The books she recommended were stacked at his left elbow, one open in front of him, his laptop off to the side for taking notes. PTSD treatment methodologies had come a long way since World War I when it was called shell shock and treated as a weakness in a man’s nerves. A long way … except not in Jack’s brain. In his brain it was still weakness. You couldn’t pump twenty-year-old males full of adrenaline and testosterone then send them off to war, then bring them home and tell them they weren’t weak and their feelings were entirely normal. By definition they weren’t normal. He joined the military, and not for money for dental school. He joined the SEALs. He went to war. He was the best of the best at death and destruction. Taking a bullet through the throat was a distinct possibility. Weakness wasn’t.
Erin’s presence hovered on the edge of his awareness as she moved around the library, instructing the circulation staff to reshelve books, answering questions, working away at the computer in her office behind the circulation desk. He didn’t look her way but used his peripheral vision to gather details. She looked prim and proper, not like she’d almost bought a Ducati, then had sex with a man whose name she didn’t know.
He didn’t manufacture a reason to walk up to the desk. She’d answered his questions, pointed him in the right direction; he had no other reason to talk to her. She was a professional, and he wasn’t looking to make trouble for her. He had a paper to write.
He’d made a list of the various treatments: prolonged exposure therapy, as Colleen had suggested for him, cognitive behavioral therapy, and stress inoculation training were all effective. Then came approaches with less empirical evidence to support them: art therapy, writing programs, even hunting retreats. The literature explained various options and presented cautiously worded success rates for each of them, but if seventy percent of the individuals in a top-notch program saw improvement, then thirty percent didn’t. He’d never seen himself as part of the thirty percent before, and he wasn’t about to start now.
He’d read all three of the books Erin gave him the first time around, and had re-read two of them. He picked them up and walked over to the circulation desk just in time to see Erin stepping into the elevator leading to the stacks. She was wearing a knee-length skirt so tight he had no idea how she walked in it and a silky blouse open at the throat to expose her collarbones and a fair bit of sternum, and her pale brown hair was waved and curled back from her face.
Listen to your body.
Heat slammed down his spine, and before he could think about his action he was moving fast and silent, sliding the finished books into the return slot, then taking three long strides to duck between the closing elevator doors.
She folded her arms under her breasts and gave him a smile. “Hello, John Patrick Powell.”
He grinned at her. “Jack to my friends,” he said. “Did you look up Professor Trask’s roster?”
“Too easy,” she said scornfully. “I was pretty sure I’d seen you somewhere before. I finally remembered where.”
“The library orientation class for veterans.”
“Exactly,” she said, satisfaction infusing the word. “You remembered I taught it?”
Once it had been his job to remember that and a hundred other details, after a HALO jump, before an explosion, and all while taking fire from insurgents. “I remembered. But there was one of you and a dozen of us.”
“I remember the class because you all paid attention,” she said. “Sat up straight, listened, took notes, asked good questions. It was a dream to teach.”
The doors dinged open. They stepped out into the second-floor stacks, Erin moving with a purpose, him following in her wake. Two seconds of watching her answered his earlier question. The skirt’s hem came together with a bunch of pleats that let her walk. Watching her toned calves in heels and the bounce and sway of the pleats distracted him so much he nearly ran up her heels when she stopped.
“Are you looking for something in particular?” she asked.
He scanned the aisle between the wall and the stacks. They’d passed no one on their way from the elevator to this corner, and a quick glance through shelves leading away from the corner showed no one lurking in the rows. His body hummed the way it did during a firefight, or before a big op, familiar enough that he stopped thinking about it. “You,” he said, low and rough, surprising himself.
Her eyes widened ever so slightly, and she peered through the stacks. “Are we alone?”
Her voice was a curl of smoke in his mind, vintage Hollywood screen temptress. “We are,” he murmured.
Her hand slid along his nape, between fleece and skin, her lips parting as she drew him down to her. He braced one hand on a metal shelf and wrapped the other around her waist, pulling her to him, from breasts to hips. She stumbled a little, up on her heels, until he shifted his weight. Hips and lips aligned and collided at the same time, the pressure enough to bruise and swell until he leaned back slightly. Her soft moan echoed in the space, books and shelving nowhere near enough to muffle the sound, so he shut her up. Opened his lips, parting hers, then slid his tongue into her mouth, stroking, teasing.
“We shouldn’t do this,” she whispered, then bit his lower lip.
He retaliated, holding her to him, using his other hand to pull the open collar of her shirt to the side and bite her collarbone.