Page 47 of Hard to Lose

“I’m thinking I should be offended since it’s my kiss that was last on your lips,” Gunner says as he comes out from behind the bar and approaches me.

There’s a devious look in his eyes that makes my insides twist deliciously. I stay facing the bar and yelp when Gunner spins my chair around unexpectedly and makes a damn fine show of kissing me properly.

A cheer goes up all around us as he steps between my thighs, fists a hand in my hair, and mercilessly kisses me. For the briefest of moments, it’s just him and me and this incredible kiss.

But the noise fades back in, the kiss ends, and I’m left staring at a man who has a lopsided grin and a semi-hard-on pressing between my thighs.

Glad to know he feels the same way.

He leans down to whisper in my ear. “Kissing is most definitely not overrated.”

“Noted,” I murmur and then smile as he steps back behind the bar.

Taking a deep breath, I turn myself back around to face the bar to find Gunner sliding a gin and tonic in front of me with the cutest smirk on his face. Almost as if he can’t believe he just did that. Almost as though he’s surprised that I made him do that.

But it’s all Gunner. He watches. He listens. He acts.

And I’m one hundred percent here for it.

“It seems you left quite an impression on him,” Nix says from his seat beside me.

“I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing,” I say, totally aware I now have the attention of more people than I intended when I walked in here.

“It’s a good thing. Definitely a good thing,” he murmurs and takes a sip of his beer.

“How do you know Gunner?” I ask Nix.

“We served together.”

“Here? On deployment? Where?” I ask, trying to learn as much as I can about the man who I can’t seem to take my eyes off.

“Both.” He meets Gunner’s curious stare, and I notice a slight nod exchanged between them, almost as if Gunner is telling him it’s okay to tell me more. “I know Gunner is a hero because I was there. I was one of the ones he saved that day.”

“I had no idea. I don’t even know what to say,” I say below the noise of the bar. And I truly don’t. Gunner is so quick to squash any talk about heroics that I kind of assumed the comment Nix made that first night was more a bravado thing. Him saying it so I might like his buddy more.

But when I look at his face and see the somberness there, the admiration, I realize that Nix wasn’t simply being his friend’s wingman. He was serious.

“Nothing to say other than I wouldn’t be sitting here if it weren’t for that man right there.”

“Do you mind telling me what happened or is that something I should ask him?”

“You can ask all you want, but Gunner won’t tell you shit. He’s not that kind of guy despite the fact that the events of that day still haunt him every night when he sleeps as they do me.”

“I’m sorry.” I don’t know what else to say.

“There’s no need to be. We signed up for it.” His chuckle is self-deprecating, almost resigned, before he falls quiet for a beat as we both smile when Gunner’s laugh sounds out across the bar.

“But still . . .”

“But still,” he repeats and snorts. “We were on routine rounds at the base of the Tora Bora mountains. We had some intel about one of the towns along the way. They were making IEDs or some shit,” he says as if he doesn’t remember. I know for damn sure he probably remembers every little detail. “Anyway, we went to suss out if the informant was telling the truth and walked right into an ambush. It was a firefight like we’d never seen before, coming at us from every damn direction.” Nix shudders and takes another sip of his beer.

“I can’t even imagine,” I say, thinking how surreal it is to hear about something you see in movies and know it happened in real life to Nix and Gunner.

“We were in a bad way. Things were FUBAR,” he says and tips his beer to the neon sign of the term on the other side of the room. “There were ten of us that went in and one by one we were falling. We had no cover, no help, and air support was twenty minutes out when we had only about five minutes left of ammo. It was fucking terrifying. Somehow Gunner was able to get back to one of the Humvees. It was one of the only ones we had with armor on it and the fucking guy literally starts it up and plows right through the building where some of the enemies were taking cover. He came in like a goddamn superhero.”

“I can hear you, Nix,” Gunner warns as he walks past to grab some more beer glasses before moving back to the other end of the bar where I think he’s purposely keeping to.

“He can threaten me all he wants, but it’s not going to work.” Nix gives him the bird and a grin. “You need to know that he barreled through that building and back into the firefight he’d escaped from. He was like a madman, running around without us being able to lay down cover for him. We were all hit in some way or another and he did everything he could to pull us, carry us, and shove us into the Humvee so he could get us out of there to a location where we could defend ourselves until air support came. It was like he was a different person, Chase. He came in shouting orders to us left and right, trying to take out the enemy when he could, and trying to save us all at the same time. He did that three times. Three times he pulled that Humvee out and then plowed back into the village to extricate and save us. Three fucking times before . . .” Nix gives a shake of his head and then clears his throat as emotion I didn’t expect overwhelms him.