Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance (27 page)

“Hi.” Damn, that was brilliant.

“Hi.” She dropped her purse by the door and kicked off her shoes. She moved with an almost fluid grace to the love seat across from where he sat on the couch. Jen rubbed her temples.

She looked beautiful. Beautiful but exhausted. “You look tired.”

She turned and looked at him, a glint of light from the kitchen spilling onto her face. “It comes with the job.”

“I know.”

He swallowed as she rubbed her head with her hand again. “You don’t have to sit and make small talk, if you don’t feel like it,” she said after a moment.

“What if that’s exactly what I want?”

She looked at him again and Shane wished he could read her thoughts. Her body language was too fatigued to reveal much. “Okay. What do you want to talk about?”

He met her gaze. Steady. Afraid to blink. Afraid to look away and risk breaking the fragile peace between them. “I screwed up, okay? I never meant to hurt you by suggesting you don’t know what it feels like to lose someone.”

Jen sat up abruptly and leaned forward, her elbows hitting her knees. “I was trying to goad you into looking past your legs all the damn time.”

“What you said about control? You were right. I’m used to being in control. I’m used to having my finger on the trigger and knowing the plan and, hell, even writing the plan. I can’t plan now. I can barely think half the time. All because these fucking pins take up my entire field of vision and I can’t see anything else.”

“That’s just it, Shane. You’re more than your injuries. You’re hurt. So what? You’re not dead.”

“I’m also not going through the same thing Carponti and Osterman are. They’ve lost limbs.”

“I lost a breast and I’m doing just fine. Carponti will get better and he’ll be fine. I’m willing to bet he fights to stay in the army and learns how to shoot again.”

He wanted to tell her that Osterman was not going to be fine. That he was going to wake up one day and realize that he’d driven away everyone who’d ever cared about him. That Randall was going to badger each person on Shane’s team until they broke and admitted to something they didn’t do just to get the damn lieutenant to leave them alone.

“Carponti was one of my best sergeants,” Shane said quietly. “Osterman was hell
on a fifty cal. So much potential there, and now it’s gone.”

Jen moved before Shane could even register the movement. The couch bent beneath her weight and the heat from her body began sinking into his skin. “Stop talking about them like they’re dead. They’re not. You’re not. Tomorrow’s another day. You’ll get another chance to make a difference.”

“It’s not that,” Shane said.

“Then what is it? Explain it to me so that I understand. Because I don’t.”

The words got stuck right beneath the hollow in his throat. He cleared it then, and forced them out. “It’s that I can’t fix this. I can’t fix what’s wrong with Carponti. I can’t fix Osterman’s head so that he stops looking like he’s about to off himself.” He dropped his head back and closed his eyes. “I have never been this useless before in my entire life.”

“Shane, you’re not supposed to fix everyone else’s problems.”

“Yes I am!” The force of his words stunned them both. So much for fixing things. He was making this worse, but he couldn’t stop now that the dam had broken. “I am. That’s what I do. I fix my soldier’s problems. I let them lean on me when things in their lives are broken. I take care of them.”

Her fingers were cool on his cheeks as she traced her fingertips over his skin. “Then maybe it’s time you accept that you need a little help fixing your own things,” she murmured.

“I can’t. Because I’m not supposed to be the one who needs fixing.”

He sat with his hand covering his mouth. So still he might have been a statue. It was a long time before he moved his hand from his mouth. His voice sounded cracked
and rough. “The first soldier I ever buried committed suicide.”

He rubbed his hand over his face before he continued. “I was too young and too cocky to see it coming. The signs were all there. He started showing up late to work. His performance started falling off. Then one day, he didn’t come in. I lied when I reported I had all my men accounted for. I was almost court-martialed for dereliction of duty when they found Dickerson’s body.” He sucked in a deep breath. “He killed himself on Friday, right after end-of-day formation, and no one knew until Monday.” He pressed his mouth into a flat line. “It took two and a half days for me to find out that one of my guys killed himself.”

The muscles in his neck were tense, straining against his skin. “And he was just the first soldier I buried. Do you want to know the names of the other ten? Martinez. Neils. Jablowski. Mercado. Davis. Williams.”

“Shane. Stop.”

“Stupediwictz. We called him Widget. Zublow. Mitchum. Adel. But only one killed himself.” He closed his eyes, covering his mouth with his hands again. “Today, I felt like I was sitting at the bottom of a fucking mountain because I couldn’t climb the goddamned stairs at the barracks to get to my soldier.”

“Shane.” She knelt at the edge of the couch, her fingers digging into his forearm. His skin was hot against hers. “This isn’t your fault. There’s still time to get through to him.” Please, God, don’t let her be wrong.

Finally he looked at her and the pain in his eyes tore at her soul. “I need these pins out. I need to be able to get places where wheels can’t take me.”

“I can’t do that for you, Shane. Even if I could, getting them out requires a surgical
team and you’re not fully healed yet.”

His mouth opened but no sound came out. Nothing, then he snapped it shut.

“Look, instead of worrying about what you can’t do, let’s figure out what you can. Osterman comes in for physical therapy—”

“Every time I try to talk to him, he avoids me, and climbs up stairs so I can’t follow him. Do you know how fucking pathetic that is? One of my guys went to the hospital for screwing up his pills. Osterman is just a matter of time. I know it in my soul. This is my team. These are my boys, and they’re floundering because I can’t get my ass out of that chair.”

Jen stood abruptly. “You know what? Fine. Sit here and wallow. You’re letting a flight of stairs do you in? Really?”

Finally, emotion sparked in his eyes—dark fury roiled there in a massive ball of energy. “This is my fault!” he shouted. “Both of them were hurt on missions that I was running.”

“So what? They got hurt. They’re alive, damn it. They’re still alive.” Her words started with a shout but ended with a whisper. Shane’s boys were alive but he was dying sitting in that wheelchair. It was as though it was doing more than atrophying his muscles, it was chipping away at his soul.

“Shane.” She reached for him, cupping his rough jaw and turning his face toward hers. “This is not your fault. You are a soldier. You cannot save everyone. Good men die in combat and you can’t save them. Your boys are alive. Be happy for that.”

“Every time I see Osterman, I’m reminded of Dickerson,” he whispered.

“Then we’ll figure out how to get him to stick around longer so you can talk to him.
We’ll figure it out. Stop acting like you had the power to change this. You’re just a man. You’re not supposed to be okay all the time, either.”

Silence hung between them for a long moment.

“Jen, I can’t do this.”

“Do what?”

“Us.”

“Well, you know, we already did the ‘us’ thing. And unless you want to stay in that van down by the river, brushing me off right now is the last thing you want to do.” She paused, waiting to see his reaction. “Yes, that means I’m blackmailing you. I need to keep the Great Penis around a little longer.”

He choked. “What?” he managed.

“Never mind. Inside joke.”

“Seeing how I assume this is my penis we’re talking about—”

“Will you shut up and kiss me?”

He pulled her to him and kissed her like a dying man. Like he wasn’t going to get another chance at this, whatever this was. Because she’d been wrong. He couldn’t count on being able to try again tomorrow.

He only had today. Tomorrow, he had one less day to make a difference. But he didn’t tell her that. He slid his tongue against hers and tasted her, Jen, and something so much more.

Something stronger than anything he’d ever felt. Something that felt like pure heaven.

He’d fallen for her and he didn’t even know when it had happened. He just knew
that today, she’d pushed her way into his personal hell and shoved him out of it. And he was so damn grateful that she was there.

It was what she did, he realized, as he urged her closer. He wanted to feel her weight against his chest, the brush of her hair against his shoulder. He ached for the day he could see her beneath him and touch her the way he craved.

But for tonight, he would take her however he could have her. Her breath sighed into his mouth as she made tiny, sexy gasps. Her fingers curled into his shoulders, her nails dug into his skin in the most delicious pain.

He twined his fingers through her hair and angled her mouth to claim all of her. She shifted and he pulled her to him until she sprawled across his lap. His legs ached in this position, but he was unwilling to move, to lose that intimate contact between them that he needed.

He needed this. He needed it with her. He traced his fingers down her neck and watched as she arched, tipping her head back and giving him access to the soft skin of her throat. His fingers trembled as he traced her jaw, feeling the soft pulse of her heart beneath the pad of his index finger.

Jen pulled away abruptly, unwilling to cede all control. She’d worried that he might never touch her again after how she’d reacted last time. Tonight, when he’d reached for her, she’d gone willingly into his embrace. The strength in his arms amazed her. Even after weeks of limited activity, he was so strong. So solid.

He’d tried to push her away tonight and it had taken everything she’d held within her to push back. To not let him dictate everything in their relationship. Because she was at least done with lying to herself about that. They had a relationship.

Shane and his boys, Carponti and Osterman, had somehow become spheres in her life, always there. Always present. With their presence came worry, but she wouldn’t give that worry up.

She cared deeply for this man. She pulled his T-shirt over his head, and reveled in the sight of his powerful chest.

His breath was coming hard and fast. When she lowered her face to press a kiss onto the black lines above his heart, he stilled. There, in the stillness of his body, a deep tremor began. She felt it beneath her lips, beneath her fingertips as she traced them up the inside of his arms and down his ribs, to his navel. His stomach jumped beneath her fingers and a delicious female power circled through her veins like liquid fire.

* * *

There was no way he could sit here and let her explore his body without the most powerful desire beating against his skin. Every inch of his flesh ached as she teased him. Stroked his skin and smiled like she knew exactly what she was doing to him.

He pulled her up abruptly. “I need you naked,” he whispered against her mouth.

She kissed him deeply as she somehow shimmied out of her pants and helped him ease his shorts down and off. “Thank God for athletic shorts,” she murmured.

He didn’t miss the fact that she kept her shirt on again. But then she was kissing him and her heat slid over his erection until he damn near exploded at the contact. He gripped her hip with one hand, urging her to sink down onto him.

Then she did, and he was lost. He was drowning in her, his hands roaming her body, slicking over her belly, her hips. He wanted to touch her everywhere. He slid a hand up her shirt.

He stopped thinking and just felt. Wanted to cup her softness in his hand. Needed to feel her nipple pucker against his palm.

Her sudden stillness struck him like a freight train. Her fingers dug into his wrist and her body was no longer welcoming. “Don’t,” she whispered, pushing his hand away.

He leaned up, trying to kiss her. “It’s just a scar, Jen. It doesn’t matter.”

“It does to me. Please don’t.”

Jen couldn’t explain the chill in her veins that had doused her arousal as quickly as if she’d been thrown in a Minnesota lake in the dead of winter. He was still buried deep inside of her and part of her ached for him, for his touch. For this union that completed a missing part of her soul.

Still, she didn’t release his hand. “Jen, relax.”

“It’s not that important.”

“You’re beautiful to me. Scars or not. Let me see you,” he said, his voice rough. “Trust me with that.”

“I can’t.”

The shadow fell across her face and she looked away, a new tension in the set of her shoulders as reality sank in. No one had done this to her. The voice she heard in her head telling her she was a freak was her very own.

Shane let her go. He couldn’t do this with her. Not like this. Not if she insisted on keeping this barrier between them. As she stood beside the couch, Jen’s jaw was set, her eyes shadowed with an old hurt. She didn’t leave. Not yet. “Getting help and not feeling sorry for yourself only applies to other people, doesn’t it, Jen?”

Her fingers shook as she reached for her pants. “Let it go, Shane,” she said quietly
as she yanked them on and padded up the stairs.

She could talk all she wanted about getting better and facing his problems.

But she’d never moved past her own. And until she did, they were dead on arrival.

It was quite possibly the worst she’d ever felt. Her lips tingled from his kisses and her belly felt warm and heated. Her blood hummed.

What on earth had she been thinking?

She hadn’t been. Jen remembered what it was like to question her value as a woman. As a person. Something in Shane gave her the confidence to feel desirable again. Something she hadn’t felt in oh-so-long. Yet it still wasn’t enough to overcome how she felt about her scar. Last night, it had crushed something beautiful between them.

She wished she could have taken that final step and opened herself to him. That she’d let herself feel his fingers against her breast and his lips on her nipple.