21 Marine Salute: 21 Always a Marine Tales (34 page)

“Shhh.” His whisper soothed the ache clawing inside to get out. “We’re gonna do some soap and then back under.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m a child.” The words lacked real heat.

“Trust me, sweetheart. I don’t think you’re child.” As if to emphasize the point, he rubbed a washcloth across her chest. The fabric rasped over her nipples and the tips pebbled expectantly. A current of need buzzed through her, swarming from her breasts down to her sex and back up again. Her legs buckled and she sagged back against him. Zach’s arm stroked up her belly and caught her just below her breasts. The contrast of his warm tan against her mottled paleness cramped the desire flooding her limbs.

She bit the inside of her lip and tasted blood, but she managed to stifle the moan climbing up her throat. He continued his torment, lathering her chest and shoulders. Just when she became accustomed to the spicy storm heating her breasts, he soaped a path between her legs. An almost foreign bliss buzzed up from her sex and heat flooded downward. Fighting to catch her breath, she slapped a palm against the tiled wall.

The arm holding her up banded like steel around her middle. She would not fall. He wouldn’t let her. Her fingers curled. The hard cotton rasped against her sex, stroked the inside of her thighs in silken, hot, soapy fashion and rasped against her clit.
Too much
.

The orgasm rolled her under. The vanity lights rainbowed as though a kaleidoscope through the water. The buzz of pleasure centered at her core and zinged through her body. Her muscles spasmed and released. She came too fiercely. She opened her mouth to scream and all that escaped was a long moan. Her nails scraped at the tile, fighting for purchase, to hold the line against the torrent.

Zach murmured to her, but she could barely understand the words. Another caress against her clit and she rode the roller coaster again. Tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, and her heart slammed into her ribs. It was too much. The cloth fell away and his hand cupped her sex. She wanted to clamp down on him, ached to feel the pressure of his fingers—or better his cock—tunneling into her.

Her damn muscles refused to cooperate. Her recalcitrant thighs quivered, failing her control. She couldn’t grind against his hand or urge him inside. His fingers rested against her clit, neither stroking nor removing the pressure.

“Shh, sweetheart. You’re way too sensitive and I’m sorry, I didn’t realize how much.” Her head lay back against his shoulder. The heel of his hand moved in slow circular motions, wringing another womb-clenching climax from her. Her knees buckled and the only barrier keeping her upright was the hard body wrapped around hers.

His fingers abandoned her sex and ran up and down her body. Sluicing off the soap, she realized belatedly. He shut the water off and carried her out of the shower. Thankfully, he didn’t seem to mind her boneless lack of cooperation. He settled her on a towel laid over the toilet lid and once she sat, he went to work with a second towel, drying her off efficiently. His cock thrust outward, a raging hard on bobbing between his legs.

Son of a bitch, she got off and he was the one hurting right now. She caught one of his hands on the upward stroke. “Zach….”

He pulled his hand away and gave her a stern look. “No touching, sweetheart. I’m already reminding myself that you aren’t up for this yet, and it’s taking everything I have to not pick you up and take you right against the wall.”

A quiver rippled through her belly and wet heat soaked her sex. They used to do that. He loved walls. Hell, he loved any hard surface. For all his beauty and his charm, he loved it rough and wild.

“God, babe…don’t look at me like that.” The words were nearly a groan, and he wrapped the towel around her and shuffled away before she touched him. He stuck his head out the door and into the bedroom. “Logan!”

The man in question appeared within seconds, his gaze snapping sharply from Zach to her. “What’s wrong?”

“Help her get dressed so I don’t do something I regret later.”

No matter how much she tried to tell herself that wasn’t a rejection, the request stung. Jazz folded her arms in front of the towel and squirmed back, not that the low counter tops really hid her emaciated form.

“I got this, go walk it off.” Logan didn’t have to make the offer twice. Zach practically fled the bathroom. All business, Logan scooped her up, towel and all from the toilet seat and carried her into the bedroom. “You want your uniform back on or something else?”

“MARPATs.” The word shouldn’t be that hard to say.

Logan set her on the bed and unzipped her bag. “I’ll unpack this when we get back from seeing James.”

Fantastic—from orgasm to rejection to the head shrinker—her day was complete. Logan carried back a Marine green T-shirt, bra, clean underwear, and her MARPATs. Her fingers went to her bare neck and swallowed the tears clogging her throat. “Where are my tags?”

“They kept taking you back in for surgery and had to remove them.” He tugged the chain out from under his own shirt and her heart squeezed. Her tags hung on the chain. He draped the them around her neck and the metal, still warm from his body, tingled against her skin. “Better?”

Strangely enough, she did feel better. Not quite trusting herself to speak, she nodded once.

“Okay, babe. Let’s get you dressed and fed. Clock’s ticking.”

***

The psychologist turned out to be a nice-looking guy in his thirties. While his hair wasn’t clipped to standard, it was neat and matched his business dress appearance. She’d eaten the burger Logan sat in front of her and tried not to notice when Zach joined them—still damp from his second shower and dressed once more. She lied that the burger was good, ate at least half of it. It sat inside her stomach like a lead weight. The stilted conversation ended quickly enough because they had to get her to the appointment.

James dismissed her escort much to their chagrin and wheeled her into his office behind closed doors. For ten minutes, she’d sat there, saying nothing—aware of the doctor’s assessment.

The silence weighed on her.

“How does this work?” They were the first words she managed since their introduction.

“We talk. We don’t talk. It can work a variety of ways. How do you want it to work?” An easy-sounding answer to a not-so-easy question. She turned her attention to the great picture window overlooking a landscaped courtyard populated by trees and flowering plants.

“I don’t know. I prefer rules and regulations. Procedure.” All of which was true. She specialized in making things happen. She managed men, supplies, and intelligence.

“Makes sense, you’re a Gunnery Sergeant. You’re used to managing situations and people.”

Except that she couldn’t manage at the moment. The joke was on her. She clenched her left hand into a fist. Her right hand ignored her save for a rude twitch of her middle finger as though flipping herself the bird.

“Yes.” It was a better answer than the one screaming inside her head.

“Procedurally speaking, therapy is about what you need. So if you want to make a list of conditions or topics, we can focus on those one at a time.” He made it sound so simple. She shivered. The room was too cold.

“I don’t know what’s relevant.” Lists required assignment of priority and value.

“Everything is relevant.”

She laughed, the humorless sound harsh to her ears. Was desiring two men relevant to being blown up? Did her body’s lack of cooperation have a priority over the desire to fuck them? She had no hair, she barely looked like a woman, and her life as Marine could very well be over. So what use would they ever have for a broken Marine?

What use do I have
?

“Too general?” James leaned back against his chair, one leg crossed over the other. He appeared utterly normal, comfortable almost, as though willing to sit there all day.

“Non-specific requirements lead to non-specific responses.”

“Fair enough. You were upset when you arrived, and you appeared relieved when the guys left. Why?”

Well, that was specific.

I had several orgasms, and Zach ran away. I guess being turned on by Frankenstein’s Marine isn’t as appealing in fact as it is in theory
. “I’m just tired.”

“Gunny, do us both a favor. If you don’t want to answer, say so. Lying doesn’t help.”

Anger surged up to pound against the back of her eyes. She recognized the completely irrational response, but the torrent seized her like a ragdoll and carried away her reason. “Don’t call me a liar. I may not understand what the fuck my brain is doing or why my brain is doing it to me, but I am tired. Really fucking tired.”

“Because lying in a hospital bed is work and so is rolling around in that wheelchair.”

Was he for real? “I was injured.”

“You were injured. But that was weeks ago. What’s your excuse now?”

Fury ballooned in her chest, pinching her heart and squeezing her lungs. “My brain isn’t working. You think I want to be stuck in that bed? You think I want to be in this wheelchair?”

She tried to shove her right leg out, but it only twitched and slid off the foot rest. Pain dug hard fingers into her thigh, the muscle twisting brutally. “I’d walk the fuck out the door right now if I could.”

“And that pisses you off.” The mild understatement didn’t deflate her frustration.

“Of course it pisses me off. I forget things. They repeat information to me over and over. For a week they taped sticky notes to the tray in my room so I remembered where I was. Why I was here…what happened.”

“Why are you here?”

“Because some fucker planted an IED in a university and tried to blow me up.”

“Tried or succeeded?” The mild tone continued to hammer at her.

“Succeeded or I’d still be in theatre.”
I wouldn’t be broken. I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have had Zach’s hands on me or Logan’s dog tags around my neck
. Pain spasmed in her chest.

“But he didn’t succeed.” The doc’s voice dragged her back to the room.

“What?”

“The guy who planted the IED wanted to kill you. Presumably he wanted to kill a lot of someones—maybe even the little girl you saved. But he didn’t succeed. You’re alive.”

She snorted. “What kind of a life am I going to have? I’m like the walking dead. Scratch that, rolling dead.”

“Marine, you’ve had eight surgeries. You had shrapnel that impacted your skull and cracked your cranium, impacting the brain beneath. You nearly died on the table, but you didn’t. A lot of people would still be in the hospital, but you’ve left the room behind. You’ve got a long road in front of you, but don’t forget just how far you’ve traveled already.” James’ expression mirrored his words, equal parts stern reprimand and gentle sympathy. “You want a checklist for your recovery, make one. Set your goals. You have an entire company here to help you make it happen.”

“I can’t ask them to do it. It’s not fair.”

“I’m sorry. You can’t ask who to do what?” He zeroed in on her outburst.

“I can’t ask Zach and Logan to wait or to wonder, or to even be there when and if I can ever choose. And if I choose, how do I do that? How do I stick one of them with a cripple? Wouldn’t it just be easier to walk—well, when I can—walk away?” Her head hurt. Where the hell had that come from? “Sorry, this isn’t about my personal lack of morals. We were talking about the IED.”

“Jasmine, we’re here to discuss you. Everything is relevant. What choice are you sweating about?”

The interesting phrase touched a chord of awareness. Sweat slicked her arms and soaked through her shirt. Despite the icy chill in the room, droplets of perspiration rolled down her face. Her hands trembled. Hell, she didn’t even do therapy right. “It’s not important.”

“I think it’s important. It sounds like it’s troubling as much as what happened in Afghanistan….”

“I don’t want to talk about it…not with you. Not with them. I have to focus on getting back on my feet. I have to be me again.” He needed to let it go, let her have some shred of her dignity.

“Tell me about the explosion.”

Thank you
.”I don’t really remember it. A buzz. Running. Bright light. Then I was in Germany.”

“What was your assignment?”

Jazz pinched the bridge of her nose. Her eyes burned, but she stemmed the tears before they fell. “My FET team presented to a group of local girls and their mothers about educational opportunities. We’ve been gaining momentum in the outlying villages, particularly those where the women had to run everything anyway. City women are harder to reach, but the task is to bring those villagers in, set them up, and create an environment that local women will want to participate in.”

“What was your role in this assignment? Specifically?” His pencil scratched on the notepad in front of him.

“I was the closer. Roxy, she engaged, handled opening arguments, and revved up the crowd. Stormer delivered the facts, the statistics, and set the playing field. I made it emotional by encouraging them to apply the information and the ideals to their own personal goals. If I hooked one girl, she usually brought two or three with her.”

James took more notes. “How did you know who to hook?”

“I watched them. You can tell a lot from body language, how a person leans forward, or withdraws. Similarly eyes are great storytellers. The girl who wants to know more, squints. As though in a personal struggle between culture and curiosity. The one who showed the most interest was the one I went after.” The tension in her shoulders eased.

“What is your success rate?”

“Twenty-eight percent—up from twenty-four last month.”

“How often do you hold those meetings?”

“We tried for weekly. We moved the locations frequently, to make it easier for those traveling, and we spent the intervening week visiting villages with information about the meetings.” She was thirsty.

“Are you in love with Logan and Zach?”

“Yes.”

The word escaped before she fully acknowledged the question. Her lungs squeezed. Jerking her gaze up, she focused on the doc, but he simply added another note to his legal pad.