Page 30 of Twister

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Twister was feelingtrue to his name under the heavy spray of the water. They had finally moved into the shower, and he was feeling twisted, corkscrewed, contorted, tangled, fucking wrenched out of normalcy into this…this thing with Sadie. This fucking crazy ride that had him panting after her like he was a dog in heat.

But he had to acknowledge right away, immediately, before the thought was even half-formed. This wasn’t lust. If it was, he wouldn’t be so twisted into knots. Lust was easy, a sexual urge that, once fulfilled, was satisfied. He wasn’t satisfied, not one goddamned bit.

Water cascaded over her shoulders and between their bodies as she soaped up. With a soft sigh of relaxation, she closed her eyes, tipping her head back so the spray soaked her hair. Water ran over her beautiful features, down her slender throat, and across those eye-popping, generous breasts.

Twenty-four hours ago, he would have bet a million dollars that he wouldn’t have reacted to her, but here he was, reacting all over the place to every single breath she took. After rinsing her hair, she brought her head back down, and her water-spikedlashes lifted, the power of those amber eyes tightening around him like a fist. She met his gaze with a small smile that was so incredibly sweet.

She had kept his secret, and now he held on to hers, marveling at how much he wanted to protect her, mind, body, and soul. His heart was tugged hard by how she must feel to be in the very spot where her great-grandfather had died.

The way she cried had ripped his heart out, and he couldn’t stop himself from gathering her against him. He hated that she was dealing with all this alone. The thought compounded the ache in his chest. But he’d been so glad when she had spilled the beans, ducking her head, looking stunned and a little embarrassed that she’d revealed so much. Now she knew how he’d felt, trapped beneath those stairs, spilling his guts. He had to wonder if anyone had been able to get past her defenses. He knew so much about building barriers…apparently, except when it came to her.

She poured a generous amount of the shower gel in her hands and didn’t miss how she shifted against him and the way she flattened her palms against his chest, washing his torso with a gleam in her eyes, slid those silky warm hands around his waist, and up the slope of his spine, spreading over his back. Every moment near her was torture, and he…couldn’t get enough of how it felt to be so…alive, in aching, excruciating need. It was no surprise that his consoling had turned into him fucking her, his dick so hard and throbbing, he hadn’t been able to control himself. She smoothed her hands over his ass, kneading him, then he grunted when she thoroughly cleaned his junk, slipping her hands down his legs.

“Squeaky clean, now,” she murmured.

“Who needs a fucking sponge when you’re around,” he growled, his body reacting to her touch, tingling and alive with sensation.

She laughed softly. “It was such a hardship,” she said wryly.

“I like everything you got there, too,” he said, his eyes raking over her. Her breathing increased slightly.

“Saying things like that makes me weak in the knees.”

He groaned inwardly at his admission that she made him weak, but it was the god’s honest truth. Why had he felt so freaking compelled to tell her? She turned that gorgeous body to meet the spray against her face, washing off all those bubbles in every tantalizing place. He caught her around the waist. “You can hold on to me,” he said softly.

“Shane…” she whispered, the one word filled with a wealth of emotion that struck a chord deep within him. Eyes closing, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.

Her mouth was soft and yielding, an unbearable temptation he couldn’t resist. Her lips parted, and he was helpless against her, wanting to meet her more than halfway, to once again taste her and that dark hunger that mirrored his own.

He was holding his breath as if she was going to do something amazing. This was so stupid and not like him. He always kept breathing, always, under the worst conditions, during combat, during training, during everything he didn’t want to do. He breathed.

Especially through all those days and nights he’d been dragged to help anyone his dad deemed necessary, resentful that he couldn’t be a damn teenager and enjoy the kinds of things teenagers enjoyed. Mad that he hadn’t gotten the sleep he needed to pass tests, excel at sports, or find bliss in some young girl’s arms. Despair at the things he’d seen, the pain, the lost souls, the empty eyes, and broken minds. Nothing in his life had ever been sugar-coated, and it made it hard to enjoy anything that was normal, like good food, family, a warm bed, safety, love, and the simple pleasure of leisure time.

He’d gotten hard, covered over everything that made him soft or weak. He’d needed that tough shell to deal with it all, and when high school ended and he had the grades he’d needed for medical school, he’d balked. Flat out refused to go, went behind his dad’s back and enlisted in the Navy to become a SEAL. He knew he had what it took to complete the grueling demands of that elite role, and there were so many people in need of the kind of warrior he’d always felt he was inside. The downtrodden, the innocent, the defenseless, and the unfortunate caught up in something out of their control.

He hated being controlled.

He did have what it took. Steamrolled over the brutal regimen that proved he was the kind of man who could take it in the face and still come up fighting.Never out of the fight. The only easy day was yesterday. All in all the time. Embrace the pain. Pain is weakness leaving the body. I will not fail. I persevere and thrive in adversity.

He’d proven all that in spades, and when he’d found himself helpless, bleeding to death while his buddies fervently and fiercely ran into danger without regard for themselves to save his life, he’d found something that had brought him to his knees mentally. That, in finding his internal warrior, he had denied the simple man he was and all the needs that man had every right to have.

He kissed her harder, even as he burned with shame, thinking that if any of his teammates had died, he would have just simply let go. They had every right to live, each one of them, especially Tex, Bondo, Easy, and Shark. They had found who they were in the arms of the women they loved. They had embraced life. Bondo was even a father now after losing his first wife and daughter to childbirth. He’d found courage and embraced his second chance with Cameron. Tex, who had been adamant against love because he had been so burned by it, foundhis soulmate in Nora. Easy had lost his heart in high school to a girl, taking away his innocence on a wet road in the rain and blood, then lived in limbo until he’d met Astraea. Shark, even Shark, who had lived a life of crushing loneliness until Maddie’s freaking beautiful ray of sunshine touched him. Dagger, who admitted he was in love with his brother’s wife, and the anguish that came with the fact that she hated his guts. Brawler, who had everything any woman would want in a man. Finally, Flash, quiet and full of humor and sensitivity, balancing that with a warrior’s brutal discipline.

Then there was him. A man who believed there was no time for his needs when there was so much injustice in the world. To serve, he must never be vulnerable or let down his guard. How was he going to reconcile that truth? How was he going to cross that great divide like his teammates and get to the other side where dreams lived and breathed because strong minds and hearts made it so?

He continued to kiss her, but now with a fierce urgency borne of knowing how much they meshed. Kissed her with an abundance of relief and gratitude, and something else far more profound that echoed in the furthest recesses of his soul—an emotional, intimate bond that rocked the foundations of the solitary man he’d always been.

Shame gripped him again, making his face hot and his whole body tense with the writhing, engulfing humiliation. He’d shunned it all, and when he thought he was going to die, all that regret that he hadn’t embraced all that life had to offer swamped him.

Something had splintered inside him, some barrier that had kept his mind closed, these thoughts at a distance, but they rushed in on him now. Something was going on. A lot of things were going on, and Twister felt out of the loop. It was very uncomfortable, and he feared it was a dangerous place for himto be. But the more he tried to stop it, the worse it got. That gray fog, the walls closing in on him, a voiceless panic hung at the back of his throat.

He broke the kiss, starting to feel the sand slipping out from under his feet, like a big old wave was sucking him back into a riptide.

She had her eyes closed, and she faded in and out of his sight. He started to shake and pressed into the back of the shower stall. The panic in him rose suddenly to cold-sweat terror. He clenched his teeth against a moan of dread, looking for a way to escape.

She opened her eyes and gasped. “Twister?” She whispered his name, the concern in her eyes made him frantic to control this damn out-of-control feeling. “Tell me what you need.”

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