By the time he was finally sinking into her, his body was a taut, raging inferno of need. It was like trying to hold back a steam engine, but he did. He sank into her inch by inch, never letting his gaze fall from the flushed cheeks, the half-lidded gaze, or the softly parted lips.
“Why are you doing this to me?” The pleasure on her face belied the tortured sound of her voice.
“You know why.”
Their eyes met and held. Three years of disappointment and heartbreak seemed to pass between them before she looked away.
But he wouldn’t let her turn from him. He forced her gaze back to him with each small thrust of possession.
Feel this. Feel how good it is. We belong together.
When he was finally seated fully inside her . . . the feeling was indescribable. His chest pounded, not just with lust, but also with something far more important.
“I love you,” he said.
And then he proved it.
* * *
• • •
How could he do this to her? How could he be so gentle and tender?
This was Colt, for God’s sake. Her hardened, angry ex-husband who’d slept with her for months before giving her any clue that she was more to him than the flavor of the week. She could count on one hand the number of times he’d said he’d loved her, and it had never been like this.
She almost hated him.
Almost.
But that stupid, weak part of her that would always love him was too busy basking in—savoring—every touch, every caress, and every heart-tugging look in his eyes as he thrust slow and deep—achingly slow and deep—inside her.
The pain was almost unbearable. Not in her body—although she’d forgotten that feeling of stretching—but in her squeezing chest.
Her heart wanted to remain indifferent, but under the weight of such a fierce onslaught, it was yearning—longing—to reach for the brass ring that he offered. To let him take away the pain. To let him love her. To let him fill the cold emptiness inside her even if just for a moment.
And with him on top of her, holding her, filling her body so completely with his, that brass ring seemed hers for the taking.
He was tearing down her resistance with every tender, poignant stroke. With sweetness. With gentleness. With emotion.
With the feeling of his body sliding into hers.
“I love you.”
She didn’t want his love, damn it. She wanted to come. She wanted him to take her hard and fast in a blaze of fiery passion. She wanted to pretend it didn’t mean anything. That none of this meant anything. That he wasn’t giving her everything she’d longed for for almost five years.
But he wouldn’t let her. No matter how hard she fought. No matter how she touched him, what naughty things she whispered in his ear, or how hard she gripped the rock-hard ass that she’d always loved to urge him to go harder and faster.
It didn’t matter what she did. He wouldn’t fuck her the way she wanted.
He fought off her attempts with unrelenting purpose that left her nowhere to hide.
For the first time, Colt made love to her. Thoroughly and completely. And when they finally came together, he broke her.
Looking into his eyes as the emotion inside her built to the point of no return, she felt her heart open. She let him in. For one incredible moment she let him fill her with everything he wanted to give her, and she cried out with the joy and pleasure of it.
But when she came down, she came down hard. She hit the ground in a free fall of regret and anger. It jarred her. It made her body, still warm in the afterglow and heat of his embrace, cold.
Reality set in, and the horror of what she’d done—what she’d let herself feel—hit her full force like a slap in the face.
Did she enjoy pain? Was she some kind of masochist?
She pushed him off her and tried to roll away, which was easier said than done with six feet four inches of heavily muscled operator on top of her.
“You have to go,” she said, her voice sounding panicky even to her own ears. “I can’t do this, Colt.”
She was too weak. Too vulnerable. Too stripped to the core from her uncharacteristic loss of control earlier.
She tried to scoot out of bed—or maybe she was pushing him out—but he held her down with one arm and lifted up on the other elbow to look down at her.
God, he was sexy. His big, perfectly muscled body leaning over her like that. Perfectly muscled naked body. She didn’t want to look—liar!—but it was hard to miss. His shoulders, arms, chest, stomach . . . lower . . . were all in peak condition and top operational form. In other words, he looked like one of those guys in a fitness magazine but with more scars and without the baby oil. He didn’t need oil to emphasize his muscles. Although the sweat was kind of doing the same thing.
She turned her gaze away harshly.
He tried to bring her back with a tender brush of her hair from her face. “I know you’re scared to trust this.”
She jerked away and sat up to grab her shirt. She felt naked—exposed—in more ways than one. “I’m not scared, but you are right. I don’t trust this anymore than I trust you.”
“I love you, Kate. I’ve never stopped loving you.”
She didn’t know whether she was angrier with him for tempting her with false promises or with herself for wanting to believe them. “If that is true, then you and I have very different definitions of love.”
Rather than get angry, he accepted the criticism and the sarcasm. “You’re right. You don’t treat people you love the way I did. But I wasn’t like you, Kate. I didn’t have any good examples to follow when I was growing up. But I’m trying to change. I’m not going to make the same mistake twice. I can’t promise to be perfect, but I can promise to be better. I know I fucked up, and if you need to punish me for the rest of my life, I’ll take it. I’ll take whatever crumbs you want to dole out. Just give me another chance.”
“Give me another chance.” “That guy.”
Her stupid heart tugged with treacherous force, even as her temper exploded. She jumped out of bed and turned on him, not caring that her silk blouse barely covered the part of her that was still wet with his semen. They hadn’t used a condom. Not that it mattered—with pregnancy anyway.
“Are you crazy? After everything that we went through, do you think I can just forgive and forget? No one changes that much, Colt. How can I ever trust you again or believe you would ever trust me? What’s going to happen the next time I have to work with a good-looking guy?”
His mouth tightened just enough. “I’ll trust you and deal with it.”
Kate went to her tote bag and pulled out her phone and a file. She held the phone out to him first. “Have you seen the new head of my section? His name is Dan and we’ve been working closely and long into the night on a couple of things.” She smiled, seeing his mouth tighten even more. “Ah, it looks like you recognize him. He was Delta back in the day, wasn’t he?”
“That asshole was a dog with women,” Colt gritted out between clenched teeth.
“Same could be said of you before—and after—we married.”
She didn’t say anything for a minute. She didn’t need to. It was clear he was festering enough on his own. But he gritted his teeth even harder and said, “I wouldn’t like it, but I said I trusted you and I meant it. If you have naked hot-tub parties together and you tell me nothing is going on, I’ll trust you.”
She quirked a brow at that. Naked hot-tub parties? Right. She didn’t believe that, but it was clear he was going to be stubborn.
She’d expected that. That was what the file was for. He’d sat up in bed—naked—so when the file landed in his lap it was only partly by chance. That part of him that made her stupid.
“What’s this?”
“Read it.”
He opened
the file and as he flipped through the documents, Kate had the satisfaction of seeing him get pale.
Except the stab in her heart told her it wasn’t really satisfaction. Because part of her—maybe a bigger part of her than she wanted to acknowledge—had wanted to believe him more than she realized.
He might have changed but not enough.
By the time he put the folder down, he wasn’t just pale; he was looking ill. “You’ve filled out adoption papers?”
She nodded, and maybe she was a coward, but she couldn’t look at him. She couldn’t bear to see the rejection in his eyes even if she knew it was there. “I don’t know how long it will take, but I want to be a mother, Colt.”
As much as she’d wanted to be his wife. But she knew the futility of putting those two things together.
Did she expect him to say something? What was there to say? Out of the corner of her not-watching-him eye she saw him get up and start to put on his clothes.
That was that, then.
She hated him for the disappointment burning in her chest, in her eyes. How could she let him do this to her all over again? How could she let him give her hope only to have it pulled out from under her like Charlie Brown’s football?
She’d quickly tugged on her underwear and skirt and sat on the edge of the bed while he finished. He was moving slowly. It was obvious he was trying to find the right thing to say.
But that was the problem. There wasn’t anything to say—right or wrong. They were at an impasse. She wanted a child and he didn’t. She’d put that aside for him once—or tried to put it aside—but she wasn’t going to do it again.
He finally came to stand before her. She couldn’t not look up.
“You deserve to be a mom, Kate. If that’s what you want. But . . .”
He turned away, dragging his fingers through his hair uncomfortably.
“But you don’t want to be a father,” she finished.
He looked back at her angrily. “God, Kate, what kind of father would I be? No kid deserves to have someone like me for a dad.”
He didn’t see it. He would never see it. But Kate had always known in her heart that once he held their child in his arms, he would love it just as much as she did.
He would have been a great father to their daughter. But now that could never be.
Because of her. Maybe this was her punishment.
She looked up at him. “You’ve never been curious how I got pregnant? I was on birth control.”
He frowned, obviously surprised by the change of direction in the topic. “I assumed it was an accident.”
“Right. Everyone knows birth control isn’t one hundred percent effective, but I had an IUD and that is pretty darn close.”
Colt was watching her strangely. Clearly he hadn’t guessed where this was heading. Maybe he trusted her more than she realized.
“IUDs expire,” she said. “I’d had mine for seven years. My doctor kept sending me reminders to have it changed, but I kept forgetting to make an appointment.”
“For how long?”
She didn’t flinch from his gaze. “A year.”
Colt’s expression was like granite. “Are you saying you got pregnant on purpose?”
Kate wanted to cry. “I don’t know. Not consciously. But unconsciously maybe. I was fighting to hold on to our marriage. I thought that once you saw the baby—our baby—you would experience that kind of unconditional love and then . . .”
Her voice dropped off.
“Then what?” His voice was as tight and steely as she’d ever heard it.
She looked up at him. “Then you would know how to love me like that, too.”
He flinched almost imperceptibly. Knowing how ridiculous and pathetic it sounded, she hurried to explain. “It’s a horrible reason to bring a child into the world. So what kind of person does that make me? To try to hold on to her husband with a child he never wanted. And now . . .” Her eyes were burning with unshed tears as her hands twisted in her lap. “You were right about karma.” Her voice was practically a whisper.
But he heard her. He took her by the arm and hauled her up to face him. He looked as fierce and angry as she’d ever seen him. But it wasn’t with her. “I was lashing out, Kate, trying to hurt you because I thought you didn’t want me anymore. I didn’t mean it. What happened was an accident. It didn’t have anything to do with what you did—consciously or unconsciously. You are not being punished because you wanted a baby, okay?”
She nodded, and he let her go. They stood facing each other for a long, painful heartbeat. It was as if neither of them trusted themselves to say anything for fear that the chasm between them would only grow wider.
As if that was possible. But now, he knew he wasn’t the only one to blame.
“Why is a baby so important to you?”
Kate was taken aback by the question. “I don’t know.” She just knew that it was.
His voice was as grim as his expression when he finally spoke. “I think we both need time to think. We can talk more in the morning.”
Kate nodded, but she knew there was nothing more to talk about. They’d said everything that needed to be said.
Nothing had changed. Colt was her past, not her future. Except now she knew the full tragedy of that future in trying to get over a man who would always hold her heart.
Seventeen
After making his call, Scott didn’t seem to be in any rush to eat so they took their time. He practically forced her to have dessert. “It says Annie’s apple pie is ‘famous.’ How can you skip it?”
He’d apparently never stepped on a scale and seen it three pounds heavier at the end of the day than when he’d woken up.
She sat back in the front seat and put her hands over her very full stomach, trying not to be resentful of Mr. Washboard no matter what he ate. She’d probably gained five pounds after that monstrosity of pie, ice cream, whipped cream, and caramel—with a cherry on top, of course. And that was after the chicken-fried steak.
If she’d been hoping for one of the hipster-version country kitchens that had popped up in some parts of the country, she was to be disappointed. Annie’s Country Kitchen was good ol’ country-fried everything with not a grain of quinoa or leaf of kale to be seen.
It had been delicious.
But now they were back in the car heading . . . south.
Back to DC, Natalie assumed. She’d known she wouldn’t be able to delay him taking her in forever—even with the baby—and the attempt on their lives had only hastened the inevitable. She didn’t have any reason to be upset. He’d protected her family, which is more than she should have asked from him. She knew what helping her could cost him.
And even though Scott might be helping her, she did not delude herself that he was ready to forgive and forget. He obviously thought she was still hiding something.
Besides, with a man like Scott, she wasn’t even sure “forgive and forget” was possible. Her betrayal had hit him in the place that was the most important to him. Not just his pride, but the pride he took in his job. She knew how much being a SEAL officer meant to him. With his background he could have done anything. He could have been making millions as an investment banker somewhere and hanging out on golf courses and in private clubs.
But he’d chosen a different path. A path that was all his own. He’d told her the story of the family friend who’d recognized his strengths in high school and had encouraged him to think about the military. She knew how his parents had been surprised but supportive. And she also knew how proud Scott was of all he’d accomplished on his own—without his family’s influence or money.
He had a right to be proud of all he’d achieved and the bright future that he seemed destined for.
Destined for until she’d entered his life, that is. He’d never talked about what came next—he was too focus
ed and happy being a SEAL—but once or twice he’d mentioned something (usually in frustration) about needing people who actually understood how wars were fought and how to use the military effectively being in position to make policy decisions. She knew he wanted to be one of those people.
He had the right stuff, and she wasn’t the only one to see it. Once after a meeting, she’d overhead the secretary of defense and her boss talking about Scott and that command was expecting “big things” from him.
By helping her, he was putting that future even more in jeopardy. And if things went wrong . . . Her heart squeezed. He would have every right to blame her.
He’d seemed relaxed at their late-night dinner, but now that they’d been driving for a while, she could tell he was anxious about something. He kept tapping his thumbs on the steering wheel and glancing at the phone in the console between them.
“Are you expecting a call?” she asked.
He frowned. “Yes, from Kate. I got ahold of Colt, and he was supposed to have her call me. I hope nothing is wrong.”
It was clear he had a very particular kind of wrong in mind.
“From what you told me about their divorce, I’m surprised they can stand to be in the same room together.”
“Yeah, it hasn’t been easy on her the past month having to spend time with him again, while trying to figure out what happened with my blown op.”
She heard what he wasn’t saying. He was blaming himself for getting her involved. “It’s not your fault, Scott. From what you’ve told me of your sister, she would have never forgiven you if you hadn’t gone to her for help. That’s what people who love each other do.”
The irony of her words was not lost on her. That was what she should have done. But she hadn’t trusted that he’d returned that love. He’d never told her that he loved her, but looking back she thought he had. Had in the past tense.
The enormity of what she’d lost hit her hard. It was too late for regrets, but that didn’t mean she didn’t still feel them.
She covered up the sudden awkwardness that had sprung up between them by picking up the phone and handing it to him. “You should call her.”
Out of Time Page 22
