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“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, ye
ah. 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.
