Or could I have one night, maybe two, with him, and move on?
Didn’t I deserve as much?
Who was I kidding? With any other man, maybe, but not this one.
“But maybe you hoped?”What a stupid thing to say, Brooke.I’d never been able to control myself around Rav.
“I’m not sure hope’s the right word.” His hands slid down from my jaw to my neck, pulling the high neck of my shirt down and causing every muscle inside me to tense. He’d feel the scar. He’d know it was there.
Run, Brooke! Run!
But if he felt the scar, he didn’t react. “Hope isn’t a big enough word to express what it was like seeing you again.”
His admission sent a pulse of desire through me that was impossible to ignore. I reached for him, pulling him closer so our mouths met again. This kiss was different—deeper, needier. His hands moved down my sides, spanning my waist before sliding around to my back, crushing me against him.
When his mouth left mine to trail kisses down my jaw, I tilted my head back, giving him access to my neck—to the right side. His lips found a sensitive spot below my ear, and my breath caught.
Six years, and he still remembered exactly how to touch me.
“Rav,” I breathed, my hands finding their way under the hem of his T-shirt, needing to feel his skin.
He made a sound low in his chest as my fingers traced up his sides, over the ridges of muscle that had sustained me through many a long night. When I tugged at the shirt, he straightened to haul it over his head in one fluid motion.
My gaze snapped to his shoulder. To the scarred mess where he’d been shot that day. Not just three neat circles, but jagged evidence of surgical repair, tissue damage, and healing. “I’m so sorry.”
Another stupid thing to say, Brooke.
“I’d do it all again if I had to.”
How could he say something like that and still think he’d failed me somehow?
I traced one of the marks on his shoulder, in the dip between muscles. He’d covered it all with new ink. I focused further out, taking in the whole design.
The tattoos on his upper arms were the same as before, Navy symbols like a compass star and anchor, alongside the red maple leaf and blue fleur-de-lis, but they’d been expanded up over his shoulder, and included?—
I sucked in a quick breath when I realized what I was looking at. A scorpion. Its tail wrapped around the bullet holes, one of the claws extending along a particularly long scar.
A scorpion? Was that for me? Or just some random figure a tattoo artist gave him to incorporate into the mess his doctors had left behind.
“This one’s not venomous.” He was so quiet, it was almost as though I were reading his mind instead of listening to his voice.
When did he get it?
“I had it done after the surgeries were finished.” He looked down at his shoulder, rolling it a few times. “And after I started with Reynolds.”
“Why this design?”
He blinked at me several times, a vulnerability flickering across his features before he wrapped me in his arms and pulled me flush against him. “When I was at my worst, I heard your voice, telling me I could go on. So I… I got this to always have something of you with me, even when I thought I didn’t deserve it.”
But still, he hadn’t called me back?
I wanted to believe him—wanted it with such a passion that my stomach churned. But years of silence couldn’t be erased by a tattoo and a few tender words.
“I’m so confused.” I leaned forward, pressing my lips to the most prominent scar, feeling the raised texture against my mouth. “I’m still angry with you, but I…”
But no matter what, my body craved him.
My stupid heart did, too.
