Using his viselike grip on her hips, he urged her into motion. “Slow,” he said. “Take it … fuck … take it easy.”
At first she did, because it pleased her to absorb each shift and glide, feel her body adjust to his cock, her palms slipping on his shoulders as sweat slicked his skin. Then she lifted up a little higher and dropped back down, forcing a groan from his throat. Her breasts bounced with the movement. She sat up straighter, shifting her hands to the bottom of his ribs and did it again. Sensation pulsed to the edges of her skin and beyond, and then she couldn’t stop. She rode him for all she was worth, her entire awareness narrowed to the tight grip of his hands, his hip bones bruising her inner thighs, and his cock blunt and hot inside her.
“Fuck. Erin, I can’t … going to … I’m almost there.”
“Yes,” she gasped. “Yes, yes, yes!”
She was dimly aware of his heels pushing against the sheets as he shoved up, burying himself deep inside her, then aware only of the contractions of her sex around his. Her entire body tingled as her muscles gave way. Heart pounding, air heaving into and out of her lungs, she slumped against him.
“Oh my God,” she said.
“Seconded,” he said with equal feeling.
She laughed and rolled to the side, then shimmied out of his coat, letting it fall across his chest as she stretched and wriggled in the sheets. He chuckled and shoved his coat to the floor. “What are you doing, wild woman?”
“What feels good,” she said, and pointed her feet until her toes cracked. “I’m doing what feels good.”
“Go on with your bad self,” he said, and heaved himself out of bed. He came back with a wet washcloth for her, then thoughtfully disappeared while she used it, returning with two glasses of water in one big hand and half a chocolate pie in the other. “I had a look in the fridge,” he said. “I hope that’s okay.”
“If you’d reappeared with two apples or my fat-free cottage cheese, it would definitely be a problem,” she said, taking the pie plate from him. Two dessert forks sat in the graham cracker crust and whipped cream. Picking one up, she licked it clean then traded it to him for a glass of water. She drank half the water, then dug into the pie.
“So, Jack Powell, why did you leave the Navy?” she asked, because after fabulous, bone-melting sex resulting in two orgasms, she could say anything.
In answer, he held out his right hand. She watched it tremble and twitch until he made a fist, then opened his hand again. Still trembling.
“Is that from exertion?”
He laughed, but the sound wasn’t actually amused. “That was great sex. Really great sex. Unfortunately I’ve been dealing with the tremors for a while.”
She held out her hand in response. Her fingers quivered a little. “It was enough to make me shake,” she said.
“I’m trained to handle the worst. I’m failing.”
Calm and collected, she sectioned off another chunk of the pie. “Want to talk about it?”
Normally, no. With her, he did. “A friend died. Bled out in front of me,” he said, then stopped to get himself under control. “It’s happened before. We’ve all lost friends, teammates, men we call brothers. I’d come back from dozens of good outcomes and bad outcomes completely fine. I came back from the last one with a classic case of combat nerves.”
“Hence the paper on PTSD treatments?”
He nodded. “I thought if I quit the Navy, took a break, I’d get better,” he said. “So far I’m not. Depends on the day, how tired I am. I don’t sleep much. Or well.”
The conversation had taken a sharp turn from playful to serious. She broke off a piece of crust and popped it in her mouth. “That’s why you fall asleep in the library.”
“It’s quiet there. Warm. I just shut down,” he said.
She looked at him. “You don’t seem all that upset about it.”
“I am,” he replied, matter-of-factly. “Thanks to several months of therapy, I can tell you that I’m both angry and scared. The one thing I’ve always been able to trust is my body. It’s never, ever let me down. All the crazy-ass shit I used to do when I was a kid, BUD/S, eight years on the teams, my body did whatever I asked of it. As strong as I was physically, my mind was stronger. Now it’s not, and I have no fucking clue who I am without that control.” He tossed the fork onto the plate, then held up his hand again. “I was supposed to go into security work when I left the Navy. I had a job lined up, even rented an apartment in Istanbul. But with this, I’m a liability, not an asset.”
One hand halfway between the pie plate and her open mouth, she stared at him. “Jack. I’m so sorry.”
He shrugged. “You’re not the only one who wants to explore limits. Apparently I have new ones, and I need to find them.”
The smile he flashed her was a shadow of the one he usually wore. She looked at the man sprawled in her borrowed bed, really looked at him. He was a Navy SEAL, a trained warrior, and just a man, too.