Colby made a sound of aggravation low in her throat. This time I couldn’t hold back the laughter, it popped out and I cleared my throat to cover the sound. It didn’t work. Her hazel eyes burned into the top of my head as I looked down at my plate again.
“Fine. Thengiveme my lunch.”
“Ask nicely-”
“Please,” she snarled at him.
He seemed to consider that. “It’s a start. Now asknicely. And ask me to feed you.”
“Just give her something to eat,” Arsen told Rafe in Russian.
“No. She needs to learn that we’re in charge and she has to do what we say,” he replied calmly. Colby listened to the exchange though she didn’t know what they said.
“You’re a dick,” I told him with a chuckle.
“True. But in time she’ll figure out she belongs to us.”
I gave a derisive snort. “She’s an American.”
“So?” Rafe asked.
“You might be waiting a while for her to beg. They grow their women independent over there.”
“Plus, she was in the military,” Arsen added.
“I’m aware of that. It doesn’t change the fact that now she’s here with us. She belongs to me now. The sooner she gets that through her head, the sooner she can eat.”
Colby’s eyes had finally stopped ping-ponging around at us as we spoke and now she stared glumly into the fire.
“Be sure you don’t break her spirit as you tame her,” Arsen warned. He stood and dumped his empty plate back into my basin of water. “It’d be a shame if she lost that fire.”
“I don’t want that,” Rafe admitted.
We both understood what he was doing and why. If she was truly going to live with us, there were times we’d need her to obey orders and do so without hesitation. Not for our own egos, but to keep her safe.
It was dangerous enough out in this wilderness for men, but doubly so for women. None of us wanted to see her hurt because of our decision to bring her here. That was the only reason we were going along with what he was doing. Well, not the only reason. True, he wasn’t doing this out of ego. Our egos were already so big that there was no stroking them. We needed her safe, but we needed her to not leave again. To realize that her days as a free woman were over. She belonged to us now and would rely on us for everything.
Rafe’s methods might be a bit harsh, but they were effective. I put my own dishes in the basin and waited for the other two to finish their battle over lunch.
Rafe was eating slowly, giving her a chance to change her mind and share his meal with him. She stared into the flames, refusing to look at any of us. With a shrug, Rafe downed the rest of his food, sopping up the juices from the chickens he’d bought at the market with the last bite of his pita.
I didn’t miss the way Colby watched him from the corner of her eye or the way her pink tongue flicked out to lick her lips. She was hungry, but she was more stubborn. She’d give in eventually.
“What did you learn at the market?” I asked.
“They’re searching everywhere for her and those who assisted her,” Arsen responded.
“So…us,” I said with a sigh. “Great.”
“Not much we can do about that, although they don’t know that it wasus.” Rafe replied. We’d had to protect Colby. None of us would change killing those men yesterday. We were lucky that they hadn’t put together who her rescuers were. We’d been causing some trouble lately and didn’t need them figuring out that Colby belonged to us. “As far as they know she was rescued by a team of SEALs, or some shit. We did, however, find out that the group that attacked her team belonged to Roj.”
“Which means they were there for us, more specifically the mercenaries that blew up their weapons stash. They’d been waiting to ambush us when we’d come in for supplies.” I shot a guilty look at Colby. Arsen was watching her with sympathy.
“That’s right,” Rafe said. I could see that was weighing heavy on his mind as well.
Roj Badawi was our current target and he’d been a lot harder to track down than the last few we’d gone after. He was a bomb maker and strategist. It was suspected that his group had aligned themselves with The Holy Order of Qaltala. The last thing anyone needed was The Asad—Roj’s nickname out here, meaning The Lion—working with The Holy Order.
Both groups were dangerous alone. Together they’d be a nightmare to deal with. They had assembled their own team to come after us, and Colby’s team had been in their way. If they hadn’t been flying overhead and gained the insurgents attention, we would have been fighting for our lives much like they had been.