Until he tried to snuggle her closer. White-hot pokers of pain shot through his busted leg as he rolled. He bit back the curse and breathed through it.
The pain hadn’t been so bad last night, but of course, he’d been pretty distracted. Plus, he normally soaked his leg before going to bed but hadn’t had a chance last night. Apparently, he was going to pay for it today.
All the commotion woke Grace.
“Good morning,” she murmured sleepily, and slid a leg along his, which was simultaneously arousing and excruciating.
“Wait,” he said hoarsely.
“Don’t wanna.” She stretched provocatively, rubbing her bare breasts against his chest, which distracted him enough that he didn’t realize she’d hooked her knee around his leg. She fairly purred with sexy little sounds that meant she was turned on. And probably about to do something about it.
“Grace.” He grabbed her shoulders and squared them so he could be sure he had her attention. “Stop.”
Her expression went from hot and sleepy to confused and guarded. Her whole body stiffened, pulling away from his. “Okay. Sorry.”
“No, don’t be sorry.” Kyle swore. Moron. He was mucking this up and all he wanted to do was pull her back against him. Dive in, distract himself. But he couldn’t. “Listen.”
He took a deep breath, fighting the pain, fighting his instinct to clam up again.
He hadn’t told anyone about what had happened to him in Afghanistan and didn’t want to start with the woman who still had the power to declare him an unfit parent if he admitted to having a busted leg. But as he stared into her troubled brown eyes, his heart lurched and he had to come clean. This was part of closing that distance between them. Part of learning to trust her again.
She’d said she was going to let him keep his girls. He had to believe her. Believe in her, or this was never going to work, not now, not in a hundred years.
“I didn’t tell you to stop because I wanted you to.”
Her gaze softened along with her body. “Then what’s going on, Kyle?”
“I got wounded,” he muttered. Which made him sound as much like a wuss as he felt. “Overseas.”
“Oh, I didn’t know!” She gasped and drew back to glance down the length of his body, her expression darkening gorgeously as she took in his semiaroused state. “You don’t look wounded. Everything I see is quite nice.”
And now it was a fully aroused state. Fantastic. This was so not a conversation he wanted to have in the first place, let alone with a hard-on. “My leg. The bone was shattered. I had a lot of surgeries and they put most of it back together. But it still hurts, especially in the morning when I haven’t stretched it.”
Sympathy poured from her gaze as she sat up and pulled the sheet back, gathering it up in her hand as she sought the scar. When she found it along the far side of his calf, she touched the skin just above it lightly with her fingers. “You hid this last night. With the low light and striking that weird pose. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“It’s...”
How to explain the horror of being wounded in the line of duty? It wasn’t just the pain and the fact that he wasn’t ever going to be the same again, but he’d been unable to protect the rest of his team. He’d been unable to do his job because his leg didn’t work all at once. A SEAL got back up when he was knocked down. Every time. Only Kyle hadn’t.
Maybe he’d fail at being a parent, too, because of it. That was his worst fear.
“I don’t like being weak,” he finally said, which was true, if not the whole truth. “I don’t like giving you ammunition to take away Maddie and Maggie. Like I might not be a good daddy because my leg doesn’t work right.”
“Oh, Kyle.” She laid her lips on the scar for a moment, and the light touch seared his heart. “I would never take away your daughters because of an injury. That’s ridiculous.”
He shrugged, unable to meet her gaze. “You were going to take them away because I didn’t come home for two months. But I was in the hospital.”
“Well, you could have said that!” Exasperation spurted out with the phrase and she shook her head. “For crying out loud. Am I supposed to be a mind reader?”
Yes. Then he wouldn’t have to figure out how to say things that were too hard.
“Now you know,” he mumbled instead. “That’s why I had to stop earlier. Not because I wasn’t on board. I just needed a minute.”
“Okay.” But then she smiled and ran a hand up his thigh, dangerously close to his erection. “It’s been a minute. How about we try this instead, now that I know?”