Maybe it surprised Liberty that she came against his mouth in a pulsing wet rush about two minutes after he spread her wide open and feasted on her sweet pu**y. But it didn’t surprise him.

While she collected her brain cells, Devin rose to his knees and dug into the side dresser drawer, fishing out a new box of condoms.

As soon as he tore off a single plastic packet, Liberty sat up and plucked it from his fingertips. “I’ll do that this time.” She opened the package with her teeth. Keeping her fist around his shaft as she rolled the condom on, she leaned forward and kissed him.

Devin groaned—from her sure and steady touch on his c**k and the kiss that turned him inside out.

She cupped her left hand around the nape of his neck, holding his head in place as her tongue explored his mouth. Then she whispered, “Betcha can’t get me to come again.”

He laughed against her smirking lips. “Challenge accepted.”

Afterward, they were lying side by side in his bed and he still had his hands—and alternately his mouth—all over her. He couldn’t not touch her. And he’d turned on the lights to see her better while he touched her.

“Go ahead and ask,” she said softly.

He traced the thick pinkish scar on the outside of her thigh above her knee. “This is where you were shot?”

“The shooter got me here”—she touched another scar on the upper right side of her chest below her collarbone—“and here”—her fingers slid over to another scar on the same side, two inches lower—“and by some weird trajectory, when he fired the third and fourth bullets, he hit my leg in almost exactly the same spot, so I have one big scar instead of two.”

“On a scale of one to ten, how much did it hurt?”

“About a five when it happened. Then, when I was in the hospital, it jumped to a thousand. The first shot went clean through me and came out my back.” Liberty rolled. “See that huge scar next to my shoulder blade? That’s what an exit wound looks like.”

Devin swept his thumb across the mark; his stomach cartwheeled thinking about what she’d been through.

“Open wounds like that take longer to heal. The second shot lodged in bone, so they had to operate to remove it. The medical staff over there is quick and efficient, but they patched me up after surgery and put me on a transport to Walter Reed.”

He kept caressing her, wanting to hear about her ordeal and challenges while at the same time he wanted to distract her from the pain of her past.

“The weirdest part? That morning I left the barracks and reported for duty. After the incident, I was aware I was shot, aware I was headed for surgery. But then I didn’t wake up again until I was in the hospital in the United States. It freaked me the f**k out.”

“I can’t imagine.”

“By that time they’d called Harper. She and Bran and the boys showed up within two days of my arrival.”

Devin wondered if his sister would show up that quickly if something happened to him.

Probably not. When have you been there for her?

“I hated that I was injured and I’d serve out the remainder of my enlistment on disability. Harper is a fixer. It about killed her that she couldn’t just slap a Tweety Bird bandage on me and make it all better. Poor Bran had to deal with surly me, his distraught wife, a two-year-old and a baby. But he handled it all in that way he has about him. After a month of bed rest, I started physical therapy with a vengeance. By the time they discharged me, I was in the best shape of my life.”

“I’ll say,” he murmured and bent down to kiss her scar. “Then what did you do?”

“Looked for work. But jobs were hard to come by. My years of specialized training meant I was qualified to be a security guard in an office building or a mall cop.” She sighed. “I’m not belittling what they do; I just knew I couldn’t do it. I hated school, so the idea of enrolling in higher education made me think that janitorial work wouldn’t be so bad.”

He laughed.

“Then I . . . meandered until I interviewed with GSC. The rest is history.” Liberty faced him. “You were so quiet I thought maybe I’d put you to sleep.”

“Not even close.” He touched the scars on her chest again. “The reason you don’t wear cle**age-baring shirts isn’t because you wanna hide your impressive cle**age. It’s because you wanna hide your scars.”

Liberty blushed. “Well, yeah. I have scars everywhere. Not just those. But they are the newest, so they’re the most prominent.” She brought up her leg. “See this one?”

Devin reached down, curling his hand around her ankle. His thumb swept over the scar above her ankle bone. “What happened?”

“I broke my ankle when I was ten. We never had insurance, so my mom didn’t take me to the doctor. By the time the school nurse saw it, I’d done some serious damage to the bones and ended up having several surgeries.”

“I hope your mom felt like shit for not getting you in sooner.”

“I doubt she even remembers it.”

“You never talk about your mom.”

“You never talk about yours either,” she shot back.

Devin went motionless. Even when Liberty had told him that she planned to call him on his shit, he hadn’t believed it. And he really didn’t like it.

Except she was the first woman in a long time—maybe ever—who cared enough to even try to get past those monumental walls he’d erected.