Chapter Fifteen - Zach
Son of a bitch.
What was she doing home so early?
“Shay.” I stood. “I thought you’d be out for a bit longer.”
“Imagine that.”
Shit.
She was pissed, and her anger was another vice trying to crush my head from the inside.
I called to her when she retreated from the room. “Shay, it’s not how it looks.”
She tried to be mad, but her words trembled instead. Her lip quivered. Fuck. I’d kick my own ass for hurting her.
“Save it,” she said. “I should have known better.”
“Let me explain.”
“There’s nothing to explain,” she said. “It’s not like…like we were…”
Dating. Exclusive. Made for each other. Fucking perfect together.
“Shay!”
And she was gone. Storming upstairs.
Why was she back so goddamned early?
And how was I supposed to reveal who Gretchen was without fucking everything up?
I groaned. I’d paint the bulls-eye on my ass now. Shay would kick me to the curb, and I didn’t want her aiming too low.
“The little missus is jealous.” Gretchen leaned on the coffee table. It didn’t help that she was all fucking leg in the skin-tight cocktail dress she wore for the house-call. “I’m assuming you haven’t told her about me.”
“What’s to tell?”
Gretchen shrugged. “I’m always trying to drum up business.”
“Stick around. She’s loading a shot gun. You can stitch me up.”
She stood, tucking a blood-pressure cuff into her bag. “You’re lucky I like you, Zach. Please promise you’ll take care of yourself. No more working out for four hours a day.”
“Two.”
“Zach.”
“Three and a half.”
“You’re healing,” she said. “I know you refuse to believe it, but you aren’t one hundred percent healed yet. So use your brain and be glad it still works right.”
“I am.”
“No, you aren’t. If you had an episode that scared you bad enough to call me during my date.” She wagged the doggy-bag from the Italian restaurant. “Then you’re overdoing it.”
“The appeal is in two weeks.”
“All the more reason to rest. I already lost my brother in this war. I’m not going to lose his best friend too. Okay?”
“I hear you.”
“Go rest.”
Gretchen shouldered her purse and bag. “And, for Christ’s sake, go talk to Shay. Tell her what happened. She won’t judge you for getting injured overseas. She looks sweet…as long as she doesn’t rip your innards out first.”
“If she hasn’t yet…”
Only one way to find out. I escorted Gretchen to her car to delay coming clean to Shay. Even if she forgave Gretchen, she wasn’t going to be happy about my condition or the truth about my extended leave.
I knocked outside her bedroom.
No explosions. No gunshots. So far so good.
She didn’t answer, but I didn’t expect her to welcome me with open arms and legs. I knocked again and edged inside.
“So…you came home early…”
Nothing.
The room was empty. Bathwater hummed from behind the partially closed bathroom door. I watched as Shay shifted at her vanity, but I didn’t say anything. Just stood there like a damned idiot, without a single fucking idea of how to start my apology or explanation.
The bathroom door opened. Shay shrieked.
She hadn’t tied her silk bathrobe, and the pink graced her dark curves with a hypnotic beauty.
I stared. Who the fuck wouldn’t?
The softness caressed her full breasts, and the hint of her slit peeked between the short pleads of the robe. She wasn’t quick enough to hide from me. Even better, she missed the hem of the robe and revealed more. She screeched and turned to tie it. The pink silk barely kissed the bottom curve of her perfect ass.
“Zach!” She pulled the robe’s belt tight, either to shield her nudity or because it’d be a felony to knot it around my neck. “Knock first!”
“I did. You didn’t hear.”
“Then don’t come in!”
“Let me explain.”
“Don’t start with me.”
Shay wove her curls into a quick bun, a little too violent for the clip she jammed against her head.
“I’ve had a horrible night,” she said. “I don’t want to hear any excuses. You’re free to hump whoever you like.” Her eyes widened, dark and brimming with tears. “But my father ruined his family because he strayed bed-to-bed. Don’t you dare make me into some other woman.”
“Other woman?” Christ, she thought I was dating Gretchen? I took her hand before she escaped to her bath. “Gretchen isn’t my girlfriend.”
“I don’t need the specs on your petty officer’s latest mission.”
“She’s my doctor.”
Shay stilled. I pulled her business card from my wallet.
“Dr. Gretchen Mahoney,” I said.
“Internal Medicine?” Shay flipped the card over. Her voice softened. “Why did you have a doctor in our living room?”
Our living room.
Fuck. I snuck into her heart with all the subtlety of a boot to the door and a flash grenade. If I blew it now, I’d wish the shrapnel had finished the job on me.
“It’s a long story,” I said.
She stared at the scars on my arm. “I want to hear it.”
“I wouldn’t dream of interrupting your bath.”
Shay hesitated, holding my gaze for any reason to stay. I held my breath as she returned to the bathroom. The faucet turned off. My chest ached in relived agony.
She leaned against the doorway. I knew she debated if she could trust me. No reason to lie then.
“I gotta come clean,” I said.
She swallowed. “I figured that was coming.”
“I’m not fucking around with Gretchen. She’s just a friend, helping me because I served with her brother. She took on my case as a favor.”
“Your case?”
I sat on the bed and patted next to me. Shay’s eyebrow rose like I unzipped my pants and offered her a seat on my cock.
Why was this so hard? It wasn’t like I was still in the hospital, pissing through a tube and waiting for them to glue my skull back together. I made it out of the fucking desert alive. I healed. I survived.
Would she see it as a miracle?
Or would she see the same man I saw in the mirror?
Weak. Frail. Aimless.
“I’m not on leave.” The words stung. My hands curled into fists. Six months ago, I couldn’t even do that. Progress. “I was medically discharged.”
Shay frowned. “You said you were going back to the SEALs in a few months.”
“I know.”
“You lied?”
She bit the word. It felt like a slap across the cheek.
“I am going back,” I said. Hope healed more than the migraine meds Gretchen tried to shove down my throat. “Now that I’ve recuperated, I’m appealing the discharge. I’m meeting with te doctors for a physical in two weeks. If they believe I’m fit to serve, they’ll issue me a medical waiver. I’ll reenlist.”
“What do you mean recuperated?” She asked. “What happened to you?”
Like she hadn’t seen the scars. I could pack muscle on top of more muscle, but all people saw were the purple, fading scars where my guts tried to blast out of me.
“IED.”
Shay edged closer to the bed. “So you were…hurt.”
An understatement. “Yeah.”
“How badly?”
“A couple fractures short of entering a classified Navy SEAL cyborg program.”
“Zach. Talk to me.”
I sighed. Shay slipped to my side. I smiled as she tugged the robe over the sinful darkness of her thighs. That little silky reveal was enough to refuel me for another tour.
“It was bad,” I said. “I’m…not at liberty to tell you where I was or what I was doing there. I can say I’m damn lucky that I made it back to the helicopter. I should be another bloodstain in the sand.”
Her eyes widened. She traced a shiny scar over my wrist. “But you’re okay now?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“Why didn’t you tell me you were on a medical leave?”
“Because there’s a chance they won’t grant me that waiver. They might not clear me to re-enlist. If that happens…”
I eyed the master suite. The estate grew on me. I still couldn’t find my way through it in the dark, but a man got used to living every day as a fantasy.
Especially when the most beautiful woman in the world caressed a scar that came from a fireworks accident when I was fifteen, not the explosion that nearly ripped my skull apart.
I brushed her hand with mine. The simple contact was better than any morphine they shot in my veins at the VA hospital. “Last night, you asked me what would happen if the one thing you wanted in life was taken from you?” I met her gaze. “I understand that fear. Completely.”
“You want to go back to the SEALs?”
“More than anything.”
“But it almost killed you.”
“It’s my life. Wanted it since I was a kid. I didn’t have much of a family, and I thought my dad was a soldier. It seemed a natural life for me.”
“Do you like it?”
“I did,” I said. “I liked the travel and excitement. Never had a reason to stay at home.”
Until now.
I didn’t say it. Probably should have.
“I’m sorry.” Shay looked away. “Oh hell. I sounded like an idiot downstairs.”
“I didn’t tell you Gretchen was my doctor when you first met her. I didn’t want you to know I had been hurt overseas.”
“That was dumb.”
Yep. Especially after I realized a girl didn’t get that jealous for nothing. “I promise. Nothing’s happening between me and her. Gretchen’s engaged. I have more to worry about than you.”
“Why?”
“Well…” I grinned, grateful for the conversation change. “She’s a lesbian.”
“That is a relief.”
“Should I be concerned?”
Shay’s playful tone amused me more than her robe slipping over her shoulders. “No, I’ve been very satisfied lately.”
“Just satisfied?”
She hummed. “As much as can be expected.”
“I’ll have to work harder. No one’s ever accused me of being adequate.”
Shay didn’t want to play. She tucked a falling curl behind her ear. I wished she let me do it for her. A brush to her cheek tempted me more than night between the sheets. Every second she allowed me to touch her cocoa skin was a gift, a blessing second only to her smile.
So why did her smile fade?
“You came back early,” I said. “Everything okay?”
She nodded. I didn’t believe her. I took her hand.
She let me hold it.
I’d explode just imagining her lithe, gentle fingers pumping my cock.
“It was a rough night,” she said. “My friends…weren’t acting like my friends.”
“What’d they do?”
“Asked for money.” Her eyes rose to mine, honest and desperate. “And I would have helped, I would have. But…I don’t have the trust. And they got mad...”
Shay was as lovely on the inside as out. She’d spend her last cent trying to make sure everyone was happy. She’d run errands, copy homework, and give money because she mistook gratitude for love. And her asshole friends seemed the type to exploit it.
I tugged her close, surprised when she rested her head on my shoulder. “You don’t owe them anything, baby.”
“But I will help them.”
“I know.”
“I just hoped tonight would let me clear my mind. I needed…to think.”
And I needed to kiss her. Maybe that was her problem. Too much thinking, not enough kissing, touching, and fucking.
“They didn’t even try to help with Professor Sweeten. They asked how I pissed her off and then…bam. And Heaven, I swear, she better not come near me again. Not unless she’s on her knees and I’m on my way out of church.”
“Sounds like a rough night.”
“Why are you the only one who understands?” She swallowed. “Why are you the only one who even tries to understand?”
“Because I know what it’s like to have everything but still lose the one you want.”
Shay quieted. I thought I blew it. It sounded romantic in my head, but what the hell did I know? There was still too much shrapnel, swelling, and half of the desert rattling around my brain for me to make sense of most things.
I should have spelled it out for her. Laid it all out and waited for the rejection.
But I always did like torturing myself. Kicking my own ass meant I was getting stronger. Worked in the weight room, on the battlefield, and in the bedroom.
I didn’t have to say a damn thing. Shay reached for me, her delicate fingers stroking over my cheek. She leaned in, gentle, and kissed me.
Goddamn, those lips. With a single nibble to my bottom lip, Shay might have asked me to burn down the damn estate, and I’d have agreed with the flick of my tongue against hers. My cock throbbed for her. I shifted in my jeans, but that gave it room to get harder.
I wanted this fucking woman.
I wanted everything about her. The pouty lips. Those hidden curves under the robe. Her body. Her heat.
Her dreams. Her secrets. Her every vulnerable thought.
And, in return? I’d be the one there for her. Her douche-bag friends or absent father would never hurt her again. I’d comfort her. Hold her. Kiss her.
Until I shipped back out.
Holy Christ.
I spent two months in the hospital and six in therapy. Every damned second of my recovery was spent forcing myself to take the next step, add the next weight, and meet the next challenge.
I never had a reason to stay that could compete with my desire to go.
Until her.
Shay stood. I curled my fingers in the comforter so I wouldn’t throw her onto the bed. She tickled the knot of her belt.
The silk opened.
Fell away.
And she stood before me in perfect, goddess-like perfection.
Dark. Sensual. Curvy and feminine and absolutely utterly beautiful, from the ebony curls of her hair to the swell of her breasts and the hidden treasure tucked between her thighs. She let the robe drop to the ground and turned. Her firm ass brought a man to his knees quicker than a gun slammed into the back of the head.
She escaped into the bathroom. I stared after her, my heart punching a hole in my chest.
The water started again. Her voice echoed from the tub.
“Zach?” Her words were a light tease. “Are you coming in or not?”