Page 30 of A Hero Comes Home

“I have an assistant who took over for me today.” She tilted her head into his palm which was now cupping her jaw. “Why would I go to work on your first day home?”

“You were pissed with me when I left.”

“That was three years ago! Did you think I held on to that anger all this time?”

He shrugged as if he didn’t know.

“Idiot!”

He nuzzled her neck, then leaned back a bit and said, “I’m going to like this bakery gig of yours if you smell so sweet all the time. I was going to buy you some perfume at the exchange, but this is lots better.”

She was running her hand over his shoulder and chest and arm, relearning his body, which he knew was the same, and yet different. Leaner, certainly. But could she feel some ridges under his T-shirt? What would she think when she saw the scars? There would be questions, for sure.

His conjecture proved true when she asked, “Jacob, what happened to you?”

He blinked several times to mask any bleakness or horror that might be revealed in his one eye that was exposed, and said, “Shhh.” Then he did what he’d wanted to do from the instant he’d seen her. For three friggin’ years, actually.

He kissed her.

And the kiss was sweeter than any item she might offer in her bakery. The chocolate cake he’d just devoured came to mind.

And the kiss was sweeter than hot sofa sex. The many times they’d rocked this very furniture came to mind.

And the kiss was sweeter than anything his dreams could conjure up. Three years of sexual fantasies came to mind.

In fact, when he was being interrogated, endlessly, or tortured, brutally, he’d found a way to enter a dream state where he’d made a game of picturing kisses with his wife, all different kinds, seventeen in all. And caresses . . . who knew there were fifty-four ways of touching a woman, or being touched by a woman? Then there was the sex itself. Forget all those pseudo experts in men’s magazines, Jake was the king of sexual fantasies, featuring his ten favorites.

And forget all that SERE training soldiers, especially Special Forces ones, were given under the Army Code of Conduct for “surrender, evasion, resistance, and escape” of POWs. When it came right down to it, each man had to dig deep and try whatever worked for him to keep faith, whether in God, country, or family, or a combination of all three, that he would eventually be saved.

In Jake’s case, for some crazy-ass reason, it was Sally’s kisses that had helped him most through some of the worst times. Maybe it was the simplicity, the honesty, of a kiss, compared to the evil he’d been facing. Or maybe it was the fact that a kiss was often the prelude to something else, a signal of hope, and he’d been pretty much without hope back then when he’d been told that everyone back home thought he was long dead.

And so he surrendered for the moment to the sheer bliss of kissing his wife. It wasn’t a trick to make him reveal secrets. No one would beat him bloody for failing to show his pain. He could show his emotions without words. He could feel human for as long as the kiss lasted.

Gentle and seeking.

Shaping.

Ah, there, the perfect fit.

Sweet.

But, no, this is better.

Hot.

Wet and open.

Gentle again.

Oh, Lord, thank You for this small blessing. A willing woman. My wife.

For the first time in what seemed like forever, Jake was glad he’d survived.

Suddenly, he heard a buzzing noise. Not a doorbell, or any of the usual Bell Cove bell sounds. Was it in his head? Oh, Lord! Was this to be another effect of his torture, a new feature of PTSD . . . a buzzing signal when he got turned on? Red tide and now erotic buzzing. What next?

But wait. Sally was pushing away from him and laughing. “It’s the oven buzzer. I’m making brownies for the barbecue,” she explained. Standing, she straightened her clothes and looked down at him, all blush-faced cheeks and kiss-swollen lips, her short hair tousled as if she’d just engaged in a bed romp. In other words, sexy as hell.

As she walked away, he thought, Saved by the bell . . . uh, buzzer.