by Serena Bell
She blushed deeper, but she looked incredibly pleased with herself, which was at least as much reward as the rest of it for Griff. “One of New Becca’s resolutions is to stop dating assholes,” she said. “I decided it would be easier to do that if I wasn’t constantly dealing with the virginity thing.”
“Glad to help,” he said.
“If you don’t mind my asking, how’d you lose your virginity?”
He grinned. “It’s such a teenage guy story. Are you sure you want to hear? It doesn’t necessarily paint me in the best light.”
“Go for it.”
“I was fifteen.”
“Fifteen!”
“Yeah. That wasn’t actually that young in the town where I grew up. It was just the way it was. We didn’t have anything else to do. By the time I lost mine, I already felt like I was behind the curve.”
She rolled her eyes at him.
“Well, I know different now,” he said. “Anyway, I was at summer camp. And there was this girl there. She was my age, and pretty, with—” he paused, trying to be truthful but not crude. “—she was well-endowed. All the guys were interested.”
“You guys,” Becca said darkly. “All alike.”
“At fifteen, hell yeah.” He eyed her admiringly. “Not so different now, maybe, either. Just able to see a few more good traits without tunnel vision.” He smoothed her hair back and kissed her nose.
“So this girl? The curvy one?”
“Everyone said that she’d come to camp with a box of condoms. Like, her parents had put it into her luggage, just in case. And that, as you might imagine, made her the object of a lot of curiosity. Mine included. I made friends with her, and then I kissed her one night next to the lake, and a few nights after that, we used up the condoms. In the woods, on her sleeping bag.”
“Did you take her virginity, too?” Becca asked, big-eyed.
He kind of wanted to say yes, just for the first rites cred, but the truth was, he’d been third in line. He shook his head. “Nope. Just mine.”
“Was it good?”
“Not the first time,” he said. “I mean, it was fine for me, but it was just like you’d expect. Over in a blink of an eye. The second and third times, though, I managed to do a little better.”
“Just the small pack, then?” she teased.
“Yeah, that was what I said, too,” he said, grinning. He hesitated, wanting to ask a question that had been on his mind, but not sure how to word it. “Hey.”
“Yeah?”
“How does someone as hot as you end up a virgin at twenty-four?”
She smiled, a cat-who-swallowed-the-canary smile. “I had a slow start. When I was seventeen, I started dating this guy, Todd. He came from a conservative Christian family, and he wanted us to save ourselves for marriage. I would have been fine with—” She bit her lip. “But he was adamant. Nothing below the waist. So that’s how it was, and—you’d be surprised how hot that could be.”
Her cheeks pinked up.
“I wouldn’t,” he said, thinking about the way Becca kissed and how she’d responded to his mouth on her nipples. His dick stirred back to life.
“We were together three years. After high school, he went to community college and I was working, and we were seeing each other a few times a week. He’d hinted a proposal was on the horizon. I thought maybe he’d even bought a ring. But then he—”
She bit her lip again, and he realized he was braced, anger tightening up his chest. Someone had hurt Becca, and he so, so wasn’t okay with that.
“He quit waiting. He’d been having sex with someone else for several months. While I kept holding out for him. The worst part was, when I found out—” Her voice broke, but she sailed on through it and steadied out. “He said he still wanted to marry me, and he thanked me for staying pure even though he hadn’t been able to resist temptation.”
“What the fuck? Like, what the actual fuck? That bastard!”
The guy, whoever he was, was lucky that Griff wasn’t violent by nature, because otherwise his days would have been numbered. Griff would have hunted him down and strangled him with bare hands.
“Shit, Becca, that sucks.” I know what that’s like, he didn’t say aloud. But he remembered, with a rush of pain. The sense of loss and betrayal. Someone you trusted—hell, loved—making you feel like none of it had ever mattered. Like you hadn’t mattered.
She waved a hand. “It was a long time ago.”
He’d seen that hand wave before, though. He knew—she didn’t like to admit to anyone how much something hurt her.
Took one to know one, on that front.
She rolled away from him, toward the edge of the bed. She grabbed her phone and tapped an app.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
She gave him a look. “Ordering myself a Lyft.”
He winced. She must have seen, because she said, “What?”
“Do you think that’s how I roll? A Lyft?”
“Um—no. Sorry. I just didn’t want you to feel like you had to drive me home.”
He glared at her.
“Sorry! OK.”
“Pour yourself another glass of champagne,” he said. “Have some chocolate covered strawberries. Celebrate. Then I’ll take you home. Also—”
He got up, crossed to his bag, and pulled out the gift he’d brought her from the lingerie shop. “Thought you might want something clean to put on. Since your underwear’s all wet.”
“Your fault,” she said, shooting him a look that made his dick wake up and show interest in more action.
He watched as she pulled his gift from the bag. “Wow,” she said. “That’s really pretty. And you really didn’t have to do that.”
He shrugged. “Kinda wanted to see you in it.”
“Should I put it on?”
The best part was watching her wriggle the red teddy bodysuit up her body. She shimmied to accomplish it and her tits were like something he would have dreamt up when he was a teenager.
Goddammit, he was going to fuck her again.
She reached for her dress, but he put an arm out to stop her. “Not yet,” he said.
Her eyes got big at that.
18
The second time was even better than the first. He took a long time getting her ready, kneeling at her feet, her ass cupped in his big hands, his face buried against the lace of the bodysuit. She was pretty sure, from how seriously he took his job, that he’d planned this from the moment he’d first seen the scrap of red lingerie in the store.
He peeled her out of the bodysuit and laid her back on the bed and then he stroked into her until her world narrowed to the sharp sparkle of sensation where his body met hers. In, out, heat and light and that crazy spiraling tension that wound all the way to climax and took him with her. This time, she stayed aware enough to watch him, the way all his muscles went taut, the expression on his face one of pleasure bleeding right to the edge of pain.
Afterwards, he asked her if she wanted a shower.
“We could shower together. You know, save time,” she suggested.
He grinned. “We’d be here all night if I got in there with you.”
All night wouldn’t be so bad, she thought, and then was annoyed with herself. What had he said to her? His threshold for complicated was so low that he didn’t even stick around for donuts and coffee. She wasn’t going to get sappy and want more. She wasn’t going to be that dumb stereotype.
She got in the shower and washed herself clean, marveling at how wet he’d made her, and how swollen. How sensitive and greedy her body still felt.
Then she sat on the bed and toyed with her phone while he showered, and she tried not to break down the door to the bathroom and demand more.
It was just horniness, though. He’d gotten her going, and apparently now that she knew what she’d been missing, that particular genie wasn’t going back in its bottle. It was up to her and her alone to rub that magic lamp.
The bathroom door opene
d, and he came out on a cloud of spicy wood-and-wilderness Griff. He smiled at her, but the expression on his face was different now. More remote.
Ah, so this was how he did one-and-done.
That was fine; she could do that, too. “Ready to head out?” she asked.
“Yup.”
He must have blown the candles out when she was in the shower, and now he gathered his things and restored them to the duffle. It was strange watching it all go back into the bag, all of what they’d done undone—except for the act itself, which had permanently changed her.
He held the door for her on the way out, hit the elevator button and pressed door-open so she wouldn’t be rushed—but he didn’t kiss her. He didn’t even look at her, fiddling with his phone as they descended to the main floor. They crossed the lobby in silence, stopped briefly at the desk where he checked them out, and stepped out together into the night.
Traffic on Alaskan Way was surprisingly busy for after midnight, cars rushing by on the multi-lane street. He took her hand and stepped off the curb.
A car peeled out from nowhere with a screech, startling her. It must have been idling along the curb somewhere, and they hadn’t seen it. Its headlights swept across their faces, and Griff jumped back, yanking Becca’s arm so hard it hurt.
She was startled. The lights. The sharp pain in her shoulder. The harshness of a man who’d been so gentle with her body less than an hour earlier. It took her a moment to let go of her surprise and tune in to Griff.
He’d dropped into a crouch on the curb, and terror overwrote his features. His eyes were a million miles away.
She knew it immediately—she’d spent enough time around Nate and Alia, listening to them talk about Nate’s struggles and the men Alia treated. This was some kind of flashback.
She knew not to startle him out of it. She knew he wasn’t here with her and that he could be violent without realizing it, a reaction to whatever was in his half-conscious mind. She crouched beside him and murmured his name. Quietly. Over and over again. He was frozen in place, his gaze on a distant point, his breathing fast but quiet—as if he were hiding in the dark, waiting for his chance to—to what, she wondered? Attack? Defend? A strange tenderness caught at her, the two of them there, him suffering something she couldn’t see—that no one could see. How awful to have been hurt in a way that could overpower his consciousness, so that the sweep of headlights could scare him into an animal retreat.
“Griff.” Not trying to call him out of it, just trying to reassure him. She must have said it twenty times.
Finally something shifted in his gaze. A tiny flicker of awareness. His pupils shrank, and he was looking at her. The tenderness she’d been feeling for him was reflected right back at her. Something swelled in her chest, and she reached out a hand to touch his face.
He caught her hand and clasped it to his cheek.
“Marina,” he said, his voice thick with affection and longing. “Thank God you’re okay. I couldn’t find you.”
Becca jerked her hand back like his stubble was a cactus’s quills.
“It’s Becca,” she said.
Her voice sounded cold and harsh, loud.
Then he was really back. His eyes focused, hard and tight, on her face, and she saw it: recognition followed quickly by disappointment and regret.
Well, of course. He’d loved his wife.
What had Nate said the morning after she and Griff had watched The Princess Bride?
You and he want different things.
And what does Griff want?
To bang enough women that he forgets his ex-wife. Which, I might add, is a lost cause. He’s totally not over her. I think he’d take her back in a heartbeat if she asked.
She thought: You hit the nail on the head, Nate.
“Sorry—Jesus. Sorry.”
Griff got to his feet, a little shaky.
“I have these flashbacks.”
He was obviously sheepish, and at once, her compassion returned.
“PTSD,” she said.
“That’s—yeah.” He shook his head. “That was probably really scary for you. I’m so sorry.”
It had been, a little. Her hands were shaking now. But the last thing he needed was to worry about her. “I’ve heard about it, so I figured that’s what you were going through. And you weren’t—you didn’t do anything. You just crouched down. Does it happen a lot?”
“It’s happened before. When something startles me, usually. Loud noises, bright lights, things flashing. Look, um—if you could maybe just not mention this to Nate and Alia? Or Jake?”
“They don’t know?” she asked, surprised.
He shook his head. “It just not something I talk about.”
That struck her as odd—and not quite right—but she left it alone for the time being. He could do without the third degree in the state he was in.
He took a deep breath and sighed. “Thanks for not freaking out. For just bearing with me.”
“Of course,” she said. “Seems like the least I could do in exchange for a big favor.”
That made him laugh, shakily. “Just so you know,” he said, “that favor one hundred percent paid for itself. Seriously. You don’t owe me anything, and you never will. Besides,” he said. “Friends look out for each other.”
It was her turn to laugh. “I guess that makes us pretty good friends then, huh?”
“Yeah.” He took her hand firmly in his, looked both ways, and guided her across the street. “Yeah, I’d say it does.”
His voice was warm, and it warmed her.
Friendship was good.
It was perfect, in fact. Safe. Simple.
Because Griff was obviously, patently, completely still in love with his ex-wife.
19
On Monday afternoon, Griff plopped himself down at R&R’s peer support group.
He tried to make it to the groups as often as he could, even though he rarely, if ever, talked about himself. He figured someone had to do the listening. And that wasn’t going to change today, even as his conversation with Becca from the other night echoed in his thoughts.
They don’t know?
It just not something I talk about.
Most of the chairs in the circle were full, and Jake was already seated across the circle, making the folding chair under him look like a kid’s potty. He was the perfect stereotype, physically, of an Army Ranger—over six feet tall and big, muscled, tough as nails. Except that if you looked closely—and only if you looked closely—you’d see that one of his legs was prosthetic from mid-thigh down. And Jake wasn’t the only one; a bunch of the guys in group had prosthetics.
Griff had been coming to group for longer than anyone besides Jake. Sometimes Griff half expected Jake to kick him out, or at least chastise him for still taking up space, two years on. But no, Jake greeted Griff with the same welcoming grin every time, the same one he was shooting him right now.
The door opened and CJ sauntered in. Griff raised his eyebrows in Jake’s direction, and Jake nodded, a half-smile creasing his face. This was CJ’s first time. It was a good sign when a guy showed up. It meant he was starting to open up, let the toxic stuff drain away, at least as much as any of them could.
CJ settled into a seat near Jake, then looked up, saw Griff, and gave him a friendly nod.
Jake called the room to order. “Most of you know how this works, but there are a couple of new guys here today—”
It was when Jake led groups that Griff admired him most. Anyone could run a hotel for wounded vets, but only someone with guts could tell and re-tell the story of how his own life had been shattered in order to help other people heal. Not to mention listening, without flinching, to all the other stories of pain, neglect, guilt, and betrayal.
Griff could do the listening part, but the rest he would leave to Jake.
“The only thing you have to tell us is your first name. If you want to tell us anything else—age, rank, life story—it’s up to you. I’ll start. My
name is Jake. I’m an Army Ranger . . .”
He always said it in the present tense, and yet Griff knew Jake had no plans of returning to active duty. He’d loved fighting, but he didn’t miss the army. He was serving now in the best way he knew how.
Griff had missed the army so bad in the beginning—the sense of purpose, the ease of always knowing exactly what he needed to do next, the brotherhood. It felt like he’d lost part of himself when he left. But gradually, that feeling had dulled. R&R had its own routines. Its own ever-changing brotherhood.
Griff couldn’t claim that doing odd jobs for Jake was his life’s mission, though it was reassuring for him to know where he was going and what was expected of him each morning when he got up. He just didn’t feel like he’d chosen his path. Becca had nailed it—he didn’t know what he was going to do when he grew up.
Becca.
He’d been trying to put Saturday night out of his head. It wouldn’t do him any good to dwell on it—not how good the sex had been and not how the evening had ended. Remembering how he’d cowered on the curb drenched him with shame, even though Becca had been unbelievably kind about it.
Becca had been fucking amazing on Saturday night. Bits and pieces of it kept coming back to him, vivid flashes of how hot she’d been, how eager. The noises she’d made, how the red lace had hugged her curves. He’d been wearing out his right hand in bed these last few nights, reliving it.
He was pretty pleased with himself. He knew he’d given her a first time to remember.
The only problem was, it had been equally memorable for him. Hence his wrist fatigue.
“—next thing I knew I woke up and they were telling me they’d had to take the limb.”
Jake was telling the story of what he’d lost to that IED that day—his buddy, his leg. He’d told the story tens of times, but everyone listened like it was new. Maybe because of the way Jake told it, like he was still looking for meaning in it himself.
They went around the circle. Everyone talked, at least a little. When it was CJ’s turn, he haltingly told a story Griff could tell he hadn’t revealed to many people. He’d been trapped three hours in a wrecked armored carrier. The two other men with him had been killed. He’d been badly injured, hallucinating that the dead men were trying to kill him.
