Rev (Jack 'Em Up #4) by Shauna Allen Page B

before.
    Fuck it.
    I leaned down and took her mouth with mine. I tasted the seam of her lips with my tongue and she opened to me like I’d unlocked her with a key. Her fingers raked through my hair as she drug me closer, stealing my breath.
    I couldn’t get enough of her and the sweetness that seemed to ooze from every pore. She was intoxicating and so damn innocent. I ran my hand up her hip and waist, finally touching the curves that filled my fantasies.
    “God,” I whispered against her lips. “You’re so perfect.”
    I felt her tense up and her hands fell from me. I pressed one last kiss to her bottom lip then met her eyes. The pain and doubt I found there slayed me. “One day you’ll let me in,” I vowed in a promise born of my newfound determination to know this woman. “One day you’ll believe me.”
    Her eyes fluttered closed as if she couldn’t bear to look at me.
    I sat back and found her balled up fist in the sand and interlocked our fingers. Her face relaxed but she still didn’t open her eyes.
    I couldn’t explain it, but I suddenly found myself desperate to have her open up to me. I just didn’t know how to make that happen or why it was so important to me. I watched a young couple stroll past, their arms wrapped around each other as they grinned and stole a kiss. What I wouldn’t give to have something so easy, to relinquish this baggage that dragged me down.
    As if she read my mind, Jewel’s eyes slid open and she met my gaze. “I trust you,” she said softly. “I’m just scared.”
    “Scared of what?”
    She rolled to sit and face the ocean again. “Of being hurt. It’s hard . . .”
    I understood better than she knew. “I’ve hurt too many people in my life and I’ve vowed to never do it again. I won’t hurt you, Jewel. I swear it.”
    “You can’t promise that.”
    “Yes, I can.” Then, I did the other thing I vowed to never do. I began talking.
    I told her about Afghanistan. The suffocating heat, the rugged beauty, the hills that were scary as shit because we all knew the Taliban were hiding in caves we couldn’t see. I told her about my job in the tank and the friendships I’d made. About Juan Martinez and Johnny Franks, and Sarg, and Asher Creed. The brotherhood born of war. I stopped short of telling her about the blood on my hands. I just wasn’t strong enough.
    Her eyes glistened with tears as my words tapered off. She lifted her hand and brushed moisture from my cheek. I hadn’t realized that my words would begin trickling out in liquid pain, and I hated myself for the weakness. I hated myself for so many reasons.
    “I’m so sorry,” she whispered.
    “Don’t be sorry. I couldn’t stand that.”
    “Have you told anyone else about this?”
    I shook my head.
    “Not even your military friends? A psychologist? No one?”
    I thought of my straight-laced, unemotional shrink. Yeah, no. “The people who need to know were there with me.”
    “Why now? Why me?”
    I spoke truth as I knew it in that moment, recklessly giving her what I had, even if it made me bleed. “I don’t know.”

Jewel
    I couldn’t believe Micah was telling me all of this. I could probably count on both hands the number of times he’d talked to me these past couple of years . . . until these past few weeks. Something in him had changed, and as happy as I was about that, it made me a bit wary. My own trust issues were to blame, I knew.
    I wanted to give him something in return and open up to him, but the words were trapped in my chest. What would he think of me if he knew the truth about what I’d put up with? Would he find me weak? Disgraceful? Pathetic?
    “It was my ex.”
    His brows curled down in confusion. “Huh?”
    “You asked me who made me feel bad about myself . . . It was him. He wasn’t very nice.” I stared down at the sand. Talk about the understatement of the year. “Stupid to let someone do that to me, but that’s what happened.”
    He cupped my jaw and lifted my face