“Would you have chosen differently if you could do it over again?” Carmella asked.

“I thought things, and did things that I don’t know if I can ever forget. And that’s probably for the best. I’m who I am right this moment because of the military and because Asa and Mick came into my life and I had a feeling of fraternity that I had been missing before. I realized there was nothing shameful in wanting a profession where my office was under a hood instead of overlooking a cityscape. So, despite the pain, I’d make the same choice again.”

“Were you scared?”

“Every day.”

Carmella rested her head on his arm. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“Me too, gorgeous. Now about that happy ending.”

Duke hadn’t meant to say all that. He rarely spoke about his time in Iraq. He considered himself lucky. He came back to the United States with a lot of secrets and pain, but it was manageable. And for that he was incredibly grateful. Some of his friends never made it back. Others who got home wrestled with demons far greater than getting shot at every day.

He also hadn’t meant to be so touched by something as seemingly simple as a massage. But everything she wasn’t ready to say yet was communicated through her touch.

That, coupled with all the stuff she’d shared, had shredded every last defense he had. He’d given himself to Carmella Rossi and that was that.

“Damn, you wreck me. You know that?” he asked her.

She wasn’t expecting that.

Carmella paused, those big eyes just taking in his face. “I don’t want to wreck you. I like you in one piece.”

Now that his back felt better, he was able to grab her and pull her beneath him quickly.

“It’s a good sort of wreckage.”

“I don’t know if there’s such a thing.”

“I’m the one feeling it and I’m saying there is. Contrary.” He kissed her, sad that she meant what she had said. Angry that whatever she’d experienced had led her to believe this kind of knock-down-drag-out love was impossible. Or bad. “Your ex-husband, is he the one who made you believe love isn’t real?”

Duke realized he wasn’t sure he wanted to know once he’d asked.

“My mother has a romantic fool’s heart. It’s landed her in one fucked-up mess after the next. Clifton only underlined what I learned from her. I thought there would be sex. This is like showing up to a party where there’s no food.”

“Look at you. There’ll be sex.” He bent to breathe her in at his favorite spot. Her neck where it met her shoulder.

Pulling the soft cotton of her shirt away, he licked over the skin there. She hummed and the sound wrapped a fist around his cock.

“Oh yes.” He bit her nipple through the material of her shirt and bra and her pussy seemed to superheat against his cock. “I pretty much want to sex you up every moment of the day so there’s nothing to worry about on that front. I’m greedy for you in every way. I can’t help it. Give me more. His name is Clifton? I’m having a really hard time imagining you with a dude named Clifton.”

She snickered and he felt better. “His name is Clifton. He claims it was after his great-grandfather who was a blues guitarist. I think it’s from his great-grandfather who sold shoes he stole off the back of a truck.”

He reared up enough to pull her shirt off. “Keep going. I’m just multitasking.”

“You make it hard to concentrate when you do that.” Her voice had slowed down a tad and gone down to velvet and smoke.

“Thank god because when you get super turned on, your voice does that thing and it makes me crazy. Crazy for you.”

As he’d said all that, he’d gotten rid of her bra and moved to his knees, her thighs open to either side of him as she lay on her back.

So much had happened between them in a short period of time and he gorged on her. On the way her hips felt under his hands as he held her. The power of her inner thigh muscles as he petted her and she arched for more.

Her tits, fuck, he had to take them in his hands, loving their weight. This beauty with that heart of a lion, soft and vulnerable but ferocious too. All contradiction.

Perfect.

“You were telling me about Clifton.”

“Why, though? Isn’t this much better without talk about my ex-husband?”

“It’s always fantastic when you’re naked and my hands are on you. We’ll be done talking about him and then we’ll both have a happy ending.”

Her eyes went half-mast and her frown tipped up slightly into a feline smile of promise. “You’re so good with compliments. Seriously.”

He not only loved her, lusted after her, and craved more of her, he liked her. He had a lot of acquaintances but the true friends in his life were a small circle. She was there, he realized with a start.

“Well, let me follow up with this. I’ve had a thing for you for years. I’ve jerked off dozens of times with your face in my head. Nothing could have prepared me for the reality of you.”

She swallowed hard. “Why is it we aren’t having sex already?”

He just looked at her until she sighed dramatically.

“There’s not a lot to tell. I was young. I wanted out of my mother’s house, but without college or marriage, I had no reason to move out. Mainly I know this after the divorce. He was a good lesson.”

“Which was?”

Duke didn’t know why he wanted this so much. But he did and she seemed to get it too. He’d been doing all the chasing and the way she let him in and trusted him with these details made him feel like she wanted to be with him too.