by Zoe Dawson
* * *
He was outside her pretty condo exactly on time, a take-out bag in his hand. He knocked, and she opened the door. She had her hair loose, and she looked good enough to eat. Her face was scrubbed clean, and she had changed into a tank top and shorts.
“Hey, Blue,” she said as he came inside. She closed the door. “Ooh, what did you bring?” The child-like expression on her face caught him off guard. For a moment, he absorbed that expression like it was sustenance. He’d never encountered a woman who seemed so sure of herself in every aspect of her life. She had been completely unabashed about her nudity around him, her need for a cover-up non-existent. For some strange and unexplained reason, she grounded him.
He handed her the bag, and she opened it and smiled wide, the delight going all the way to her gorgeous eyes.
“How did you know fish tacos were my favorite?”
“I didn’t,” he said watching her. “I love them, but noted.”
She looked up from the bag and gave him a little doe caught in the headlight thing, then she walked over to her kitchen and started unloading the bag.
She reached over the counter, her beautiful ass pressing against the fabric of her shorts, her shirt hiking up and showing an expanse of her creamy lower back.
He clenched his fists. Being here, engaging in this activity was against the UCMJ, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. They were breaking one of the rules of the navy.
“You had better earn your grade, Charlie. I’m not going to just give you something you don’t deserve.”
She didn’t turn around but said absently, “It would piss me off to no end if you did.” She set two plates on the bar and then reached over again. “I’d give you a gazillion sit-ups.”
He strode over and got the forks himself, about out of his mind with this beauty. She gave him a look, her brows raised, and he set the forks near the plates. “Anything else you need over there?”
She smiled softly, and he looked away. “Nope, my hero, just the forks.”
“I’m no one’s hero.”
“Yes, you are,” she said and reached into the bag and pulled out the tacos, setting two on each plate. He settled on a stool and she slid on next to him. “Oh, I have wine.”
“I’ll take water,” he said. He was done with alcohol. The thought came out of nowhere. It was imperative that he keep his wits around Charlie. She was going to help him, and he didn’t know what that would entail.
“Okay.” She sat there for a minute. “I’ve waged my own battle with alcohol. She got off the stool and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Heads up.” She tossed him the bottle. Then she grabbed one for herself. Settling down next to him again, she took a sip of her water, then reached for one of the tacos.
“Mm-hmm,” she groaned, and his whole body went tight. “That is so good. Thank you for this. I was starving.”
“Sure,” he said, watching her as she ate, drawing his eyes to her mouth. He tried to focus on his own hunger, but it got mixed up in this woman. What she had done for him this afternoon was priceless.
“Eat,” she said, nudging him. “Then we can get started.”
He did what she suggested, barely tasting the meal.
She slipped off the stool and walked over to her couch and sat down. “Come here.” She patted the cushion. He complied, settling down next to her.
She dimmed the lights enough that the ambient glow from the street cast most of the room in shadow.
“I’m going to ask you to do some things and you can’t refuse. If you’re not ready for them, you can tell me you aren’t, but we’re going to try them anyway. Okay?” He nodded. “Good. We’re going to build trust between us like I mentioned. So, the first thing I want you to do is take my hands.”
She offered hers palms up, and he reached out and clasped them. He had a mild reaction of wanting to snatch them away, but the more intense response was that she was so warm. She smiled in triumph.
“I really enjoyed kissing you, Blue,” she said. “We’re not going to get physical tonight, so you can relax. When his hand loosened, she smiled again. “There you go. I want you to make good eye contact with me. We can do it for five-minute intervals.”
She tightened her grasp slightly on a small squeeze.
He met her gaze and took a breath. Looking into her eyes, he noted how pretty her irises were, a vibrant turquoise, like the gulf water, the lashes thick and full. He was the type of guy who liked to look into his lover’s eyes, gauge her expressions and watch her body react to what he was doing to her. But technically, Charlie wasn’t his lover. He’d taken her once, but that had been about lust, not mutual pleasure. She stared back at him without looking away once. Just steady, strong eye contact. There was no subterfuge with this woman. What he saw was what he got. His shoulders relaxed.
“Time is up.” She squeezed his hands again. “You have the bluest eyes, the color of the ocean. You’re aptly named,” she said, and he sank a little deeper into the couch.
“Now I want you to breathe deeply for ten minutes, and you can make eye contact whenever you like.”
They went through that exercise, and he was beginning to feel pretty mellow. He found that he very much liked looking into her eyes and was doing it more often than he thought he would.
“Good. Now the tough assignment for the night. I need you to come clean with me about what happened to you. Everything from the smallest detail.”
He pulled his hands out of her grasp, his body tense all over again.
“Remember what I said about the tasks? You have to at least try.”
“It’s classified.”
Her brows rose. “Really?”
“I can’t talk about a mission with someone who doesn’t have the clearance.”
“But if someone did have the clearance, you could?”
“Yes.”
When she smiled, he realized that he’d fallen into that trap. “You have it.”
“Yes.” She explained about the warhead and the sunken Jackson. “I met a SEAL Team lead by Lieutenant Cooper.”
His heart jumped that his team had gone on without him. “That’s my CO! Explain.”
She gave him the details about her salvage and recovery, including the mishap with the oxygen. He went from angry to concerned, then resigned. “Please give me your hands back. We’re going to be touching through this. If you need more comfort, something from me that you’re not getting during the retelling, you can ask me, and I’ll comply. But you have to ask me.”
He was uneasy immediately. He was a SEAL. He didn’t ask for help, he provided it.
“There’s no shame in it, Blue,” she said as if she’d read his mind. This woman was intuitive as all get out.
“Perception,” he whispered.
“Full disclosure,” she whispered back.
He took a breath and started to talk, telling her about the explosion, waking up and stumbling off. He related his affair with Elena, how she made him feel, and her untimely death at the hands of the rebels because she didn’t want to be used against him.
Then he moved on to his own capture, how he had placed his emotions about Elena’s death into a compartment in his head and closed the door. He hadn’t gotten closure with her, hadn’t gone to her grave.
“Haven’t asked for forgiveness,” she murmured.
“How can I? I’m to blame for her death.”
“Are you? Didn’t she make her own choices?”
“She wouldn’t have had to make those choices if I hadn’t come into her life.”
“We’ll get back to that. What about the next part? The Golovkins.”
He started to feel queasy, and pinpricks of sweat itched across his body. When he didn’t say anything, she whispered, “Try, Blue. Tell me.”
He was freely sweating now. “They ran the rebels by intense and utter fear. Their empire was huge, and they got there by being as ruthless as possible.”
“And Natasha?”
&n
bsp; His hands began to tremble, and it was clear to him that she felt the shaking. “You’re safe with me, Blue. Tell me.”
“She was a sadist, but it was more than that. It wasn’t enough to just break someone. She wanted to twist their minds into pretzels, destroy them completely.”
“You resisted using SERE?”
“Yes. They full body dunked me into a pool. I used my training to stay alive. When they saw that wasn’t working…they put me in a cell.”
“Did they keep you bound?”
He looked away, the queasiness in his gut churning. “Only outside the cell.”
She breathed in and said, “Is that the truth?”
He pulled his hands away, his breathing increasing in tempo. “Yes and no.”
“I want the complete truth, Blue. I need to know what happened to you before I can effectively tie you. You have to trust me on this. If you don’t, we might as well forget about this and just have sex like the both of us want to. Nothing will be resolved.
She made him hard that quickly, the memories that battered him only adding to the twisted feel of it.
“I don’t know if I can be with you like that, Charlie.”
She leaned her elbows on her crossed legs. “Why?”
“I’m…” He couldn’t finish. How could he tell her he was carved up, scarred, and mutilated? How could he let her see what they had done to him? How would she look at him? Would she think him weak for allowing them to do such a thing to him?
“You’re what?” she asked gently, her voice so soothing. In that moment, he wanted her to touch him and forget about what had happened in that cell.
It might have been a move to distract her. He wasn’t sure. But he pulled off his T-shirt. Reaching out, he snagged her wrist. “How about we build some more trust?” He set her hand against his chest.
She made a soft, startled sound and took a huge breath, her eyes widening. Scooting forward, she said, “Can I use my other hand?”
“Yeah, sure,” he said, knowing that she was going to kill him. He had no idea how he could make love to her without revealing his lower body.
“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to deflect my questions about what happened to you by revealing the kind of chest that women would die to touch. I’m not immune, but I’m also not easily swayed. I’m going to need to hear it all, but if you want to wait, then we can wait.”
“You are relentless.” He looked away as she dropped her hands down to his. He took a deep breath and said, his voice uneven, “It was bad, brutal.”
“I know. I got that from what you were saying the other night, from the sound of your voice and the way you wrapped yourself around me.”
He withdrew a bit, and she said, “No, don’t. I was so moved, off the charts. I don’t know how you got through it. But you need to talk about it with either me or someone else. The teams need you, Blue. You can’t let this defeat you.”
Damn if he didn’t want this woman. Damn if he didn’t want to talk to her about it and have her tell him what he needed to hear. But, tonight, he wanted to feel her hands on him, feel the way she felt about him. It would come right from her heart, through her hands. He craved that. Craved her touch, even as he feared where it would lead them.
If he wanted her this much now, it would only get worse. He wondered if she was wearing the thong. Needed to know. “Are you wearing it?”
Her eyes met his, and she smiled. “Yes, I am. It makes me feel crazy sexy.”
He reached for her hands again, hope starting to strengthen in him. If she could touch him and it would be okay, maybe he could show her, maybe he could tell her about what happened. Maybe she could put him back together like Humpty Dumpty. Maybe all he needed was her to see him in the light of day when he’d hidden himself from everyone else. He avoided looking, feared there would be a trigger.
But then she smoothed her hands up to his shoulders as if she wanted to feel everything about him, then farther up to his face. He was powerless to stop her, powerless to hold back the sighing relief of the feel of her.
Except this powerlessness felt so fucking good.
8
Charlie had promised herself after what had happened in the bathroom between them at the beginning of the week that she wouldn’t get physical with him until they had more trust between them. He’d taken her from behind for a reason, and after his painful confessions the night before and his comment about walking out to sea, she had an inkling of what had happened to him. His torture hadn’t been simple.
He was using his gorgeous body to distract her from something that he feared. Something he couldn’t talk about.
“Blue—”
“No, Charlie, no more questions. Just touch me.”
“Ocean—”
“Please,” he whispered, his face contorting then smoothing out.
She stared at him, the funny churning in the pit of her stomach very disquieting. His need swayed her, devastated her, made that small chink in her armor grow. There was desperation in him, his need something more than just sexual. She wanted to ask him what it was. What he really needed.
She slowly smoothed her hands over his stubbled face—his cheeks, chin and oh-so-strong jaw, even as he unclenched it at the soft stroke, his beautiful eyes going to half-mast, his face softening. She ran her thumb over his lips, unable to stop herself, and the air caught fire, Blue radiating that energy as if supercharged.
She ran her fingertips over his throat, and his eyes closed as she rubbed the pad of her thumb over the enticing hollow. He gasped, his breathing increasing, his chest expanding. He covered her hand, his touch warm and strong.
She slowly smoothed her hands over the muscled width of his chest, pressing and kneading his nipples as he groaned deeply, the rumble vibrating against her palms. She wanted to caress and stroke every inch of him, telling him through touch alone just how beautiful she thought he was.
Her mouth ached to taste him, but she was reluctant to break this spell they were under. She slipped down to his abdomen, the heavy muscles thick and ridged as her nails scraped over them. She flattened out her hand, then moved it in a slow, massaging tempo, the movement dragging another low groan from him. She closed her eyes and began slowly, sensually kneading his flesh, her pulse growing thick and heavy.
Her fingertips touched the edge of his pants, her intent to find his erection hot and throbbing, but everything changed. He grabbed both of her wrists and held her immobile. With one smooth motion, he stood up, and before she knew what was happening, her world tilted, and she was over his shoulder.
He headed through the shadowy condo to the bedroom where he set her down. She reached for the light switch, but he stayed her hand. “No, no light.”
Disquieted by the somberness in his voice, she stared up at him. “You don’t need to hide anything from me, Blue.”
“No light,” he responded, his voice gruff. “I want you, Charlie, regardless of violating the UCMJ or my own ethics. There’s something about you that I need, and I can’t resist it.”
Troubled by the way he met her eyes, his haunted and anxious, the vulnerability she sensed in him warring with his strength, Charlie realized how fragile he was, just how badly he needed her to be all right with his unease, how he was trying with everything he had to trust her, and the pain of what he was hiding. She was angry at the people who had hurt him, broken him. Wanting and determined to make things better, she reached out and caught the back of his neck, then stretched up to give him a soft kiss.
He stopped breathing and went very still. Charlie could feel the need in him, the lonely, lonely need, and she put her heart and soul into the kiss, wordlessly telling him things she couldn’t say aloud right now. A shudder coursed through him, and he drew a ragged breath, catching her by the back of the head, his jaw flexing beneath her hand as he responded. He moved his mouth slowly against her, tasting her, savoring her, drawing her breath from her and leaving her weak.
It went on and on and on
, until Charlie was drowning in all the sensations pouring in on her, and she flattened her hand against his chest. Blue tensed and dragged his mouth away from hers. His heart was slamming in his chest, and his breathing was harsh and uneven, but he gathered her up in a cuddling embrace. Charlie hung on to him, needing him—needing his strength around her. Finally, she was able to get a breath past the frenzy in her chest, and Blue ran his hand up her back, pressing her to him. He turned his head, pressing an unsteady kiss against the curve of her neck, then nestled her closer.
“They took so much from me,” he whispered. “I don’t know what I have left.”
She closed her eyes and hugged him hard, moved by his husky admission. Knowing deep in her heart that she once had lost so much and had buried it away so deeply, so she could function also. And now, there was a horrible emptiness inside her, a hollowness that she had to fill so she could also be whole again. For all these years she had pushed and buried and hidden everything that had once made her who she was. It was imperative she face her fears and her loss. If she didn’t, she was truly frightened she would completely lose herself. If she believed he had the courage to come back, and he did, she could have the courage to face everything that terrified her.
“You have everything you need, babe. I’ll show you that they didn’t take anything, that you’re whole and strong in spite of what happened to you,” she said fiercely.
He let out a ragged breath. “You give me hope,” he whispered.
Unaccountably moved by that admission, even more by the protective way he tucked her head against his shoulder, Charlie shut her eyes and struggled against the sudden threat of tears. Lord, but this man deserved some joy in his life. This man who was taking her out of her comfort zone, who was making her face her own fears.
Resting his cheek against her hair, Blue continued to rub her back, and Charlie turned her face against his neck, saturating herself in his touch. He released a long sigh, running his hand up the full length of her back.