Gia flinched in astonishment when she felt him press his lips to the crown of her head, then froze, not wanting to discourage him from the gentle and practically nonexistent touch.
She remained silent, but a quiver ran along her limbs when his mouth traced down the curve of her forehead to the crest of her cheekbone. He pressed her closer against him, tucking her into him, making her feel safe with him for the first time in a long while.
The quiver turned into a shudder of relief, and she tilted her head back, her mouth pouting in silent invitation.
Eyelids at half-mast, she studied him and felt the power of him as he looked at her in earnest. “I might not be able to go through with this,” he whispered, his voice raw, gritty.
She swallowed at his words, realizing with some surprise what he wanted from her, and desperate to be everything he needed. The nurturing part of her soul had been crying out to help him, and when it had been blocked at every turn, that slice of her nature had started to wither.
“We can take this slow. Or not at all. Whenever you’re ready, I am,” she murmured selflessly. She was no martyr in this, but she’d be whatever he needed her to be if it got him back on track.
He shook his head. “No. I want this. I want you. I do. Just…”
Gia knew what he meant. She guessed this would be the first time for him since their honeymoon. “Whatever happens, happens.”
She moved away from her awkward stance striding his legs, then grabbed his hand and tugged him upright. He curled his fingers into hers, and the slight tremble made her stomach jolt. His nerves were endearing and terrifying.
“It’s okay, Luke. I swear. I only want to be close to you.”
He nodded, the action tight. “I should clean up first.”
“You smell lovely. Earthy, like my man.”
His nose wrinkled, but he let her lead him out of her study. Down the stairs, at the other side of the house, the sounds of Lexi squealing at something and Josh’s laughter settled her, and she tugged him along toward their bedroom.
She wanted to see him, to touch him on their bed. The bed they’d claimed her in all those years ago, and where their daughter had been conceived.
After they crossed the landing and walked into the room, she released his hand and headed for the bed, coming to a halt a few feet from the antique storage chest that sat in front of the footboard. Turning to face him, she then put her hands on the T-shirt she wore. She pulled it over her head via the hem and let him see her bare torso. His hissed inhalation was remarkably endearing and something of a relief.
Flinging the shirt on the floor, she started on the buckle, then unfastened her belt and worked on the fly of her jeans. When she was naked, bared completely to him, she said, “This is the best way, Luke. Scars and all.”
He swallowed, but said nothing, watching her as she studied him. When he remained silent, she raised her arm, tilted it slightly to show him a scar on her inner elbow. “Do you know how I got that?”
When he shook his head, she murmured, “One of my mother’s boyfriends got a kick out of seeing me cry when he put his cigarette out on my arm.”
His head jerked forward at that, a move that assured her she’d pulled him out of the stasis he’d been caught in. “You never told us that before,” he growled, striding forward to grab her arm and to peer at the old scar.
Shivering when he rimmed the still-sensitive flesh with his thumb, she whispered, “I didn’t want you to know.”
“Why not?”
“I was ashamed.”
“What of? Your mother’s the one who should have been ashamed.”
“No. In her defense, she didn’t know. I used to clean them myself, and when she saw me doing it, only the once, he was out the door. And she was mad at me, boy, so mad for covering it up.” She gave him a slight smile. “Mom loved him, and he made her happy. She worked a lot of hours, and I figured she deserved some happiness, even if that meant enduring his attention.”
His jaw worked as he studied the scar. Then, he lowered his head and brushed his lips against the faintly puckered flesh. “If I could take that from you, I would. You know that, don’t you, Gia?”
“I do.”
“You never have to be ashamed. We love you as you are.”
“Yeah, well, it works both ways, baby.”
Her whisper had him rearing back again. “This isn’t the same.”
“Of course it is,” she immediately asserted, then, started to unfasten the buttons on his shirt. He didn’t fight, so she took that as a good sign.
The shirt came away to reveal bruised skin, new scars, bad ones—the faint puckers on her body were nothing in comparison. The angry flesh would calm down with time, but it was the bruises that made her wince. All this time later and he still had them? Christ, what color had they started out as?
She raised her hands to trace them over his torso, learning this new landscape. It thrilled her when gooseflesh popped up, and she continued to study the new terrain, knowing she had to be careful with him. He was as skittish as a virgin, and though she didn’t need this to end in sex, she desperately wanted contact. Skin-to-skin contact as they lay down together, and maybe rested a while in each other’s arms.
Skimming her hands up to his shoulders, she began to drag his shirt down, revealing more bruises and damaged skin. It was a wonder his face wasn’t more cut up, or maybe it healed quicker…she didn’t know. It wouldn’t have bothered her for him to have lost his pretty-boy looks, but she was relieved he didn’t have to go through that too.
When his shirtsleeves dropped low over his upper arm, it was her turn to hiss. “Why didn’t you let me clean this?”
“I managed,” he mumbled gruffly.
He had, but that wasn’t the point. “It’s a wonder it hasn’t got infected. And if it did…it doesn’t bear thinking about.” When he didn’t reply, she averted her attention from the deep stitches closing up the horrendous gash, and up to his face. “You know how mad I am at you, don’t you? For not telling me about this, I mean.”
He pursed his lips but didn’t argue. “I know.”
“Should you be doing anything with it? For Christ’s sake, farm work is too much. You need to stop going. What happens if dirt transfers into it?”
“Why do you think I didn’t tell you, Gia?” he retorted, but there was little heat to his tone. He simply cocked a brow, but the lack of snap made her flush.
“Because you know I’m right. Tell me true, any deeper and you could have lost it, couldn’t you?”
He nodded. Once. Then, he shrugged. “But that’s like anything. If the bomb had been two feet closer to the left, I’d be dead and Smith, the driver, would be alive. What-ifs are a fact of life over there.”
Gritting her teeth, she pulled the sleeve completely from his arm, somehow managing not to hurt him with her anger. Next, she went to work on his buckle. Surprisingly, when she broke through the fly, he had a hard-on that sprung out from behind the zipper.
She cocked a brow at him again, murmuring, “That bodes well.”
“It’s a hard habit to break.”
“What do you mean?”
He clenched his jaw. “You’re naked, sweetheart. Your tits are jiggling, and in the next hour, my cock might be inside you. Let’s hope it remembers how to work on sensory memory.”
Gia grinned at that. “It’s certainly had enough practice.”
Luke’s lips twitched, but he grabbed her hand when she went to shape him with her fingers. “Not yet.”
A quick scowl crossed her brow, but she nodded and dragged his pants down. She knelt in front of him and winced when he rested his weight on her to pull the remainder from his legs. It was another sign of his true strength. Luke and Josh were seriously fit. Luke more than Josh, whose life was more sedentary than before, but when she got a look at Luke’s knee… Well, she knew why he had to lean on her.
In truth, any need to connect, to feel his skin against hers had disappeared at the sight
of the huge stitches on his arm. Seeing his mangled knee, taped up with God only knew how many bandages, took the rest of it away.
She had to hide the quiver in her jaw by pasting on a phony smile. Apparently, it wasn’t convincing, because he rolled his eyes. “It looks worse than it is.”
“Why don’t I believe you? Hmm, I know because you kept these injuries from me in the first place.” She folded her arms across her chest, then jerked when her bracelet scraped over her breasts—she’d completely forgotten she was naked. “If you’d been injured here, you wouldn’t have been able to keep it from me.”
He shrugged again. He was doing that a lot of late, and it made her want to whack him. Then, she had to remember that most parts of him were bruised and wouldn’t appreciate her battering them with her fists. “Maybe. Maybe not,” he remarked. “I’ve done it before.”
That had her right eyelid twitching. “Well, that’s nice. Thanks for keeping something like that from me.”
“Sometimes you have to put up and shut up, Gia. I don’t need you to kiss my boo-boos.”
“No, but you need me to keep track of doctors’ appointments and the like. Have you been going? You must need PT for your knee?”
Luke clucked his tongue but otherwise ignored her. She let him for once and watched as he settled backward, carefully lowering himself onto the side of the bed. Cock standing like a flagstaff though it had obviously hurt him to lie down, he sighed once his back was supported.
“Feel good?” They had a special mattress; it conformed to the sleeper’s body.
“Yeah,” he grunted.
“You could have been in there from the start.”
“I know, but I wasn’t ready for it. Neither were you. Josh, probably. He knows what it’s like to have the nightmares. Not you. Not really.”
That had her frowning. “You mean you’ve been trying to protect me?”
His sigh was shaky and as big of an admission as a nod.
“You jackass. Be grateful you’re injured because I’d totally kick you in the shin.”
Damning him because he smiled when he tilted his head to look at her, she glowered back.
“What did you want me to do, Gia? Go against the habit of a lifetime?”
She sniffed. “Five years. And maybe I need protecting, but not from you.”
“No, but I’m not me at the moment. I’m not going to lie to you. I’m not. I’m in another place, a darker one.” A hiss escaped him when he shuffled into a more comfortable position on the bed. “When I left here, I was certain I wouldn’t see this place again. I know you both talked to me, tried to make me see sense, but it wouldn’t penetrate this thick skull of mine. I didn’t realize the universe was deciding to gang up on me.”
“Are you trying to tell me you’d prefer us to be living without you than handling this stuff?” A scream made of impotent fury and exasperation started to inflate inside. How she contained it, she didn’t know. She really didn’t. Her skin felt tight with the need to hold it back.
“Don’t put words in my mouth, Gia.”
“I’m not. That’s how you made it sound. Nothing is worth losing you, Luke.” Her nostrils flared as she snarled, “Nothing.”
“Bull. How can you say that? All the BS I’ve brought here, all the shame…”
She planted her hands on her hips. “Don’t be ridiculous. Shame is nothing. I’ve coped with that all my life. According to your father, what we have together is shameful. How do you feel about that? Want to go and throw yourself under a bus to celebrate?”
“This is different. This is national and public humiliation.”
“It isn’t. It hasn’t been on the news.”
“I guess that’s something to be grateful for,” he retorted, his tone bitter, and his cock wilting at the topic.
She tried to give a damn, but she couldn’t. Not when this was too important. She needed to shake some sense into him, and that wasn’t always possible. Luke was less obstinate than Josh and her, but he could still be intractable. In his own way, and with his own moral code.
“What’s happening now, isn’t going to be happening next year. This is a bump in the road. That’s all.”
He shook his head. “You don’t dream what I do.”
“No. I don’t. But at the same time, I don’t always dream about unicorns and fairy dust either. We’ve all got stuff in our heads, Luke. It’s up to us to let it drown us or for us to choose to coast over it.”
When he sighed, some tension escaped his frame. She wasn’t sure if that was a good or a bad sign, because he was incredibly tough to read.
Knowing he was processing her words, she sat next to him and mimicked his position. Lying down flat, she had to fight the urge to roll onto her side and stare at him. Instead, she chose to look up at the ceiling.
How long they lay there, she didn’t know. They just did. Naked as the day they were born, united by tense if still-reeling threads, Gia wouldn’t lie by saying she hadn’t imagined this ending in such a way.
“Do you think you could hug me without hurting me?”
The words broke into her thoughts. They’d been heavy ones too, pondering where the hell Luke was mentally and emotionally if he thought they’d prefer his death than the bullshit his ex-CO had spread about him.
“Of course.”
“It’s not that simple. I have a lot of aches.”
She jerked a shoulder. “I’m up for the challenge.”
Gia rolled onto her knees. Carefully crawling over to him, she spread her legs and sat astride him. His hips, groin, and inner thigh seemed to be the least affected areas, which meant she was sitting close to his now soft cock.
Unsure if it was a good idea or not to tempt the tiger, despite his being depressed, she shrugged off the thought and lowered against him.
That he didn’t react told her more about his mental state than he probably realized. She maneuvered her upper body so she could rest against him without hurting him.
A few times, as she tried to get comfortable, he grunted, but she persevered and eventually came to a stop with her cheek pressed to his chest, her eyes directly opposite the wound on his arm.
It wasn’t repulsive, because this was Luke and nothing he could do was repulsive. She could say that with ease because he’d seen a child come out of her body, and she’d watched one too many birthing videos at Lamaze classes—childbirth was spiritually beautiful but sure as hell not aesthetically pleasing. If he could cope with that, she could deal with bone-deep gashes.
“Better?” she asked, after a few moments silence. Gia had expected him to wrap his arms around her, but he hadn’t. Nor did he reply.
She moved a little, finally unable to stare at the scarred tissue any longer without bursting into tears, and nuzzled her face into his throat.
It wasn’t a cold day out, and with the heating on, it was temperate. But naked, on top of the sheets rather under them, she’d started to feel the seasonal chill. Now, this close to the furnace that was Luke, where skin touched skin, she was deliciously warm.
Boneless.
She guessed she could thank yoga for that. Awkward positions became par for the course after a while, and this wasn’t the most comfortable way to rest, but she wouldn’t complain. Not when this was obviously a huge step for Luke.
Gia relaxed into the pose, and was embarrassed to admit, she eventually dozed. She knew she’d drifted off, because when she awoke, she felt overheated. That stuffy warmth that indicated she’d been asleep for a little bit too long.
Also, the silent shakes coming from the man underneath her had been beneath her attention until that faint second when wakefulness had hit her.
“Luke?” she asked quietly. “Are you okay?”
Gia tried to move, to pull back so she could look at him, but for what she could only assume was the first time that afternoon, he clamped his arms around her and hugged her to his chest.
The shaking didn’t stop. It went on and on. The faint murmurs, the
hushing sounds as his emotion finally broke free killed her. For this strong man to be brought to this, for the Forces that had forged him to drive him to his knees, she was furious.
And hurt.
So incredibly hurt.
She wanted to give him everything he needed, but she knew she couldn’t.
Before anything, they’d always been soldiers. The Forces had come first for so long, she was used to taking second place. Gia didn’t mind—it was the way of it. Theirs was more than just a job; it was a vocation. Or at least, for Josh and Luke it was. How could she make it better when that vocation had snapped back and sunk its fangs deep?
“I’m so sorry, baby,” she whispered, repeating it over and over, hoping the words penetrated.
After only God knew how long, he stopped shaking, and the stillness was almost as terrifying as that constant tremor. His arms relaxed and he let her move. With care, she sat up and studied him.
His eyes were closed. The dark blond hair atop his head mussed and tousled, the same bronzed lashes damp with tears. His skin was pink, sore around those wet eyelids.
She bent over him, hovered a hairbreadth away, then brushed her lips over the tender flesh. The lashes fluttered a little, but he let her minister to him, let her tend to him in the way she’d been craving for the last month.
Kissing him the way she’d dreamed, Gia let her tongue savor the physical evidence of the sacrifices he’d made. She dotted his cheeks, peppering them with her love before moving to his lips. Carefully, she slid her tongue over the morsels, enjoying his taste before taunting him with gentle flicks.
It didn’t take long for the hard, grim line of his mouth to relax, and she slipped her tongue between those delicious lips, finally being able to kiss him the way she needed.
And he responded.
She thought the angels might have sung at that moment, those wonderful seconds when he retaliated with hesitance to her teasing.
The Power of Love Page 12