So many regrets slammed over him, yet he couldn’t ignore the fact that today he could have lost even the comfort of knowing she was alive. Sure, it tore him up thinking about her building a future with someone else, but that pain was nothing compared to the hell of envisioning her dead. The crushing hell he would have lived with if he’d arrived too late.
Shit.
Bubbles slowed as they neared a muddy stream and stopped under the umbrella of a leafy higlo tree. “Time for a breather.”
“I’m good,” Jose insisted and he was—physically. It was his brain that was about to explode. “Stella?”
“I’m all right,” she insisted, then swayed on her feet.
“Damn it.” Jose shifted the student over to Bubbles in a flash.
His teammate assumed the burden without hesitation and settled the dude against the tree trunk. “We’re safe here for now. I’ll check over the student. You take care of Stella.”
“Jose?” Her whisper carried on the night air with the distant chirrup of a cheetah. Stella jolted. “We shouldn’t stop. I can do this. I don’t want to hold you back or make us a target.”
Dark circles stained under her eyes, but sharp attention sparked as she scanned past the tree to the wild dogs lapping from the shallow stream.
Even now, she was worried about him. Regardless of what she’d been through, the lack of food and sleep, she was ready to kick ass again with the help of a protein bar. She was every bit as incredible as he remembered, indomitable. And alive.
To hell with objectivity.
He gripped her shoulders, and without another thought, he hauled her to his chest. He held her vibrant and whole body against his. He buried his face in her hair that still held the barest hint of her eucalyptus shampoo in spite of the hellish few days.
“God, Stella, I didn’t think you were going to make it out of there.” His voice rasped in his throat, each word, every emotion grating through him like broken glass. Each word sliced him so tangibly he could have sworn he saw the starlight glinting off the shards.
“You made it in time.” She pressed her forehead to his chest, her fists gripping his survival vest.
“You called.”
“I can’t believe you’re here.” She trembled in his arms.
His body zeroed into just the feel of her against him and for a few seconds he allowed himself to forget she needed him to be a different kind of man. To forget they were in the middle of nowhere. To forget he still had tough questions to ask her.
A cleared throat had him pulling back. Even keeping a steadying palm on her waist, his arms already felt empty without her.
The injured student—now clearly awake—whistled lowly in the dark. His back against the trunk, Sutton Harper half grinned, despite his injuries. “I take it you two already know each other? Because if not, I’m feeling shortchanged on the post-rescue TLC.”
Jose shot a scowl at Bubbles for failing to alert him that their extra passenger was back in the land of consciousness. Bubbles shrugged. The trumpet of elephants blasted in the distance. The wild dogs twitched their satellite large ears before sprinting off in a streak of mottled fur.
Stella pressed a hand to her chest. “You’re awake. Thank God you’re all right, Sutton.”
“Anybody got food?”
Bubbles leaned over him, checking the cut above his eyebrow. “This isn’t a 7-Eleven, dude.”
Jose gathered his scrambled thoughts and elaborated for his not-too-chatty friend. “What he means to say is that he needs to check you over first. You were unconscious for a long time. We can take a few more minutes, but then we need to find somewhere to hunker down for the night.”
Stella handed Sutton a canteen. “Maybe some water would help?”
“Yeah, that would be good.” Sutton took a swallow and passed it back. “Tell your boyfriend thanks.”
Her hand shook as she swept stray hairs back from her face. “Old friend.”
The guy held out his uninjured hand. “Well color me lucky. I’m Sutton Harper, and to whom do I owe my life and my firstborn child? She called you Jose, right?”
He simply grunted, easing back from Stella, keeping an arm around her waist. Names weren’t passed around in his or Stella’s professions and he would prefer the less known about her life, the better.
Harper lifted an eyebrow at his curt response. “How cool to have an on-call military boyfriend if you happen to be kidnapped by warlords in a foreign country. Kinda coincidental for a simple student, don’t you think?”