Military Heroes Bundle: A Soldier's Homecoming / A Soldier's Redemption / Danger in the Desert / Strangers When We Meet / Grayson's Surrender / Taking Cover

“I don’t—”

“Shh,” she said gently. “It’s true. You were in the service. You got your orders from this country, and you went. If there’s any guilt in what you did, we all share it. All of us. We can’t claim lily-white hands because we didn’t put on a uniform. Not in this country.”

He didn’t respond, seeming to lack the words.

“You know it’s true, Ethan. You do the dirty work we ask you to do. Whatever gloss we put on it, however high we hold the flag and however loud we cry the justifications, you and your fellow soldiers are just carrying out our will. Sometimes you’ll be sure it was absolutely right. But I suspect that in all wars the people on the front lines often wind up wondering what they’ve done and what it makes them.”

“Connie—”

“Listen to me. Just remember, when you walk down a street, that you didn’t do a damn thing all the rest of us walking those same streets didn’t ask of you. Didn’t send you there to do.”

Her grip on his hand had grown vise tight, and he squeezed back. Finally he gave a short, mirthless laugh and said, “I guess this is a night for therapy.”

“Or a night for putting things into perspective. You tried to help me see I wasn’t responsible for what Leo did. Well, you need to understand that just because you were the tip of the spear doesn’t make you any more responsible than the rest of us, the spear throwers.”

For a few moments he seemed about to argue with her, but then tension seeped from him. Before she knew what to expect, she was swept up into his arms and being carried up the stairs as if she weighed nothing at all.

She didn’t make a sound, didn’t offer a protest. How could she? Nothing had ever felt so right as being in his arms.

He carried her into her darkened bedroom, where the TV still flickered, and laid her on her bed. Then he stretched out beside her, fully clothed, and pulled her close, as if he wanted their bodies to melt together. She managed to wrap one arm around him, feeling the breadth and strength of his back. Feeling the wonder of him in every cell of her being.

“This’ll sound crazy,” he said huskily.

“Tell me.”

“You just said something to me that made more sense than anything anyone’s said in a long time—except for something Micah said the other day.”

“What did he say?”

“He told me the past was past, that if I wanted atonement, I had to find it in today. And that if I had nightmares, I had to build new dreams.”

She drew a sharp breath. “That’s so true! So beautiful. Oh, Ethan, I need to remember that, too.”

“I know. We’re not so very different, in some ways.”

“No, we’re not.” She tightened her hold on him. “When was the last time someone told you how beautiful you are?”

“Me?” He gave an embarrassed laugh.

“You,” she repeated. “Not just the way you look, although you probably have no idea what a handsome man you are, but in other ways. The first night you spent here, I felt something about you, something in the air around you. You were saying something about having studied shamanism and being a bit of a mystic. I don’t remember exactly. I just know I could feel it all around you, as if you’re a special spirit.”

“Not me. I’m an ordinary man.”

“No, you’re more than that.” She sighed and shifted so that her head was cradled comfortably on his shoulder. “I used to think we were beings of light unwillingly tethered to the ground.”

“And now?”

“I still think we’re beings of light, but we aren’t tethered unwillingly.”

“No?”

She tilted her head so she could see his face. “No,” she repeated. “We came here for this. For something beautiful we can experience no other way. Holding and being held. Comforting and being comforted. Skin touching skin across the abyss of seeming separateness.”

He closed his eyes as if absorbing her words. “You should try poetry.”

“Not me. It’s just what I feel sometimes. Transcendence through our very limitations. Tell me you haven’t felt it.”

He nodded slowly. “Rarely,” he said presently. “Too rarely. But yes, I’ve felt it.”

“These are the moments we exist for, Ethan.”

He cradled her even closer, if that was possible, and rocked her gently. The motion was soothing, seeming to lift her to another level.

This wasn’t possible, she warned herself, but the warning seemed distant and faint. She knew she would never trust fully again, and she knew that Ethan would undoubtedly move on until he found a life that suited him. They were too wounded to build anything between them.

So if she gave in to the longings building in her, it would be for a night. A single night. There would be no future in it.

Oddly, that seemed to free her. It banished all the fears from her marriage that had been holding her back. There was nothing to fear here, because this wouldn’t be a commitment. Nothing to upset her carefully established balance.

In Ethan’s arms, she felt herself grow weightless, as if she were rising to the heavens, above it all, safe from it all. Magic surrounded her, sheltered her, filled her.

She hardly felt herself move as she turned her face up, seeking his kiss.

When it came, gentleness came with it, a tender touching of lips that spoke not of hunger but a different kind of need, a more important one.

She responded in kind, shedding her shell, reveling in the freedom to just experience and share. Savoring the deep sense of safety that must have been coming from him, because it surely didn’t come from her.

He began to stoke her back, firmly but gently, shoulder to small of back, over and over until she understood why cats purr. A soft moan escaped her, saying all that words couldn’t.

Slowly his hand slipped lower, pressing her rounded bottom and bringing her into the cradle of his hips. Now she could feel his need, too, as well as her own, and the feeling was so good, so good...

She had never known a man could be so hard all over, nor that his hardness against her softness could be so enticing. Every inch of Ethan had been honed for action, and awareness of that carried her to some elemental place inside her where nothing existed except man and woman, woman and man. Identity slipped away, succumbing to urges as old as time.

They fit together as if they had been created for this. His kiss grew deeper, and her hips rocked in response, trying to get closer to him, trying to find the answer to her growing ache.

His mouth left hers, tracing a path lower, along the slender column of her neck, awakening new nerve endings, sending a shiver through her. Warm, soft lips, hard body, heat...passing chill, all of it descending through her to her very center, where it fed the growing, hardening ache inside.

The cotton of her nightgown provided no barrier as he moved lower, tracing her collarbone with his tongue, slipping straps away to bare her shoulders to his chase.

He rolled her gently onto her back, as if sensing she was utterly open to him. First his lips, then his tongue, found the stiffened buds of her nipples through the thin cotton, causing her to give a soft cry of delight and need.

He teased her, light brushes and kisses while the cotton grew damp, until she writhed in helpless thrall to the hunger he drew from her. Only then did he close his mouth over her, drawing her in, sucking gently in a rhythm that caused an echoing tightening between her legs.

His hand slipped up the outside of her leg, drawing her nightgown with it, exposing her to the cool air and, wonderfully, to his touch. The first brush of his fingers at the apex of her thighs was a mere hint, barely stirring the nest, yet causing her to shudder breathlessly.

Yes, that was what she wanted. More of that. Harder. She lifted her hips to find what she needed, but he pulled his hand away, denying her. Tormenting her in the most beautiful way imaginable.

“Ethan...” A sharp whisper, and she reached for his powerful shoulders, trying to draw him closer, but he resisted. His mouth moved to her other breast, drawing her desire out like a taut string ready to be plucked to create the most perfect note.