All for You (8 page)

“She died two years before I joined the army.” The muscle in his jaw pulsed. His neck was tight. He paused for a long moment. “I’m sorry,” he said shortly.

“Why are you sorry?” It took everything she had not to reach for him. There was such a rawness in the bleak sadness in his voice.

It was a long moment before he answered. “It’s not important,” he said quietly.

There was more there, something dark. Something that tugged at her and made her want to go into the dark shadows she saw in his eyes.

But there was something more, something that urged her to wait. Her gut said he wasn’t ready, that he’d opened up without meaning to.

“Wouldn’t you be more comfortable if you took that off?” She motioned to his body armor.

He said nothing for a long moment as he set two smaller pouches next to each other. “I’ve done more uncomfortable things than this in this gear,” he said after a while.

“Like what?”

“Sleep. Eat. Bleed.”

She froze. “You’ve been shot at.”

He didn’t stop sorting. “Shot. Blown up. Sure. It’s an occupational hazard.”

Emily watched the efficient movement of his fingers as he continued laying out the pouches on the chest of her body armor. He had rough looking hands. Veins stood out against his dark skin. Coarse hair dusted the backs of his wrists, disappearing beneath the uniform t-shirt. A black watch encircled his left wrist. There was no wedding band mark on his left hand.

Faint white scars marked his knuckles. She wouldn’t have seen them unless she’d been looking. She searched the moisture-wicking fabric of the t-shirt, looking for any sign of scars on his body. He spoke of getting shot at like it was akin to stubbing his toe. The muscles in his jaw bunched; the veins in his neck strained against his skin.

“You can keep staring at me or you can pay attention to what I’m doing so you can do this yourself.” He stopped, holding a small, roundish pouch in his right hand. When she didn’t move, he sighed roughly. “What are you staring at?”

“You’ve been shot?” Emily cleared her throat. “I mean, I know it’s not unrealistic and all but…”

He shifted then to pin her with those intense dark eyes. “What do you think I do in the infantry? Hand out candy and flowers?” He turned back to her gear. “Winning the hearts and minds is some slogan for officers and talking points on cable news. I just want to bring my boys home from the fight.” His throat moved and he yanked the glasses off his head and tossed them onto a nearby chair. “All right, pay attention. You want your ammo pouches where you can easily access them and where they don’t hinder your movement.”

She blinked at the abrupt transition. “I have no idea what you just said.”

He turned to stare at her, his eyes glittering darkly. “Which part?”

“Any of it.”

“Ammo. Ammunition? The little bullets you put in the magazine and shoot people with.” He frowned. “You know what a magazine is?”

Emily pursed her lips as heat crept up her neck. “Can I just not answer any more questions?”

She wanted to shrink away from the harsh irritation she saw looking back at her. She braced for an ass chewing of epic proportions, prepared to take it. She wanted to understand his world but she didn’t even know what questions to ask.

“All right, look,” he said after a long moment. And when he continued, there was a wealth of patience in his voice. “When you deploy, you’ll have something called a basic load of ammo. You’ll have more in your vehicle. You’ll need to get proficient with your weapon because rapid reloading is a learned skill that takes a lot of practice. Your magazines, where you carry your extra ammo, go here, like on my kit.”

“Kit?”

“Short for rifleman’s kit,” he said pointing to all the equipment on the floor. “Slang for all of our gear.”

Emily nodded and looked at the magazines he wore tucked into his body armor pouches, trying to keep up with the new language he was throwing at her. “Is that a basic load?” she asked, gesturing toward the magazines strapped to his chest.

“It’s more than basic load.” He met her gaze. “I like to go loaded for bear. Soothes my PTSD.”

She tipped her head and studied him, trying to figure out what kind of man would admit to a disorder that held such a stigma. The edge of his lips curled into a faint smile. “It was a joke, ma’am,” he said softly.

“Emily,” she whispered. She swallowed, locking her eyes with his. “My name is Emily.”

“Emily.” Her name a caress on his lips. A deep, rumbling sound, deep in his chest.

She couldn’t look away from the dark intensity of his eyes. The shadows she saw there were deep, etched into the creases around his eyes. There was something compelling about the man. It went beyond the physical power. Beyond the broad shoulders and wide chest and rough hands.

He’d been driven hard his entire career, she realized. Like an old war horse, ridden into battle again and again. A man who’d gone to war so many times, he was convinced he needed it. He loved it.

She looked at him and wondered if he’d ever simply stopped the carousel and tried to get off. The scars on the backs of his hands, the lines around his eyes, suggested otherwise.

“Sometimes, the jokes you guys tell throw me off,” she admitted.

“Black humor. It’s a valuable life skill.” His lips twitched. “Now then, would you like to learn how to put your gear together?”

And just as abruptly, the man she saw behind those eyes was gone, replaced by the surly sergeant determined to teach her how to put her “kit” together.

Her naiveté should have pissed him off. Part of him
was
pissed that the prim and proper little captain would try to crawl inside his head. He reminded himself that she’d only asked a simple question, a question that any cherry who hadn’t deployed asked.

“Your ammo pouches go here,” he said. He slipped the thick strap through its slot on the body armor.

She watched what he did, her quick gaze taking in every movement. “What is it like,” she asked softly.

Questions like that haunted him because he didn’t know how to answer. “Which part,” he asked.

“Deploying.”

He swallowed. How to tell her about the long hours of boredom, the days with shitty rations and no place to sleep but on the back of his truck.

“It sucks,” he said. “There’s not a lot of ways to kill the time.”

“How do you pass the time?” she asked.

He paused, figuring she didn’t need to know that his first few weeks deployed were always spent puking his guts up and generally trying to hide the crazy. Maybe this time would be different. Maybe this time, he’d beat the seductive addiction that called to him every time he’d managed to make it home. “I don’t have a lot of free time. Soldiers take up a lot of it.” He slid a pouch meant for grenades in the space that would cover her heart. “And this is a good place for a flashlight or a head lamp.”

“You’ve lost a lot of friends.” It wasn’t a question. He felt the tingling of anxiety tightening against his heart.

“Yes.”
Please don’t ask if I’ve killed someone.
Because he couldn’t bear to see the flicker in her eyes. The silent judgment.

He closed his eyes as the sleeping demon inside him surged and thrashed, sparked to life by the memory of a question asked far too often with no regard to the weight of the words.

As though killing was something he did for fun. Like some kind of real life video game where the person on the business end of an M4 got to hit the reset button and come back to fight another day.

Like it didn’t claim a piece of your soul each time you had to decide between the man on the end of that front sight post and your boys. It wasn’t a hard decision.

Until it was.

“Where’d you go just then?” Her voice penetrated the melancholic introspection. He’d become such a buzz kill. He needed to go have a stiff drink to chase the memories back to the dark corner where he normally kept them.

Except he didn’t drink anymore. He shook his head, avoiding her gaze. “Sorry. Got distracted.”

She reached for him then, her fingers curling over his. His skin heated where she touched him. “Reza,” she whispered.

He was tempted, so tempted to turn his palm beneath hers. To capture her fingers and see just how far she wanted to take this thing between them.

He met her gaze, offering her a wry grin. “You don’t want to go crawling around inside my head, doc.”

Her throat moved when she swallowed. “Maybe I just want to get to know you a little better.”

It was his turn to swallow. His mouth went dry. So he hadn’t been misreading things.

There was something there, something shimmering and new and filled with brilliant promise between them. It was so bright it fucking blinded him.

Once more, he tried to do the honorable thing and pull away. Because he hurt everyone he cared about.

It was how he was wired. Hadn’t his dad beat that message into him?

“That’s probably not a good idea,” he said. His voice grated against his ears but even as he spoke, he knew it for a lie. Something as simple as her touch woke a dark and twisting need inside him.

Made him crave more.

She was close. Close enough that he could lean forward if he wanted. Brush his lips against hers and see if her mouth was as soft as it looked. He wanted to nibble on her bottom lip and feel her skin beneath his fingertips as he kissed her.

He needed to focus. They were going to the range today and he couldn’t be thinking about her like this if he was trying to teach her how to shoot. “Where’s your IFAK?”

Emily frowned. Reza almost laughed at the expression on her face. She was priceless. “My what?”

He kept forgetting she didn’t speak the language. “Your first aid kit. Where is it?”

He pulled his thoughts back from the brink of inappropriate as she leaned forward on her knees. “Do you have any idea what you’re looking for?” he asked, his voice rough.

She looked back over her shoulder and Reza’s entire body tightened. She had no fucking idea how sexy she was at that moment, army uniform and all.

She knelt in front of him, pushing up on her knees with a frustrated sound. “I have no idea.”

His gaze dropped to her lips, parted in frustration. She was there, just there.

And Reza surrendered to the temptation. He leaned in. Slowly, so that she could back away if she wanted to. Slowly, so as not to frighten her off.

Slowly, until his top lip brushed hers. A gentle nudge. A hesitant question.

And her soft, yielding answer as her bottom lip opened, just a little, just enough as she leaned in, opening to his touch.

He’d done stupid things in his life before and he would do stupid things again. Of that much he was certain.

But his brain didn’t register the movement as stupid.

It was like waking up from a long sleep. Warmth spread inside him as he traced her lips with his tongue before sliding against hers. Pleasure spiked through him when she leaned in, bracing one hand against the body armor covering his chest.

He wanted to lock her door and lay her down on that pile of gear and strip her naked and learn everything that she liked.

But they were at work and at any moment, someone could walk by her office.

Officers and enlisted weren’t supposed to get involved and Reza damn sure wasn’t about to ruin her life with a single moment of indiscretion.

He eased back, swiping his thumb over her bottom lip before putting more space between them.

“Was that an IFAK?” she whispered, her eyes sparkling.

Grinning, he shook his head. “Not exactly,” he said. She was going to mess up her hair in the field today. He wondered if she knew that.

He had the sudden idea that she might not care. She came across so proper but there was a wildness in his little captain.

A wildness he’d gotten a tiny taste of just then.

A wildness that he wanted to taste again.

He laughed then because he needed to do something to subdue the arousal wafting through his blood like a hit of the purest alcohol. “Get out of the way, knucklehead,” he said, more gently then he felt.

He always ended up taking care of the strays in his platoon, the kids with no father, a bad home life. And he’d never admit it but he needed them as much as they needed him.

Maybe if he’d managed to protect them, he could make up for failing to protect his mom from the violence in their home. It was a stupid fantasy. Like he was searching for something he would never find. Something he should have known better and given up on a long time ago.

Emily wasn’t like that. She knew what she wanted out of life, knew what she was doing.

She was stronger than he’d ever been or could ever hope to be.

He spotted the first aid kit under the chair and leaned forward to grab it. Emily reached for it at the same time. It was something out of an old movie. His hand closed over hers. He was instantly aware of her soft skin. The fragile feel of her bones beneath his, the echo of that kiss burning against his lips.

She froze the moment his skin connected with hers and there was a scattered fear that looked back at him for the moment he held her in his grip. And then as soon as it happened, it was over. He released her, the burn of her skin against his penetrating his flesh, a hunger twisting and rising inside him, craving more.

She said nothing and he let the silence stand. Whatever this was, it was complicated.

It always would be where Reza was concerned.

“Ready to try it on? Stand up and let’s see how it fits.” She opened her mouth, looking dubiously at the pile of gear. He tipped his chin, studying her. How could someone so stubborn be so unwilling to ask for help? “You don’t know how.”

She shook her head. “Got it in one.”

“All right, watch me. You see these straps here?” He pulled on two Velcro tabs near his abdomen until they tore free. Dropping them, he let them fall, banging behind him like a heavy tail made of military equipment. “Lift this and there are two more straps underneath.” He pulled those free as well and showed her how to lift the body armor over her head. “Got it?”

She looked between hers, still a shapeless lump on the floor and his, straps flailing like a Muppet on too much caffeine.