“Does it hurt?” She murmurs.
“No. Itches, sometimes.”
“What happened?” I tense, and she shakes her head. “Sorry. I shouldn’t have asked—”
“It’s fine. On our last job, we were working counter-terrorism in…” I bite my lip. “A, uh, foreign country.”
Her mouth twitches. “Confidential, is it?”
“Kind of. Let’s just say the Middle East. We were supposed to be doing recon, but our patrol got captured. The guys locked us up and tortured us for information.”
She sucks in a breath and pushes closer, brushing her thumbs over my face. “Theycutyou?”
“Among other things.” A shiver rolls up my spine as memories press into the back of my head. Dark, and black, and full of pain.
She must see it in my face, because she switches subjects. “Matt said that you used to carry a picture of me.”
Shock rocks me. Thatson of a bitch.Why the Hell would he tell her that? I’d honestly prefer to discuss the torture. “One picture,” I admit. “I’m sorry. With everything going on right now, that probably seems creepy.”
“No,” she whispers. “Things like that aren’t creepy when you’re a celeb. I had, like, twenty posters of Justin Timberlake in my bedroom when I was a teenager. I didn’t apologise when I met him.”She tucks some hair behind my ear. It’s too short to stay there, so it falls out again. She tucks it back, over and over, until she’s essentially just stroking my hair. I don’t understand what’s happening. “How did you get it?”
I rub my face. “A guy in our patrol, Damon, had a sister who worked as an editor for a magazine. She sent all of her issues to him. You were on the cover of one. I thought you were—beautiful, I guess. I couldn’t stop looking at you. He noticed, thought it was hilarious, and ripped it out, stuck it over my bunk. At first it was a joke, but then, when we moved on, I just… couldn’t bring myself to toss it. So I folded it up and kept it with me. It was like having a lucky charm.”
“Huh.” Her face is thoughtful. “So did you, like, jerk off over me, or what?”
My mouth falls open. “I…”
She laughs. “It’s okay. It’s sort of a given when you do lingerie shoots that people are gonna wank over the shots. And I’d much rather it be a lonely soldier in his barracks than some creepy stalker.”
“I didn’t, though,” I say honestly.
“Hm?”
“I didn’t—do that. Which probably makes it weirder.” I run a hand through my hair. I’m shit with words, and there’s really no way to put this without sounding completely deranged. “It wasn’t a lingerie shot. It was a picture of you on the beach, wearing a white t-shirt and this ridiculous, huge floppy hat. You were holding an ice cream and smiling at the camera, and… I don’t know. You were so beautiful. And it was souglydown there. Some guys had girlfriends, or kids, or families that they were fighting for, but I didn’t have any of that shit. But I could look at that picture of you and remember that beautiful things still existed in the world. Sunshine, and ice cream, and happy girls on beaches wearing floppy hats. It reminded me that that’s what I was putting myself through Hell for. So that stuff could still exist.”
She sits up slowly, her eyes wide. I grimace, heat rising to my face. I sound like a total creep. “I’m sorry. That must be—”
She cuts me off. “I think you’re the most beautiful man I’ve ever seen.”
I stare at her. It’s a completely preposterous thing to say. “I’m notbeautiful,” I sputter.
“No?”
“No! I’m… people turn around and stare at me in the street. I makebabiescry, I’m notbeautiful—”
She cuts me off with a kiss.
For a second, I’m taken aback. She presses closer, running her tongue against my bottom lip, and I feel almost clumsy, like I’m on the back foot. But then she softens, her body melting against my front, and my hindbrain takes over. I wrap my hands around her hips and drag her into me, yanking her onto my lap. She keens as her pelvis hits mine, winding her thighs around my waist like a vice.
God. I’ve wanted this ever since I set eyes on Briar. Kissing her feels exactly how I imagined. Like sunshine, and beach days, and summer afternoons. Happiness glows through me, lighting me up inside. The kiss gets harder and rougher. Electricity sparks everywhere our skin brushes; I feel the rub of her cotton shirt against my skin, and the soft press of her tits through the fabric.
Her little hands slide up my bare chest, twisting into my chest hair, then wrapping around my neck. Her nails scrape up against the skin, and I can’t stop the growl that falls out of my mouth. With every little shift of her hips against mine, I feel a throb of blood between my legs. I grind back up on her, and she gasps, reaching for the waistband of my boxers.
Shit. We’re going way, way too fast.
“Briar.” I shake my head, forcing myself to pull away. “Briar, stop.”
She sits back and looks up at me with pink cheeks, then rolls her eyes. “Let me guess.” She drops her voice. “We canny do thes. It’s against company policy, lassie. A’m sorry, it’s just no’ ethical.”
