by Zoe Dawson
So many years, he’d kept everything under wraps, learned to handle his emotions alone and in private. Ever since his dad had pulled that trigger, Cowboy had shut down. It was only becoming evident to him now how much he had cut himself off from life. Living alone, staying away from his family and keeping everything to himself.
What was he afraid of? He shifted and she clutched at him, her head coming up. Their eyes met in the dim light, and Cowboy was done, at the end of his rope, his patience. He’d come here for a second chance, and he was putting up roadblocks to taking the risk. It was so much easier to shut down, stay neutral. But what he hadn’t realized was that also numbed him.
Kia reached up and traced his face with her fingertips. “I used to dream about you being in my bed. I never, ever in a million years thought I’d have you here.”
Against his will and every ounce of his common sense, he looked down at her mouth.
And took a breath.
“Please kiss me,” she said in her bold, off-kilter Kia way as if she’d never grown out of that small-child-demanding way, her voice kind of raw and throaty, as if they’d already been kissing the heck out of each other for the last couple of hours.
Without the dark smudges at her eyes, her face hadn’t lost one ounce of its dramatic contrast, none of its beauty. Her lashes were half-mast over her stormy eyes, her lips a softer shade of pink. Her hair was wild, so Kia wild, as if she’d been heaved across pillows and dragged across mattresses, the way a guy might, if he was…crazy or lucky, or simply out of his ever-loving mind.
“Wes,” she breathed his name, her hands going to the button on his shirt and starting to undo them one by one.
He didn’t stop her. He was too busy thinking, remembering and wondering if she might be a practitioner of witchcraft, because he was not his normal, clear-thinking self. He felt a little bewitched, as if he were under some kind of spell.
He fought it a bit. “Condoms,” he said.
“I don’t have any, but I’m on the pill. It’ll be okay.”
She was pulling the rest of his T-shirt out of his pants and unbuttoning his cuffs, pushing his shirt off his shoulders. She was gone, over the edge, and the part of him that had resisted, let go.
She was sweet, hungry for him, needed him.
Needed him inside her.
Needed him to anchor her world.
Kia had barely changed from the girl he’d known. She still smelled like her, looked like her, acted like her and Christ, she still had the same mind-blowing effect on him.
But she wasn’t the same and neither was he, and he’d been taught a hard lesson in the most brutal way. Could people really be trusted?
He cupped her cheek and smoothed his fingers over her skin.
Hell, would they even still be together if he’d taken that risk?
He knew better than to kiss her, but he did it anyway—just let go of every freaking thing he thought was stopping him, tilted that impish face up to his and brought his mouth down on hers.
Heat, as hot and stirring as all get out, washed through him. He groaned with the pleasure of it, gave himself over to it. Her skin was so soft and he was breaking out in a sweat. He suddenly knew it didn’t matter that she was his charge. This wouldn’t compromise him one lick.
She wanted him, and deep, deep down inside in a dark place where he’d locked, bolted and chained the door and thrown away the key, he opened it up. At first it felt rusty, then it hurt, then it hurt so good, then it felt so damn good, so damn right.
He’d let his dad’s suicide stunt him emotionally. That included everything from friendship, except where it came to Kid, to allowing himself to love.
One of her hands slid through his hair, across the nape of his neck and up toward the top of his skull, holding him for her kiss. His brain was fogging. Her mouth was so soft, so silky. He clasped her around the waist and settled her on his lap, a hand on the silken softness of her thighs. Her other hand was sliding beneath his waistband, heading south, driving him wild, and he knew she was going to take him in her hand, stroke him, get him even harder than he already was and he was going to let it ride.
Let it fucking ride.
She called to him like a siren away from nights so dark he’d thought they’d never end, of fear and pain that had dogged him whenever he wasn’t vigilant. Of grief so deep, he was terrified to let it surface.
He’d gone into the navy to escape, to lick his wounds, to prop up his sagging pride. They had made him into something because he worked hard, took it into both his hands like a lifeline. In turn, they had honed him and enhanced him for near indestructibility.
Yeah, she’d seen right through him.
He was transparent to her.
He slid his hand around the back of her neck, and she captured him with her smoky-eyed gaze. Yeah, she wanted this.
Combing his fingers up through her hair, he closed his fist around a handful of silken strands and brought them to his face, and he breathed her in, the rich combination of all she was: the girl of his forgotten dreams.
She intrigued him like no other, enchanted him, everything about her. If he couldn’t open up to Kia, if he couldn’t let go of his shame, he would die inside. He would shrivel up and expire without her. She was like air, water, light.
The navy had kept him on the move, and he had made no effort, none. He was on the hunt for America’s enemies, but deep down inside him, always on the hunt for her, the rarest thing on earth, a woman who knew him and cared.
After his dad’s betrayal, he lost track of who he’d been, but Kia hadn’t. She knew him. His longing for her had a past, and his need to be with her had taken on a life of its own.
Lowering his mouth to hers again, he kissed her, gently sliding his tongue inside when she opened for him. A small groan escaped her, and he deepened the kiss, the way a man does when he’s going all the way. And she knew it, her body softening against him in a thousand lush and lovely ways.
This was all he needed.
Her.
He’d needed to sink himself into the sweet mystery of a woman’s sensuality-this woman’s quirky, goth cowgirl with the backbone of steel.
She pulled off her T-shirt exposing those pierced breasts, the metal of little fairies glinting in the moonlight. Every part of him that was hard, got harder—the curvy mounds of her breasts beckoning him.
Grabbing her hands, he pulled them behind her, then manacled her wrists in one hand. He kissed her neck above the collar, then grasped it in his teeth and pulled. She groaned. Very gently he pushed against her wrists, using the pressure to arch her back until her nipples were jutting out hard, delicious nubs encased in metal and driving him crazy. He closed his mouth over one, and she cried out softly.
“Wes,” she whispered. “Pull on them. It feels so fucking good.”
He groaned softly, tugging.
She moaned, “After I had them done,” her voice barely-there breathless, “the ride home was so crazy, the vibration of the car erotic. Still in full adrenaline mode, I came so hard, I had to pull the car over.”
“Fuck, Kia,” he whispered. “Tell me what it feels like.”
He rasped his tongue against the hard tip. “Wrap your tongue around me,” she sobbed, “I’m coming. Oh, God…Wes.”
He sucked, and her body bowed while she shuddered. He grabbed her breast a little roughly, tightening his grip so her nipple thrust out even more. Using his tongue again, she cried out, the ecstatic sound of her guttural moans driving him wild. Her hips thrusting against him.
Cupping her face in his free hand, he pressed her back toward the headboard and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. She slipped into him like a drug as he opened his mouth wider, kissing her deeper, longer, exploring her. She sighed in his mouth all the while with that compelling, fascinating grip on the waistband of his jeans, the backs of her fingers brushing against his skin.
The wind whistled outside, he remembered that wind like an old friend the way it had blown
across Sweetwater, rattling his bedroom window. The taste of her filled his senses, turning them on, heightening them even more than they had been. She moved with him, her body all curves and desire, the sheer eroticism of her running like high-powered, pure adrenaline from his heart to his groin.
The scent of her was so feminine, so profoundly rich. She was like a storm queen, all dark hair clouds and silver eyes power, gathering to strike him and infuse him with her domination.
“Wes,” she murmured, and for the first time in a long time he remembered he was Wes.
“Darlin’, sweet, sweet darlin’,” he whispered against her lips. I’ll protect you with my life.
He was finally in the here and now, in the moment with her, not in the past, not worrying about the future, but here.
“I’ve never felt…this feels…” Her voice trailed off, pressing out-of-control kisses to anyplace she could reach, the side of his face, along the length of his jaw, to his lips.
“Real,” he murmured. So real.
He remembered laying in a ditch in the wilds of Afghanistan looking up at the stars thinking Kia was seeing the same brightly lit sky. She was like a star, sinking into his cells, filled with light and air, beyond the physical, the lushness of her body, beyond the compelling enticement of her kiss, freeing him from the bondage of his own wasteland, his own loneliness, of always and forever being alone.
“I missed you,” she murmured. “Even if you weren’t mine, I missed you.”
She restlessly shifted her hips, and he cupped her bottom. “Let me go,” she demanded and he released her wrists for now. Her fingers went to the top button of his jeans.
“Wesley McGraw,” she whispered. “Cowboy.”
Yeah, that was him, the guy she was unraveling one button, one kiss, one seductive move at a time.
He reached down and yanked off her shorts, and her clever hands had unzipped and was shoving his jeans and boxer briefs over his hips. She pushed him over onto his back, and she rose, turning on the light. The glow from the lamp made him squint. She was looking down at him, her eyes not missing an inch of him.
“Oh,” she said, staring down at him. “Oh, my.”
It was surrender to the heat of the moment, the strung-out sweetness. It was hot and getting hotter with every soft kiss she pressed to his mouth, with every single sashay of her hand over his body, with every time he teased her with his fingers. She couldn’t get enough of touching him, her hands going over his chest and shoulders, molding over his biceps, trailing down his back, kneading his buttocks.
Her gaze made him ache with wanting her, sent a surge of pleasure through him. In a move that galvanized him, had his hips thrusting up from the mattress, she licked him from the base of his erection all the way to his head, taking the tip of him into her mouth. His hoarse, gruff cry burst from him.
He wanted to be careful with her. He wanted to take things slow, to really savor the taste and feel of her—next time.
This time glided past “caution” the moment he slid his hand between her legs, into the soft, secret warmth of her, into intimacy. He reared up, using a martial move on her that swept her knees out from under her. A SEAL ninja move that was pure commando.
He was a big man, covering her, drawing her leg up against his hip, making room for his large self in the cradle of her hips and he rocked against her.
“Ohhh,” she breathed, moving with him, pressing herself against him. When he was only partway in, she caught her breath on a small gasp, and he took it into his mouth as he kissed her. Feeling how ready she was for him, he plunged into her and her hips met his with the same frenzy.
“So slick,” he whispered, using his thumb on her core, and she came, arching up, taking more of him, the look of her so intensely erotic, an electrifying hard-on, turn-on. Pulsing with the contractions of her pleasure, she sighed, and the deeper he went, the softer she groaned.
“Wes…damn…oh, Cowboy.” She spread her legs a little wider, taking him in, taking all of him, her hands on his biceps, her hips moving with him on every thrust.
“I cried for you,” she whispered against his mouth, then dragged her tongue across his lower lip and bit, hard—and he didn’t know what tore him up more, the love bite or her confession. Both went straight through him on a wave of desperate need to fuck her so sweetly, to dry her long-gone tears, and somehow to love her until she was his.
Kia. He’d known the first time he’d seen her, known there was something between them, some connection making her impossible to ignore. He’d seen her so many times, and every time she’d made an indelible impression on his heart.
Now they were here, wrapped around each other, drenched in desire and need, all he wanted to do was thrust into her harder and faster, more and more and more, to find his pleasure in her body, to let the sweet, slick heat of her consume him and take everything he had.
One deep slide after another, he pumped into her, again and again, reaching and striving for the moment of inevitable release. When it came, it came on him slow and hard, pulsing through him and damn near driving him goddamn crazy.
He pushed deeper, burying himself to the hilt inside her, and she tightened around him. He groaned with the pleasure and pushed into her again, loving the feel of her around his dick. This was life. My God, he’d missed this like a complete idiot. Her breath was warm on his neck, coming in short gasps. Her breasts were pressed against his chest, the erotic feel of the metal sensually scraping his skin.
He could feel her heart racing, feel the heat of her satisfaction. Whatever else he was, he was safely, surely, wildly, intensely alive deep inside her.
She turned her head and opened her mouth on his shoulder, her teeth closing on him not so gently.
“That all you got, darlin’?” The toughness of men’s skin could take a lot more damage than a sweet woman’s. She tried again and it hurt so good.
He propped himself up on his elbows looked down into her flushed face and sated eyes, the storm banked for now, a soft gray. A sigh escaped her, and he tightened his hold on her. God, for so long he’d been dormant, not understanding what he was missing, and maybe that’s what held him back. Maybe if he knew this, it would change his world. Turn it upside down.
And it had. She had.
He’d been in limbo emotionally for so long. Taking this pushed him beyond the limits of eat, sleep, fight, repeat, made him understand why he’d kept such a tight grip on his emotions all these years. If he hadn’t…he’d have to face what he hadn’t faced ten years ago.
She felt like life to him.
He could protect her. He could protect her without fail, no matter what she’d done, no matter what or who came after her. He was the tower of strength against which all others were broken. Until his last breath, he would be her protector down to the marrow of his bones. Whatever she was tied up in, he was bound as well.
9
Kia opened her eyes to the sight of Wes…Cowboy gloriously sprawled belly down against her, the pillows and blankets in all his morning-after sexiness, his hair mussed and sinfully tousled on his forehead. He was always so impeccably groomed that seeing him like this touched her in ways that she hadn’t thought possible, that she could feel any more tender towards this big, beautiful man. His face was softer in sleep the way it never was when he was awake. There was just too much intensity for that. He seemed vulnerable with his jaw relaxed, covered in that dark stubble that had teased her skin with a sensual burn.
She didn’t want to move and disturb this moment, this benchmark moment when she’d opened her eyes and finally, oh-so-finally had this man in her bed, beside her like she had dreamed and fantasized for so long. But it was no longer a fantasy.
Last night…my God. It had never been like that before.
His breathing was deep and measured, no doubt from exhaustion after their night together, his beautiful body needed time to recover. She, too, had slept soundly, no more terrible nightmares, although she would welcome them if she ended up
in his comforting arms. She sighed with the memory of how utterly insatiable he’d been last night when he finally let her drift off to sleep wrapped up in his arms.
Her stomach did a free-fall tumble that had nothing to do with being hungry for breakfast and everything to do with her intense attraction to Wes. The man was so wickedly gorgeous there ought to be a warrant out for his arrest right now because it had to be illegal. Even asleep, completely ruffled, he managed to exude an earthy, sexual magnetism, one she was finding dangerous on so many levels—physically, emotionally and mentally. The fact that this man had the ability to affect her so completely for so long was a scary prospect she was still dealing with.
She sighed again loving the heaviness of his arm curled around her waist, the way he’d tucked her tight against his body during the night. And she’d reveled in his closeness, his presence filling that vast loneliness that had been such a part of her life for so long. She’d allow herself the luxury, if only until his short vacation was over and he left Reddick for San Diego and his warrior life.
She didn’t want the real world to intrude, but her stomach pinched and her heart lurched thinking about how much danger he must be in every day out there in such a violent world. Here in Reddick, not much had changed. The crime rate was low, people went about their lazy days, enjoying each other, the outdoors, entertainment, good times while Wes was putting on body armor, going out to keep the world safe while armed and dangerous.
He was definitely armed and dangerous when all his male attributes culminated into this sleeping hunk occupying more than half of her king-sized bed.
“If you stare at me any harder,” he murmured in a rough, sexy voice, “I’m going to think you have a thing for me, darlin’.”
He stirred and his gradual move from drowsing to full wakefulness was mesmerizing. His whiskey eyes looked like chunks of amber with the way the light caught them. One brow lifted lazily, as did one corner of his sensual mouth.
