“You should have given me a chance to make that decision, Dan. It wasn’t up to you, but given where you were at with women at the time, it was probably pretty clear cut with you. You weren’t going to trust me enough to come to me and give me the whole story. And you didn’t know I’d fallen in love with you. That was one of your rules: I could never say those words to you. I could never speak of what lay in my heart for you because you were afraid of ever getting involved in a real relationship.”
“You’re right. But you’re wrong about something, Sloan. I did trust you. Whatever we had at Bagram was the best I’d ever had with any woman. Yes, you respected my rules, you put up with me, but something…something happened to me when I was around you. It got so that I couldn’t wait to be with you, love you, share our talks after having sex.” His voice grew hoarse. “Whatever we shared? It was the best I’ve ever experienced. It damn near killed me to walk away from you. And honestly? I never recovered from it. I couldn’t see how you would want to still be around me after that. I was a loser in my head. How could you want a loser in your life?”
“You were never a loser in my eyes. Even when we met again in Sudan, you had always been a brave hero to me.”
“And now?” he growled. “Now that you know everything about me? Am I still that hero you built me up to be?”
“I never stopped loving you, Dan. Not even now. You will always be a hero in my eyes. Have you made mistakes? Yes. Have I? Yes. Because you never allowed a woman to get close to you, you didn’t understand the ups and downs of being in a real relationship. That’s why you keep telling me you don’t know what love is. If you didn’t have it growing up, how can you know what it is? Your mother left, and she was the only one giving you any kind of love and affection. The rest of the time you were imprinted with an uncaring alcoholic father.”
Dan straightened, taking a deep breath. “I can’t be something I’m not, Sloan.”
“What? You can’t fall in love? Just because you don’t think you know what love is doesn’t mean you aren’t feeling it or that it isn’t drawing you back to me. Because I know, in your way, you do love me. I know because I’ve been in love before and I know the signs, the way two people gravitate to one another, the good things they share even through the bad times.”
“I can’t offer you anything other than what you see right now,” he said heavily.
“Dan? It’s one thing to deliberately hurt another person. You never did that to me. You’re overlaying your lack of love and affection from your family onto me. It doesn’t work that way. It doesn’t mean you can’t love. You do love me, and I damn well know it.”
“How do you know this? I have feelings, deep feelings for you. I know how important it is for a woman to hear the man say he loves her. Jesus, all I’ve given you is pain. And suffering. How do you know you still love me?”
“Love chooses the person. My mind didn’t choose you. My heart fell for you. I knew it was love because I’d experienced different levels of loving another person before. What I feel for you has no bottom. It has no sides to it. I’ve loved you through some pretty bad times. Even I wondered what the hell was wrong with me for hanging in there with you. How could I continue to love a man who thought he was incapable of loving another human being? And yet, I saw you, Dan. No matter how much your terrible childhood ran you, the many losses you suffered through, I saw you. That’s the man I’ve loved to this day.”
Tears drifted down her cheeks. “It took me two months to figure this all out, to realize that you’re the one I want in my life. And it’s fine if you can’t say you love me. You show me in a hundred small, but important, ways every day. You have loved me like no other man ever has, despite your shortcomings in other areas.”
Dan slowly rose, looking down at her. “I don’t know how you can still love me, Sloan.”
She uncurled from the couch. Walking over to him, she slid her hand into his, searching his anguished features. “The heart doesn’t have to have a logical reason. Let me show you? Let me teach you what love is? I don’t ever need to hear that you love me. Love is so many things on so many levels, large and small, every day. Come to bed with me? Let me love you? And you share what you can of your heart with me in return? I’ll be satisfied with that.”
“You’ve got more courage than anyone I’ve ever known, baby. I don’t deserve this second chance. I promise you, Sloan, I’m trying every day to become the man you deserve, not the one you got that first time around.”
“I know that. That’s why I came back, why I want to try one last time with you. You love me enough to try to make our relationship work for both of us.”
“That’s all I need to know,” he rasped, and he leaned down, tenderly taking her lips, feeling her respond, pressing herself against him, their hips meeting, the heat flaring urgently through him. She was going to take no prisoners this time, and elation swept through him, erasing all his anxiety. Sloan was giving him a chance to care for her just as he’d dreamed of doing. She called it love. He called it care.
*
The morning light drifted through the half-opened curtains in Dan’s bedroom. The bed was made, and she smiled to herself. Dan’s military discipline and organization still ruled his life in some ways. In boot camp, everyone was taught to make their bunk.
He turned, shutting the door. “First things first,” he told her. “A condom.”
“Not a chance today. I’m in my clear period, Dan.” She saw his eyes gleam with satisfaction. Dan hated wearing a condom, and she didn’t care for them either when they could get away with it.
“Good to know.”
She grinned. “Don’t gloat.”
He slid his hands beneath her velour jacket, easing it off her shoulders. “I’m gloating, okay?”
Her skin lit up as his fingers grazed her flesh. He placed the jacket over a chair in the corner and came back to her, somber.
“How long has it been for you?”
“Two years.”
“You were small and tight when I slipped my fingers into you before. We’re going to take this easy, then.”
Her lips curved and she lifted the shirt up and over his head, taking pleasure in the dusting of dark hair across his chest. Dropping the shirt to the carpeted floor, she gently grazed the pink scar that had fully healed along his left side. She felt around for any swelling, gently palpating the region, seeing if he winced or tensed. He did not.
“Doc,” he growled, “I’m a hundred percent. Don’t be looking at my scar and deciding we can’t have any sex.”
“Just want to make sure.”
“I’m fine,” he ground out, slipping his hands beneath her tee. “You’re not wearing a bra, Sloan.”
She laughed, running her hands across his thick shoulders, feeling his strength and warmth beneath her fingertips. “You know I never wore one at Bagram. Why look so surprised about it now?”
“You know how to make a man hard in a split second. You always did. I will never get enough of you,” he rasped, sliding his hands around her warm breasts, hearing her moan, her fingers digging into his upper arms, telling him she welcomed his touch. The moment he moved his thumbs languidly across those hardened pink nipples, she nearly collapsed against him.
“You’re starving again, aren’t you, baby?” He licked her earlobe, hearing her gasp with delight. He could already smell her sex scent, knowing full well she was juicy, the rich, delicious honey aroma of her body spilling out of her entrance as he continued to lavish her nipples. Sloan’s eyes shuttered closed, and he heard that hum in her throat, telling him he was pleasing her. That made him feel so damn strong. His heart was in the mix because he didn’t want her to collapse on the floor if he teased her too much too soon. He wanted her in his bed with him.
CHAPTER 20