Page 26 of Stolen By the Billionaire
As she bucked to throw him off, her soft ass nudged his hips.
Nope. He repressed that inclination.
Sometimes, adrenaline and testosterone got all mixed up in the heat of battle. Blaze had pulled his fellow operators off women before they’d committed a war crime. Lust and blood lust felt the same and overwhelmed even the best training, given the wrong circumstances. Even the dividing line between adding to your number in lawful battle and straight-up murder was too narrow sometimes.
Air filled Blaze’s lungs. He had subdued the enemy combatant. He was in no danger.
There was no need for the violence flooding his bloodstream.
He was prepared for this situation.
Blaze reached into the big side pocket of his fatigues to retrieve zip ties.
He bound Sarah’s hands behind her back with two plastic strips chained together. “I didn’t want to have to do this.”
“Stop! You can’t tie me up! I have too much to do!”
“I have to get you out of here. Men are coming here to kill you,” Blaze intoned, keeping his voice level and calm, as befitted a Navy SEAL officer. He wasn’t some untrained gangbanger raging about a slight to his bruised ego.
Or his shoulder. His very bruised shoulder.
“No! I can’t leave! I have chores still to do!” she yelled.
He plucked her phone from her hip pocket, powered it down, and tucked it into his uniform’s lower leg pocket. “They can wait.”
“Give me back my phone!”
“You cannot do the chores today.”
“I have more chores to do all day, every day, forever!”
“Sarah, you must be extracted from this area. There is no way you can stay here.”
“I have to!”
Exasperation broke through his professionalism. “What do you do when you go on leave? I mean, vacation? Doesn’t a neighbor or a service take care of your stock?”
She was sobbing, rolling her forehead on the barn’s cement floor. “I don’t take vacations. Oh, my Lord and Savior, a vacation. That’s crazy talk.”
“What if you get sick?”
“I don’t get sick.”
“What about Christmas?”
“The animals get hungry on Christmas. I bake them horse cookies with a little honey and cloves.”
That was troubling. “But what if you can’t do your chores?”
“The Yoders fed my stock for me when I had to be in church on the mornings of my parents’ funerals, but I was home in time for evening chores.”
He paused, sitting back on his heels. “You didn’t take a day off for your parents’ funerals?”
“No,” she said, sobbing breaths pushing out of her mouth. “There is no one else. I get it all done.”
He touched the palm of her hand, feeling calluses and ridges on her fingers and palms with his fingertips. “Logan should have been here to help you.”
Logan Bell lived in a Manhattan apartment overlooking Central Park and refused to wear a suit that cost less than five grand. The thought of Logan performing any sort of manual labor was enough to give Blaze a case of the chuckles.
