Then Luke slid back onto the bed and pulled her up to straddle his lap. She could only cling to his shoulders and shake as he undid his jeans and shoved them down his thighs. A whimper slipped free as she slid against his hard length, not up enough to let him in, but just enough to tease. God, she wanted.

He stilled her with his hands on her hips. “Condom, darlin’.”

Condom. Right. She’d been dangerously close to forgetting that one little fact. Pregnancy wasn’t a factor but… “Should I be worried about you?”

The shock on his face nearly made her laugh. “I haven’t been with anyone in over a year. I’m clean.”

She kissed him. “I can’t get pregnant, Luke. I want to feel you. All of you.”

“Are you sure?” He groaned when she slid against him again. “Darlin’, be sure before you say shit like that.”

“I’m sure.” It might have only been a few days, but how did such a relatively short time hold up against the fact that they’d bared their souls to each other? Like called to like, and she and Luke were the same in too many ways to discount. He understood her like no one else in her life did, and she might be the first person to look at him and see the scars as just another part of the man. They didn’t make him less. They were simply a part of his journey that other people could see.

She wanted this closeness, too—a physical closeness to match the emotional one that seemed to grow with each passing hour. She reached between them and took him in hand, guiding him to her entrance.

He pulled her down onto him, sealing them as close as two people could be. Then he hooked the back of her neck and held her far enough away to force her to meet his eyes as he used the other hand on her hip to slide her up and down his cock. “To answer your earlier question… I’m saying I want you, all of you, only you. I want you on my cock, in my bed, and in my life.”

She moaned as he brought her down, grinding against her clit. “That’s all?”

“Darlin’, that’s everything.” He kissed her, the softest, sweetest kiss of her entire life, as if she mattered more than breathing. She clung to him, riding him as pressure tightened low in her body, pushing her closer and closer to oblivion with each thrust.

“Luke—”

“I know. I’ve got you.”

His words—the same words he’d whispered earlier that day—unleashed the pleasure inside her. He kissed her, swallowing her scream and drawing out her orgasm, until her entire world narrowed down to the feeling of his hands on her hips, his cock filling her completely, and his mouth on hers.

He was right. This was everything.

Luke cradled Alexis against his chest and just let himself be. There was nowhere he had to go, nothing he was supposed to be doing, nothing weighing him down. For the first time since his injury, he actually felt at peace. He stroked her hair back from her face and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “I mean it.”

“Hmm?”

“Every word I said. I mean it.” He wasn’t ready to start throwing around certain four-letter words, but it was time to stop ignoring the connection between them. For the first time in nearly two years, he felt alive and worth a damn, and it was because of the woman blinking sleepily at him.

She gave him a tentative smile. “It’s okay, Luke. You get a free pass on anything said in the heat of the moment.”

That was the thing, he didn’t want a pass. “Darlin’, don’t think you’re getting out of this that easily.” He lifted her and set her back down in his lap, her legs on one side and her head against his shoulder.

“Will you…” She took a deep breath. “Will you tell me about how you hurt your knee? The full story?”

Every instinct screamed for him to change the subject or snap at her or do anything other than take that fun little trip down memory lane. But hadn’t he asked her exactly that back at the café? It was only fair to trot out his wounds for her inspection.

But as he looked down at her face, he knew it wasn’t curiosity driving her. She caught him watching her. “It’s a huge part of your life—of who you are now. I just… I feel like you know all the ugly parts of me, and maybe it’s not fair to ask for you to lay yourself bare the way I did earlier, but I’d like you to tell me. If you want to.” She smiled. “I already know that you love your auntie, even if she’s a tough lady, and that you’re going to be okay. You might feel like you stalled out, but you’ve been moving in the right direction all along. And you’re proud and stubborn and know how to drive a woman out of her mind with pleasure.”

“Not a woman. You. Only you, darlin’.”

She bit her lip as if she didn’t quite believe him. “But my point is, I’d like to know more about that pivotal part of your life.”

If he was serious about pursuing this thing with her, it meant he had to open up about the specifics at some point. It might as well be now. He considered how to tell the story without giving away that he’d been a PJ. At least he didn’t have to edit out Flannery—he’d been sent to the northern base in Afghanistan, while Luke ended up at the southern one. “All clusterfucks start out as routine missions, and this one was no exception. We were in the area for some recon.” Or at least the Marines he was accompanying were. PJs normally didn’t head out on shit like that, but there’d been a report of an injured soldier in the area, and they were tasked with finding him and keeping him alive until they got to the hospital. “No one knew it was an active minefield.”

“Oh, honey.”

He shook his head. “Part of the job description.”

“Just because you know it’s a risk doesn’t mean you have to bear it all with your chin up.” She cuddled closer and kissed his shoulder. “Sorry. I’ll keep quiet.”

Having her in his arms made it easier to keep going. “I had our patient over my shoulders. The guy next to me, Barger, took a wrong step. I didn’t even have time to register what happened when I was flying through the air.” The world had dissolved to pain and red and a roaring in his ears. “I don’t remember much after that.” The PJ still in the helicopter had filled in the details. How Barger was beyond saving, and how the blast had severed an artery in his leg, killing him within minutes. That was the hardest part to live with—knowing that he hadn’t saved his friend. Yes, he’d saved the man they were sent in for, but it wasn’t enough. “I woke up in the hospital in Landstuhl. They’d done what they could at the local base, and they saved my life, but they weren’t worried about making me pretty.”

He paused, half expecting her to cut in with something, some meaningless apology, or an assurance that he really was a hero even though he’d failed his teammate. He should have known better. Alexis didn’t do any of that. She just pressed another kiss to his neck and hugged him tight. “I’m glad you lived.”

“I am, too.” If he hadn’t, there would be no ridiculous mission sending him across Europe after this woman who seemed to see the man beneath the scars, this woman who was stronger than she gave herself credit for, who’d given him a gift beyond measure. “It was a long recovery, and the doc sat me down three weeks into it and flat out told me that I’d never regain full motion in my knee, and the muscle damage meant it’d always cause me problems, no matter how hard I worked.”

This part, strangely enough, was harder to get out than the rest. “I went into the military straight out of high school. It gave me a purpose I was missing. It was my everything.”

“You lost your identity and purpose in one fell swoop.”

Exactly. “I’m not proud of it. Seems a man should be more than his job.” But everything about Luke had been wrapped up in the PJs. Without that…What was left? He laid his cheek against her hair as the answer came to him for the first time that he’d been wrong—he was more than the PJs. He was a nephew and a mechanic and a man. More than that, he was a survivor.