protect those she loved, it had come as second nature to want to protect them, too. Only she’d hurt them all while doing it. Now, remorse would be her companion.

Turning to Dom, she noticed he was looking a little pale but a lot pissed off.

“Dom?” she asked quietly not wanting to disturb him but needing to know he was all right, and where his head was at.

It took him a moment to come back into his head before he answered her. “Yeah?”

“Are you okay? You have this look on your face…I don’t know how to explain it.”

“Just thinking.” His answer was short, sharp.

“Do you want to talk about it?”

He pondered her words for a moment. Looking to her, he grabbed her hand squeezing it lightly. “It’s not something you ever need to hear about, Princess.”

“Oh. Ok.” It kind of hurt that he would dismiss her so easily. He demanded everything from her and more. It was the first time she’d had the opportunity to really help him, and him shooting her down stung.

“Just thinking about the past, Princess. Trust me when I tell you it’s not something you’d ever want to hear about. Nothing good came from it then, nothing good will come from it now.”

“Talking about it will be good for you, though.”

“Are you always so damn logical?” He laughed.

“Only when it comes to someone I love.”

Shit. Did I just say that out loud? Please don’t notice, she begged in her mind.

“Are you saying you love me, Princess?” His tone of voice had no give, so she didn’t know if the idea made him happy or what.

“Of course she is you idiot,” Casey commented from his drool-filled bench.

“Shut the hell up, Case,” Dom snapped at him. Staring back to her, he asked again, “Princess?”

She smiled at him, not wanting to have such an intimate conversation with an audience, even a partially passed out one. There was a lot she wanted to say to him, and the fear of him not reciprocating held her back from experiencing th

at humiliation where she couldn’t run away.

“That’s all right, I can wait,” he whispered to her.