Please? Did that word truly just come out of Kelly Taylor’s mouth?
I study her.
I look hard. I desperately try to see something beyond her physical beauty and her fight-or-flight attitude.
Is she attractive?
God, yes. She’s the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long time. I’ve always liked redheads, and though her hair is a little darker, she still qualifies. She’s wearing blue leggings and a large white T-shirt. Hardly the stuff of wet dreams, but she makes it look like it came straight out of Victoria’s Secret.
My dick responds to her, which I’m not happy about. She’s my charge. I’m supposed to protect her, not fuck her.
But although I find her physically attractive, her personality? Not so much.
“What do you want?” I ask her.
“I’m just…scared. I’m so tired of being scared.”
“I understand. I’ve been scared myself.”
She scoffs. “When were you ever scared?”
Really? Did she just go there? “I was a Navy SEAL, Kelly. My life was in peril on the daily when I was overseas. I lost friends over there. Buck and I came back, but four of our friends didn’t.”
She swallows. I don’t hear anything but I see her throat move.
Good. That got to her. It’s about time she realizes that she’s not the only person who’s ever been through bad stuff. She’s not the only person who’s ever been to hell and back. I feel for her. I do. I feel for every one of those women who was violated on that godforsaken island. But the other ones that I know? Katelyn? Aspen? Jenna? Carly?
They’re all healing. They’re taking a proactive attitude.
Kelly? There’s nothing proactive about her. She’s all reactive, pure and simple, and she reacts by striking.
“So…good night.” I head back toward the door.
But again she grabs my arm. And damn… Her touch. My cock is already hard.
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.”
She crosses her arms. “I don’t need your pity.”
“You don’t have my pity,” I say. “Just my concern.”
“Are you kidding me? The pity coming from you is so thick I could cut it with a knife.”
“It’s not pity, Kelly. It’s empathy. Pure and simple. I don’t know your story, but I know my own. I know what it feels like to think life will never be good again.”
“Oh you do?” Her tone is sardonic.
I shake my head. “No one has your story. It’s your own and unique to you. But other people do have stories, some not as bad as yours…and some worse.”
“You think you have a story worse than mine?”
“No,” I say truthfully, absently reaching to touch her. I stop just shy of her cheekbone. “I don’t.”
Because I think her story transcends her time on that island. I think there’s much more to Kelly Taylor than any of us know.