Page 89 of Cowboy SEAL Homecoming

Chapter 21

Alex didn’t know how long they lay in the back of the truck in each other’s arms. Time had ceased to mean much of anything there for a while.

Eventually the cold air of the night began to seep in and they hunted around for their clothes and pulled them on. It took some time, but they convinced each other they needed to head back. Though he got the feeling she wanted to do that about as much as he did. Which was not at all.

Because reality was going to be something they had to deal with, and in the warm afterglow, the last thing he wanted to do was think about reality.

For the first time in so many years, he didn’t want to solve problems or achieve anything. He wanted to wallow in the perfect beauty of something.

But life didn’t work that way. Silently, he bundled them both back up and got in the truck and drove back to the house.

When he pulled to a stop, Becca was twisting her fingers together, staring at the house with an unreadable expression on her face.

He wasn’t quite ready to read any expressions. Or figure much of this out. Because he knew himself well enough to know what would happen when he started thinking and figuring things out—a plan, orders, a mission. Rules and codes, even if they were only his own, and that would most definitely irritate Becca into bolting.

Or maybe he wasn’t afraid his brain would go in its normal, overly careful patterns. Maybe he was damn well terrified he’d keep living in the moment. Just keep enjoying. And where the hell would that lead him?

He wasn’t sure. Everything about tonight had upended him. It was good, probably, but uncomfortable definitely.

“I have one last request for the evening,” she finally said.

“Okay.” Requests he could do. Whatever she wanted, he’d want to give it to her—if only to see her face light up in a smile.

Chill the fuck out, dude.

“It’s kind of…silly,” she continued, still twisting her fingers, looking nervous.

“I doubt that, Bec.” She was funny, and she was quirky, but silly? No. He couldn’t imagine it.

“Okay, well, you know, I was thinking or hoping… I mean, I thought maybe, it’s probably dumb, but you could, uh…”

He frowned over at her, fidgety and stuttery, and completely the opposite of what she’d been all night. So he reached across the console between them. He took her hand and brought it to his mouth, kissing the top of it. “Just say it. Whatever it is. It’ll be fine.”

“Would you sleep with me?” she asked, blurting it out even as none of the nerves left her vibrating frame.

“I think that’s what we just did.”

“No, I mean like in my bed. Tonight. With me. I mean, we can have sex again. Or we don’t have to. I don’t know how that whole multiple-times, sore thing works. But you know, like, just a…”

Alex didn’t think it was silly, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t taken off guard. It was more than fair for her to want that. He should have no qualms about offering that, no qualms in giving her whatever she wanted, but…

This was the damnedest thing about the woman fidgeting next to him. She had no experience with people, none whatsoever, and yet he always ended up feeling like he didn’t know what the hell he was doing.

He’d never spent the night with a woman before. Which he’d never thought about or considered. It had just been the way things had gone in his life.

“You don’t have to,” she said, trying to tug her hand from his. “It’s not that big of a deal.”

He held tight to her hand. “It’s not that I don’t want to,” he managed to say carefully.

Her hand stilled in his and she peered at him with those big, assessing eyes. “Is it because of the nightmares?”

He tensed, jaw clenching even as he told himself to relax. “No. The one nightmare isn’t a problem.” Which wasn’t a lie so much. Okay, maybe it fucking was, but so be it. “I just want you to know, the guys will give us crap for this. I can make sure they only give me—”

“I don’t mind them teasing me over something I have no shame about. But if you feel weird about it, then, you know, we shouldn’t. I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want to do out of some misplaced sense of…something.”

“It is not that I don’t want to do it,” he repeated firmly. It was just all those other things he didn’t want to discuss.

“Are you sure? Because it seems like you don’t want to do it. It’s not a big deal. Really. I just thought I’d ask.”