by Cynthia Sax
Dedication
To my dear, wonderful hubby for teaching me that love lasts, to Wylie Snow, Christine d’Abo, J.K. Coi, and Amy Ruttan, four of the most generous and talented writers in Romanceland, for keeping me sane, and to Cris Conquers for always supporting newer writers.
Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
About the Author
Also by Cynthia Sax
An Excerpt from When Good Earls Go Bad by Megan Frampton
An Excerpt from The Wedding Band by Cara Connelly
An Excerpt from Riot by Jamie Shaw
An Excerpt from Only In My Dreams by Darcy Burke
An Excerpt from Sinful Rewards 1 by Cynthia Sax
An Excerpt from Tempt the Night by Dixie Lee Brown
Copyright
About the Publisher
Chapter One
DREAMS HAVE ALWAYS been my refuge from the judgmental world. They’re nightly pockets of happiness I anticipate during the day and cling to every morning.
Tonight is different. Nightmares chase me, my visions gruesome and dark, filled with explosions and flying shrapnel and images of Hawke in increasingly intense levels of pain.
I try to be a good soldier, putting pressure on his gushing wounds and sewing hunks of skin together, my hands shaking, my mouth dry. My efforts aren’t enough to save him. Hawke dies again and again, each loss tearing at my sanity.
After I fail to keep him alive for the fourth heartbreaking time, there’s a moment of sorrow-laden silence. I bow my head and grieve for him, for the future we’ll never have.
Another explosion rocks my imagined world. My eyes burn from the smoke and ash. I blink away my tears, dreading what I’ll see.
The cloud of concealing gray clears. Hawke writhes on the war-torched ground, his face twisted in agony, his body battered. He reaches bloody fingers out to me, a wordless request for my help.
My gaze drops. Oh, God. He has no legs, his blue jeans jaggedly torn, sprays of vivid crimson arcing from his severed limbs.
“Hold on, Hawke.” I rush to his side, broken glass crunching under my shoes. “I’ll save you.” I can do this. Francois, my French friend, shared how he saved his friend after one horrific battle. I unbuckle Hawke’s belt and slide the black leather from the loops on his jeans. “Shit.” There’s only one belt and he needs two tourniquets.
Hawke moans, the sound pulling at my heart. The puddle of blood encircling him grows larger, coating my ballerina flats.
My big man fights me as I attempt to encircle both of his thick thighs. “Stop moving,” I order. The leather slips once, twice, three times, before it finds purchase. I tighten the loop. This doesn’t stem the bleeding.
With every pulse, every spurt of lost blood, his efforts to escape me lessen. “Stay with me.” My voice cracks with emotion. Sweat drips down my spine, my shoulders aching. His heartbeat is loud, sound distorted in my dream, and the boom, boom, boom is slowing. “Don’t leave me.” My fear and panic builds. I have to save him and I don’t know how.
His heart stops, the stillness terrifying. “Hawke,” I scream, thumping on his T-shirt-covered chest with my dirty fists, trying to revive him. “Hawke.”
“I’m here.” Rough hands grip my shoulders, plucking me from my nightmare. “You’re safe, love.” I’m pressed against a wall of warm flesh. “I have you.” Hawke nuzzles his face in my hair, his breath wafting on my skin.
I open my eyes and blink, the room brightly lit. “You’re here.” I scan his broad face, flattened nose, square chin. His pale blue eyes are clear, his scarred skin unbroken. There’s no blood, no signs of trauma. “You’re alive.”
“I’m alive,” Hawke reassures me, his voice soft. “In your dream—”
“I couldn’t save you.” I run my palms over his massive form, searching for fresh injuries, finding old scars and bulging muscle. “I couldn’t stop the bleeding.”
I splay my fingers over his pecs. His heart beats strongly against his tattooed skin, the steady rhythm taking the edge off my terror. Hawke lies still as I examine him with my hands and mouth, sprinkling kisses over his rippling abs, tracing his hipbones with my tongue, tasting salt and man. He hardens. I pump him once, twice, casually fondle his balls, and continue my exploration, mouthing over his massive thighs.
I touch his knees and my fear subsides. “You have legs,” I murmur, needing to hear the words. “It was just a dream.”
“It was just a dream.” Hawke bends his legs.
“Thank God.” I strap my arms around his calves, press my bare breasts against his shins, and lavish all of my attention on his knees, dipping my tongue into each indent, sweeping over every swell, learning the size and shape of his scars, this tested flesh silver against his golden skin.
He doesn’t move, doesn’t talk, allowing me to touch him. Gradually, I quiet and the fluttering in my stomach eases. I rest my cheek against his knees, his healthy, whole legs.
Hawke threads his thick fingers through my hair. “Tell me about your dream, sweetheart.”
“You don’t want to hear about it.” I close my eyes, picture him bloody, hurt, dying, the visions appallingly real.
“Try me.” His tone is dry.
I’ll tell him because I need to tell someone and he’ll understand. He’ll know.
I take a deep breath and the words spill out of my mouth. “It was a bombing. I wasn’t hurt, but you were, badly. From your knees down, there was nothing.” My shoulders lift higher and higher. “You were losing so much blood. It was everywhere.” I inhale, remembering the metallic scent. “I tried to help you, removing your belt, using it as a tourniquet just like Francois did with his friend, but his friend only lost one leg in battle, you lost two and—”
“In battle?” Hawke growls, his body stiffening. “That damn Frenchman told you about his war stories?” He swings his legs over the edge of the bed, taking this proof of his survival away from me. “I’ll kill him.” My irate former marine presses down on the mattress with his massive fists.
“Don’t leave me.” I wrap my arms around his chest and my legs around his waist. “I can’t deal with that right now.” I shiver, my breasts brushing against his back. “I need to touch you, to know you’re alive.”
He covers my hands with his, flattening my palms against his skin. “I won’t leave you, love.” He sighs, his chest rising and falling. “But Francois shouldn’t have shared those memories with you.” He rolls his shoulders, his joints cracking. “They’re not your burden to carry.”
“He doesn’t have to bear that burden alone.” I slip into Hawke’s lap, straddling him. “Neither do you.” I tremble, remembering the horrors Francois related, the death, carnage, agony. “I’m here for you.”
“I know you are.” Hawke runs his hands over my hair, petting, smoothing the strands. “Talking about the past won’t change it.”
“It’s not the past.” If it were ancient history, I wouldn’t be so freaked out. “You face the same dangers every day.”
“Not every day.” He curls a tendril of my hair around his index finger. “I rarely take assignments now.”
“The assignments you do take are high risk. And it only takes one assignment gone wrong.” One to make my nightmares a reality. “They’re the missions you don’t trust your men to lead.”
Hawke frowns, his forehead furrowing with thought lines. “My men are capable of leading any mission the Organization accepts.”
“You don’t believe that,” I argue, having learned long ago that actions hold more weight than words. “Because, if
you trusted your men, you’d step back and allow them to do the job, to lead those dangerous assignments. You should train your men better, Hawke. Ensure their skills match your own.”
“Their skills do match my own.” His voice raises. “They’re the best damn security professionals on the planet. I trust them with any assignment, with my life, with your life.”
I lift one eyebrow, smelling steaming ripe bullshit. My overprotective military man wouldn’t trust anyone else with my life. He considers my well-being to be his personal responsibility.
He sighs. “You don’t understand.”
I place my hands on his chest, needing to touch him. “Explain it to me.”
“I’m asking my men to risk their lives, love.” Hawke brushes my hair away from my face. “How can I expect that from them and not be willing to do the same?”
My man is too damn honorable. I consider my responses, my gut saying I might have only one shot at this, at changing his mind. “What do your men expect from you?”
There’s a pause as he considers my question. “They expect me to reduce their risks, to ensure there are no unknowns, no surprises.”
“And you can do that best by taking assignments?” I gaze up at him, reading his expressions as he taught me.
Hawke’s face darkens, a big fat no written in his pale blue eyes.
It’s too early for celebration. Knowing what is right and doing what is right are two different things.
Mr. Peterson, my old boss, realized I was the right candidate for the full-time job, yet he chose Dru, my nasty coworker. I swirl my fingertips over the wings etched across Hawke’s collarbone. My former marine might never delegate his high-risk assignments, might continue to place himself in danger, and one day, I might lose him, forever.
This would devastate me. I’ve finally grown to trust him, to care for him. The thought of him being dead, gone from my life, is unbearable.
“Think about what I’ve said.” I lean forward and press my lips against the sun depicted between his tattooed wings. “That’s all I ask.”
“I’ll think about it . . . later.” Hawke falls back onto the mattress. I perch on his naked body, my wet pussy pressing against his defined abs, my spine straight. “Right now, I’m thinking of a pretty little woman with long brown hair and big brown eyes.” He pulls his body higher on the bed, taking me with him.
“Oh.” I feign nonchalance. “Do I know this woman?” I swirl my fingertips around his flat male nipples. “It can’t be me.” I lean over him. My hair falls forward, the tendrils drifting over his chest, brushing his tattoos. “I’m average-sized.”
“It’s always you,” he purrs, his lips curling upward and his eyelids lowering. I smile knowingly. He likes being touched this way, his face soft and his eyes dreamy.
I sweep the strands back and forth, back and forth, as I slowly move over him, gently caressing him with my hair, fingers, nipples, pussy. He undulates beneath me, a rolling wave of muscle, his cock sliding between my ass cheeks.
“I’ll take care of you, Hawke,” I mouth over his stubble-covered jaw. “I’ll keep you safe,” I promise. I don’t yet know how, but I will. My hips roll, my body on autopilot, responding instinctively to my big man’s presence.
“You’re taking good care of me now.” Hawke glides his rough hands over my back, the slow drag of his fingertips, up and down, fanning the flames of desire. “I’m enjoying every moment of it.”
“I could do more.” I grind against him, branding my pussy juices on his skin, marking him. “Much more.”
“Give me everything you have.” He grasps my hips, coaxing me to move. “I want it all.”
“You have my all.” I rock against him, grazing my nipples across his pecs, rubbing my ass onto his shaft, my hair cascading like a veil around his rugged countenance.
“Belinda.” Lust and wonder and something more, something deeper, curl around my name, embracing the syllables as I embrace him. Hawke’s eyes brighten to a brilliant blue, lit by passion. Our lips skim and I flick my tongue playfully over his flesh.
We touch tenderly, with no urgency, as though we have the rest of our lives to find release. I stroke Hawke’s time-beaten face, tracing his flattened nose, raking my fingernails through the stubble on his cheeks, his contrasts exciting me. He curves his hands around my ass, squeezes and releases, squeezes and releases. My moisture bathes his flat stomach, my musk scenting the air.
We taunt and tease each other, the rest of the world forgotten. There are no hostiles, no judgment, no fear, only the two of us and our escalating passion, our forms moving together faster, harder.
“Need,” I pant, yearning for more, a deeper physical connection, his tongue in my mouth, his cock inside my pussy.
Hawke repositions my body so my pussy lips hug his base, and he reaches for a condom, fishing his fingers in the container, closing them around a flat blue package. I stroke his shaft, rubbing the bead of precum over his tip, my thighs shaking with want, a craving I’ve never felt for any other man.
Hawke rips the package with his teeth and sheathes himself quickly, rolling the latex over his length. He then places my fingers on his cock, his gaze meeting mine. “I’ll always protect you, love.”
He’s protecting me from my irrational fears. We’re both healthy. I’m on birth control pills. If that precaution fails, my former marine is honorable. He’d never walk away from his child, as my dad walked away from my mom, leaving her alone, in endless poverty.
Hawke might die. That’s a very real possibility. I shiver, images from my nightmare haunting me. But he’ll never willingly abandon me.
“I’ll protect you too.” Pushing away my dark thoughts, I rise onto my knees, sliding my wet folds over his rigid length, coating his skin with my juices.
Hawke’s rim teases my clit. I draw myself upright as much as I can, straining to eliminate the distance between his tip and my pussy hole. I can’t move higher, can’t take him inside me, my grand plan to ravish him failing. “You’re too big.”
Hawke chuckles. “You’re small.” He cups my ass, lifting me easily.
“I’m average-sized,” I insist, positioning his tip at my entrance.
“You’re perfect,” he compromises, lowering me onto his hard cock. We moan, his deep tones harmonizing with my higher pitch, our pleasure decadent, right, shared.
“That’s my cock head inside you, Belinda,” Hawke informs me as though there is any doubt. Only his tip stretches me this tight.
“Yes.” I grip his biceps, digging my fingernails into his barbed wire tattoo, adding red crescents to the black design. “Now give me every inch.”
“It’s yours.” Hawke’s invasion of my body is mind-meltingly slow. His latex-covered cock head advances upward, rubbing against my inner walls, setting off tremors in my soul. I struggle to accommodate his length, my wet, warm pussy hugging his shaft, the friction, the pull of my flesh over his divine.
My delicate folds finally press against his unrelenting base, his coarse hair tickling my clit, his shaft pulsing inside me. I’ve taken all of him. He’s mine. I grab my breasts and tilt my head back, swaying the strands of my hair over my ass, drifting the tendrils across his thighs.
“You’re so fuckin’ priceless, sweetheart,” Hawke rumbles, his appreciation open and gratifying. He wants me, needs me as I need him. “Custom-made for me.”
“I’m designer goods.” I smile, seated fully on him, savoring the illusion of control. That’s all this is. My knees don’t touch the mattress.
“Yeah.” He gazes up at me.
“I’m one of a kind.” I squeeze his shaft with my pussy muscles, and my big, strong man’s lips flatten, pearls of sweat forming on his forehead.
“Let me verify the quality of my purchase.” He knocks my hands aside and replaces them with his own, tightening and loosening his grip on my breasts, his rough touch spiraling my need higher.
“Do I pass inspection?” My eyelashes flutter.
“You do,�
�� Hawke confirms. “This isn’t mass-produced by some uncaring machine.” He recites words I once told him. “I feel the craftsmanship, the love.” He catches my nipples between his thick fingers and tweaks my sensitive flesh.
A titillating pain shoots down my torso and I cry out, arching my back. Hawke grins. He knows what he’s doing to me, how he’s sexually tormenting me.
Our gazes meet. I’ve learned how to torment him, also. Hawke’s eyes flash as he reads my intentions. Before he can react, I clench his cock.
He jerks, his face twisting, his smile fading. My military man will never be handsome, his countenance too blunt, too battered, but I can’t look away from him, the strength in his features ensnaring me.
I push upward, move less than an inch, and fall. Riding him isn’t possible. He’s too large. And I can’t remain still, not with the passion inside me building and building.
I pitch back and forth, the pressure against my clit divine, the fullness without equal. This is tantalizing and arousing, and a month ago, I might have been satisfied with this solution. I would have brought my own body to release, finishing myself off with my fingers.
But Hawke has taught me to crave more, to want it all. I can’t do this on my own. I look into his eyes. Will he make me ask, beg, plead, for what I need?
Because I will. I’m beyond shame, ravenous for satisfaction.
His lips twitch. “You’re delightfully stubborn, love.” Hawke gives my breasts one hard squeeze and then slides his hands under my ass, lifting me.
I hold on to his arms, his muscles flexing under my fingertips, and I hover above him, only his broad tip remaining inside me. He holds my gaze and my breath catches, my body humming with anticipation.
He drops me.
“Hawke,” I cry as I fall, impaled on hard cock, my pussy lips smacking his base and my ass slapping his thighs, the sensual slide, thought-banishing burn, and exquisite connection combining into ecstasy.
Hawke repeats the action again and again. My breasts jiggle, my skin heats, and my arms and legs tremble while I ride him, mounted securely on unbending man.
His rhythm increases. He thrusts upward as he drives me downward. The bed moves with us, the wooden feet pounding against the floor.
