A soft sigh escapes my lips as we part so my shirt can clear my face and then our lips find each other’s again. I release my tangled grip on the back of his hair and scrape my fingernails down the steeled muscles of his biceps, his body responding, tensing to my touch. The guttural moan he emits from the back of his throat turns me on, entices me, has me wanting and needing more.
Desire coils and need springs with each passing second, my thighs clenching together, my breath coming faster. “Colton,” I murmur as his lips travel down my jawline to the pleasure point just beneath my ear that has me arching my back and moaning out loud on contact, heated warmth on willing flesh. His hands scrape over my rib cage and cup my breasts, already weighted with desire. Sensations spiral into and then through every part of me.
“Fuck, Ry, you test a man’s control. I’ve been craving the taste of that sweet pussy of yours. That sound you make when I bury my cock in you. The feel of you coming around me.”
He groans as I slide my hands between his shorts and grip his heated flesh. And as incendiary as his words are, as much as they stoke the fires already raging out of control, there’s an added tenderness in his touch that’s a stark contrast to their explicitness.
“I want every inch of you trembling, fucking shaking, begging for me to take you, Ry, because fuck if I won’t be doing the same. I want to be your sigh, your moan, your cry out in pleasure and every fucking sound in between.” He leans in and nips my lip, and I can feel him quiver, and know that he’s just as affected as I am.
“I want to feel you. Your fingernails digging into my shoulders. Your thighs tense around mine as I drive you closer.” He breathes out, the dominance of his tone fringed with a raw necessity has my entire body vibrating with need. “I want to see your toes curl as they push against my chest. Want to watch your mouth fall open and your eyes close when it becomes too much—the pleasure so fucking intense—because, baby, I want to know I make you feel that way. I want to know you feel just as fucking alive inside as you make me.”
And I can’t take it anymore, his words the most seductive foreplay for my body that’s already craving his touch. I pull him toward me, hesitancy a distant memory. Our bodies and hearts crash together as we fall back on the bed beneath us as hands and mouths explore, taste, and tempt.
I force him on his back by scoring my nails down his chest, his muscles tensing and throat humming with a desperate groan. My mouth traces a languorous trail down the line of his neck, over the ridged muscles of his abdomen scrunching and flexing with each lick of my tongue or scrape of my fingers. I kiss my way down one side of his sexy as hell V and then back up the other side, cautious of his freshly tattooed rib cage as my fingertips find and encircle his steeled length through his shorts.
I look up and meet his eyes, clouded with desire and weighted with emotion, as I pull down his shorts. I kiss my way down the tiny line of hair and then move down and tease the crest of his dick with the wet, warmth of my lips. His cock pulses against my lips as he hisses out, “Fuck!” The drawn out way he says the word encourages me to take him further into my mouth, and press my tongue to the underside as I slide down and take him deeper.
His hands sitting idly on the bed clench into fists, and his hips twitch as I slide him back out until just his tip is in my mouth. I roll my tongue around it, paying special attention to the nerves on the underside, before sliding back down until he hits the back of my throat. In an instant, his hands are fisting my hair as pleasure overtakes him. “Sweet Christ,” he pants out between labored breaths as I continue to work him with my mouth. “So fucking good.”
Fingertips tease his sensitive skin beneath, tickling and pressing, as I hollow my cheeks out with each slide down and subsequent suck back out. I look up at him and can’t help the satisfied smile that tries to form despite his place in my mouth. Colton’s head is thrown back, lips pulled tight in pleasure, and the muscles are strained in his neck. The sight of him slowly coming undone would have me wet and wanting if I wasn’t already.
I fist my hand around him and work it in circular motions while I bob my head up and down over the remainder of him. He groans, turning to steel in my mouth, and in an instant he is dragging me up the length of him, my nipples aching from the skin on skin contact.
His mouth is on mine the minute my lips are within reach, a greedy clash of lips, tongues, and teeth as he dominates the kiss, taking what he wants even though I’m giving it up more than willingly. He shifts our position in the blink of an eye so I am on my back, atop the pillows propped behind me. He scrapes his eyes down the length of my torso, a mischievous grin lighting up his face as he looks at my panties and then back up at me.
“I’m out of practice,” he says with a shake of his head and a flash of his lone dimple. And then despite the carnal need raking through every one of my nerves, I can’t help the laugh that falls from my lips as the fabric of my panties is ripped in half. “There,” he says, lowering his mouth to my abdomen and pressing a kiss there. “Much better.”
And it’s not the kiss in itself, but the unexpectedness of his lips holding still momentarily, just below my navel, that sobers the moment for me. But at the same time, makes it that much sweeter. His eyes are closed and his lips are pressed atop the womb that held his child, and chills immediately race across my anticipatory flesh.
After a moment, his lips make their torturously slow ascent up my rib cage to my breast. I can feel his heated breath, the slide of his tongue, the suction of his mouth as he closes over my nipple, and I cry out involuntarily. The sensations his mouth evokes are like a lightning strike to my sex, my inhibitions singed and body lit afire.
“Colton,” I pant as the ache in my core intensifies and fingernails score the skin on his shoulders as his mouth pleasures and hints at things to come. When my nipples are tightened and teased so thoroughly they’re on the edge of pain, he moves back up my body. One of his hands fists in the back of my hair, holding my curls hostage, while the other slides down my body and slips between my legs.
I hold my breath in that space of time between feeling his fingers move my thighs apart and them actually touching me. Lungs robbed of air and body full of anticipation, Colton brands his mouth to mine in a soul-searing, gravity-defying kiss, and just when it leaves my head spinning and desire spiraling out of control, his fingers part me and stake their claim. His mouth captures the moan he coaxes from me as my nerves are expertly manipulated. Heat ignites and a rapturous moan emanates from the back of my throat as I am entirely consumed and completely undone by Colton.
His fingers coated in my arousal slide back out and up to add friction to my already throbbing clit. “Ah!” I can’t help the garbled cry as his fingers connect, sensations overwhelm, and emotions swell. His fingers stroke and his mouth tempts the skin along my neck as my body climbs the wave at a rapid pace. My nipples tighten and thighs tense as desire ricochets through me and then comes back to hit me ten times harder.
And I am lost. Stepping into an oblivion that’s assaulting all my senses, and overwhelming all thoughts. My hands grip his arms and my hips buck as my body detonates into a million splinters of pleasure. The only thing I hear besides my pulse thundering in my ears is a satisfied groan falling from his lips.
Within a second of riding out the last wave of my orgasm, Colton is shifting, pushing my thighs apart with his knees as he places the head of his cock against my still pulsing entrance.
And then it hits me—breaks through my hazy state of desire—and shocks me back to my senses. I push against his chest, shaking my head. “Colton … we need a condom …” I tell him, reality hitting me stronger than the climax tremors still rumbling through me.
Colton’s body tenses and his head snaps up from where he’s watching our connection. He angles his head and just stares at me, the only sounds in the room are my still shuddered breathing and the soft strains of Stolen on the speakers overhead. But the way he looks at me—as if I am his next draw of breath—halts any f
urther protests from my lips.
“I don’t want to use a condom, Rylee.” His words startle me but more than that, it’s the way he says them, resigned disbelief laced with irritation.
But why?
Disbelief because I ruined the mood to ask? Irritation because he has to now? “C’mon, Colton, don’t be such a guy. I know it doesn’t feel the same but we need to be smart and—”
Colton’s sudden shift in the bed, pulling me up and into him so I straddle his lap, surprises me so much that I abandon my protest. His hands find the nape of my neck, thumbs framing the sides of my face, and his eyes bore into mine with a reverent intensity that I’ve never seen before. “No, Ry. I don’t want to use a condom and it’s not because of lack of feeling. Fuck, baby, I could have burlap wrapped around my dick and I’d still feel you.”
I want to laugh as my mind tries to figure out just what Colton is telling me. “What do you—what are you trying to say?” And even though he hasn’t answered me yet, my heartbeat quickens and my fingers start to tremble.
I watch him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and his lips turn up in a ghost of a smile. He shakes his head slightly as that smile deepens. “I don’t know how to explain it, Ry. That night was horrible. It was something that will forever be etched in my mind—you, me … the baby …” His voice fades as he shakes his head softly, looking down for a moment because I know he’s still trying to come to terms with the fact that we lost a baby together. He exhales a shaky breath, and when he looks up the raw honesty in his eyes has me holding my own. “I was scared shitless,” he says, leaning in and brushing the most tender of kisses against my lips before kissing my nose and then leaning back. “It still scares me every time I think about it and what could have happened. I—I’m just not sure how to even explain it.” He blows out a loud breath, and I can see the need in his face to try and capture the right words to express how he feels.
“Take your time,” I whisper, knowing I’d give him all the time in the world if he asked for it.
He rubs his thumbs back and forth on my cheek, goose bumps dancing over my skin at the poignancy of the moment. “A part of me …” His voice breaks and I can see the muscle in his jaw tic as he attempts to control the emotion I see swimming in his eyes. “… a part of us died that day. But it was the part of me that I’ve been holding on to.”
When he refers to the baby as ours, my breath catches in my chest and my hands reach out to hold onto his biceps.
“I sat in that waiting room, Ry, with your blood, our baby’s blood, on my skin and I don’t think … I don’t think I’ve ever felt so fucking alive.” That soft smile is back on that magnificent mouth of his, but it’s his eyes that captivate me. Those sparks of green that are pleading, asking, and searching to make sure I understand the words—spoken and unspoken—that he is telling me right now.
He looks down at his hands for a beat, emotion flickering over his face as he remembers how he felt before looking back to me. “The blood of a baby I’ll never meet, but that was something we’d created together …” The gravel of his voice breaks on his last words, but his eyes remain steady on mine, making sure I see everything in his—grief, disbelief, loss.
“All the emotions … everything that was happening … trying to process it all felt like taking a sip of water from a fucking fire hose.” He exhales another breath, closing his eyes momentarily as he becomes overwhelmed with the memory and how to best explain it. “And I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to process it, Ry. But the one thing I do know,” he says, his fingertips tightening on my cheeks to reinforce the certainty of his words, “is that when I sat in that waiting room and the doctor told me … about the baby … feelings I never thought possible filled me,” he says, eyes unflinching and complete reverence in his voice that causes my heart to swell with hope for things I never thought I could imagine.
His thumb wipes away a tear that runs down my cheek I didn’t even know I’d shed and he continues on. “And sitting there in that damn hospital room, waiting for you to wake up … I realized what you meant to me, what we had created together—the best parts of us combined. And then it hit me,” he says with so much tenderness in his eyes that when I go to open my mouth to say something nothing comes out. He smiles softly at me, darting his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. “I realized that what she did to me doesn’t have to happen again. That I can give someone the life I never had, Rylee. The life you showed me is a possibility.”
I bite back the comments that rush into my head as Colton’s words break down every last form of protection I’ve ever woven around my heart. My fingers tense on his biceps and my chin quivers from the emotions coursing through me.
“No, don’t cry, Ry,” he murmurs as he leans in and kisses the tracks of tears coursing down my cheeks. “You’ve cried enough already. I just want to make you happy because fuck, baby, it’s you that’s the difference. It’s you that allowed me to see that my biggest fear—darkest goddamn poison—wasn’t really a fear at all. It was an excuse for me to not open myself up by saying all I could do was bring pain and pass my demons on. But I know—I know—that I could never hurt a child—a baby that is my own flesh and blood. And I sure as fuck know you could never hurt one just to spite me.”
Tears well in his eyes as he lowers them for a moment and shakes his head, the confession and cleansing of his soul finally taking its toll. But when he looks up at me, despite the tears swimming in his eyes I see such clarity, such reverence, that my breath is stolen. My heart that was robbed long ago is undeniably his. “It’s like out of the horrible darkness I’ve had to live with my whole life came this incredible ray of light.”
His voice breaks and a tear drops as we sit in this beast of a bed, bodies bare, pasts no longer hidden, hearts naked and completely vulnerable, and yet I have never felt more certain about any other person in my life.
He tilts my head back up to look at him. “So are you okay with this?”
I look at him not sure what he’s asking, but hoping my assumptions are true.
“GOD, I NEED TO KNOW you’re okay with this, Ry?” I search her face for any indication that she’s along for the ride, because right now, my fucking heart’s pounding and my chest is constricting with each damn breath.
Those violet eyes of hers—the only ones that have ever been able to see straight into my soul and see everything I’ve hidden—blink back tears and try to process what I’ve been telling her I’ve never wanted, I now want with her.
Tomorrows.
Possibilities.
A fucking future.
The ultimate motherfucking checkered flag.
And deep in my heart I know with absolute certainty how I feel about this woman who crashed into my damn life, grabbed me by the balls—and apparently my heart—and never let go. I can’t resist one brief taste to calm the apprehension coursing through me, to ease the upheaval of a soul I always thought was doomed to Hell. I lean in and press my mouth to hers using her soft lips as a silent reassurance she doesn’t even know she’s giving me.
I look at my hands trembling on her cheeks, and I know this tremor has nothing to do with the fucking accident and everything to do with the healing of wounds so old and scarred I never thought they could be mended. I lift my eyes to meet hers again because when I tell her, I need her to know that there may have been many before her, but she is the only fucking one who will ever hear this.
“I told you in Florida that I’ve always used adrenaline—the blur, women—to fill the void I’ve always felt. And now …” I shake my head, not sure how I’m going to get the words racing laps around my fucking head to sound coherent. I take a deep breath because these words are the most important ones I’ve ever spoken. “Now, Ry, none of that matters. All I need is you. Just. You. And the boys. And whatever it is we create together.”
Chills dance on my skin and I’m so overwhelmed with everything—the moment, the feeling, the fucking vulnerability—that I have to force a
swallow as I close my eyes momentarily. And when I open them, the compassion and love in hers—and the simple notion that I see her love, accept it— has my pulse racing from the euphoria it brings, and it breaks the final barrier of my past.
“I love you, Rylee.” I whisper the words. The weight in my chest fractures, splinters into a million fucking pieces freeing my soul like a 747 taking flight.
HE LOVES ME.
The thought races around my mind, over and over as adrenaline surges through me.
He just told me he loves me.
Words escape me as a swell of love and pride for this man engulfs me, wraps me in its cocoon of possibilities, and quiets any remaining doubt I might have had. “Colton …” I’m so overcome with emotion I can’t even find the words to tell him what I’ve waited so long to say.
“Shhh,” he says, bringing a finger to my lips while a shy smile forms on his. “Let me finish. I love you, Rylee.” His voice is more certain now in his declaration, as he finds his footing in this newfound world. His smile widens and so does mine with his finger still pressed against my lips. “I think I always have … from that first damn night. You were that bright spot—that fucking spark—I couldn’t hide from even when the darkness claimed me. My God, baby, we’ve been through so fucking much that I …” His voice fades as the moisture pooling in his eyes leaks, a single tear sliding down the side of his face.
I hiccup the sob I’ve been holding back because it’s impossible to keep it at bay. I reach up and hold his cheeks, his stubble coarse and comforting beneath my palms, and press my lips to his as his arms wrap around me and pull me in tight against his body. I lean my forehead against his as my fingers fist in his hair so I can pull his head back to see his eyes. “I love you, Colton. I’ve wanted to say those words to you again for so long.” I laugh, unable to contain the happiness bubbling inside of me. “I love you, you brave, amazing, complicated, stubborn, gorgeous man that I can’t seem to ever get enough—”