“But—” Sudden panic invaded him.

Christina reached out, took his hand in an unexpected reassurance, her brisk voice gentling. “There’s nothing medically wrong with her, Peter. Except for the fact she barely eats or moves out of that chair, she’s as healthy as you are. And she knows enough about her handicaps to let you know before you take a misstep. You’ll be fine.” She withdrew her touch and straightened. “Be what you know she needs you to be. Kick her ass into gear again. She doesn’t need any pity. She’s had way too much of that. I’m going to go grocery shopping now, but I’ll be back in a while. Trial by fire. I understand that’s your specialty.”

Giving him one more direct look, she put the box quietly inside Dana’s door, retrieved purse and keys from her own unit, and headed down the walkway to her car.

She doesn’t need any pity. Jesus. He understood that, but all he wanted to do was scoop Dana up, rock her in his lap and tell her he was going to take care of everything. He was still wrestling with it when he stepped into her unit, made his way through a bland front room and functional kitchen, to the back den where Christina had indicated she spent most of her daylight hours.

When he stepped into the room, his conflicting emotions swamped him.

Except for what was filtering through the sheer panels, there was no light. It made it a soft, sad atmosphere, adding to what vibrated from the woman curled up on an oversized recliner. Since she appeared to be staring toward the window, he suspected she had some sense of the light, or perhaps she felt the sun’s heat. Though it was afternoon, she wore pajama bottoms and a sweatshirt that swallowed her. She looked clean and showered, however. Since she still kept her hair short, the filtered light gleamed off the slender tube that wound around the shell of her ear to hold the hearing aid in place.

She’d turned into a mole. Burrowing down in her clothes, her recliner, her featureless home, digging a hole to bury herself here. Jesus Christ. Christina was right. He didn’t need a shrink’s license to understand the less-than-subtle message.

I wish I’d died, rather than having to face this alone.

In that revelation, pity got shoved to the side by something much stronger in him. Anger.

It didn’t matter that it wasn’t at her, or that it might be misplaced. He’d use it.

There was plenty of room for him on the recliner, so he settled his hip there, his thigh close to the tips of her bare brown toes. They were painted deep burgundy. That had to be Christina’s doing. Laying his palm over them, he closed his hand instinctively over the small, cold digits, passing his thumb over her sole.

Her head lifted and turned toward him, the light from the window showing him more of her face. The sightless eyes wrenched his gut, made him want to weep. As Jon had said, they’d done their best to repair the extensive scarring in her face, but it would take time for the surgical scars to heal and disappear. She would never again have the fresh, sculpted beauty she’d had that night, replaced by a hard, tortured thinness. But as much as that and the lack of vision in her eyes concerned him, it was the lack of fire that bothered him most. Her gaze wasn’t merely sightless, but also lifeless.

No. Christina had said she had passion, anger. That fire was only dormant. He would accept nothing less. Know her heart by instinct. He was no Prince Charming, but he’d spent a great deal of his sexually mature years learning to uncover a woman’s inner sensuality and fan it to a raging inferno. For a submissive, that reaction was so closely linked to her soul, both had to be ignited to give her everything she needed. So maybe he did have the key. Because from their one night together, he knew what kind of submissive she was.

Reaching out, he slid his palm to the side of her face. As she had at the airport, she tilted her head into it, her eyes closing. No matter the scars, her sweet mouth, the curve of her cheek, her slim neck, they were all the same. Tracing her lips with his thumb, he teased them open to caress her teeth, graze her tongue. She tasted him with the tip of it, and he saw a lethargic desire flicker across her face.

“I keep dreaming about you.” Her voice was a bit raspy. There’d been some damage to her vocal cords, but if he hadn’t known, it would have passed as a sexy purr. The volume was a little low, the pronunciation slurred, as if she were sleepy. “That night. I want to be back there with you, so much. God. It was all so physical, and so much more than that. I ache when I think about you, Master.” She swallowed and became a smaller ball, as if compressing her thighs and the need there. “I’d rather dream about being with you forever, than live another single day, you know?”

She used his hand as a pillow, nestling down farther. With her other hand she splayed his fingers, ran them over her mouth, one at a time, slow, tasting, nuzzling. Peter felt his groin tighten, even as he was appalled at himself. She’s . . .

There’s nothing medically wrong with her, Peter. Christina’s admonition, her knowing look. Wow, he was slow on the uptake. But he was still warring with it, the need to nurture and yet take her over at once. Hold her close and spank her within an inch of her life for scaring him. Well, hell, there was time for both, wasn’t there?

Her brow was crinkling, mouth pressing together as if holding back emotion. “God, it smells like you, feels like you. The heat in your skin. Gram used to tell me I could have anything I wanted bad enough, do whatever I wanted to do.” A bitter chuckle. “That’s what we tell kids, don’t we? It gives them the courage to try. But what do we say when they end up like this? No ‘Be All You Can Be’ Army slogan now, hmm?” Peter pressed his lips together. Taking his hand away, he bracketed her with an arm, leaned in until the heat of his breath touched her face and she lifted hers, startled at his proximity.

“It’s time to cut this shit out, Sergeant.”

She jerked up. He was quick enough she didn’t slam into his chin, but he didn’t go far.

Paling, she touched the front of his shirt, then moved to his arms, feeling the cant of his body over hers. “Peter? Oh, fucking hell, I thought . . .”

“Been talking to me a lot without me being here? Living in your own reality?” He caught one of her seeking hands, squeezed it a little harder than he wanted to.

“You can’t be here.” She snatched her hand back, retreated as much as the cushioning would allow, as if she was trying to burrow in truth. “You don’t want this.” He kept her caged between his arms, made her feel the energy of his immovable presence. When he brushed his lips against her cheek, he registered the satisfying ripple of reaction, the pant of her nervous breath. “Telling me what I want isn’t your job, Sergeant. That’s the problem you had the night we met. You tried to control the uncontrollable.”

Her lip curled, but he smelled fear behind the sudden anger. “What’s my job, Captain?

School crossing guard? Airline pilot?”

“That’s self-pitying crap. There’s more than that out there. But for right now, you only have one job. Doing whatever I tell you to do. You’re going home with me.” Shock flitted across her face, followed by desperation, warring between fury and frustration. Hope dodged in between, so ghostlike it broke his heart. But he also saw something else, a lick of lust, his order igniting something deeper and more primal in her, something that had made her surrender to him months ago. But now her fingers curled into tight balls, fighting him.

“Not much difference between my self-pity and your pity. You’re not taking me home like some kind of stray that needs your help. You don’t want an invalid.”

“No.” He answered with a calm he didn’t feel. “But that’s not what you are. There’s a difference between an invalid and a person who thinks she’s one.” She shoved at him. He let her get out of the chair, but he noted she didn’t go far, swaying uncertainly. Damn if Christina wasn’t right. Dana had lived here for months, and yet she was barely familiar with her surroundings. When he rose and she lifted her face, he could tell she could gauge his height. Her senses were there. Just waiting for her to fucking use them. She’d said he didn’t want her. He noted she hadn’t said she didn’t want him or what he was offering.

“We had a deal, Sergeant, and I’m not letting you out of it,” he said sharply. He’d communicated in battle and on a busy manufacturing floor. He had no problem being heard by a woman with hearing aids. “You can’t see, or hear as well as you could before.

But you can smell, taste . . . touch. If you’ve been dreaming about me the way I’ve been dreaming about you, I know exactly what you’ve been thinking about. We’re going to start there.”

He caught her hand. Before she could pull away, he brought it to the front of his jeans, letting her touch wake to life the beast he hadn’t sated since he last saw her.

It shocked the hell out of her; he could tell that right off. She hadn’t been treated as a woman in a while, a woman from whom a man might demand things like this. A hard-core submissive’s desire went beyond sex, into some deeper, psychological matters.

He’d use his knowledge of that unapologetically. Maybe knowing less about her personally would help, because it would keep his focus on the one thing that might break her out of this self-imposed funk of hers. Then he could sate his overwhelming desire to give her the tenderness and comfort he had stored to overflowing in him, learn everything he wanted to know about her.

Her face was a study in mixed emotions, but the parted lips, the tension strumming in her body, told him she was reluctantly aroused. Surprised, he watched her sink down before him, her hands slipping to his upper thighs. Though staying still was excruciating, he waited, seeing what she would do.

Her lips twisted, and now he saw that anger simmering that Christina had warned was there. “I don’t have to see to give great head, do I? Even with this face I can be a pretty good whore. Hell, better, because I won’t rely on my looks.” Before he gave himself too much time to think it through, Peter pushed her backward onto her ass. She landed hard.