Liam's List (21 page)

“
Mmm,” Vivian moaned, low
and sexy like she’d just woken from a nap. “Nice
necklace.”

I laughed, not missing the coy inflection in
her voice. “It’s the world’s most affectionate gift.”

“
And the cheapest.” She
teased. “Here I thought my pearl necklace was going to be from
Tiffany’s.” She fanned her fingers over her breasts, massaging the
warm liquid into her flesh, glazing her tits with my semen. “Now
you see it.” Her voice was husky. “Now you don’t.”

Smiling, I smoothed my hand up the quivering
slope of her inner thigh. “Do you really want a necklace from
Tiffany’s?”

“
Don’t be silly.” She
looped a finger in the silver chain around her neck, twisting it
around her finger. “The only necklace I need is
this,
right here.”

Her words struck the air from my lungs.

It was the dog tag I’d given her right before
I left for Iraq.

For a long moment, neither
of us spoke as we stared into one another’s eyes, both breathing
hard. Her eyes glimmered with emotion and she looked at me like she
was looking
into
me. And she saw
me
, exposed, with all my flaws, my
fears, my pain, and her eyes told me it was okay. That everything
would be okay.

I took her hand, drawing it to my mouth and
kissing her fingertips. “You never take it off?”

“
Never.” She held my gaze
steadily. “Not even in the shower.”

At a loss for words, I pressed my hand over
her heart and kissed her slowly, deeply, fully.

A low moan escaped her as
I caught her bottom lip between my teeth and nipped as I breathed
the words, “
I love you
.”

Chapter Twenty-Six

Liam

Leaning indolently against the doorframe,
Vivian watched me as I dressed. “You still meeting up with your
friends tonight?”

“
Yep,” I said, feeling a
little ill at ease about seeing them for the first time in months.
“And you’re coming with me.”

I knew Vivian wanted me to engage with the
outside world, with my friends. So when Rob Harmon, a buddy from my
unit, had called earlier this week and invited me to a get-together
at The Ould Sod, an Irish pub down on Adams Avenue, I agreed to
join them.

“
But I don’t want to
intrude.” Viv pushed off from the doorframe and wandered into my
closet, running a hand along the row of shirts. “I know you guys
will have plenty to catch up on.”

“
You won’t be intruding.”
I whipped one of the navy shirts from the hanger and shoved my arms
through the sleeves. “I’m sure some of them will probably be there
with their wives.”

“
Hmm.” Her lips pursed for
a moment but then bloomed into a full smile. “Will any of them be
in their uniform?”

“
I don’t know,” I answered
truthfully. “Maybe.”

For some reason or other,
Vivian must have taken my
maybe
for a
yes
because the next thing I knew, she was pulling my
desert camouflage off a hanger and thrusting it at me. “Here,” she
ordered. “Put this on.”

“
Viv.” I sighed. “I really
don’t feel like wearing my ACUs.”

“
Do it for me?” The hope
in her eyes slowly turned to pleading.

As my hesitation stretched, she said,
“Please? Just this once?”

When she looked at me with those ocean-blue
eyes, eyes I could swim in, how could I possibly say no?

“
All right,” I conceded
and shrugged on my ACUs. “For you, I’d wear a hazmat if you asked
me to.”

When I was fully dressed, her lips curved
into a subtle smile. “I love you in uniform,” she told me, running
her hands over the straining muscles of my back and pulling me
close.

“
Oh, really?” A groan
scraped from my throat as she slid her hand inside my fatigues, her
deft fingers easing over the torturously tight sac of my
balls.

“
You in uniform.” She
palmed my balls, cupping her hand over the sac, pressing the pads
of her fingers against the spot right behind them. “It really turns
me on.”

Afterward, sweaty and exhausted, I held her
in my arms as we lay on the closet floor—Viv buck-naked and me in
desert camouflage.

I lowered my head and pressed a kiss to the
valley between her breasts. “We should get going. We were supposed
to be there ten minutes ago.”

“
Okay,” she whispered, her
voice scratchy from sex. “But don’t you even think of taking off
your uniform.” Before I could protest, she took my face in her
hands and brushed a feathered kiss over my lips. “You should be so
proud.”

By the time we got to The Ould Sod, we were
already running half an hour late. In my haste, I slammed straight
into a burly man the moment I set foot inside the pub.

“
Hey!” he slurred, fixing
his bleary-eyed glare on me. “Watch it, asshole!”

“
Sorry, man,” I hastily
apologized. Clearly, he was drunk off his ass, and I wasn’t about
to pick a fight with someone who was three sheets to the
wind.

I didn’t have the time or the energy.

He, on the other hand, was raring for a fight
and stepped into the ring with gloves on.

“
You dumb fuck!” he
snarled. His features were rough-hewn and his breath was rancid
with decay.

I started to push past
him, but he roughly grabbed at my sleeve, almost ripping off my
unit patch. His murky pupils were dilated as he took in my desert
camouflage. “Fuckin’ trigger puller!” he spat. “I bet you killed
innocent women and children over there in Afghanistan, Iraqistan,
and Iranistan.” He swiped a hand across his mouth. “All the
damn
stans
.”

I froze. The world outside stopped. It was
just noise.

A distant, meaningless noise.

Inside, my senses opened like floodgates as
the fragmented images floated to the surface of my
consciousness.

The red Honda Accord that I’d lit up.

The lifeless bodies of the innocent Iraqi
family inside that car.

The odor of charred flesh after the IED went
off.

All that guilt and grief festering inside me
took over any ability to react. To respond.

While I stood paralyzed, Rob Harmon suddenly
appeared by my side. He fisted his fingers in my attacker’s shirt,
dragged him out of the pub, and tossed him into the street.

Even when Harmon stalked back into the pub, I
remained in a sort of catatonic state.

The one time, the
only
time I’d worn my
uniform since my return from Iraq, I was called the very thing I
believed myself to be… a trigger puller. A monster.

Panic clawed at my insides, filling my head
with useless noise, and I beat it back as I heard Harmon calling my
name.

“
Sykes!” A strong hand
rested on my shoulder. “You doing okay, man?”

I nodded a
distracted
yes
as
I surveyed the pub, looking for Vivian.

A wave of nausea rolled through me; she was
nowhere to be found. While I scanned the pub again, shouts and
screams could be heard from outside.

“
Fuck, man!” Someone
barged through the door and yelled, “You’ve gotta come outside and
see this! That shitfaced mo’fucker is getting his ass whipped by a
girl!”

My hands clenched into
fists and my first thought was,
Viv better
be okay or someone is gonna have hell to pay
.

My heart pounded through my body as I flew
out the door. Harmon followed me.

Outside on the sidewalk, coarse laughter
rumbled through an assembled crowd of frat boys.

Then I heard a scream and the faint sound of
a struggle.

With an impatient growl, I shouldered my way
past the group of frat boys and stopped when I caught sight of
Viv.

There she was, in the middle of the parking
lot, clouting my attacker over the head with her bag, her tiny
fisted hand flying to connect with any part of him.

I’d never seen her like this before… so
unhinged, choking with rage.

Rage for me.

Instinctively, I moved to go to her, the
resolve I felt to protect her blazing into something hard and
bright in the face of her courage. But a large hand closed over my
shoulder, restraining me. “Let her be,” Harmon said quietly. “She
needs to get it all out. And if that fucker so much as touches her,
he’s all yours.”

Shrugging away from his hold, I beat down the
encroaching panic with deep and steady breaths. Maybe it was the
expression in Vivian’s eyes, something at once coolly and fiercely
defiant, it gave me pause. And I realized Vivian the lioness was
protecting me.

As I stood rooted to the spot, I watched the
darkness creep across her features, stealing her away from me with
smoky fingers, one inch at a time.

And I knew. I knew Viv’s rage ran much deeper
than what was on the surface.

It was rage for what she couldn’t
control.

It rage for what the war had done to me.

It was rage for what she had lost.

For she had lost her parents and now she had
lost a part of me.

Again and again, Viv lashed out at my
attacker. Swinging her arms in the air, she went at the inebriated
imbecile until he doubled over his knees and crumpled to the
tarmac, squealing like a pig about to be slaughtered. “Fuck!” he
screamed. “Get this fuckin’ bitch away from me!”

Still, Viv wouldn’t stop going at him—with
her bag, with her fists, delivering blow after solid blow.

When the moron finally realized no one was
coming to his rescue, he pushed up from his knees and staggered
away from her. “Bitch!” he yelled over his shoulder. “You’re
fuckin’ crazy!”

Viv spared him no words—just a savage,
cutting glare.

Shortly afterward, the crowd began to
disperse while Viv stood completely still.

All was silent save for her labored
breathing.

Only then did I go to her.

Wordlessly, I folded her into my chest and
she buried her face in my shirt. I felt her lungs expand with deep,
gasping breaths.

As her shoulders shook, a strangled sob tore
from her throat.

A deep pain sliced through my heart. “Shhh.”
With a trembling hand, I stroked her face, her hair, her tears.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered against her lips. “I’m so sorry.”

She stared at me, her pale skin lustrous in
the streetlight. “For what?”

I pressed a tender kiss to each of her
eyelids. “For screwing up your life. For screwing up my life. For
everything.”

“
You don’t have to be
sorry,” she bit out, sniffing back the tears.

“
C’mon,” I said softly,
resting my hand on the side of her face, my thumb skimming along
her cheekbone, wiping away the tears. “Let’s go home.”

“
No.” There was a small
break in her voice. “I want to go inside and meet your
friends.”

“
You sure?” I noted the
forced smile on her lips, the frayed edges of her
breath.

“
I’m sure.” Her smile
faltered, but it didn’t disappear entirely. And something I saw in
her eyes made me not want to argue.

“
All right,” I said at
last, although all I really wanted to do was get her home safely,
lay her down on my bed, and tuck her in for the night. “But the
second you change your mind, just give me a sign and we’ll leave,
okay?”

She nodded and I caught her hand, lacing her
fingers through mine.

As we neared the pub, Viv turned to me and
said, “I need to go use the restroom and freshen up a bit. You go
on.” She rested her hand on my back. “I’ll only be a few
minutes.”

“
Okay.” I drew her into my
arms and dropped a kiss on her forehead before making a quick stop
at the bar to get a drink. By the time I joined my friends at their
table, I gathered most of them were already on their fourth and
fifth rounds of beer.

“
Hey, Harmon,” Perez
goaded. “You still a FOBBIT?” When Harmon pointedly ignored him,
Perez turned to the petite redhead on his left. “Seriously! Your
man over here was a barrack rat. The TOC roach of all TOC roaches.
What I wanna know is, is Harmon like that at home, too?”

“
I wouldn’t know.” The
redhead gave a short shrug. “Since I have no idea what a FOBBIT is,
let alone a TOC roach.”

I pulled out a chair and sat down. “A
FOBBIT,” I offered, “is a soldier who has never left Forward
Operating Base.”

“
I see.” The redhead gazed
at Harmon, a tiny smile flitting across her lips. “Well, you are
sort of a homebody.” After a pause, she turned to the table and
asked, “What about a TOC roach? What’s that?”

“
Same thing,” Perez
answered. “A Tactical Operations Center roach is a lot like a
FOBBIT, except he goes to the gym all day and listens to his iPod
so much that he has cauliflower ears.” Perez gave a snort of
laughter. “That’s the extent of Harmon’s combat
experience.”

“
Shut the fuck up, Perez!”
Harmon slammed his fist on the table. “Who you calling a TOC roach?
You rear echelon maw’fucker.”

Perez, obviously feeling the heat and wanting
to change the subject, directed his next jab at me. “What’s up with
the cranberry juice, Sykes? My girlfriend drinks cranberry juice
when she has UTI or a yeast infection.”