by Laura Kaye
Damn. “Can’t sleep. You go back to sleep, though.”
Rustling in the covers, as if her sister had sat up. “You sick again?”
“No,” Jenna said. “Probably just screwed up from sleeping most of the day.” Partially true, anyway.
But it wasn’t all of it. Sara didn’t need to know that, though, especially after the conversation they’d had about Easy—the one where Sara had urged Jenna not to rush into anything. Her concerns stemmed entirely from the fact that Jenna had been kidnapped, and Jenna got that. She did. But what’d happened to Jenna during her thirty-hour imprisonment hadn’t been anything like the horrors of the almost-week Sara had spent in the basement of Confessions.
“I’m gonna go downstairs and watch some TV.” Sara had made Jenna memorize the codes to the Rixeys’ apartment and gym doors so she wouldn’t ever be prevented from finding her in the building again. “Since you’re awake, you can go back down with Shane if you want.”
Feet hit the floor over by the bed, then Sara’s phone lit up as if she were using it as a flashlight. “I don’t want you to be alone.”
“I won’t be. Aren’t there six people living in that apartment right now?”
Sara chuckled. “Yeah. It’s like a college dorm.”
“See? Come on, we can walk down together.” Making sure she was decent in case they ran into anyone, Jenna tugged at the legs to the boxers she’d stolen from Easy’s duffel, though his Steelers shirt was so long it covered them entirely.
They crept through the space, not wanting to wake the guys who apparently had rooms in the unfinished apartment, too. Downstairs, Sara had Jenna punch in the code to make sure she knew how the pad worked.
Even in the moonlight streaming in through high windows, the Rixeys’ apartment showed off how awesome the upstairs would be when they finished it. High ceilings, red brick walls, and polished plank flooring extended in all directions.
“My door is the last one on the right, but are you sure you’re sure?”
Jenna kissed Sara on the cheek. She’d been incredibly cool and supportive through all of this, worrying and all. “I’m sure that I’m sure that you’re sure that I’m sure of being sure.”
The darkness didn’t hide Sara’s smirk. “Good night, smart-ass.”
“I love you, too,” Jenna said.
Sara pulled her into a hug. “Me, too. Try to go back to sleep if you can.”
“ ’Kay.”
Moments later, a soft click down the hall told Jenna she was all alone. She padded over to the kitchen and opened the door to the fridge. A can of Sprite looked like nirvana, so she grabbed that and closed the door.
On the opposite side of the room, Jenna approached a wall of electronic components. So many little red and orange lights were illuminated that it could’ve been mission control. The moon highlighted the big rectangle of the flat screen and the red power button on the corner. Flickering blue light filled the space when she turned it on.
She cracked open her soda and searched the top of the shelf for the remote, then she turned to check the tables near the couches.
Jenna froze. Because Easy was lying asleep on the nearest couch. Stretched out, shirtless, and utterly gorgeous.
Should she stay? Should she go? Neither the light nor the sound seemed to be disturbing him, and her only other choice was to return to her room alone.
Which was all kinds of a no.
Besides, she didn’t want to be anywhere else.
Decided, she curled up in the recliner nearest to the couch and surfed through the midnight underbelly of cable-TV programming. About once a minute—or at least it felt that way—her gaze drifted over to where the low light outlined the broad, inverted triangle of Easy’s muscular back. Part of her yearned to lie down behind him, her body tight up against his, her arm around his stomach, her knees tucked up against his quads. Her skin could almost imagine the warmth of his just thinking about it.
She sighed. Why hadn’t he come up to at least say good night?
Finally, she settled on a marathon of an old vampire series. She lay there so long, her eyes went bleary, and her left arm fell asleep. Unthinkingly, she shifted around to rest against her other side, which jarringly reminded her of the bruises on her face.
How she could’ve forgotten them, she didn’t know, since now that she was thinking about them, they seemed to throb to the steady beat of her pulse. She ended up in sort of a contorted position with her head on the arm of the chair and her legs curled up against the back, but the pins and needles in her arm demanded the change.
And, nicely, however awkward the new position was, it offered the distinct advantage of giving her a clear view of Easy.
The next thing Jenna knew, she was floating.
She forced her heavy lids open and, sure enough, the ceiling moved above her. “What’s happening?” she mumbled.
“Shh, just putting you to bed.” Easy. Carrying her.
She put a hand on his chest and, lured by the warmth and the smooth expanse of hard skin, turned her face toward him. She breathed the masculine scent of him deep inside. “I missed you.”
The next sensation that registered was the softness of the bed against her back. Her hands clutched his shoulders, not wanting him to go. But then she did. If he stayed, she wanted it to be because he chose it. Not because she asked, or pleaded, or because he felt a duty to do so.
Jenna wanted Easy. Simple as that. And she wanted him to want her in return.
His heat disappeared, and the bed shifted. Jenna’s heart squeezed. He was leaving. Ah, well, guess that was her answer. Her mind was still playing that song when the bed shifted again.
“You awake?” he whispered.
“Yes?”
“Can I sleep with you, Jenna?”
Goose bumps erupted over her skin at the question. She knew he meant sleep sleep, but even that thrilled her. “I was hoping you would,” she said.
He slid under the covers. They didn’t touch. And the proximity without contact was killing her. Her mind became ultra aware, her skin almost tingly in anticipation of his touch, her body yearning to seek out his.
“Jenna, can I tell you something?” came his hushed voice in the darkness.
“Of course,” she said, shifting a little closer.
“You may not like it,” he said, an odd quality to his tone. Worry? Sadness? Fear?
“Okay.” She couldn’t imagine what he wanted to say, or what could’ve happened in the past few hours, but instinct insisted it was important.
The thick sound of a tortured swallow. “I talked to Shane and the guys tonight about something, and I want you to hear it from me.” Jenna’s heart tripped into a thumping beat that made her body vibrate. “I haven’t been well, Jenna. Ever since everything that happened to us in Afghanistan. The friends we lost. Our careers ruined. Our reputation. It all weighs on me so much that some days it’s a load I can barely carry.”
Sadness and sympathy formed an aching pressure in her chest. Such terrible things had happened to him, and the injustice of it surely made it an especially bitter pill to swallow. “I don’t blame you,” she said. “It was horrible.”
“It was. But what I’m saying is, sometimes I just wish I could escape it all. I think about that, Jenna. Sometimes even how I would do it.”
The words hung there . . . and slowly seeped into her brain.
She gasped. Was he saying . . . ? “Do you mean, like, hurting yourself? Or killing yourself?” Heart pounding and eyes stinging, she felt powerless and maybe more scared than she’d ever been in her life. For him. Arms screaming to hold him, she moved closer until her hands found his arm. His muscles went rigid, like he didn’t want to be touched, so Jenna froze, not wanting to make him feel worse than he did.
He blew out a long, tired breath. “Yeah, that’s what I mean. I told the guys because I need help. Medicine and maybe talking to somebody. We’re gonna figure out a way to make that happen in the midst of all of this.”
>
“Good,” she said, wiping away a tear that spilled from the corner of her eye. “I’m so sorry, Easy. Have you been holding this inside all these months?” Imagining the loneliness of those feelings hurt her as surely as if someone had punched her in the stomach. When he didn’t reply, she had her answer. “Well, I’m glad you told your friends. And me, too. How can I help?”
“What?” he asked.
“How can I help? What can I do to make this better?”
A long, tense silence she didn’t understand, and then he said, “You . . . want to help?”
The doubt in those words pounded a raw ache through her veins. “Would you mind turning the lamp on, please? I’d really like to be able to see you.”
When the golden glow illuminated the far corner, she found Easy standing there, not quite facing her and not coming close to making eye contact.
“Come back,” she whispered. For a moment she thought he was going to question her, but then he stalked toward the bed and climbed back in. He lay down on his back pretty much as far away from her as he could and still be on the mattress. Fine. Then she’d go to him. “I’d like to hold you,” she said. “Would that help, even a little?”
His head rolled toward her, and the low position of the lamp cast shadows across his dark face. “You heard what I said, right? You understand what I’m talking about?”
Jenna frowned. “Yeah. I get it.”
He scrubbed his hands over his face, then crossed his arms tight over his chest. Everything about his body language radiated tension and defensiveness. When he didn’t say anything, her brain whirled to make sense of what he was asking? Or, maybe even what he wasn’t asking.
And the only thing she could come up with nearly broke her heart.
She grasped the bulge of his biceps. “Wait. Did you think if I knew this about you, I wouldn’t want you?” Her memory resurrected his voice insisting he wasn’t a good person, too. And the pieces of the puzzle started to fit together. He was hurting, unsure of himself, adrift in a sea of pain, clear from the tense set of his muscles and the lost expression on his face.
God. Here she’d been thinking about how she could’ve died. When, really, they both could’ve died. And never even had the chance to meet. Sadness weighed down on her shoulders at the thought.
Jenna fitted her body tight against the side of his, propping herself up on his shoulder so she could look into his eyes. “Easy, even if we are only ever friends, you will remain important to me for the rest of my life. You saved my life and Sara’s life and gave us a chance at something real and free and safe. So if that’s all we ever are to each other, I’d still want to help. I’d still want to hold you and ease your pain. I’d want to repay the way you saved me by saving you in return. If I could. That’s not a question.”
His eyes unshuttered, and his expression softened, like she was surprising him.
“But if you’re as interested as I am in seeing what this thing between us might be, what you told me doesn’t change my mind at all. It makes me care for you even more. It makes me want you even more. It makes my urge to help even stronger.” Jenna stroked his face with her fingers and prayed she was getting through to him. “My situation was so different, of course, but I understand loss and betrayal. My father introduced me to the joys of those at the age of fifteen. Carrying that pain inside you doesn’t make you any less of a person, Easy. Not in my eyes. Not in my heart.”
Slowly, his big arms unfolded, one opening up to invite her in.
Relief flowing through her, Jenna eased herself against the crook of his body, laid her head on his chest, and wrapped her arms around him as far as they could go. His arms came around her in return, and they held each other like that for a long time.
Finally, she pushed up again so she could look at him and propped her head up on his chest. “I’m sorry you’re going through this.”
He nodded. “You really don’t . . . think . . .”
She stroked her hand down his face. “What?”
“This makes me feel weak, cowardly, self-indulgent. I just didn’t see how you could find me . . . attractive, given all this.”
“Oh, Easy, I don’t see a single one of those when I look at any part of you. And I will tell you every day until you believe me. You are the bravest, strongest person I know. And the fact that you’re doing all this while you’re feeling this way? Just proves it. Okay?”
He just looked at her.
She twisted her lips, returned the stare, and wondered how to convince him that she believed in him. “Repeat after me: I believe that Jenna believes in the good in me and always will. Your turn.”
More staring.
She leaned in closer. “Come on, now. I believe that—”
“I believe that,” he mumbled.
She gestured with her hands for him to continue, relieved that he was going along, however begrudgingly. “Jenna believes in the good in me and always will.”
He sighed. “Jenna believes in the good.”
“The good in me and always will. Come on. Almost done. Make ya feel better, I promise.” And she needed to hear it, too. She needed to know he believed what she’d said and how she felt.
“The good in me,” he murmured so quietly, she could barely hear it. “And always will.”
“Not bad for a first time.” She smiled and tried to keep her tone light even as her heart squeezed with emotion for him. “We’ll keep practicing until you really believe it, too.”
His smirk was miles better than the sadness and insecurity that had painted his handsome face moments before. “You’re tough for being so little, you know that?”
“Hey, what can I say? Good things come in little packages.”
His small chuckle seemed like such a victory. “Oh, baby, that I know for damn sure.”
“You do, huh?” Jenna grinned as Easy nodded. Her playfulness was such a gift. So different from his norm, it drew him out of his usually distant shell. And his twisted thoughts.
The kind of thoughts that had kept his ass downstairs on the couch after he’d finished the PTSD checklist Shane gave him. After digging up all those feelings, giving voice to them, and seeing the quantitative proof of mental illness racking up as he marked a whole host of symptoms as occurring with moderate or greater frequency, Easy had gone straight to talking himself into believing Jenna would never want a man as weak as him. Or, more generously, that he shouldn’t saddle someone like her with a guy like him.
“I was wrong to make assumptions about you,” he said, looking up into her gaze. Her smile was full of warm compassion. “It was only because I was upset to lose the possibility of you.”
“Here’s the thing. Mostly, I’m doing okay right now with everything that happened. But I’m getting flashes of memories, and little bursts of physical anxiety for no apparent reason, and I’m jumping at every little sound—”
“Of course you are, Jenna. You’re only two days out of being rescued from a kidnapping.” Easy tucked a loose strand of red behind her ear.
“Exactly my point. We’ve both been through something kinda messed up. And we’re both dealing with the consequences. Right?”
He stroked the soft skin on her arm with his fingertips, the small touches like a lifeline he couldn’t resist. “Yeah.”
Jenna tilted her head and gave him the sweetest smile. “Well, then let’s do what feels good and figure out the rest as we go.”
“I’m down with that,” he said, stroking his fingers through her hair again. He loved the contrast of the silky red against the dark skin of his fingers and hands.
She leaned into the touch and closed her eyes, and the pleasure that shaped her beautiful face was its own fucking reward.
Having set loose all these emotions tonight, Easy was surprised his body had room for even one more. But there was no mistaking the arousal heating his blood and his skin where they touched, especially when she grasped his hand, brought it to her lips, and kissed his palm and the pads of each
fingertip.
When she was done, she brought her mouth back to his middle finger and kissed there again. Except this time, the tip of his finger slipped between her wet lips.
Easy’s cock jerked, and he rolled his hips, a reaction that was stronger the second time when her tongue snaked out and slowly licked up the length of his finger.
“Jenna,” he said, his eyes glued on her mouth.
Her smile was pure seductive innocence as she dropped his hand and pressed her mouth to his bare chest. Small kisses and swipes of her tongue drew his hand to her hair. She flicked at his nipple.
Easy sucked in a breath, and his grip on her hair tightened as she pulled his nipple into her mouth. He let her tease and torment him for a minute, then he gently guided her upward. “Come here, babe.”
He caressed just below the bruise on her chin. “Don’t let me hurt you,” he said, the thought truly sickening him, especially after the way she’d accepted everything he’d dreaded telling her with such grace, such open-mindedness.
“You won’t,” she said, her lips lingering close enough to his that he could feel her breath.
Easy kissed her. He stayed away from the cut, but he couldn’t be as gentle as he thought he should, either. Urges ran through his blood—to claim, to possess, to take, and they spilled into the way his lips sucked and pulled at hers, into the forcefulness of his tongue stroking against hers, into the tightness of his grip in her hair.
She moaned and gave every bit of it right back to him, making him feel claimed in return.
Exactly what he needed.
Holding her waist, Easy lifted her onto his body until her legs straddled his hips. Her weight fell on his chest and his cock. Both of them cried out at the first pressing contact. One hand kneading at her ass and encouraging her to rock against him, his other returned to her hair and guided the kisses he simply couldn’t get enough of.
He hadn’t been with a woman in over nine months, and he’d walked away from that last time feeling it had been a mistake. He hadn’t been right in the head, and it had been with a girl from high school who’d still expected him to be his old self. The one that’d died on a dirt road in Afghanistan almost as surely as the men who’d never come home at all.