by Ella James
I try to think of why she’d want to, and all I can come up with is maybe she thinks it looks unruly or dirty. I run my hand through it.
“Are you picky about when you wash it or how you style it?” she asks.
I feel my brows scrunch as I shake my head.
“Okay, good.” She sits up straighter, reminding me hilariously of an energetic little meerkat. “I’m a sucker for guys with pretty hair, yours especially. If you let me wash it I’ll…bake something after we have dinner. Something you really like. Or—something else. I’ll owe you one.”
I shake my head in confusion, even though the eager look on her face has me laughing. “Okay… You don’t owe me,” I add.
She’s out of the tub with a giant slosh of water, dripping on the rug as I scoot up, bending my legs so she’ll have space to sit behind me.
I’m not prepared for the feeling of her smooth, warm body settling behind mine. As she spreads her legs, her little feet scooting around my thighs and tucking over them, I’m painfully hard.
She wraps her arms around my shoulders and pulls me back against her. I grit my teeth and try to think of something grim—like IEDs. I don’t put my full weight on her, but I’m pretty sure she doesn’t notice. I see her grab a green thermos from one ledge of the tub.
“I keep this in here for when I make my own bath scrub out of coffee grounds and coconut oil.” She fills it up from the tub, then tilts my chin up and smooths my hair off my forehead.
With one hand shielding my forehead from the warm deluge, she pours water over my hair. Chills dart all across my shoulders. My dick gets even stiffer.
She repeats the process, soaking my hair in the soapy-scented water. Then she rests her right elbow on the tub’s side. “Lean back in the corner of my arm.”
I do, even though I feel a little like a doll or some shit.
“This is good.” I see her smiling at an angle that puts her upside down for me. “It’s like the beauty parlor. Just relax.” She sifts her fingers through my hair, and I can’t help chuckling. The beauty parlor. This girl.
“These are the curls I always wanted, but my hair was only wavy,” she says, poking out her lip. “I wanted Shirley Temple curls.”
She starts to work soap into my hair, her fingertips massaging my scalp in a way that makes me shiver. When she’s finished, she smooths her hand back over my forehead, keeping the bubbles out of my face, and I feel this weird, hot feeling in my chest. It’s hard to breathe around the strange sensation, but I try not to focus on it. I smile up and back at her. “Your hair is pretty, Gwennie.”
“Don’t you call me that.” She gently slaps my cheek. “It’s Gwenna or Gwen. Gwennie is someone’s pet piglet.”
“You are a little piglet.” I grin, leaning up a bit and turning so I can see her. Which I quickly realize isn’t going to be enough. I turn more fully toward her, reaching out and trailing a finger down the inside of her forearm. “Pretty and pink.”
She tugs my ear. “Lay back, you infidel.” Her jaw drops open. “Shit. That’s not PC.”
Her blanched face tells me she’s concerned about more than just being politically correct. Shame moves through me as I settle my head back in the crook of her arm.
“Doesn’t bother me. It’s not PC,” I tell her with a smirk, “but I’ve heard it before. Some people used it to mean real insurgents, so we didn’t joke about it. But it doesn’t remind me of anyone or anything like that.”
She’s quiet as she massages what feels like an excess of conditioner into my hair. It smells like coconut sunscreen, which happens to remind me of training down at Benning.
“Did you have short hair when you were working?” she asks.
“Shorter than this, but not too short. Operators are supposed to blend in with civilians.”
She pauses in her massage to trace the tats on my left shoulder. “Do these not identify you?”
I nod slightly and pull my sagging eyes open. “One time we got caught by the Taliban for a couple days. We tried to tell the villagers we were journalists so their leader would force the Taliban fighters to let us go. But they didn’t believe us. Their village leader was afraid of my tats.”
Gwen’s hand shelters my forehead from another cupful of hot water. It sloshes hotly over my soapy hair, running down the back of my neck.
I can’t help a rumble in my throat.
“That sounded like a purr,” she teases. She pours another cupful over my head. “When’s the last time you had your hair washed?”
“Never.”
“Ever?” She pauses.
“Maybe when I was a little kid.”
Another cup of water, another heavenly pass of her fingertips through my hair.
“Well that’s a shame,” she murmurs.
I try to stay still and keep the full weight of my head off her arm as she pours a few half-cups over the back and sides of my hair.
Then, just when I think she’s finished, she parts the hair around my scars and feathers a light kiss over my head. It’s fast, a no-big-deal thing, over almost before I notice. But it brings that feeling back into my chest. The heavy, hot one.
I turn around, because I want to see her, and as I trace her collarbone, I see a scar I’ve never noticed at the base of her throat.
Looking at it makes my own throat feel tight. I reach for her, but I can’t seem to touch her.
Her eyes roll. “Yeah, yeah. Don’t give me that look. You’ve got that wicked-looking shrapnel scar on your neck and shoulder back here—” she points toward it— “and I see a bullet scar on your back, no exit hole in the front, I noticed, BTW. What about the one on your thigh? Bullet, too?” She arches her brows. “Who knows what else I can’t see. You’re a pincushion, just like I am.”
I finally manage to swallow and trace my fingers over the little scar at the base of her throat. I want to ask her if it’s from a breathing tube—one of the ones they push in during a real emergency. I’ve seen one done in the field before.
Instead I ask, “Is that from the wreck?”
“Yes.”
She soaps her chest up and I wait for her to say more, but she just blinks at me and looks down at her bubble-covered breasts. My gaze follows hers. My dick throbs as I notice her nipples poking out of the suds.
I’m about to reach for one when I see another scar on her right arm—long, straight, and about five inches long. I feel an almost painful wave of protectiveness for her.
“Do you still…have any pain?” Goddamn, my voice is raspy.
Gwenna smiles gently. “For the most part, no. It’s sweet of you to ask.”
“I’m not sweet.”
“I think you are.”
A moment later, she washes the soap off her chest and rises from the tub. She wraps a towel around herself, then holds one out for me. I tuck it around my waist, and she says, “Lean your head down.”
I hesitate only a moment before I do as she asks, and Gwenna covers my dripping head with another towel.
She rubs it all around, kind of violently. I’m trying to decide if it feels good or bad when she stops. “Barrett—oh my God! Your tattoo. Is this— I have the same one, this exact tat, just like yours!”
My heart starts pounding as I straighten up. My eyes go to the inside of her forearm. “I saw that the other day.”
I try to keep a neutral face as she looks from her arm up at me. “That is so insane! I wish I could put them beside each other and show you.” She holds her arm up by my neck. “Yours looks exactly like mine. Identical. Where’d you get it?”
“Miami.” My throat tightens around the word.
“I got mine in Breckenridge, the year before the wreck. Why’d you get yours? It doesn’t exactly fit your badass special ops theme.”
I blow my breath out, looking at the floor for just a second while I get my shit together. Then I look into her beautiful brown eyes. “I got it to jerk around with my friend Breck. He always wanted it to be colder out there in the middle of t
he desert. We called him our special snowflake.” I smile a little at the memory, even though the tattoo angle on the story is bullshit.
“Breck…like Breckenridge?”
I only hesitate a moment before I answer. “Yeah. He was from there.”
I see her eyes widen when she hears the word was—and for once, I’m glad she’s scared to pry.
TWENTY
GWENNA
“Can you step into the laundry room and get that giant salad bowl from the shelf over the washer?” I would grab it myself, but I’m grating cheese.
Barrett tilts the skillet against the sink’s ledge, dripping the last streaks of venison grease from the pan into the Tupperware bowl where the browned meat is.
“Sure,” he says quietly.
He sets the skillet in the sink and washes his hands. I watch the way he soaps his arms up to the elbows. I can’t decide what it reminds me of—but something. A moment later I realize: He does it like a doctor. God knows I saw enough of them scrub into and out of my room after the wreck. I think of teasing him about it, but I don’t think he’s close to his doctor father, so he may not appreciate me mentioning him.
He catches my eyes on him as he turns. He smirks.
I grin unabashedly. As he walks into the laundry room, I want to laugh. I’m not sure why. It’s just like…there’s pressure in my chest—old pressure, stuck there for these last few years—and suddenly I need to let it out, so I can breathe and just…be happy again.
I smile as he turns toward the shelves over the washer and dryer. I feel so much lighter when I’m with him.
I let my gaze linger on him, drinking in his masculine beauty. Which is why I notice when he stumbles back, bumping the back of his head into the doorframe. He whirls around and, with wide eyes and a flushed face, staggers back into the kitchen. He stops by the dinner table. His face blanches. His eyes widen, and he just looks…like he’s in trouble.
Shit.
His chest is pumping in and out and he’s still got that look of frozen terror on his face when I get close enough to wrap my arms around him.
The second I lock onto him, a shudder ripples through his body and I feel his chest inflate and hold there as he struggles to breathe deeply. I tug the sides of his shirt.
“Barrett—look at me.” His eyes open and close in that exaggerated way that makes him look like he might pass out. It’s a blink in my direction, then he’s struggling for air again, his big chest heaving as his eyes slip out of focus.
“It’s okay.” I hug him. My heart pounds. “I’ve got you.”
I pull him with me to the counter and fumble for a lunch-size paper bag while he leans over, palms braced on his knees. The gasping sounds he’s making hurt my heart and make me sweat with fear for him, even though the rational part of me knows he’s just having a panic attack.
I grab his forearms—“Let’s sit down, okay?”—and together we sink to the floor. He leans back against my cabinets, his hands grasping weakly for his thighs. I pull the bag open and look into his eyes as I lower it over his mouth.
“It’s okay. You’re here with me, with Gwen.”
His dazed eyes cling to mine, even as his chest pumps and his muscles tremble. With my cheek against his chest and my hand straining to keep the bag over his mouth, I look up at him.
“Barrett, you’re with Gwenna. We’re in my kitchen. Feel my arm around you? You’re okay.”
I squeeze him tightly and a second later, he raises a hand to hold the bag. With my free hand, I stroke his neck.
“You’re here with me, baby. We’re making tacos. After we eat, I want to show you your Myers-Briggs profile, and you can laugh at what a dork I am. I thought maybe you would end up staying over…so I did something for you. Do you want to see?”
He blinks at me, and he seems to realize at the same moment I do that he’s not sucking air out of the bag anymore. His shoulders are still tense, but his frenzied breaths are calmer now. His eyes are still far off, but they’re holding mine.
I have this image of myself bursting out the front door when I used to have a flashback. Anything to move, outrun the moment.
“Come here…” I hold my hand out for him but he moves the bag off his mouth and stands without grabbing onto me. I clasp the hand that isn’t holding the bag and lead him slowly through the den and my office.
We step into my bedroom and I turn out the overhead light. Then I lead him over to the bed, where I flip a button on the extension cord draped over my night stand and my ceiling lights up. It’s striped with lines of Christmas twinkle lights.
“When I used to have nightmares, I would wake up to these and it would pull me back here faster.”
I watch him blink up at the rainbow of lights.
“Come here…”
We lay down. He’s slow and careful, like a fast movement might somehow startle him. I don’t let go of his hand.
When he’s lying on his back, I snuggle up against him, resting my head on his hard arm, gently re-lacing my fingers through his. “I think I know what happened.”
Unless he’s scared of laundry rooms, the overbearing scent of gardenias is the only thing that makes sense. Smell is tied tightly to memory.
“If it’s the plants,” I whisper, “I can throw them out.”
“Why?” It’s so soft I can hardly hear it.
I stroke his cheek. “Because I don’t need them.”
I wrap my arms around him. His shoulders jerk with leftover tension. Then he shifts onto his side and buries his face in my neck.
I’m surprised…but it feels good. So right. I wrap my arm around him, inhaling the scent of him: so new and yet so soothing. I feel the width and hardness of his back and think of where it’s been. I wish he’d never been to those places.
I curve my hand around the back of his head. I barely know him—but it doesn’t feel that way.
“I went into her brother’s flower shop. In Syria.” He doesn’t lift his head, just rasps the words against my collarbone. “She said…I didn’t look like other Westerners. She said my eyes looked different.”
He stops, breathing deeply. I rub circles on his back while silence rolls around us.
“She put this aloe on my neck, and there was a freezer room. But to get to it, you had to go through this other room.” I feel his forehead press against my throat as he breathes.
“She called it her gardenia room. They were piled in there…like yours.”
My heart squeezes as I try to picture him standing in this tiny room filled with gardenias, sunburned, maybe shirtless as this woman rubs his back.
“She told me one day they meant secret love—gardenias. She was younger. I— the…ISIS was there…everywhere. The delivery drivers, everyone was in their pocket. Like the mafia.” I run my fingers through his hair and hold my breath while he breathes slowly to catch his.
“I would go sometimes…around delivery time…and wait in that room. In case something happened. I was always hot. Summer. We weren’t really over there yet—at least not officially. According to the head shed.” Another few seconds slide by, and I can feel him draw another long, slow breath. “I had on the local dress,” he goes on. “Clothes.”
Despite the benign nature of his words, his body jerks with a hard shudder. I pull him a little closer. “It’s okay.”
I feel him breathing: measured breaths. “She wore a burka and—” His voice breaks. “She did want to take it off.” He laughs roughly. “She’d come into that room and…I would never let her.”
I trace the curve of one of his curls, and he lets his breath out slowly. “She would let me do overwatch from up above the store.” He lifts his head, looks out across my room, toward the window, beyond which the world is indigo with dusk.
His eyes glide to mine. He frowns vacantly before moving his gaze back to the window.
“One day someone else—another operator,” he rasps, “got some intel. Something was happening with IS in the area. I went. I thought maybe…
” He swallows. “I thought I could get something, you know? She might know something. She gave me some tea and she was telling me her sister-in-law was pregnant, like it was so important. But I didn’t think about it.” His face blanks out, and his voice drops lower, like he’s remembering this day so vividly, he’s more there than here.
“I went up there on the roof and saw these women. Two with babies. One of them looked pregnant,” he says slowly.
He puts his hand against my throat and curls his fingers. I can feel them shaking. I close my hand over his.
“After a little bit,” he rasps, “they scattered—those three women. One of them blew up. I tracked the other ones. The babies…looked so real. But you can’t— There were other people down there. Shopping. So I didn’t hesitate. I took out a second woman, quick. And then I moved to the third one. Took her down. She blew up after a minute, so she had a bomb on her…”
He shakes his head and inhales deeply.
“That third lady,” he whispers, “she was clearly… But the second one…”
I see him shut his eyes, and for a moment he is silent in the watercolor of the Christmas lights above us.
“Maliha ran out there,” he chokes. It takes me half a second to realize Maliha must be the young florist. “I saw her drop down by this second lady…” His body jerks a little, and I press my hand over his. “I thought it was her sister-in-law…”
His eyes hold mine for just a moment, and they’re stark with pain and— Maybe that’s confusion on his face.
He shakes his head.
“It wasn’t.”
I watch his hand clutch at his temple.
“The tea she gave me…it had opium tincture in it. I can see her reaching for that woman’s stomach. I can see her eyes… and they were wide. It was like a dream. Not just the tea. I saw her, but I couldn’t…” His eyes find mine. “Anyway,” his gaze flicks down, and then back to mine— “there was a backup detonator. She grabbed it. I saw her going for it, should have known, but…” He shakes his head. He drops his head down in a bow.
“They told me that,” he rasps. “When I joined the Unit, someone warned me…” He shakes his head, like whatever he’s trying to convey is just too much, too much effort. “She was young, Gwen. She used to listen to this band...Icona Pop and…Taylor Swift. She had this iPod.” I see a tear drip down his cheek as he looks into my eyes. “Sometimes I think…I wonder why she said my eyes were different. If you notice…look. Sometimes in pictures. Older guys, the people just like me.” He swallows. “Those old guys’ eyes look hard and cold. Almost…dead. To people who don’t know, but…they aren’t. They’re just sad,” he whispers.