Page 93 of Damaged Desires

“Blood wings?” she asked, a confused frown appearing on her face that I attempted to rub away with my thumb.

“The day you pass the Trident board and they finally give you your bird, the team congratulates you by pinning it on and then proceeding to pound their hands on it. All of them. Repeatedly. Over and over again until it’s embedded into you as it should be. A way of life. Something you can’t ever change. You are a SEAL whether the actual piece of metal is there or not.”

Her eyes widened, and her fingers ran over the scar softly again, as if she could sand it away with a gentle touch. But she couldn’t. It was me.

“That must have hurt.”

There was nothing to be said to that.

“I’ve played with the idea of getting a tattoo,” she told me.

“Why haven’t you?” I asked.

“It seemed so… clichéd. Getting a tattoo to remember that you… survived.” She said the word survived as if it were a snake or a rat. As if it were something you were supposed to run from.

“Surviving isn’t nothing, Athena,” I said. She rolled her eyes. “Nietzsche says, ‘To live is to suffer, to survive is to find some meaning in the suffering.’ I’ve forgotten that recently. You’re reminding me of it.”

She twitched in my arms, almost as if I’d stabbed her, and I wanted to apologize for it. To apologize for every hurt I’d sent her way, starting with the one I’d given her when I’d asked her to leave.

“I’m sorry I asked you to walk away that morning at Tristan’s.”

Saying Tristan’s name was like flicking the shutters closed on a window. Dani’s soft look was replaced with business Dani. Daniella. The ever-efficient professional. She pushed against my chest again, and I let her go.

“I have a lot to do today,” she said, moving to the edge of the bed. I sat up, leaving the sheets behind and wrapping my legs around her middle and my arms around her chest, trying to figure out how to bring back the woman who’d spoken my name like a prayer.

“You’re running,” I said, a whisper in her ear, before nibbling on the soft lobe and then placing kisses down her neck and onto her shoulder.

The tension in her body eased slightly, and she relaxed back against my chest, placing a kiss on the arm I had around her. I slowed my kisses at her neck, moving a hand to her breast, kneading, twisting, pulling. I was rewarded with a gasp and her breath coasting over my arm.

“Shower with me?” I asked.

She stilled before nodding, and I took it as the step forward it was. Her staying, me staying. I led her into the bathroom where I made her come apart with my hands and my body a few more times before we had to face the world.

As I dug through my dresser to pilfer any clean clothes I could find, she wrapped her arms around my waist, watching me shuffle through the old clothes. I pulled out an ancient pair of sweats and an even older Green Day T-shirt. She snaked out a hand to take an Aerosmith T-shirt. They were all from a time in my life when I thought concerts and skateboarding were my future. She slid the shirt over her head, and the look of her in my shirt was enough to make me want to take her back into bed and forget there was anything she had to do today.

A rumble escaped my lips, and she kissed me before laughing and pulling herself away. “I have to get to work.” She gave me a once-over as I slid on the beat-up clothes. “What is this look?”

“It’s the I-have-to-do-laundry look.” I grinned at her, searching for my clothes we’d tossed around the room and placing them in the hamper I’d set by the door.

“I have things to wash as well. When I’m done for the day, maybe you can show me where the laundry room is at?”

“Just give them to me; I’ll throw them in with mine,” I said.

She laughed at first, but then, noting my lack of a smile, said, “You’re serious.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“They’re female clothes. Some of them can’t just be tossed in the washer and the dryer without a care.”

“Athena, I’ve been doing female laundry for a while now. Even before living at Tristan’s, I practically lived with Angie.”

Her brow creased, and I realized I’d said the wrong thing again—other women’s names coming off my lips after hers had been on them all night. She turned and headed for the door, but I leaped over the hamper and grabbed her, pulling her hard to my chest.

“Ask me; don’t run,” I growled.

“What if I don’t want to ask you?” she said, chin up, confidence hiding her true feelings.

“You do,” I told her, and it caused her to bristle.