When Grizz finally wandered back in the door, I was curled up with a bowl of popcorn and a good movie.

“You’re in late,” I teased him. “Productive day?”

“I wish,” Grizz groaned, setting his jacket down on the countertop. “It looks like we’ve fucked ourselves over since the last time I was in town…”

“That doesn’t sound good.”

“No, it’s not,” he growled, rummaging through the fridge.

I climbed up from the sofa and lightly wandered over to him. With my hands gliding along his back, I enjoyed how his hard muscles felt beneath my touch.

“You could use a massage,” I noted.

“Probably.”

I leant down near his ear. “We’ll start with food. Bottom shelf. Cooked up some dirty rice, just packed it up an hour ago. Zap it, and it should be good.”

A smile crossed his face. “You cooked?”

“I know how to whip up a couple of things. Original recipe was kinda weak, so I splashed it with extra zest. There’s some Tony’s in there, bit more pepper…”

“You’re too good to me.”

“You’re damn right I am.”

I left his side and sat back down in the sofa, giving him a little wiggle in my tight panties. A grunt from his direction told me that he appreciated the view.

After a few minutes in the kitchen, Grizz joined me in the living room, slumping down into the seat beside me with a bowl of steaming Louisiana rice.

“Whatcha watching?”

“Another one of the usual,” I answered. “Don’t remember what it’s called. Looks old.”

“I know this one,” he pointed at the screen with a fork from beside me. “This is one of those older Bruce Willis flicks. I can’t remember what it’s called either.”

“Die Hard?”

“No, not one of those. It’ll come to me.”

The action movie only had an hour left. By the time it was over, the empty bowl was on the end table by the sofa, long forgotten, and I was curled up against Grizz’s side.

My ultimatum still stood.

No fucking until I knew the truth.

But I was finding it harder and harder to keep my hands off of him, and sooner or later I was going to give into the growing heat between my thighs…

I knew that meant only one thing.

It was time to confront him.

“I need to know what happened, Grizz,” I finally told him. “I’m being patient, but it’s time you told me what the fuck went down.”

Grizz turned his face away.

“No,” I insisted, pulling him back by the chin. “Don’t run away from this. You’ve got to let me in sooner or later…”

“I’m not sure that you’re ready to hear the truth,” he swallowed. His gaze was distant. “Or that I’m ready to give it to you.”

“You can’t dodge it forever,” I persisted. “If you want me in your life again – if you really, truly do – then I can’t move forward until I know why you did it.”

Grizz closed his eyes. I felt so much pain, oozing off of him… but it was time to rip the goddamn band-aid off.

“Okay,” he finally sighed.

“Good,” I nodded, pleased. “Just start from the top. Tell me everything.”

“Not here.”

I started to get annoyed.

“The bedroom,” he clarified.

“Fine. Get your thoughts together,” I impatiently replied. “I’ll be in there waiting. Don’t keep me waiting too long, okay?”

He sighed. “Okay.”

I left his side and undressed, leaving the panties on. The sounds of Grizz bringing plates into the kitchen, and running water, filled the air for a few minutes before he finally came into the room.

Grizz looked amused at my mostly naked display on the bed.

“Not the mood I was expecting.”

“It’s your reward,” I smiled seductively. “If you fulfill your promise.”

“Not a lot of rewards are paid upfront.”

“This is just a little taste,” I waved down my bare chest. “The real reward comes after. We both need this.”

He sank down to his knees on the edge of the bed, his hand running along my side.

I swatted it away, teasingly.

“Words first.”

A great sigh left Grizz’s chest, and he kicked his boots off. Once he’d lain down on his back, I curled up against him again, my hand draped over his chest.

“When I reenlisted for the war, it was to go straight back into combat duty. I was another pair of boots on the ground, same as before. I’d made my peace with that. I wasn’t the only one out of my old squad who rejoined. Half of us did, four in total. We all reported to the same team lead. The old crew was back together again, this time with some fresh faces.”

I nodded, listening to his words. He continued to think back on days long gone.

“Wasn’t a night that passed that I didn’t think about you. I wrote you letters. We came under some outbound supply breakdowns, so I held onto them all, just in case things changed.”

“You did?” I was surprised.

“Course I did. Whole stack of them, ready to go. Must have been dozens.”

“What did you write about?”

Grizz smiled, staring up at the ceiling.

“I wrote to you about the stresses of war, about how much I loved and missed you. I wrote about the boring days, the exciting days, the terrifying days… I wrote about my dreams, my hopes for our future together… I must have wrote a million apologies for leaving you behind, no matter the reasons.”

My heart swelled with love and pride, but I still hung onto every word out of him.

His voice changed, growing darker. “And then shit went wrong. We were out there in the dark going building to building when I was hit. My squad wasn’t going to leave their brother to die…”

“They tried to save you?”

“I’m too damn big to carry or drag, and we were being quickly surrounded. The whole place was just one big trap and every single one of us was going to die there. I told them to leave me. I’d cover their asses from a window so they could get the fuck out. It was suicide, but I was going to raise a little hell before I was done.”

He paused for a moment.

“What happened then?”

Grizz shuddered. “A bomb happened. Whole damn building was rigged to blow. The whole place was a trap.”

“Holy shit,” I gasped. “I’m so sorry. Please tell me that–”

“I was the only survivor…”

The silence fell hard.

“I was pulled out of the rubble two days later. I was dehydrated and fucking delirious, but I was alive…”

“Oh thank God.”

“No, you can thank the Devil for that one,” He grimaced gravely.

“Why?” She insisted.

His eyes locked darkly with mine. “You want to know why I didn’t come back? You want to know why I don’t want to talk about it?”

I was suddenly beginning to question it.

“I didn’t come back, because the demons that dragged me out of my makeshift tomb weren’t Americans.”

“Oh God…”

“I spent three years locked in a cage. Three years of torture and desperation.”

“No… you weren’t… They would have told me if you were captured…”

“They couldn’t tell you a thing, because they didn’t know you existed,” Grizz said gravely, his eyes dark with the weight of war. “They wanted ghosts for these missions… They wanted men without old ladies and kids back home. We were expendable. I wasn’t even in fucking Afghanistan…”

My heart stopped in my chest.

“We knew the stakes. The whole squad did. We were raiding compounds in Pakistan and we knew exactly who we were looking for. The brass made it clear if we were captured or killed out there, they’d deny we ever fucking existed. I couldn’t tell them about you Kate…”

No, I whispered inside.

No, not my Grizz…

“How did you escape?” I finally asked.

“I didn’t… Eight people were locked up in that hellhole with me. One of them must have been important enough to justify a rescue mission, because all I remember is one of the walls caving in and all hell breaking loose. Few hours later I was strapped into a cargo plane and shipped home.”

Laying in bed with me, the world-weary biker watched my reaction quietly.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” I finally asked him. “Why didn’t you try to contact me?”

“Because it was six fucking years I was gone, Kate,” he replied calmly, trying to hold back his anger. “Six long, painful years that felt like centuries… I wasn’t the same man who left. I couldn’t let you see me like that…”

“You didn’t even try?” she asked.

“You were gone. No address, no contact information… I thought you’d gone to New York like we’d talked about. Hell, I hoped you’d gone there… gone on to live your life without me dragging you down.”

I was deathly quiet now. I could feel his heartbeat thumping away rapidly against my chest.

“Did you?” He finally asked.

“Did I what?”

“New York.”

“Oh.” I let the syllable hang in the air. “I tried… By the time I finally gave up waiting on you, the opportunity was gone… It was long gone.”

I hesitated for a moment.

“I tried to stay in New York. Worked odd jobs, waited tables. You know, whatever kept a roof over my head. But my credit cards were running on fumes. I had to ditch town.”

“And you wound up in Louisiana?”

“Eventually, yeah,” I conceded. “Wanted to try to make it to New Orleans. Heard there was some work out here, something that paid pretty well.”

“I guess it didn’t work out?

“You could say that. I wound up in Baton Rouge for a while. After a few setbacks, I couldn’t afford to stick it out.”

Grizz nodded. “So, you settled for Lafayette instead.”

“Yeah, took some advice from a few new friends. Followed the trail to Lafayette, but it didn’t pan out. So I’ve been kind of trapped there, ever since.”

“There are worse places.”

“Don’t get me wrong,” I quickly clarified. “I liked Lafayette. It’s okay for a college town. But being constantly broke wasn’t exactly doing me any favors.”

“We both got handed a raw deal,” Grizz finally noted. “I never should have left you behind.”

The atmosphere in the room thickened with the weight of something bigger than us. It felt like this small bedroom was the only place in the entire world, and that the outside simply didn’t exist.

“I’m sorry that I was so hard on you,” I whispered tenderly as I curled up harder against him.

He answered, “You didn’t know.”

“I know that. I tried to have faith…”

His finger lifted my chin, and he gazed down into my trembling gaze. Grizz’s thumb brushed near my eye, wiping a tear away.

“Don’t cry,” he whispered.

“I can’t help it.”

I tried to turn my gaze away, but Grizz held it fast, commanding that I stand my ground with him.

“All that matters is that I have you back,” he tried to comfort me. “I’ve walked this world a long goddamn time, and I’ve learned to know a miracle when I see one. You coming back into my life? That’s a miracle.”

“Think so?” I sniffed.

“Damn right.”

I tried to summon my confidence.

“Don’t ever leave me again,” I told him.

A smile crossed his lips. “You have my word.”

With our informal vows exchanged, he pulled me on top of his heavy chest. His body was warm against me, and his lips were so inviting.

I needed him.

And I knew that he needed me.

It took no effort at all to lift my face forward, pulling myself further up my body. I clutched close to the man I had loved, and he lifted his face.

Electricity surged between our lips as we kissed. It was a magnetic power beyond reason, something stronger than either of us.

It was a kiss born out of miracles.

We would have never crossed paths again, and I would have never known the truth. Grizz would have never found me again, if not for a chance meeting in a Louisiana college town in the dead of night…

Within a second’s passing, we were locked together by lips and embrace, and over a decade of crushing sexual tension finally melted away, like hot wax off of bare skin…