Total pages in book: 66
Estimated words: 66978 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 66978 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 335(@200wpm)___ 268(@250wpm)___ 223(@300wpm)
She’s a beautiful woman, for sure, but I don’t like her.
Still… It’s been a while for me, and I am a man, after all.
“Can I tell you?” she asks.
I breathe in, let out slowly. “Tell me what?”
“What it was like.”
“On the island?” I shake my head. “I can’t hear that, Kelly. My imagination is bad enough. I hate what was done to you women. And I understand more than you know.”
I expect a sarcastic or smart-ass comment to come from her, so I’m surprised as hell when—
“Tell me about the war.”
“I wasn’t in the middle of a war,” I remind her.
“I suppose not. Where were you?”
“Afghanistan. A couple tours.”
“And Buck was with you?”
“He was.”
“You came back and he came back,” she says. “Who didn’t?”
“You really want to know?”
“I do. I think I really do.”
“Okay.”
I unbutton my shirt.
She gasps. “Now wait a minute.”
“Don’t get the wrong idea,” I say. “If I wanted something more from you, I’d have tried it before now. But this is the best way for me to explain to you who I lost over there.”
I continue unbuttoning, and her cheeks turn red. Will she like what she sees? Most women do. But I’m not unbuttoning my shirt for her to ogle me.
I slide the shirt off of my shoulders and hang it over the chair standing by the door.
Then I turn around so she can see my back.
She gasps. A huge and audible gasp.
“That symbol in the middle is the Navy SEAL Trident. You already know they call me Phoenix, right?”
“Yes.”
“See the Phoenix? The bird erupting in flames? That’s me. And the Buck? The deer with his antlers on fire? That’s Buck.”
She says nothing. I imagine she’s nodding, but I don’t turn to look.
“The rest of those images are my friends. You’ll notice that they all have halos. Ghost, Wolf, Ace, and Eagle.”
I jerk when her warm finger touches my flesh. But I don’t move. I let her. I relish her touch as she traces the outline of the phoenix, of the buck, of all the other images and their halos.
I’m not sure how many minutes I stand there, how many minutes she touches me, but the warmth from her finger travels straight through me, all the way to my core.
All the way to my cock.
Finally—
“I had no idea,” she says.
I turn to face her, meet her gaze. “We don’t go over there for our health. We go over to serve our country, and it’s not always pretty. More often than not, it’s downright ugly.”
“It’s beautiful work,” she says. “The tattoo, I mean. What you did over there…”
“Wasn’t beautiful, for sure. Buck and I had them done when we got back. He has the same tattoo.” I hold up my wrist, showing the SEAL trident again. “Plus this one.”
“The Navy SEAL logo again,” she says.
“It’s so much more than a logo.”
She nods, but she doesn’t ask me to elaborate.
Good, because I’m not sure I can. I can tell her the meaning of the symbol, but I can’t tell her the feelings it invokes in me.
You have to be a SEAL to understand.
Her gaze is focused on my chest now—
“I have a tattoo,” she says.
“Do you?”
“I do. Would you like to see it?”
“Sure.”
She unbuttons her blouse, and a pink lace bra becomes visible, but she stops unbuttoning when it’s loose enough to pull over her shoulder.
She turns around, and on her left shoulder is a volleyball, surrounded by wilted black roses.
I can’t help widening my eyes. “That’s nice work, but it’s something I’d expect to see on Aspen, not you.”
She turns back, a frown on her face. “What? You think Aspen is the only woman in the world who plays volleyball?”
“No. I just didn’t know you did.”
“I don’t. But I did when I was a kid. I was good too, until—” She shuts her mouth abruptly.
“Until what?”
“Nothing. I don’t know why I showed you. I don’t go around showing people my tattoo. I just thought…since you showed me yours…”
“I showed you mine because you asked about my friends.”
“Yeah. Well, my tattoo doesn’t have anything to do with friends.”
“There are some people out there who just like ink,” I say. “But those who have only one or two tattoos usually have them for a specific reason. I was just wondering what yours was.”
“It’s a reminder,” she says.
“A reminder of what?”
“A reminder that no matter how happy I get—how happy I allow myself to get—it will all eventually be taken away.”
Does that explain the black wilted roses? Her words sink into my heart. My God, what she’s been through… I can’t help myself. I reach toward Kelly, and I trail a finger over her porcelain cheek.
“I’m so sorry,” I say.
She steps away from my touch. “For what?”
“For whatever happened to you on that island—or anywhere else—that made you feel like you don’t deserve to be happy.”