“Don’t need them,” she hissed out. “I’ve been taking the pill. Just you, Sebastian, now.”
Why hadn’t I known that? Because I’d been a fucking douche for the last few months.
She ignored my surprise, instead pushing my briefs over my hips and fastening both hands over my dick, guiding me inside of her.
So, so good! And I was the one groaning loudly.
She clenched around me and I nearly came, only just managing to hold back.
“Fuck, Caro!” I gasped.
“Don’t try and control it,” she pleaded. “Just love me. Love me, Sebastian.”
I flexed my hips, ignoring the shooting pains in my under-used body, and began to thrust into her.
It felt so intense; like we were meant to be together; man and woman, moving together.
The word love blossomed into my mind and I lost it, pouring myself into her, filling her with everything I had in me.
My whole body trembled and I rested between her thighs, my face buried in her neck, my breath still coming in gasps.
She stroked my back and whispered, “I love you. So much, tesoro.”
Eventually, I pulled out and lay back next to her. She touched my cheeks and her fingers came away wet. Had I been crying?
“Are you okay?” she asked quietly.
I nodded, too choked to speak. Then I opened my eyes and smiled at her.
“Very okay, Caro. I’m very okay.”
And we held each other without needing to speak.
That was the beginning. And after, I couldn’t help wanting to touch her every chance I got.
But it wasn’t just the sex—I was healing in other ways, as well, working-out every day. I pushed myself to get stronger, taking walks outside, and talking to Caro—really talking to her, letting her in.
She knew when I was struggling or when I needed some time by myself, and she knew how to help me get to a better place.
We fought, too. Hell, yeah, we fought! But somehow that didn’t matter because she understood me.
One of the things we argued about was disability checks. To get disability, it’s a mind fuck. Caro said I should get the government ones, but I couldn’t face it. I was waiting on the VA payments. That would be a long fucking wait. Anything I did get would be deposited direct into my bank account, but I couldn’t bring myself to follow it up. Caro’s view was that I’d earned it; I just couldn’t see it like that. To me, it was a sign of my failure; a sign that I was unemployed and unemployable.
Then one day she brought up a subject that I’d been dreading.
We were slumped together on the sofa, drinking this fucking awful herbal tea because Caro said caffeine made me jumpy. I’d have rather had some shitty instant decaf than drink this dishwater, but that was one of the arguments I lost. Apparently it was ‘good’ for me. Whatever. Still tasted like gnats piss.
“Sebastian, can I ask you something?”
“Sure, baby,” I said, running my hand down her arm and twining my fingers with hers.
“Well, I was wondering … what are your nightmares about?”
I tensed immediately and Caro flinched.
“It’s hard to talk about,” I said, my voice low and quiet.
She nodded slowly and kissed my cheek gently.
“It’s okay—you don’t have to tell me.”
“I just don’t want you to have that shit in your head.”
No one should.
“Sebastian, you wake up screaming every night—it doesn’t have to be me, but I think you need to tell someone.”
“I’m not seeing a fucking shrink,” I snapped, irritated that she’d mentioned that idea again.
She didn’t reply and we sat in silence, staring out of the windows, watching the horizon soften as the sun sank.
I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want her to need to tiptoe around me with all these no-go areas that set me off. That was no way to live, and I didn’t want to repeat my dad’s mistakes by trying to drink away my problems. Fuck that!
So I took a deep breath and began to speak.
“I can’t tell you everything, Caro, because it’s still classified and you can’t report any of this.”
“Of course not!” she said, sounding stung.
Shit, that wasn’t a good start, but the truth was I’d worked for Military Intelligence and everything was classified, even now.
“Sorry, baby, I had to say it.” I paused, gathering my thoughts, deciding how much I could tell her. “We were in Now Zad in the first place to make contact with someone—a local guy—who was going to get us to one of the Taliban leaders—so we could take him out.”
She looked shocked. Fuck, I hadn’t even thought how that sounded. Yeah, I was part of an assassination squad. Fuck fuck fuck, I should have thought this through more.
I took another deep breath and plowed on.
“That’s why they wanted me there, because they were worried about using local interpreters for a sensitive op. It was supposed to be a small patrol, just the 14 of us, with Jankowski in charge. At the last minute, Grant was told we had to take these two guys from the Afghan National Army with us. He wasn’t happy, but he got overruled by HQ. We headed out into the mountains for what we thought would be three or four days, but we didn’t last that long. When we got to the village for the meet, we knew right away that something was wrong—it was just too damn quiet. There was nobody in the fields, no one sitting outside their houses. We were all on edge.
“I went ahead with the ANA guys and they were calling out for the man we were supposed to meet. Then this guy came out from behind one of the buildings and he was talking really fast, and he looked fucking terrified. I realized he was quoting from the Qu’ran and I knew then he’d been turned into a human fucking bomb. I yelled at everyone to get back, but then I felt like I’d been punched in the shoulder and I realized I’d been shot. One of the ANA guys had tried to take me out, then shot his colleague and turned his rifle on the rest of the squad. The firefight started, and I could hear Jankowski yelling at the contact to get down. Chiv and Jez came running over to help me—and that’s when the bomb was detonated.”
I swallowed and closed my eyes.
“The Afghan contact was … gone: Jankowski, Chiv and Jez were caught in the blast. If Jez hadn’t been so close to me, I’d have been killed, too, but he took it for me.”
My voice dropped to a whisper.
“I had pieces of Jez all over me. That’s what I dream about.”
Caro’s hands flew to her mouth; mine were shaking and my breathing had become shallow, like I was on the verge of a panic attack. Talking about it brought it all back vividly. This was why I didn’t want to talk to a shrink—it made everything much more immediate. I wanted to forget. But I never could.
“I understand,” Caro whispered, stroking my cheek. “I do, tesoro. When I was in Iraq … it was the sound of the helicopters; they were bringing in wounded and I saw … I saw the casualties. But I don’t have that nightmare anymore, Sebastian, because my worst nightmare is losing you.”
I held her tightly. That was all I could do.
A few days later, just as I was finishing my morning exercises, hot, sweaty and tired, Caro must have decided it was time to push me a little more.
“How do you feel about another challenge, Sebastian?”
I glanced over at her, wiping my bare chest with my t-shirt and stretching out for a warm-down.
“Sounds interesting. Does this one involve leaving the bedroom?”
She raised an eyebrow at me.
“Yes, it does, but now you’ve got me thinking other things, Hunter, and my once pristine thoughts are getting a little dirty.”
“How dirty?” I asked, feeling my dick begin to stiffen.
She stood with her hands on her hips and looked me in the eye.
“Very dirty.”
I groaned. “Why didn’t you say that before I did that damn workout, Caro?”