Was she shy? Pierce couldn’t figure that. “How about in the shower?”
Her glance slanted toward the bathroom before she met his gaze again. “In all that bright light? I don’t think so.” Her smile was mischievous. “Unless you’re going to wear the blindfold this time.”
She was shy. There was no reason for that, in Pierce’s view. “The water would ruin it. Come on.” He offered his hand but she didn’t take it. “I’m not kidding about experience being attractive.”
“Stretch marks aren’t. Cole was almost eleven pounds.”
He winced. “Like a cantaloupe through a keyhole. I’ve always wondered how women did it.”
Jacquie laughed at his comparison. “Well, there’s not a lot of choice by that point. The only way out of the situation is through it.”
“I’ve been in that place before.” He sat on the side of the bed, wishing he knew the right thing to say to reassure her. Pierce knew just about nothing about childbirth, and its after-effects.
“You look bewildered,” Jacquie said, her tone teasing.
“Not within my experience.”
She smiled. “That was the episiotomy that ended it all. I thought it would never heal.” Then she looked at him quickly. “Sorry. You’re easy to talk to.”
“I don’t mind listening.” He didn’t, since her confessions helped him to understand her better—and Pierce was realizing that he wanted to know everything about Jacquie Morgan. “I know just about nothing about childbirth. You’re welcome to add to my database.”
“Are you going to have kids?”
“It’s not my plan. If I do, though, I won’t be the one doing the work.”
Jacquie nodded, then looked across the room. “It’s more than you expect,” she admitted. “But then, you forget so quickly, once you see the baby. It’s nature’s way of tricking us into doing it again maybe,” she concluded with a smile.
“But not after Cole?”
She shook her head and moved her fingers in a snipping motion. “After that, I told Mitchell the baby factory was closing.”
“Did he mind?”
She considered that. “No. He was really easygoing about most things.” She eyed him. “Too much information?”
“Impossible. Experience makes us who we are.”
“That sounds wise.”
“It’s just true.” Pierce turned slightly and pointed at the mark on his butt. “If you’re ever going to be shot, I recommend the ass. It hurts like hell and it’ll be ages before you can sit for very long, but there aren’t any important organs nearby. It’s inconvenient but not fatal.”
Jacquie looked horrified and Pierce recalled her expression when she’d asked whether he was carrying a weapon. He had the sense that he’d made a mistake, but she was the one who insisted on the truth. His past was his truth.
“People get shot in battle, Jacquie.”
She frowned. “Your hip could have been shattered.”
“I looked back at the right moment.” He held her gaze. “This was supposed to make you feel better. The mark of experience and all that.”
Jacquie smiled and touched his butt. “Ingoing,” she said, running her fingertip across the scar.
“Outgoing,” he said, turning slightly to show her the matching scar on his right hip.
“Easy in, easy out.”
“Not so easy as that.” He turned to face her and pointed to the scar on his torso. “Appendectomy. An emergency one. My second year in the service. That was actually more dramatic than getting shot.”
She eyed him with a smile. “You’re never going to make me feel better about stretch marks.”
“You know I love a challenge.”
“Those are like battle wounds, badges of honor.”
“What’s the difference? You don’t think it’s valiant to bear children?”
She shrugged and Pierce knew he needed to pull out all the stops.
He sat down beside her on the bed, stretching out his arm so that the light from the bathroom played over his inner arm at an angle. He could just barely discern the cross-hatching marks of the healed scars.
Jacquie blinked. “Is that what I think it is?”
“I told you I was trouble as a teenager.”
“You cut yourself.” She didn’t seem able to believe it.
“I got help, but the evidence is there forever, to remind me of my own weakness. That’s not a badge of honor. That’s about weakness and vulnerability and fear. I’ll wear it on my hide forever.”
Jacquie studied him for a minute, then took a breath. “Okay, shower,” she agreed, tugging back the sheet. “But don’t get too looky.”
“How about I get feely?” he teased, taking her hand and giving her a tug.
“My turn for that,” she said and grabbed the finger vibrator from the nightstand. She hurried to the bathroom, nude, and Pierce looked, finding nothing to criticize.
Jacquie didn’t turn on all the lights in the bathroom and he didn’t care. The water was hot and the pressure was excellent. They caressed each other by hand beneath the stream of water. Jacquie used the finger vibrator on Pierce, with predictable results, and he didn’t tell her that even that failed to distract him from looking. She was beautiful. He caressed her with his fingertips, trying to show her with his touch how gorgeous she was. She came, gasping against the tiles as the hot water streamed over them, and clutched his shoulders.
“Looks like everything healed just fine,” he whispered into her ear and she laughed outright. He kissed her to silence and she wrapped herself around him, making him wish morning would never come.
Pierce knew with complete certainty that this one night wasn’t going to be nearly enough. A year might not be enough. He might have found something he hadn’t even realized he’d been seeking. To his own surprise, the possibility of a relationship didn’t make him want to run, even though he was a one-and-done kind of man.
But then, he hadn’t met Jacquie before.
Jacquie
