Page 52 of Forty

“Seriously?” My dick’s almost at full mast now, imagining my name on her pale skin.

“Seriously. You can ask Creech. Good thing I didn’t, though. I’d have had to tell every person who saw my titties that I’m really into malt liquor.”

I snort. Funny girl. She reaches out and traces the outlines of my other tats: the Steel Bones skull and hammers, the Army eagle perched on a sniper’s crosshairs, the POW-MIA profile set against an American flag, the engine block on my bicep.

My abs clench. It’s getting hard to sit still and let her explore, especially since she’s biting her lower lip in concentration, oblivious to me.

“What are these for?” She strokes the scales, the nickel, the handcuffs, the wrench, and the Roman numerals XL.

“That’s the crew. Heavy.” I tap the scales. “Nickel. Charge. Scrap. And me.”

Nevaeh trails her fingers over my shoulder to my collarbone, and my cock throbs. “You gonna get more?”

“Maybe. Creech finished the full sleeve a few months ago. I like having it finished.”

Her fingers reach the outline of my burns. There goes the hard on. I shift.

She startles and jerks her hand away. “Oh, shit. I’m sorry. Does that hurt?”

“No. It’s fine. You can touch me.”

She peers into my eyes and resumes her exploring, testing to see if I’m telling the truth. I am. The pain is in the bones where the pins are holding me together.

She finds the scar from one of the surgeries and traces it down my forearm. “You broke your arm?”

“Yeah. Broke my clavicle and shattered my proximal humeral bone and my elbow. There’s some nerve damage. I’ve got a decent range of motion, though.”

“How did it happen?”

“Helicopter.”

“I know that. Whathappened?” She’s got my forearm and my bicep, and she’s bending it and straightening it like the doctor, her forehead furrowed. I let her.

“There was a hard landing.”

“Did it land on your arm?” She huffs. “Whathappened?”

She wants the details? All right. Fine.

“The tail rotor control linkage broke. We went into a tailspin, and we crashed into a paved lot. I reached out to brace myself, but with the spinning—” I stop because my mouth is suddenly bone dry. Her eyes are glued to mine. She nods for me to go on, so I clear my throat. “I ended up landing on my own arm and crushing it against the metal seats. The seats are welded to the frame. They don’t give.”

She’s holding my hand now, fingers interlaced. Her palm is clammy. “How did you get burned?”

“I crawled out. There was lot of bent metal, but no smoke. I was alone in the far back. I circled around to help, and it burst into flame. So I tried to get the men out, and I got the co-pilot, but then my jacket caught on fire, and by the time we put that out, there was… We had to retreat.”

Her hand tightens on mine like a vise.

“He died? The pilot died?”

“Yeah. Him and another passenger. But two of us survived. That’s not common in that kind of accident.”

“What do you mean?” Her eyes are turning to shiny pools.

“In a crash like that, usually there are no survivors.”

And then she bursts out in tears, slamming her free hand against my chest. I grab her wrist. “You could have died!”

Her tits are heaving. There’s snot. I don’t know what to do. Nevaeh doesn’t cry. “It was almost four years ago.”

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