Page 126 of Zorro

“You okay?” he asked, voice low.

That stopped her.

She looked at him, really looked, and something in her face flickered. Hunger. Guilt. Longing. All tangled up and buried in the rigid lines of a woman who’d made herself untouchable for far too long.

“I will be,” she said finally, her tone unconvincing

Her voice had softened further. “You saved me, Bear. You stopped the man who would’ve finished what he started. BOPE’s so grateful. So is the government. They want to decorate you, the team.”

He grimaced. “I don’t want their medal. The team won’t either.”

“They’re not asking. The government wanted to give all of you a formal commendation, including Bree and Izzy. But more than that? You and your team saved BOPE from a catastrophic failure. If Batiste had succeeded, the entire unit might have been dismantled, replaced by something colder. Harder. Less principled.”

Bear exhaled. “He was just a tango in the end. He died like one.”

“Maybe,” Bailee said. “But that doesn’t make what you did any less necessary. Or any less righteous.”

There was a quiet moment. Flint stirred at the foot of the bed but didn’t rise.

Then Bailee’s gaze dropped, slow and deliberate, to the curtain of black hair resting on his chest, damp around the edges, loose now that no mission required it to be restrained.

Her voice changed. Softened. “May I…” She paused. Swallowed. Then met his gaze fully. “Can I brush and braid your hair for you?”

His breath caught. The silence between them thickened, and he hungered to feel her hands on him.

She honored their traditions, which told him she wasn’t as outcast as she thought she was. She knew what it meant, and she still asked. This was shaping up into a monumental mistake.

He nodded. Just once, helpless against his hunger.

Her hands were gentle when she moved, reverent as she reached into her own pack for a comb, like she’d come prepared. He angled his shoulders, allowing her to slip behind him without speaking, her fingers threading through the loose strands, separating, smoothing, braiding.

He closed his eyes, savoring her warmth, her careful touch.

Every pass of her fingers over his scalp lit something inside him he hadn’t felt in years, need, yes, but also desire. Not just for her body, but for the quiet she carried. The way she touched him without claiming, saw him without softening, honored him without ceremony.

Her fingers were gentle.

Her breath ragged.

He wanted her, achingly, beneath him so he could feel the full expanse of her body, her soft breasts, the heat between her legs. A woman of his people, a woman who would know how to make a home and raise children with love and laughter. Show him how marriage would work, how love filled all the empty, hollow places inside him. He swallowed hard. It was an illusion. He knew it was a figment of his imagination. But he couldn’t seem to let it fully go.

When she finished, her fingers lingered just long enough to feel the shiver roll down his spine.

“I can redo it tighter,” she murmured.

“No,” he rasped. “It’s perfect.”

He didn’t mean the braid.

She didn’t correct him.

Naval Medical Center San Diego, San Diego, California – Ten Days Later

The room was quiet. Flint had drifted off. Bear was seconds from doing the same when the door creaked open.

“Bear?” A hushed voice. “You awake?”

He groaned. “I am now.”