Chapter 25

Pacey

 

 

Did I want to talk about it? I rarely did. I hadn’t even really talked to Tugger about that night in years, but I felt myself nodding. Strangely, I did want to talk to her about it. If I wanted to take Tugger’s advice and try something real with her, then I had to. Might as well get it over with.

“Go ahead,” Juliana said, her hazel eyes looking almost forest green in our surroundings.

I rolled my head back, my eyes looking up at the sky as I took a deep breath, trying to steel myself for the vivid rush of memories I hadn’t relived in front of anyone else since I’d been cleared by the shrink once I’d gotten home.

Keeping my eyes on the deep blue sky above me, streaked in places with flaming orange, I started my story. “We received a tip about the location of a drug cartel that we’d been after for some time.”

God, this was going to be harder than I thought. I was only one line in, and already I could hear the buzzing of the comm in my ear, feel the vibration of the helicopter rotor overhead, and smell the musty interior of the old chopper.

Juliana waited patiently for me to catch up to my racing thoughts, keeping my hands in hers and her eyes on me. There was no judgment there, none of the morbid curiosity I would’ve expected to see either.

“Our intel was correct,” I told her. “The cartel was holed up in the desert.”

My hands started to shake as I thought of the next part that I had to tell her, and I tried to will them to be still. Juliana held on tighter, and the small gesture calmed me, helping me to focus and keep going.

“We found them quite easily, and we’d taken about half of them down. A guy jumped out at us, and we didn’t expect it because we thought we’d cleared that part of the compound. He had an AK, and he mowed her down so fast she didn’t stand a chance of taking cover or getting off a shot of her own. We did take him out, but not fast enough. May was already gone.”

Juliana brushed away a tear that was threatening to spill from the corner of her eye and put her hand immediately back in mine. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”

“I’d like to say it’s in the past, but I’m just not sure it is. She was exactly like me, you know? She kept up with the guys; she trained harder than all the rest of us combined.” I wasn’t sure that Juliana wanted to hear all this, but seeing the whole truth through seemed like the best idea.

“We used to talk at night about our favorite weapons or the day’s mission. We watched bad action movies and compared the characters to people that we knew. I thought that she was it for me, then she was gone.”

Juliana, as always, surprised the hell out of me. “Sounds like she was a great girl.”

There was genuine sadness in her voice, in her eyes. She reached over and pulled me in for a hug, holding me to her. It was more touching than I wanted it to be, but there was still more that I had to tell her, even if it meant that this was the last hug I’d get from her. If I wanted real, I had to be 100 percent honest.

“I swore to her that I would stay single,” I whispered into Juliana’s ear. She pulled back slightly, but didn’t let go of me completely, which had to mean that I wasn’t shit out of luck. Yet. “Well, not to her, to her memory, I guess.”

Juliana winced but nodded. “I can understand that.”

“Truth be told, I haven’t had a real relationship since May. I’ve had random hookups, mostly with taken women so that nothing more could develop, but that’s it.” And there was the kicker, because she was sure to put two and two together now about why I’d gone after her at first.

I could practically see the wheels turning in her head and that spark of indignation when she put it together. “That’s why you came after me? Because I was with Scott.”

Nodding, I hung my head, but I couldn’t let her think that was where it ended. I clung onto her hands and looked her straight in the eye. “At first, yes. I won’t lie to you, but you’re different. When I’m with you, I feel different. I want something real with you.”

“I want something real with you too,” Juliana whispered. “But what about May?”

“I think she would want me to be happy. It just took me some time to figure that out. I really want to explore whatever this thing is between us, if you’ll have me now that you know I’m damaged goods.”

Fuck. It felt like I was dragging an open wound over a flame with this shit. I wasn’t used to feeling vulnerable, but Juliana managed to take some of the sting out of it. She made me feel safe, like I could tell her anything, which was a really fucking weird feeling for me. It brought with it a certain relief though, immeasurable in one sense and indescribable in another, because for the first time since I’d gotten home, it didn’t feel like there was a bone-crushing weight on my shoulders. 

And it was all because of her. Juliana.

“You’re not damaged goods,” she told me quietly. “I want to explore us too, but are you sure you’re ready?”

“Yes.” No. Maybe. I didn’t know, but I knew that I wanted to be. I just needed Juliana, just the two of us on this hill.

As if she could read my mind, she scampered into my lap, straddling me as she stroked my hair. I closed my eyes and leaned into her hands, then her mouth was on mine, and she was kissing me gently. Her tongue nudged at the seam of my mouth, and I opened for her, my hands squeezing at her waist as she deepened the kiss. I kissed her until she was breathless, losing myself, groaning as she responded to every stroke of my tongue, every soft nip of her lower lip. Her kiss soothed me as she explored the planes of my mouth, her hands on the ridges of my chest, putting a Band-Aid on the gaping wound I’d ripped open by telling her the truth.

The way she kissed me got me insanely hard. I wanted to fuck her senseless and make love to her at the same time, which was an unfamiliar combination for me. Sex was nothing but a physical release to me, that was all it had been for years, but I wanted to worship Juliana. That felt like more than fucking.

Her fingers tightened at the base of my skull as I licked every line inside her mouth, wanting to mark all the recesses and curves there. I wanted to mark her the way she’d marked me. She rubbed against me, and a groan rumbled in my chest.

Every stroke of her tongue drove me higher, harder, and every one of her moans shook me to the core. I’d never gotten so turned on from kissing someone before, not even with May. My hands gripped Juliana’s waist, then I moved them to her ass and squeezed gently. She pressed against me to rub her breasts against my chest, and my hands worked their way up her sides until my thumbs grazed the underwire of her bra.

She crossed her arms in front of her and pulled off her top herself, not bothering to unbutton it. I nearly swallowed my damn tongue at the sight of her breasts. I’d seen them before, of course, and it wasn’t like I could forget them—they were perfection, but now they were in my face and cupped in pink lace that was as sexy as it was innocent. I closed my tongue over one hard nipple, locking my eyes onto hers.

“Pacey,” she gasped, her hands tugging at my hair. My hands traveled under the strap of her bra, the material soft under my fingertips. Then I found the clasp and unhooked it without breaking eye contact.

“You are beautiful, baby. Exquisite, even.” Her cheeks flushed, and she glanced at my chest, fingering the buttons on my shirt.

“Quid pro quo?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.

I lifted my hand to the back of my shirt, bunched the material, and yanked it over my head, shuddering when her fingertips skimmed my chest, leaving a trail of fire as they went. We hadn’t talked about how she felt about sex in public, but we weren’t really in public here.

The way she was looking at me made me feel like a god. I claimed her mouth with mine, and her hands traced down my sides, landing at the waistband of my jeans, her fingers curling underneath it. Any notion of having a conversation about it faded in that instant.

Yeah, this is fucking happening.