Healing Pleasure by Tonya Ramagos Page B

held his gaze and reached behind her back. Her hands glided over Trey’s solid chest as she found the clasp of her bra, reminding her of his continued presence. It was funny how his holding her helped her follow through with her part of the game. It somehow steadied her and made her feel safe. She couldn’t explain it and didn’t bother to try.
    She unfastened the clasp and let the bra fall to the ground at her feet. “What did you trip over?”
    “A dead teammate.”
    She didn’t like the way his tone had lost all inflection, as if he were recounting a fact that meant nothing to him. “How did he die?”
    He held her gaze for a long moment, his eyes unreadable. This time when he spoke, his tone took on an authority that sent a wicked thrill straight to her pussy. “Pants.”
    She shook her head. “Not yet.” She was losing her clothes fast and he was picking apart her questions, only giving bits of the full answer. “How did he die?”
    His gaze flicked over her shoulder before returning to lock with hers. “IED. Improvised explosive device,” he clarified. “Terrorists use them a lot. He was too close when one hit. The explosion took out a chunk of his torso.”
    Oh, God. How close had he been when the IED had gone off? She started to ask when he repeated his command.
    “Pants, Lena.”
    The fact that he called her by her name rather than darlin’ or sweet thing compelled her to obey as much as the hardness in his tone. He was using this, she realized, not just as a way to get her naked, but to keep himself from completely falling into the nightmare in his mind.
    She unfastened the button of her jeans with hands that had started to shake. She should have never agreed to this, should’ve never come here. She’d known she was getting in over her head. For the first time since she’d started her practice, she felt helpless. No amount of her schooling and experience had prepared her to help someone with these kinds of haunting memories.
    Trey’s hands slid from her hips to her sides as she lowered the zipper of her jeans and wriggled them slowly down her hips. He must have felt her shiver, maybe even sensed her fear, because he nuzzled his face in the side of her neck and whispered in her ear.
    “You’re safe, sugar. You wouldn’t be doing this, you wouldn’t be following his orders, if it wasn’t what you wanted to do.”
    How did he know that? Was she so transparent that he could see into her soul? She wanted Brit to talk about the op, firmly believing it was the best way to help him heal. Yet, she no longer understood the game she’d started. An article of clothing in exchange for an answer to a deep, probing question…What had she been thinking? It was wrong on so many levels, but that didn’t stop her from letting her jeans fall in a pool around her ankles.
    “Kick them out of the way,” Brit ordered as he closed the distance between them again. She did and he didn’t wait for her to ask another question before hooking his thumbs in the thin strips of material holding her panties on her hips. Rather than pushing them down, he twisted the straps around his fingers until they snapped, and tossed her panties over his shoulder.
    “You’re breaking the rules, cowboy.”
    “Naw, just changing them. I need a break. Will you give me that, darlin’?” One hand moved from her hip, turned, and wedged between her legs. “I don’t want to see Snake blown apart. I don’t to feel my hands covered in his blood.” He slipped a finger between her sodden folds and raked the pad of his fingertip over her clit. “This is what I want to feel. I want to see you writhing for us while I taste your sweet pussy and Trey devours your breasts.” Even as he said the words, Trey’s hands slid up her sides, dipped between her body and Brit’s, and covered her breasts. “I want to hear you begging for us instead of the screams that keep echoing in my head.”
    He’d told her more without prodding than he’d