“TC?”
“Thundercock.”
“Who the hell names their own dick Thundercock?”
“My wife. I’m lucky like that.”
Shane choked. He couldn’t even pretend he’d taken a drink of water. “You lost a hand and you’re worried about your dick?”
“Sure. I mean, we could cuddle all day long but if I didn’t have my dick, she’d probably end up fucking the UPS guy.”
“Nicole would never do that to you,” Shane said. He picked up the cards and flipped them together. The sensation of the cards slapping against his fingertips was something simple. Something real.
Something Shane had taken for granted.
“This sucks.” Carponti swore and laughed as some of the cards fell out of his hand. “We should take a picture of the two of us and send it back to the guys. Two fucking gimps trying to play cards. They’d laugh their asses off.” He slapped an ace of spades on the table. “Besides, I know Nikki would never cheat on me. I was simply pointing out that the important equipment made it home.”
Guess that was the end of that sensitive moment. Shane took the hint as relief prickled over his skin. “Does she still like her job with CID?”
“She loves it. They have her working on some missing weapons cases here on base. CID thinks it’s linked with organized crime out of Dallas and she has to work with the feds, but she’s doing great.”
Shane sighed, glad that Carponti was talking at least a little bit. “How’re you sleeping?”
Carponti shrugged and swore as he dropped two more cards onto the sheet covering Shane’s legs. “I don’t. At least not well. They gave me some pretty powerful sleeping pills, but if I plan on waking up the next morning, I can’t take them … Not if I’ve already taken my pain pills. I almost made it through the entire series of Sopranos. Only a few episodes left.”
Shane scratched his neck with the cards. “I haven’t slept for shit since I’ve been home, either. Fucking nightmares.” He couldn’t tell Carponti about his horrible dream. Just the thought of whispering the dreams out loud sent a creeping sensation down Shane’s spine. A fleeting shadow trailed across Carponti’s eyes. Just a hint and then it was gone again.
Shane frowned as he said, “How much do you sleep a night?”
“Couple hours at a shot. It sucks because I’m always drifting off right as it’s time to get up for PT. And Nikki won’t let me miss a single appointment.”
Once upon a time, PT had meant physical training to them. Now that acronym stood for physical therapy. He used to enjoy PT, running down Battalion Avenue, the rhythmic sound of cadence vibrating off his ribs as formations ran by. Now? Now PT was just one more thing to endure. One more thing that had changed in both of their lives. Silence stretched between them as they sorted their cards.
Carponti tossed his hand onto the table, faceup. “You were right, this was a stupid idea. I’ll bring checkers next time. Maybe Connect Four or Chutes and Ladders. Remember that game? I ought to be able to manage that.”
Shane shrugged and tapped the cards together, returning them to their box. The image of Carponti with the rifle barrel in his mouth burned against his retinas. The words were out before he could stop them. “Are you talking to someone?”
“What’s there to talk about?” Carponti frowned, his mouth pulling down into a tight line beneath the red beard as he took the cards from Shane.
Shane dragged his hand over his face. “You know, about adjusting and all that.”
“That’s really rich coming from someone who hasn’t gotten out of bed in six weeks. I thought you knew me better than that.” Irritation snapped across Carponti’s face—sudden anger clouding his features. He threw the pack of cards at Shane’s chest. “Fuck you. Psychoanalyze someone else.”
The door slammed behind him, leaving Shane alone with the awkward embarrassment of his thoughts. Maybe he was the one who needed to talk to someone. Who was he kidding? He was having a hard time. Nothing in his life had prepared him to be so dependent on others. He’d fended for himself for as long as he could remember because his mom hadn’t been there for him at all. Shane had joined the army when he’d been a senior in high school, leaving behind the trailer park and all of his mother’s random men.
Even in Ranger School when he’d broken his leg, he hadn’t really been dependent. Being forced to sit out on the training had sucked, but it hadn’t been anything like this, where he needed help taking a piss. Oh wait, he couldn’t do that because of that fucking tube they insisted on leaving in his dick.
He grunted and scrubbed his face with his hand, the stubble on his chin itching like there was no tomorrow. “Oh fuck.”
He’d forgotten. How the hell had he forgotten that his catheter was coming out today? He had deliberately avoided thinking about what came next. Oh, he wanted the damn tube out of his dick, but the part where Jen wrapped her hand around his cock and … No, he couldn’t think about that. Please let it be someone else. Somehow it would be less humiliating if it was a complete stranger handling his goods.
He closed his eyes as the image took form in his mind, the faintest hint of fantasy attached to it. His blood was pounding. He was afraid to look down and see if he’d pitched a tent in his pants. Between the drugs and the catheter, he wasn’t even sure he could get an erection anymore, but he damn sure didn’t want to test that theory today.
He could deal with this. It was just a medical procedure, right? No big deal.
It was a very big deal.
Because Jen wasn’t just some nurse. At some point between their long-ago kiss and her constant tending to him, she’d stopped being just a nurse and had become something so much more. She was someone he missed when she wasn’t around. Someone he wanted to wrap in his arms and protect. He couldn’t pinpoint the moment it had happened and there wasn’t a damn thing he could do about it. He had nothing to offer. No home. No way to find one until he was out of the hospital. Hell, he couldn’t even walk on his own.
It didn’t mean he didn’t care.
It just meant she was even more off-limits than she’d ever been before. It also meant he needed to find a way to get things back to being strictly business. Even though that was the last thing he wanted.
He closed his eyes and tried to remember how she’d looked that day in the gym. The day he’d convinced her to let him deploy. Funny, he could try all day long, but he couldn’t remember how she’d looked. All he kept seeing was her now. Her sparkling green eyes, her soft blond hair.
Her soft hands and gentle touch.
He groaned and glanced at his lap. Guess that mystery was solved. He was rock hard.
Just in time for a knock on the door.
Shit.
Chapter 13
Jen stopped outside Shane’s door and wiped her hands on her scrubs. Today he was getting his catheter out—bringing him one step farther on the road to recovery. Unfortunately, she was going to have to be the one to do it … and the task loomed before her like a giant … the thought of anything giant turned her thoughts in a decidedly unprofessional direction. She’d avoided Shane’s room for as long as possible, but now it was time.
She hadn’t been able to stop thinking about touching him. She’d woken abruptly last night from a dream about him. Bedpans and catheters were not, as a rule, sexy in any way, shape, or form. But in her dream, she’d lowered the sheet that covered his legs to find him aroused. And things had gone further than she’d ever dreamed of going in real life.
The thought of his penis in her hand had nothing at all to do with medicine and everything do to with Shane. She tried to think of it as a simple medical procedure. Except that it wasn’t just any penis. It was Shane’s penis she’d be holding. And she was going to have her real hands on his real flesh as soon as she stopped being a chicken and walked into his room.
She’d intubated him all those weeks ago, and hadn’t had any difficulty then. There was something more intense, more difficult about touching him now.
She tried to relax, but her stomach kept twisting into knots as she walked into his room. Nerves and something else. Something more that she was afraid to acknowledge. His expression was tense even as his lips formed a pained half smile. She nodded in greeting as she set the catheter kit down and laid out the equipment. He was a big man, and she needed to get him positioned properly for the procedure. “After this, we’re going to start getting you outside for fresh air and regular exercise. The docs are reviewing your file, but you should be ready to go home in a few more days, tops.” The muscles in his neck were corded tight, and his jaw was set. He turned his face toward the window. She deliberately avoided looking at his lap, but that didn’t stop the heat from crawling across her cheeks. Damn her subconscious for planting that suggestive seed in her mind.
“Are you okay?” He turned toward her, and something in his dark gaze made her breath hitch. He’d looked at her like that once before. Just once, when he’d held her palm to his chest.
She wanted him to touch her again. She could admit that to herself, even if she’d die before saying it out loud. She sighed softly, and her body trembled with awareness of Shane.
“Is this going to hurt?” His words were soft and thick, and they slid across Jen’s skin like warm cream. He cleared his throat.
“It’ll probably hurt for a few days,” she said. “Maybe a little burning. But we’ll manage it. Just like we have been.” Small talk when she was edging dangerously close to a full-blown panic attack? Great. Her cheeks burned hot, and she sucked in a deep breath. She could do this.
Yeah, right.
“Guess this would be a bad time for dick jokes?” he said weakly.
Any words she might have said got stuck in her throat. She tried to smile, but didn’t quite manage. Instead she cleared her throat.
“Okay, so here we go.” She washed her hands in the sink, and refused to look at him as she snapped on first one blue latex glove, then the other.
She could have sworn he groaned as he covered his face with one hand and nodded. She placed a sterile pad on his lap, looking only as much as was necessary to get it into place. She positioned the second sterile pad that would encircle his genitals and unsnapped one side of his hospital gown. He may have started wearing T-shirts yesterday, but pants were still out of the question until … well, until the catheter was out. She pulled back the pad covering his lap, prepared to pull his penis through the opening, clean him, and remove the catheter.
Shane’s body had other ideas.
She cleared her throat and felt her cheeks flame even hotter. He’d been flaccid and barely conscious when she’d inserted the catheter. He was fully erect now.… The medical fact that this probably had nothing to do with her didn’t stop a slow burn of warm heat through her veins. A simple procedure had morphed into something else with so much more.…
His very real erection stood in the room between them, like an unwanted uncle at the family reunion.
“Shit,” he mumbled. His face was bright red. It must have matched hers.
She couldn’t do this with him erect, even though she knew it was medically possible. She couldn’t touch him. Not like this. Not with her dream pounding through her brain in time with the beat of her heart. She cleared her throat again and wondered why it was suddenly so hard to swallow.
“We have a couple of options. We can wait. I can get some ice water, or you can, um, thump it a couple of times to make it stop.”
“Can’t you just get it over with?” The sheer horror on his face was almost enough to make her laugh. But the urge to touch him consumed every ounce of her willpower.
She nodded and bit both lips, hoping the pain would distract her from the desire singing in her blood. He covered his face again as she reached for him.
Heat pulsed through the thin material of her gloves. His erection was solid and heavy and her hand only covered a portion of him.
In her dream, she had slid her bare hand down his erection in a slow stroke. Liquid heat rushed between her thighs even as she stomped on the fantasy and focused on the task, ahem, at hand.
She’d never had so much trouble removing a catheter in her life. She drained the sterile fluid that kept the catheter in place. Then she peeled the tape from his abdomen that had secured the tube. She finally pulled the tube free and covered his lap. His erection forced the sterile cloth into a tent.
Jen left him to adjust his clothes. She didn’t think she’d be able to do that right now without torturing them both. She needed to put space between them before she burst into flames.
There was a medical explanation for his body’s reaction. It had nothing to do with her.
But a whisper of promise slid behind her as she left his room.
What if it did?
Chapter 14
Jen needed coffee. Her shift ended in exactly three minutes and she needed to escape. The floor. The patient in room twenty-six. And more importantly, the patient’s penis. She flushed as she ordered her coffee and tried to think of anything that didn’t involve Shane’s dick. Five hours had passed since the “incident” and still she flushed at the barest thought of it.
She looked up as the hospital’s main door swung open. Nicole smiled and leaned against the kiosk’s tiny counter while Jen dumped sugar and creamer into her coffee. Her smile was positively wicked and Jen groaned, bracing. She couldn’t know. Could she?
“I hear Shane had a small erection problem.”
Jen muffled a horrified laugh, releasing some of the tension that was wound up inside of her. “How did you hear about that?”
“Vic caught Shane thumping it earlier today.”
Jen closed her eyes as her face flamed hot again. She hadn’t found the courage to go back into his room for the rest of her shift, and the idea that Carponti had caught Shane thumping it hours later meant … she didn’t really want to think about what that might have meant. Maybe he was just an easily aroused kind of guy. “Can we not have this conversation here?” Jen asked as she tucked her hair behind her ear.
“Can’t think of a better place to have this conversation. Except maybe a locker room.” Nicole sighed and rubbed her forehead with her index finger, as though she was trying to relieve a headache, her words lighter than her mood. “Okay, so there’s a reason I’m here that has nothing to do with Shane’s penis.”
“Nikki, what’s wrong?” Any lingering worry or anxiety faded in the face of her friend’s very real struggle to get the words out.
Nicole cleared her throat after a long moment. “So, Vic has all these pills, right? He has like six different bottles of pain pills, two sleeping pills, and one or two for anxiety or something. All kinds of good stuff.”
She followed Nicole outside toward the stone benches and away from the crowded tables. Jen stirred her coffee in silence, her own problems seeming distant and trivial as her friend spoke. Nicole searched the ceiling for the rest of her words.
“I sometimes catch him lining up his bottles and mumbling to himself. I can’t keep track of everything he’s supposed to take because he won’t let his doc give me any kind of schedule.”
“And you need to know what he should be taking to keep him from messing up a dose?”
“Bingo.” Nicole’s eyes lit up like Jen just told her the meaning of life. “Can I bring you a list of everything so you can help me figure it out?”
“You don’t have any idea what he takes or when?”
Nicole shook her head. “No. He doesn’t really bring it up, so other than what’s on the bottles, I’m kind of in the dark.”
“Why won’t he tell you?”
“He doesn’t like to talk about it. Seriously, I mean. He’ll crack jokes all day long, but when I try asking about the meds, he just makes another joke and changes the subject.”
“So you have no idea what he takes on a daily basis.” Worry slid around Jen’s heart and squeezed.
“No.”
“Okay, you need to find out. I can’t tell you anything witho
ut knowing what he’s currently taking. So you’re going to have to make him tell you.”
Nicole pushed a hard breath through her pursed lips. “I was afraid of that.”
“You really think he’ll give you grief if you insist on knowing?” Never in a million years would Jen have thought that Nicole would have a hard time talking to her husband about anything.
“No. I think he’ll make a damn joke and dodge the question and I won’t be any closer to finding out. Hell, at this rate, I’m lucky I know when his physical therapy appointments are.”
“Everyone processes trauma differently. The fact that he’s making jokes is pretty normal for him, right?” Nicole nodded. “Maybe it’s his way of coping in the short term, and that’s okay. But he’ll have to deal with it eventually.”
Jen had heard almost the exact same words from Laura once. Her friend had practically stripped her bare and forced her to look in the mirror. Jen didn’t look at her scar often, but when she did, she still felt the same revulsion she’d experienced that first time. And the second time. And the third.
She hated it, but she’d decided early on that she didn’t want to have more surgery to fix it. It was part of who she was now and she couldn’t—wouldn’t—change that. Just because she’d made that decision, though, didn’t mean she was completely at peace with it.
“I’ll try to figure out what he’s taking, and when. Can I call you when I think I’ve got it?” Nicole asked.
If Shane knew about Nicole’s concerns, he’d worry, too. But maybe Carponti had talked to him about all of this. She’d have to figure out how to bring it up without alarming him unnecessarily.
“Thanks so much.” Nicole surprised her with a quick, energetic hug. “By the way, Vic asked me to suggest that you bathe Shane more often.”
“Will you stop?” Heat flushed down her neck, but Jen couldn’t help laughing. “Shane’s hygiene is not an issue.”
Because of You: A Loveswept Contemporary Military Romance Page 14
