“Fine. But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” Returning to his side, she took the bottle from him, ignored his barely hidden smile of triumph, and squeezed the oil into her hands. She waited until he turned over, and smoothed it across his shoulders.
Her agitation grew as her hands eased between his shoulder blades and down his back. The man was spectacularly built. Beneath smooth skin, packed muscles moved with sinuous grace as he arranged himself more comfortably on the blanket. Her fingers tingled at the feel of his warm flesh under her gliding palms. When she reached his buttocks, she slid her hands over the firm, supple flesh. He tensed, and she hid a smile of her own, even though he couldn’t see it from his facedown position.
Emboldened by the sudden shift of the power balance, her touch became more confident as she moved down over hard thighs and calves, glorying in his harsh intake of breath when she touched the hitherto unknown sensitive skin behind his knees. She continued until every inch of his back and legs were adequately protected. Then, feeling cheeky and triumphant that she hadn’t dissolved into a puddle of wanton need, she slapped a palm on his backside and announced, “There, all done.”
The look he leveled at her when he raised his head could’ve boiled the water in the pool all over again. From feeling triumphant, she was plunged into turbulent need again as his eyes promised all manner of erotic retribution. Her body zinged with painful anticipation, and urgent pounding started within. But he stayed where he was, a smile of pure devilment on his face as he regarded her.
“First, we shall eat. Then I’ll repay your…kindness.” He turned over, and her eyes bulged at his fierce arousal. His husky chuckle warmed her face. She scurried to her part of the blanket and busied herself laying out their lunch. When she raised her head, she breathed a shaky sigh of relief to see he’d donned his almost dry swim shorts.
“Bastard,” she muttered under her breath.
His shameless laugh told her he’d heard her. Just before he snapped the waistband into place, she noticed two sickle-shaped scars on his hip.
She’d seen them many times before and had once even dared to ask him how he’d gotten them. At the time, he’d just shrugged and given her a non-committal answer, and she’d logged the subject as one of the many no-go areas of their marriage.
She firmed her lips. Well, not this time, she vowed, setting out plates and cutlery before lifting out the chilled bottle of wine. They’d agreed to reach for middle ground, and that included learning as much as possible about him.
Starting now.
Chapter Eleven
“How did you get those scars on your hip?” Belle asked.
Nick froze. His face grew hard, his eyes shuttered. His shoulders shifted, and certain another of those shrugs was imminent, she hastened to pre-empt him.
“Nick, we were married for six months. And in all that time, you never talked about your life before you met me, aside from the barest of details. If you want this relationship to work, you’re going to have to share more than just the bare bones of your previous life with me.”
He stared at her with a steady, expressionless look. Just when she thought she’d shatter from the taut silence, he released a harsh breath and folded himself back onto the blanket. He picked up their wine and busied himself uncorking it. Her heart thumped with trepidation, but with calm hands, she opened tubs of salad and olives and laid out warm, crusty bread.
“It happened when I was in the Marines. Stationed in southern Afghanistan.” He paused.
She nodded in encouragement.
“One of my assignments was to infiltrate a trafficking gang charging astronomical sums to smuggle people—mostly children—out of the country, most often to be sold into prostitution. It went wrong. I was captured.”
She gasped, her hands pausing in the act of forking chicken salad onto his plate. “Were you tortured?”
He looked at her, his jaw taut but his expression steady and calm, as if reassuring her. “I went in knowing what might happen, but I took the risk anyway. I was only held for a day before I was extracted. But my captors used their time wisely.” He gave a mirthless smile, reaching over to take the plate from her frozen fingers. Setting it down, he poured wine into a crystal glass and passed it to her.
“Was anyone else with you? Other Marines?” she asked in hushed tones, fear for him churning through her while, at the same time, she felt a strange kindred bond with him from knowing they’d shared a similar experience. For her, looking after Father Tom and helping the Dutch couple had helped keep the gut-clawing fear bottled up. If she’d been on her own, she didn’t know what she would have done.
He shook his head and helped himself to the bread. A shaft of sunlight through the branches of the trees glinted in his hair and played over his face as he chewed before answering.
“I asked to go in alone. It’s better to do these things solo when undercover. Less risk of slip-ups that way. My CO agreed that to take anyone, even a fellow trained Marine, would’ve meant risking more lives.”
She nodded and took a sip of the crisp white wine, more to wet a mouth dry with fear for him than with enjoyment in mind. “And the traffickers? What happened to them?”
“They got what was coming to them,” was all he said, but it didn’t stop a chilled shiver from slithering down her spine. Unbidden, the image of the cave in Nawaka and the messy end to her captors rose in her mind, and she shuddered.
“Apart from those scars, did they do anything else to you?” she probed, not really wanting to know that he’d suffered further but unable to bear not knowing.
This time the shrug manifested itself. “I was a Marine, Tinkerbelle, so yes, I’ve collected my share of battle scars along the way, both inside and out. But before you go torturing yourself on my behalf, remember, I was trained for this sort of thing, so I knew what I was doing, okay?” he answered, his voice detached and almost carefree, as if his experience had been water off a duck’s back.
But looking into his eyes, she knew different. There were shadows of memories lurking there. No one could live through an experience like that and not be changed, be affected somehow by it. She knew she had.
As if reading her thoughts, he focused hard-glinting, gunmetal eyes on her. “Whereas you weren’t trained. I think this would be a good time to tell me what you were thinking of, throwing yourself into the middle of a war zone so far away from home?”
She’d known this day would come, that it was only a matter of time before he got around to interrogating her as to why she’d gone to Nawaka. And with his unbending focus on her, she knew he wouldn’t rest until he had an answer.