“How’d I do?” she asked cheekily.
“Minx, you know damn well how you did.” He poked at his thigh. “Right now I’m trying to decide if my legs will ever work again.”
Truly, he was completely numb from the waist down. But little tremors of electric delight still played at the base of his spine.
“I’m sure you’ll be fine.” She patted his shoulder and then pushed to her feet. Grinning down at him, she added, “In time.”
When she went to step off the blanket, he snagged her ankle. “Wait. Where are you going?”
“Thought I’d go for a swim and cool off.”
“Oh, I see how it is.” He pretended affront. “Now that you’ve had your way with me, the mystery is solved and you’ve lost interest. You’re gonna run off for a swim and leave me here completely spent and utterly alone.”
“Ha!” She threw her head back. The breeze tangled in her curls, making them riot. And even though he would have thought there was no chance he could perform for at least another month, seeing her standing over him, gloriously nude, her breasts lifting themselves proudly to the sun, he felt a telltale stirring between his legs.
Tugging on her ankle, he cajoled, “Come back down here. I’m assuming I’m free to use my hands again?” When she nodded, his pleading expression morphed into a leer. “Good. Then I’m claiming that right.”
“If you insist,” she huffed, but he could tell by her secretive little smile that she was delighted by his continued interest.
Curling beside him, she rested her head on his chest, splaying her hand over his heart. He picked up her fingers and began to trace the lines on her palm. His thumb lingered over a thin, white scar near the outer edge.
“Misadventure with Cory Taylor’s pocketknife when I was eight,” she told him. “Cory bet me I couldn’t throw the knife Elektra-style and hit the paper bull’s-eye he’d nailed to a tree in his backyard. I won that bet,” she added proudly. “But I also ended up with six stitches.”
“And this one?” He gently ran a finger over the ridge of puckered flesh below her earlobe. He’d noticed it while nuzzling her.
“A Wonder Woman moment gone wrong when I was six.” She sighed. “Turns out my Halloween costume didn’t bestow upon me the power of flight.”
He envisioned little Alex, hair curling crazily around her head, skinny legs, and skinned knees, and felt his heart melt. A vision of another little girl with her red hair and his blue eyes popped into his brain so quickly, he jerked with the impact of it.
Just my mind playing tricks on me, wishing things coulda been different. Wishing I coulda been different.
“A rough and tumble little girl, were you?” he asked Alex.
“The roughest and tumbliest,” she assured him. “Much to my mother’s horror.”
“And still looking for adventure even all these years later.”
She chuckled. “Guess so, huh? I mean, a woman would have to be crazy to move onto an island in the middle of nowhere with seven men she’s never met.” Running a finger over the scar above his collarbone, she added, “Your turn. Where’d you get this?”
He covered her hand with his own, still shaken by the vision of the little girl. “We’ll be here all afternoon if you wanna start counting my scars.”
She pushed up on her elbow, cupping her cheek in her hand so she could look down at him. Her beauty wasn’t obvious; it didn’t hit you over the head. But it was even more breathtaking because it was subtle. Because it grew on you. Because the more you looked, the more you saw.
Mason wished he could look forever.
“You’ve seen and done so much.” Her tone was reverent.
“Seen more than most ever will, and done more than most ever wanna,” he agreed. It was an easy way of admitting a hard truth.
Of course, Alex being Alex, she cut through the bullshit and hit at the heart of his statement. “That’s the second thing you’ve said that makes me wonder if you regret your time in the navy.”
“‘Regret’ isn’t the right word.” He shook his head. “How could I regret the friendships I made? The brotherhood I share? It’s more of a…what-if, you know? What if I hadn’t joined? What would my life be like now? Who would I be now? Would I be happier?”
“You said the navy changed you.” She twirled her fingers in his chest hair. It was such a soothing feeling.
Maybe that’s why he was able to talk about this thing he’d been keeping to himself for years. She soothed him. Tamed him. Made the great and terrible truth of him seem…not so great and terrible.
“But how did it change you?”
His breath left his lungs on a long exhale. “You ever heard of the 2 percent?”
“No.” She brushed a fingertip over the scar above his collarbone again.
“This group of Spanish scientists did a study and found that about 2 percent of the human population are natural-born killers. Spec-ops guys. Mercs. SWAT. Most, if not all, of us fall into the 2 percent.”
When her brow wrinkled, he was quick to continue. “I’m not saying that makes us bad. We’re not psycho killers who indiscriminately murder people. But I’m saying it makes us different from the rest of the population. Abnormal.”
He gazed at her then. He wasn’t sure why. Wasn’t sure what he was hoping to see in her eyes. Sympathy? Understanding? Repulsion?
Or did he just have the need to look at her? As much as he could, for as long as he could?
“For the sake of argument”—she went back to stroking his chest hair—“let’s say I buy this whole 2 percent idea. How does that answer my question of how the navy changed you?”
“Because I didn’t know I fell into that category before I became a frogman. And maybe I coulda gone my whole life not knowing. Maybe I coulda gone my whole frickin’ life thinking I was normal.”
He wished he could be different for her. He wished he could be what she needed. He wished—
“You said earlier that for some people, things from their past continue to inform their present. You said you never wanted to fall in love again because you’d be a disappointment. I thought both of those statements alluded to your bad divorce. But it’s more than that, isn’t it?”
Trust Alex to figure it all out. To figure him out.
“Sarah knew me from before I became a SEAL.” His voice was low. Hoarse. “She watched the change happen, and she couldn’t bear it. Hated it, in fact.” He shook his head. “I don’t blame her for wanting out of a relationship with a man who was no longer normal.”