Lexi Blake - Dungeon Royale

Nigel was silent for moment. “I want to talk to you as your boss and as a colleague. Do you know how he came to be here?”

She shook her head. She didn’t care. Couldn’t. He’d shoved her aside like everyone else had. He didn’t matter. Her duty did. “It doesn’t matter, sir.”

“It does because I’m sending you back out there with him. I need to know that you’re going to protect yourself.”

He wanted to make sure she wasn’t just going to spread her legs and offer herself up on a silver platter again. “I believe I have my armor fully pulled around myself this time.”

“He can be charming.”

“I’ve seen the real man. I understand. I can do the job.”

“Did you know he received the Victoria Cross?”

She shook her head. It wasn’t in his records. The Victoria Cross was the highest honor a soldier could receive. “No. I knew about his time in Afghanistan, but I didn’t know he’d been decorated.”

“Because it was kept quiet. I wouldn’t tell you the story now, but I think it’s very important for you to understand who Damon Knight is. He was Special Air Service. His unit was charged with taking a VIP into Kabul. I can’t tell you who it was. That’s the reason the whole affair has been classified.”

So it was likely a royal or someone close to the family. The Windsor men served their country, and when the country went to war, the Windsor men went as well.

“You have to understand that the men in those units form a family. When you serve, when you literally depend on your fellow soldiers for your very survival, whether you like the others or not, you bond with them. My old unit meets up at least twice a year. All of us, without fail.”

She got the feeling she wouldn’t like what came next. “Go on.”

“The unit was pinned down in the desert. They fought for days. He watched them all fall. He lost his entire unit protecting their charge. Only Damon and his charge survived. He took out the enemy, but I rather think he meant to not survive. From the reports, he went a bit crazy. It was bloody. It was suicidal.”

She didn’t want to soften toward him. Not for a second, but there she was. Damon had lost his parents, then his mates.

What if he didn’t want to lose her, too?

“Knight was recruited because he had zero ties. He was cold, perfectly capable of making life and death decisions. Capable of sacrificing pawns when he needs to. I know he seems charming, but it’s a mask.”

Was it? She was finally settling down. The hurt he’d dealt her had seemed overwhelming, but now that he was out of the room, a few things didn’t make sense.

Damon was capable of sacrificing pawns. Perfectly capable of it. For years she’d watched him, worked with him on translations. He was known for being an Ice Man. Baz had been the jokester and Damon had been the brutal one underneath all his suave charm.

So why wasn’t he sacrificing her? It was the most expedient thing to do. She was a girl who had been on the periphery of his life for years and only in his bed for a single night. Yet in the time she’d been close to him, she’d believed he gave a damn about her. Was he really that good an actor?

He was a man who had lost everyone. Even his best mate had turned on him. What would that man do if he cared about a woman and she was suddenly in danger? Would he trust that everything would work out? Would he place his faith in the universe that had kicked him time and time again?

Or would he do what he needed to do to protect the woman he cared about? Even if it meant hurting her.

Perhaps she should treat Damon Knight like a language she was trying to learn. The words he said might make a certain sense to her when run through her own filter, but every good translator knew that words had different meanings in different languages. The Sami language of the Nordic countries had over a hundred words for reindeer, each expressing a slightly different thing.

What if Damon was trying to tell her something and she wasn’t understanding it because she was putting it through her filter and not his?

“Do you understand what I’m saying?” Nigel leaned toward her.

She nodded. “Yes. Damon doesn’t have anyone.”

No one had ever fought for him, ever put him first. He’d been an orphan and then a soldier and then an operative. His career was about using his body and mind as a tool, one that was expendable.

It would have been so much easier to keep her close, to use her as some weird form of bait. If there was one thing Damon wanted, it was revenge on Basil Champion. The man Nigel was describing wouldn’t hesitate to use her to those ends.

“He doesn’t have anyone because he’s not capable of truly caring for anyone. I know him better than you do. I’m trying to make sure you protect yourself. I wish I didn’t have to send you back in.”

She sat up straighter, squaring her shoulders. “You don’t need to worry about me, sir. We’ll be fine.”

They would be after she spent some time contemplating what he was really doing, what his words really meant. She needed to see how he acted now that the decisions had truly been made. Context clues. That was she needed.

If he went right back to charming and seductive, back to manipulating her to do his bidding, she would know she was a pawn. It was what a smart agent would do.

He hadn’t been acting like a smart agent.

She would have seen that if she hadn’t been mired in her own misery. She’d walked out, had a cry, and read the file. She’d known in an instant that she couldn’t leave.

And if they had to be stuck together, anything could happen. She wiped her tears and faced the truth. He’d humiliated her and she was thinking about how to win him back. It was pathetic, but it was true.

Nigel sighed a little. “It’s not that he’s a bad man. This job can twist a person. I’ve seen it before. Once this is over, I’ll make sure he doesn’t cause any trouble with you.”

“I can handle Damon.” Suddenly, she kind of believed it. It was all in how a person looked at the problem. Something fundamental had changed inside her. It changed because she’d fallen in love. Unfortunately, she’d fallen in love with a moody chap, and there wasn’t room for both of them to be depressed. Damon was likely brooding somewhere.

She could be wrong. He could have meant every word he said. Only time would tell. Before, she would have simply moved on, believing that she didn’t deserve that kind of happiness, but now she was different somehow.

If she was right, she would likely have a battle on her hands, one she had no idea how to win.

“Miss Cash, there’s one other thing.”

“Yes?” Now that she’d decided the world didn’t have to end because Damon had a fit, she was anxious to get back to him.

Who was she fooling? She was anxious to know if there was still a chance. If she walked out there and he tried to smooth things over with a charming smile, she would likely burst into tears.

“I want a report on him and his capability in the field. I don’t trust the Americans. They’re far too friendly with him. And I certainly don’t trust him to tell me the truth.”

She already knew more about Damon’s fitness than Nigel did. It had been one incident, and she likely would have passed out, too. He’d been climbing up a machine that was going the opposite direction. How many times would that happen? Other than that single incident, he’d been incredibly fit. She nodded. “Of course.”

“Be safe, Cash.”

She took her file—the one with the pictures of her having sex—and walked out, closing the door behind her. Her heart was thudding in her chest. Did she really want to know? Did she really want that moment when he simply smiled at her and acted as though nothing had happened between them? How would she act?

Was she being a complete idiot? He’d ripped her heart out. She should keep her distance. She should protect herself.

“Penelope? What the bloody hell was that?” Damon took her by the elbow. His normally perfect hair was mussed beyond repair. He looked like he’d been pacing, waiting for her not so he could charm her, but to yell at her. “We can still salvage this. Walk back in and tell him you quit again. You were right to do it. Hell, just get your things and you’ll walk away.”

No. No charm there. He seemed a little unhinged in fact. The cool, calm operative looked like a mad boyfriend.

Hope sprang up inside her. He was overdramatic, and Nigel was utterly wrong about him. He wasn’t uncaring. He felt too much. There was a well of passion under his placid exterior.

“I’m not leaving, Damon.” She turned her chin up at him. Everyone was looking at them. “Now, we should get back to The Garden. We don’t have much time for my training.”

He stopped, his eyes finding hers. A slightly horrified expression hit his face and he took a step back. “I’m not training you. I can’t train you.”

He was going to be stubborn, and she wasn’t sure how to handle it. “You have to. It’s our cover. I’m your sub.”

He stared at her. “No.”

“Yes. Or you’ll be pulled off the assignment, too. They won’t let you go without me. I’m sorry it’s so distasteful for you, but you’re stuck with me.” She needed time to figure out how to deal with him. She couldn’t just come out and tell him he was being foolish. She had to find a way around that massive wall he’d erected.

He seemed to realize everyone was looking at him. He smoothed back his hair and his expression calmed, but the tight set of his jaw gave him away to her. “You’re right. We’ll discuss this at home.”

She followed him out.

He didn’t know it yet, but he was in for the fight of a lifetime. She wasn’t going to leave him. If she had her way, she might never leave him.

“What did he do?” Charlotte Taggart’s voice went deadly quiet though Penelope couldn’t possibly misunderstand her. Charlotte had carefully enunciated each word.

Penelope turned. They had just left the meeting Damon had called to fill the team in on the new setbacks. She’d been forced to spend hours and hours with him, first clearing up everything with SIS and then having her firearm issued along with her cover identification. Damon simply stood back, watching her like she would disappear on him. She’d offered to take the Tube back. That hadn’t gone well.

The long car ride back had been utterly silent without even the sound of the radio to break up the gloom that seemed to sit between them.

She was right. He cared for her. If he hadn’t, he wouldn’t have fought so hard to keep her safe.

But she had no idea how to break through his reserve.

“What are you talking about?” She hoped Charlotte didn’t know what had happened. She’d been out of the room when Damon had thrown his hissy fit. She’d hoped the Tennessee fellow had kept a gentlemanly silence about her humiliation. “Mr. Champion? I thought Damon explained that quite nicely.”

He’d set up the meeting from his mobile and the entire team was sitting in the conference room joking and laughing when they walked in. Despite the seriousness of the situation, Ian Taggart’s crew was relaxed as though they knew they could handle it, as though they really had each other’s backs and that made everything all right.

She and Damon didn’t even talk about it.

Now she was banished to the dungeon where Charlotte was going to show her things Damon should be sharing with her.

Charlotte’s red and blonde hair shook as she paced down one of the dungeon’s brick inlayed paths toward the bar area. “No. I know what Baz did. I’m talking about Damon. What did he do to you? Because when we left you were glowing like a woman who’d just figured out sex is pretty awesome and now you’re pale and pinched up again.”

“Again?”

Charlotte reached the bar, slipping behind it. “Sorry. It’s just you’re all tight and tense. And Damon’s shut down.” Her eyes narrowed as she pulled out what looked like a bottle of tequila. “Unless you were the one who did it.”

Suddenly, she didn’t really want to be the one “who did it.” She got the idea that Charlotte wouldn’t like someone who did something bad to her friends. “It wasn’t me.”

“It was Damon. He’s an asswipe just like all men.” Chelsea Dennis walked into the bar, her computer in hand. “Sorry, I kind of got the gist of it. Satan had a meeting with Ten this afternoon and I totally listened in on it. If it makes you feel any better, Ten decided Damon’s an asshole. Only he said it in a really slow Southern accent.”