He wasn’t sure what the hell he was doing, but damn if she hadn’t already gotten inside his head. Damn if she hadn’t made him think about his childhood and how wonderful it had been. How much he’d loved surfing. For just a little bit of time, it seemed as if the darkness had lifted, and he was feeling the weight of it lessen just a bit.

Jesus, her mouth was incredible. He was pissed that he had treated her so poorly the night he’d kissed her and embraced her soft, wet body against his. He’d been acting out of inebriation and guilt, but she didn’t deserve being treated like that.

Then she’d just taken him into her arms and given him the comfort that Elena surely would have. She’d listened to his gut-wrenching confessions and hadn’t judged him at all. She insisted on trust, and that was not only hard, but scary.

Then the next morning, he had been that ravenous beast. Taking her like that was all about him straight up fucking her. God, he needed it, and she’d wanted it.

She stirred something in him that was primal, possessive and beyond his control. She set her hand against his chest, and he tolerated her touch because it was so comforting and stirring at the same time.

The kiss continued, and he reached out and went to cup her face, but her hair brushed against his wrist and he gasped and pulled back, everything shooting through him like the adrenaline that drop-loaded into his system.

Natasha’s face, her smug, triumphant smile at the way he urged her to fuck him. His bound hands that were as ineffectual as his pleading, caught up in the powerful drugs that she had given him. All he could hear was his pitiful, weak begging.

“Breathe,” Charlie whispered close to his ear. “Take a big breath now. Like you’ve just cleared the surface and are starved for air. What you’re seeing, what you’re feeling was in your past. You’re here with me, Ocean. You’re safe here with me.”

He doubled over, sweat slicking his body as he struggled with the overwhelming fear of that moment when he realized that he had fragmented completely. That he would tell her anything if she would let him come. The guilt twisted inside him, making him wonder if he had fucked over Speed. That she had manipulated him to her own sadistic end so that she could murder one of them to hit him where it hurt the worst.

“Breathe, baby Blue. Come on,” she said softly.

He dragged in air and then leaned his head and back against the wall, his groin on fire, his dick so hard it strained against his underwear and pants. His chest heaved, his face contorted in disgust as revulsion swept through him that his reaction to these thoughts made him hard, as if he was conditioned by Natasha to respond this way, reaching out from beyond the grave to continue to torture him.

“Don’t let her have the power. She doesn’t have it, Blue. It’s yours and always has been. You’ve just lost touch with it. Claim what is yours. The only thing that is ultimately real about your journey is the step that you are taking at this moment. That's all there ever is.”

The wisdom of what she had said reverberated through him, and he gritted his teeth as the memory and the terror flowed over him. He made a soft sound and slipped to his knees, the effort of staving off the living nightmare taking everything he had. The truth of her words sent a fission of white light into his brain, and he wanted to follow it, to bathe in it, but the darkness of what Natasha had done to him eclipsed the light.

He sensed her kneeling beside him, and the warmth of Charlie’s presence cascaded over him. But the memory of Natasha intruded, wiped out any comfort Charlie was trying to give him. He cried out, the pain of the knife to his flesh a stinging, piercing slash. He couldn’t tell if Natasha castrated him even as she worked to emasculate him with all the accumulated hate she had built up in her evil life.

Her husband watched and laughed, praising her like she was his pet dog.

He squeezed his eyes closed and wanted to curl into a ball of dread and misery at the humiliation of having another man watch his helplessness for his own pleasure. He thought of Scarecrow and Wicked and how they had reacted to his mutilation and torture. How Wicked couldn’t look him in the eye. He wanted to kill both of his captors all over again. Craved it like a blood-crazed lunatic.

The vividness of the memory drowned him in a choking, stinking morass. How could he get his peace back when violence was so much a part of him? The kind of violence that wasn’t connected to combat, but was all about vengeance.

“Blue,” she said, touching him gently on the back of the neck, jarring him out of his own terrifying thoughts. “You don’t seem broken to me at all,” she whispered, her mouth hovering over his. He had crossed the line here, and the consequences would be he’d lose everything, but somehow it didn’t matter when it came to her. “Besides, being whole is over-rated. I want to know all your bits and pieces before I go mad.”

He took a hard-gasping breath and grabbed her wrist, hauling her against him. He buried his face in her neck, breathing deeply of her scent, that clean, gorgeous smell that reminded him of the ocean. She cupped his head. “It’s all right,” she whispered over and over again.

He sagged against her, and they sat quietly until his breathing returned to normal. When he raised his head, there were tears in her eyes, and she said, “Is it over?”

He nodded. He realized that he was still holding her wrist and he opened his hand. Her skin was red, white where his fingers had gripped her. “Oh, damn. Did I hurt you?”

“No, it was tight, but I’m fine.”

Then he looked into her eyes, the warmth of the Floridian sun beating down on them. They were sheltered from the street by the dumpster. A breeze ruffled her hair, and his chest tightened, his heart skipped a beat.

“You are so beautiful,” he whispered. The ugliness of Kirikhanistan faded like a bad dream. Her eyes shone blue-green in the bright light, and he couldn’t take his eyes off hers.

“Oh, Blue,” she said, her voice saturated with compassion. “I’m so sorry this happened to you.”

A knot loosened in his chest. He let her go and rose to his feet, bringing her up with him. “You think you can help me?”

“Haven’t I helped already?”

He nodded, a slight wry smile appearing. “I guess you have.” He brushed at a strand of loose hair that had escaped her bun. “I have to go. Class.”

“Me, too,” she said.

“You go first.” She nodded and turned away from him, then turned back.

“Just for the record. I think you’re the bravest man I’ve ever met.”

Her words coiled around his heart, and he tried to reconcile his view of himself to what she saw in him. He’d lost so much since that explosion, but he wasn’t quite sure it had all been about courage.

He touched her shoulder, and she turned back for the second time. “Everything is in relationship to everything else.”

She nodded as if she completely understood his cryptic message.

“You aren’t alone. You never have been.” Then she smiled softly. “I’m wearing the thong you gave me.”

He watched her walk away, leaving those words like pearls of wisdom for him to think about.

Not the thong part, which, he had to admit, was wholly distracting as he imagined her heart-shaped ass bare, the scrap of his lace between her legs.

He went to class with a burgeoning hard-on, then home, his mind completely on delectable Charlie and the lesson she had taught him in the alley. He sat down, crossed his legs and tried to get to a good place, to the edge of peace. But even after fifteen minutes, there was nothing. Just when he was about to give up, he felt it, a connection, but it was quickly gone.

He opened his eyes, and for the first time since he’d been dragged down the stairs of the Kirikhan rebel basement, he had hope.

---

He was outside her pretty condo exactly on time, a take-out bag in his hand. He knocked, and she opened the door. She had her hair loose, and she looked good enough to eat. Her face was scrubbed clean, and she had changed into a tank top and shorts.

“Hey, Blue,” she said as he came inside. She closed the door. “Ooh, what did you bring?” The child-like expression on her face caught him off guard. For a moment, he absorbed that expression like it was sustenance. He’d never encountered a woman who seemed so sure of herself in every aspect of her life. She had been completely unabashed about her nudity around him, her need for a cover-up non-existent. For some strange and unexplained reason, she grounded him.

He handed her the bag, and she opened it and smiled wide, the delight going all the way to her gorgeous eyes.

“How did you know fish tacos were my favorite?”

“I didn’t,” he said watching her. “I love them, but noted.”

She looked up from the bag and gave him a little doe caught in the headlight thing, then she walked over to her kitchen and started unloading the bag.

She reached over the counter, her beautiful ass pressing against the fabric of her shorts, her shirt hiking up and showing an expanse of her creamy lower back.

He clenched his fists. Being here, engaging in this activity was against the UCMJ, the Uniformed Code of Military Justice. They were breaking one of the rules of the navy.

“You had better earn your grade, Charlie. I’m not going to just give you something you don’t deserve.”

She didn’t turn around but said absently, “It would piss me off to no end if you did.” She set two plates on the bar and then reached over again. “I’d give you a gazillion sit-ups.”

He strode over and got the forks himself, about out of his mind with this beauty. She gave him a look, her brows raised, and he set the forks near the plates. “Anything else you need over there?”

She smiled softly, and he looked away. “Nope, my hero, just the forks.”

“I’m no one’s hero.”

“Yes, you are,” she said and reached into the bag and pulled out the tacos, setting two on each plate. He settled on a stool and she slid on next to him. “Oh, I have wine.”

“I’ll take water,” he said. He was done with alcohol. The thought came out of nowhere. It was imperative that he keep his wits around Charlie. She was going to help him, and he didn’t know what that would entail.

“Okay.” She sat there for a minute. “I’ve waged my own battle with alcohol. She got off the stool and pulled a bottle of water out of the fridge. “Heads up.” She tossed him the bottle. Then she grabbed one for herself. Settling down next to him again, she took a sip of her water, then reached for one of the tacos.

“Mm-hmm,” she groaned, and his whole body went tight. “That is so good. Thank you for this. I was starving.”

“Sure,” he said, watching her as she ate, drawing his eyes to her mouth. He tried to focus on his own hunger, but it got mixed up in this woman. What she had done for him this afternoon was priceless.

“Eat,” she said, nudging him. “Then we can get started.”

He did what she suggested, barely tasting the meal.

She slipped off the stool and walked over to her couch and sat down. “Come here.” She patted the cushion. He complied, settling down next to her.

She dimmed the lights enough that the ambient glow from the street cast most of the room in shadow.

“I’m going to ask you to do some things and you can’t refuse. If you’re not ready for them, you can tell me you aren’t, but we’re going to try them anyway. Okay?” He nodded. “Good. We’re going to build trust between us like I mentioned. So, the first thing I want you to do is take my hands.”

She offered hers palms up, and he reached out and clasped them. He had a mild reaction of wanting to snatch them away, but the more intense response was that she was so warm. She smiled in triumph.

“I really enjoyed kissing you, Blue,” she said. “We’re not going to get physical tonight, so you can relax. When his hand loosened, she smiled again. “There you go. I want you to make good eye contact with me. We can do it for five-minute intervals.”

She tightened her grasp slightly on a small squeeze.

He met her gaze and took a breath. Looking into her eyes, he noted how pretty her irises were, a vibrant turquoise, like the gulf water, the lashes thick and full. He was the type of guy who liked to look into his lover’s eyes, gauge her expressions and watch her body react to what he was doing to her. But technically, Charlie wasn’t his lover. He’d taken her once, but that had been about lust, not mutual pleasure. She stared back at him without looking away once. Just steady, strong eye contact. There was no subterfuge with this woman. What he saw was what he got. His shoulders relaxed.

“Time is up.” She squeezed his hands again. “You have the bluest eyes, the color of the ocean. You’re aptly named,” she said, and he sank a little deeper into the couch.

“Now I want you to breathe deeply for ten minutes, and you can make eye contact whenever you like.”

They went through that exercise, and he was beginning to feel pretty mellow. He found that he very much liked looking into her eyes and was doing it more often than he thought he would.

“Good. Now the tough assignment for the night. I need you to come clean with me about what happened to you. Everything from the smallest detail.”

He pulled his hands out of her grasp, his body tense all over again.

“Remember what I said about the tasks? You have to at least try.”

“It’s classified.”

Her brows rose. “Really?”

“I can’t talk about a mission with someone who doesn’t have the clearance.”

“But if someone did have the clearance, you could?”

“Yes.”

When she smiled, he realized that he’d fallen into that trap. “You have it.”

“Yes.” She explained about the warhead and the sunken Jackson. “I met a SEAL Team lead by Lieutenant Cooper.”

His heart jumped that his team had gone on without him. “That’s my CO! Explain.”

She gave him the details about her salvage and recovery, including the mishap with the oxygen. He went from angry to concerned, then resigned. “Please give me your hands back. We’re going to be touching through this. If you need more comfort, something from me that you’re not getting during the retelling, you can ask me, and I’ll comply. But you have to ask me.”

He was uneasy immediately. He was a SEAL. He didn’t ask for help, he provided it.

“There’s no shame in it, Blue,” she said as if she’d read his mind. This woman was intuitive as all get out.

“Perception,” he whispered.

“Full disclosure,” she whispered back.

He took a breath and started to talk, telling her about the explosion, waking up and stumbling off. He related his affair with Elena, how she made him feel, and her untimely death at the hands of the rebels because she didn’t want to be used against him.

Then he moved on to his own capture, how he had placed his emotions about Elena’s death into a compartment in his head and closed the door. He hadn’t gotten closure with her, hadn’t gone to her grave.

“Haven’t asked for forgiveness,” she murmured.

“How can I? I’m to blame for her death.”

“Are you? Didn’t she make her own choices?”

“She wouldn’t have had to make those choices if I hadn’t come into her life.”

“We’ll get back to that. What about the next part? The Golovkins.”

He started to feel queasy, and pinpricks of sweat itched across his body. When he didn’t say anything, she whispered, “Try, Blue. Tell me.”

He was freely sweating now. “They ran the rebels by intense and utter fear. Their empire was huge, and they got there by being as ruthless as possible.”

“And Natasha?”

His hands began to tremble, and it was clear to him that she felt the shaking. “You’re safe with me, Blue. Tell me.”

“She was a sadist, but it was more than that. It wasn’t enough to just break someone. She wanted to twist their minds into pretzels, destroy them completely.”

“You resisted using SERE?”

“Yes. They full body dunked me into a pool. I used my training to stay alive. When they saw that wasn’t working…they put me in a cell.”

“Did they keep you bound?”

He looked away, the queasiness in his gut churning. “Only outside the cell.”

She breathed in and said, “Is that the truth?”

He pulled his hands away, his breathing increasing in tempo. “Yes and no.”

“I want the complete truth, Blue. I need to know what happened to you before I can effectively tie you. You have to trust me on this. If you don’t, we might as well forget about this and just have sex like the both of us want to. Nothing will be resolved.

She made him hard that quickly, the memories that battered him only adding to the twisted feel of it.

“I don’t know if I can be with you like that, Charlie.”

She leaned her elbows on her crossed legs. “Why?”

“I’m…” He couldn’t finish. How could he tell her he was carved up, scarred, and mutilated? How could he let her see what they had done to him? How would she look at him? Would she think him weak for allowing them to do such a thing to him?

“You’re what?” she asked gently, her voice so soothing. In that moment, he wanted her to touch him and forget about what had happened in that cell.

It might have been a move to distract her. He wasn’t sure. But he pulled off his T-shirt. Reaching out, he snagged her wrist. “How about we build some more trust?” He set her hand against his chest.

She made a soft, startled sound and took a huge breath, her eyes widening. Scooting forward, she said, “Can I use my other hand?”

“Yeah, sure,” he said, knowing that she was going to kill him. He had no idea how he could make love to her without revealing his lower body.

“I know what you’re doing. You’re trying to deflect my questions about what happened to you by revealing the kind of chest that women would die to touch. I’m not immune, but I’m also not easily swayed. I’m going to need to hear it all, but if you want to wait, then we can wait.”

“You are relentless.” He looked away as she dropped her hands down to his. He took a deep breath and said, his voice uneven, “It was bad, brutal.”

“I know. I got that from what you were saying the other night, from the sound of your voice and the way you wrapped yourself around me.”

He withdrew a bit, and she said, “No, don’t. I was so moved, off the charts. I don’t know how you got through it. But you need to talk about it with either me or someone else. The teams need you, Blue. You can’t let this defeat you.”

Damn if he didn’t want this woman. Damn if he didn’t want to talk to her about it and have her tell him what he needed to hear. But, tonight, he wanted to feel her hands on him, feel the way she felt about him. It would come right from her heart, through her hands. He craved that. Craved her touch, even as he feared where it would lead them.

If he wanted her this much now, it would only get worse. He wondered if she was wearing the thong. Needed to know. “Are you wearing it?”

Her eyes met his, and she smiled. “Yes, I am. It makes me feel crazy sexy.”

He reached for her hands again, hope starting to strengthen in him. If she could touch him and it would be okay, maybe he could show her, maybe he could tell her about what happened. Maybe she could put him back together like Humpty Dumpty. Maybe all he needed was her to see him in the light of day when he’d hidden himself from everyone else. He avoided looking, feared there would be a trigger.

But then she smoothed her hands up to his shoulders as if she wanted to feel everything about him, then farther up to his face. He was powerless to stop her, powerless to hold back the sighing relief of the feel of her.

Except this powerlessness felt so fucking good.