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He laughed and pulled her down for a deep kiss. “No doubt about that.” He climbed from the bed and slid off the condom, striding toward the bathroom, naked and beautiful.
His back muscles rippled, and she took in the scar on his back. Must be the exit wound. A bullet, then. She’d suspected as much. The other scars must be from the follow-up surgeries. How many had he gone through?
Eighteen months, he’d said.
She wanted to know everything about it. About him. But all they would have was tonight. Those questions would be invasive. Out of bounds. She wouldn’t ask. But she would kiss those wounds, would give him all the pleasure he’d given her. Because if this was all she’d have of Xavier Rivera, she wouldn’t do anything to ruin the perfection of it.
Morning came far too soon, but waking with Audrey in his arms, Xavier could find no regrets in the cold light of dawn. The night had been wild. Intense. And carefree in a way he hadn’t felt in years. For several hours he forgot everything but her.
Even the pain in his shoulder had disappeared. Endorphins and lust, but still. The escape had been glorious.
Plus, there’d been no nightmares. His brain didn’t relive his last op with the brutal clarity that he lacked in the light of day.
Flyte had filled in the gaps in his memory of what happened. He’d seen Forsythe and Adams die. He knew what followed. What he’d done. Sometimes he wished he didn’t remember.
He shook his head. Even without the dreams, he was returning to that place, losing the escape he’d found with Audrey. He turned to the sleeping woman and kissed her neck. She made a purring sound and tilted her head, giving him better access to the sensitive skin below her ear.
He loved how she responded to him. She’d been so completely uninhibited. He’d hesitated when he realized he’d have to show her his scar, but he’d owed her nothing less than the same openness she’d given him, so he doffed his shirt and stood before her, caught off guard by the unease he felt in showing his damaged shoulder with atrophied muscles.
He didn’t want to talk about it. Didn’t want to think about it.
And she didn’t ask, didn’t probe. Her lips touched scar tissue that lacked nerve endings, and he could swear he felt the caress. It was like the encounter brought him back to life, when he hadn’t realized he’d been numb to the world—or at least to libido and lust—since he woke in the hospital and found himself alone. According to Flyte, Lynn had visited while he was sleeping, took one look at him, and left.
She’d known he faced more surgeries and didn’t care about him enough to consider helping him through multiple recovery periods.
Later, on the phone, she’d said, “I didn’t sign up to be your nursemaid. We never made any ‘in sickness and in health’ vows. So don’t act like I betrayed you. I saved us both from misery by walking when I did.”
The subtext was loud and clear: she didn’t love him enough to be by his side after the worst day of his life. He knew without a doubt she was running as much from the emotional trauma that loomed after losing two teammates during a failed mission as from having to play caretaker.
“Xavier?” Audrey said, “Is something wrong?”
Without realizing it, he’d tucked his face into Audrey’s neck. He must’ve frozen as the memories assailed him.
His breath left in a rush, and he nuzzled her skin to try to cover for the lapse.
She pulled away. “Look, we don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to, but don’t pretend something didn’t happen just now. You went somewhere else.”
How could she read him so well? They’d shared their bodies last night, sure, but he’d kept his mind to himself. This didn’t make sense. He closed his eyes. Like a coward, he hid from her probing gaze. He let out his breath again. “Sorry. Yeah. I got lost for a second there. And no. I don’t want to talk about it. I’m sorry it intruded on our morning.”
Lips touched his—a fleeting touch. She moved to kiss his cheeks and closed eyes, then his ear, where she whispered, “I don’t want anything from you that you don’t want to give. You can keep your secrets. If you want me to leave now, just say the word. We’ve had our fun. Maybe it was a mistake for me to stay until morning.”
He opened his eyes and pulled back so he could see her face. He guessed she was trying not to show hurt, but what did he know? He’d proved to be shit at reading women when he thought his relationship with Lynn had evolved from casual sex to a committed relationship.
He brushed his lips over Audrey’s. “Waking up with you in my bed is the best thing that’s happened to me since…well, I guess last night when you let me make love to you on the deck. And let me tie you up. And…hell, everything you’ve let me do to you since you walked into this room. And you walking into this room was the best thing that’s happened to me in years. So, I want to keep you here as long as you want to be here, until I check out at noon if possible. I want to repeat some of the fun we had last night. But I know you have to work today.”
She stroked the stubble on his cheek, her eyes lit with warmth. He’d said the right thing—which also happened to be true. Maybe reading her wasn’t a lost cause.
“I’m without a dig partner again today, which means I’ll get only half the allotted work done—if that. My assistant will get here tomorrow and can stay until the survey is done, so it makes sense for me to give myself at least a half day off. Why rush to work alone and get very little done when I’m going to have to stay at least one extra day anyway?”
Warmth bloomed in his chest. She wanted him. Wanted to stay here and make love with him even after his moody episode. And she wasn’t going to push him to talk or explain.
He’d had no idea this—she—was exactly what he’d needed for his first time wading into intimacy again after his world blew apart.
Was this intimacy, though? Or just fucking? Last night had been a lot of the latter, but this morning felt like the former, even if they weren’t sharing details of their lives.
Hell, for nearly two decades, the most important fact of his life had been that he was a SEAL, and Audrey didn’t even know that not-minor detail. This was the least he’d ever shared of himself, and yet this felt ten times more intimate than his time with Lynn. And he had no idea why.
Maybe it was because deep down, he’d always known the only reason Lynn was with him was because he was a SEAL. And the moment he became ineligible for ops, she’d walked out the hospital door without looking back. She was beautiful, and there were other SEALs at Coronado who weren’t damaged.
