“Raiden—”
“Touchin’ base frequently, takin’ jobs that’ll get me where I wanna be, comin’ home and lookin’ forward to it for the first time in years, to an actual home, and it’s a home I look forward to getting back to because my woman is there. I know it’s gonna suck, and it will for years, but that’s what I gotta give. Will that work for you?”
A home I look forward to getting back to because my woman is there.
Totally. That would totally work for me.
I left out the “totally” as well as all the rest and just breathed, “Yes.”
I watched his eyes flash then heat.
“Fuck me, I knew it would,” he growled before he repeated, “Fuck me.”
We were there. We were new but we were what we were and we both understood it, new or not.
So it was time for more than just this. I knew it by just how much all that meant to him and that he would let that show. Therefore, I pushed up and in and managed to roll him with me on top.
Then I straddled him, planted my hands in his chest and leaned toward him.
“I’m not going to ask if I can tell you something, but I am going to tell you that I have something to tell you,” I announced.
Raiden stared at me a second before the intensity left his eyes. His mouth twitched, his hands came to my hips, dipped down under his shirt that I was still wearing, then back up, spanning them, skin against skin.
“Have at it, honey,” he invited.
“I’ve seen the picture,” I shared and his head tilted slightly against the mattress.
“Come again?”
“Of you and your buddies in desert fatigues.”
Just as I suspected, the pads of his fingers dug in. His lips stopped twitching, his face went blank and his lips started to say, “Han—”
I pressed lightly into his chest and got closer. “You talk straight, I’m going to try that and hope it works, but if it doesn’t, we’ll go back and try something different. But, Raiden, it isn’t unusual when soldiers see stuff, do stuff and come home feeling disenfranchised and –”
I said no more because I was flying through the air.
I landed on the bed near the edge, and by the time I pulled myself up Raiden was yanking on a pair of cargo pants.
Okay, that did not go well.
“Raid—”
“Goin’, you be gone when I get back.”
My breath froze in my throat.
I swallowed to clear it, got up to my knees and sallied forth a lot more cautiously. “Okay, that didn’t work, honey. Maybe—”
He viciously yanked a tee down his chest then bent toward me so fast, he was a blur.
Hand in the mattress, other hand pointing an inch from my face, he growled, “Do not think you know shit. You do not know shit.”
Motionless with fear, I forced my lips around the word, “Raiden—”
“I’m goin’ and you be gone when I get back.”
It took a lot but I lifted my hand, curled it around his wrist and started, “Sweet—”
Savagely, he yanked his wrist free and I went flying into both hands catching myself on the bed. I pushed myself up just in time to see him, boots in one hand, stalking to the door.
I started to scramble off the bed, calling. “Raiden! Please. I screwed up, honey. Please, let’s talk.”
Before I got to the door, he’d slammed it behind him.
Which meant before I could get it open, he was already yanking open the door of his Jeep.
And this meant, before I got to the bottom of the stairs, he was reversing then he was gone.
*
Four hours later…
I did not go into town to sort my shipments.
No. I’d walked too close to the fire and got singed by the flames. I needed to do what I could to try to bank that fire and retreat.
So I stayed at Raiden’s house. I cleaned his coffeepot. I did his dishes. With what I had to work with, I made minimal sense of the mess on his kitchen-ish countertop. I folded the clothes in his dresser so the drawers shut. I found a scary-looking but functional washer and dryer in a small room in the back corner of the bottom level and did three loads of laundry, including his sheets, which meant I cleared most of the floor, hung his clothes and made his bed.
Once I’d cleaned the coffeepot (my first priority), I’d made coffee.
I’d also opened the fridge. The wave of scent that assailed me was so strong I was certain my hair wafted back with it and the visions that assaulted my eyes didn’t bear thinking about, so I erased my memory of them and shut the door as fast as I could.
Therefore, I’d eaten nothing.
I wasn’t hungry, but I figured I needed to keep my strength up for the battle that lay ahead.
But after what I encountered in the fridge, caffeine was just going to have to do.
When I heard the Jeep return, my nerves, already frayed, unraveled completely. I was so rattled it was a wonder I wasn’t a trembling mess, incapable of movement.
But this was important.