Page 79 of Fire for Effect

I knew he never would. He wouldn’t be Kai Griffith if he did.

Instead, he leaned back, pulling me with him until I was on his lap. His hard cock still hung out of his open jeans, the zipper pushed open to the sides.

He wrapped an arm around me, pulling my back to his front, and he placed his left hand over mine, our fingers laced together. It wasn’t hard to notice what he’d seen. It was the dent of an old wedding ring. One that I had thrown into Smith Lake on Fort Liberty.

“You were married,” he said, quietly. “You never told me.”

My jaw clenched.

I hadn’t said his name in over five years. I had refused to, since I finalized my divorce months after joining Lucky 13. I had refused to think of him, even before the ink was dry on our separation.

“What was his name?” Griff asked.

I didn’t want to tell him. I didn’t want to. But I knew I should.

Veder had said that I needed to. But what purpose would that do? To show him how weak I was? How pathetic and small I had been? That the person he met in Afghanistan was a woman so broken, she had run away from a bad, bad man. Then went back to him after we came home, because I was so fucking lonely that it was better than being alone? That I would still be married if Veder and Top hadn’t stepped in? If Charlotte hadn’t noticed a bruise under my collar?

“Taz…”

I shut my eyes.

I felt it. The moment when I’d lose him. He’d never look at me the same. I’d never be the Taz I had always been. But maybe this was for the best. I could rip him of any illusions he had in his head.

“Heath Carlin,” I said, slowly, feeling the acidity of the name on my tongue.

I pulled away from Griff’s soothing touch, pulling off of his lap, until we faced one another, sitting on the ground like two kids in a play yard. I didn’t want to touch him for this. I didn’t want to touch anyone.

“I met him at AIT.” Advanced Individual Training, or AIT, was the time after Basic Training where one learned the specific skills of their trade. Infantry school was where I had gone, with a fast track to the Qualification Course to Special Forces as an X-Ray candidate. “He got injured at Ranger School and couldn’t move on, but I did. We got married after Sapper school.”

“Did you love him?” Griff’s fists were clenched, his jaw set.

His eyes were on me, laser focused. Kai Griffith, doing what he always did. Acquiring a target and focusing on it with extreme prejudice.

“Yes.” There was no other answer to give. “Of course I loved my husband.”

It was stupid to ever think that I hadn’t, though I tried not to. Even as I signed the divorce, there was a part of my soul that screamed that I had to make it work. I could work harder, I could be better. I could give in just a little, and bend just a bit more. If I was just a bit more careful, then he’d be kinder. He wouldn’t hurt me as much if I became what he wanted me to be.

Better.

But I couldn’t.

“Veder knows,” I said, because it was best that I tell him everything all at once. Give him all the reasons to disappear. “He was in the team room when I came in bleeding–”

“Bleeding?” He shouted the word so loud that the birds flew from the trees, and little creatures skittered from the bushes.

This was probably a bad idea. The worst idea I had ever had. It was one thing for Veder or Top to see it.

It was something else for Kai Griffith to know.

But his illusions about me had to end sometime. The fantasy of us. His pursuit of me. He had to see it to believe it. He had to see it before he’d finally leave.

Then the world could be right again. Me, alone. Him, living the extraordinary future that was laid out for him.

I pulled the shirt off my body, letting it roll over my head and down my arms until I was in nothing but a bra.

Then I unclasped that, and let the rest be seen.

Griff had never seen me without clothes on. Not really. Not without the haze of lust. And even then, I was always half clothed, sure to cover what I had to hide from his prying eyes. God bless him for always looking me in the eyes, even in our most physical moments.

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