The Alpha Bodyguards Books #1-3

Chapter Twelve

P ulse after pulse, his hot release sank inside me and filled every inch like he was the answer to all the bad decisions in my life.

Gripping my hips like he owned me, he rode out the last surge of his release, but he didn’t pull out. The heat of his chest covered my back, and his mouth landed on my shoulder.

“So sweet,” his deep, rough voice rasped. “So fucking sweet.” His mouth open, he swirled his tongue over my heated skin like his expert fingers had swirled around my clit.

I didn’t have words. Or I had too many. But nothing I could say would be any sort of Band-Aid for any part of my life, or his.

“You smell like heaven.” His warm breath coasted across my neck. “But fuck, woman, you feel even better.”

He swore more when he wasn’t censoring what he said to me. I loved the raw edge to him as much as I loved his crude and dominant words. His coarse chest hair and the trail leading down to his giant dick rubbed against my bare back like sandpaper, giving me a direct shot of adrenaline to my poor stretched core.

The rasp to his voice deeper post orgasm, his touch less hurried, he gently stroked in and out of me.

Covering himself in his release, or spreading his seed deeper, I didn’t know which and I didn’t care. He was the single best sexual experience of my life. The single best experience, period.

And the thought of him going back to war made me want to cry.

“Hey,” he whispered, brushing his palms over my shoulders and kissing my neck. “What was that? ”

I bit my bottom lip and sucked in a breath past the sudden lump in my throat. “What was what?”

“Your whole body just tensed.” His chest still against my back, his arms circled my waist like I was his. “You okay? Did I hurt you?”

He wasn’t mine. He would never be mine. I knew this. I knew this I knew this I knew this , I silently chanted. “I’m fine.”

He kissed my shoulder again. “I’m gonna pull out, sweetheart. You gonna be okay?”

Oh God. I didn’t peg him as the after-sex care guy, but I should have. He’d been nothing except kind to me since I’d met him. Alpha as hell, but kind. Caring. Not like…

I cleared my throat. “Mm-hmm.”

Careful and slow, like I was fragile and he’d deemed me precious, he pulled out inch by inch.

His released rushed out of me. Hot and sticky, it ran down my leg and dripped on his expensive, shiny floor.

Ignoring the mess I’d just made, he pulled me up and turned me. Taking my face in his hands, he didn’t hesitate. His mouth covered mine and he kissed me. Gentle and sweet and so, so tender, he kissed me and he broke me.

The rest of my already crumbling heart shattered into pieces of reality and fell to the floor next to the puddle of his release.

This, this was why I didn’t let anyone touch me.

This was why I stayed away from everyone.

This was why I never should’ve let the Marine with the quiet voice and penetrating stare into my maelstrom.

I couldn’t do this.

He was gone tomorrow, but I was never here, not freely.

I needed to leave, but it was already too late. The sun would rise tomorrow, and this memory would hurt. Him, his words, his body inside mine, his tongue stroking through my mouth right now like he couldn’t breathe without touching me.

I needed to push him away, but I couldn’t bear to .

Intent on torturing myself, I let him kiss me as I soaked in every second of his hands on me. And because life was cruel no matter how you played it, I allowed myself to kiss him back. For one mind-altering moment, I allowed myself to feel the kind of gentle I didn’t have. The kind of man I’d never have.

The kind of man who kissed me so completely that I didn’t notice he’d pushed my underwear down my thighs until gravity slid them to the floor. And I didn’t notice the back of my bra go loose or realize he’d shoved his pants down until he was stepping out of them and his boots. All I felt was the strong, muscled god of a man who commanded my attention with his lips and his touch until I was completely naked and he was lifting me by the backs of my thighs.

“Wrap your legs around me, sweetheart.”

My soaking wet pussy brushed past his newly hard cock, and a wave of desire stole my breath.

I wrapped my legs around his lean hips, and suddenly he was inside me again.

I gasped as he moaned, and the vibration from his chest rubbed against my aching nipples.

A quiet curse escaped his lips, and he sucked in a breath. His cock pulsed and his forehead went to mine. His eyes closed for a moment before he opened them again and leaned back just enough to give me his unwavering gaze as it locked in on me.

His thumbs stroked my thighs. “You okay?”

I couldn’t stop the comparison. Nathan had never asked me if I was okay. He’d never made me come. He’d never been gentle. He’d never done any of the things to me Garrett was doing.

“Yeah,” I whispered to a man I didn’t deserve, praying my voice didn’t give me away.

“Too soon?”

I shook my head.

A hint of a smile touched the corner of his mouth as he held my full weight in his arms like it was nothing. “Have I told you how incredible you feel?”

My hands tightened around his neck, but I wasn’t strong enough to deflect his words. “No,” I selfishly answered.

He leaned his forehead against mine again. “So fucking incredible.”

My chest constricted, and I couldn’t stop myself. I whispered my one desire. “Come inside me again?”

The hint of a smile turned into a promise, and he winked. “It would be my pleasure.” Then he was moving.

His cock buried deep inside me, his strong thigh muscles moving fluidly, his arms held me like he carried me all the time as he moved across his kitchen and down a hall.

He carried me into his heart and he carried me into his bedroom.

I was holding on to him, holding it together, until he cupped the back of my head with one of his giant, rough hands that could pull a trigger or tease my clit and he gently laid us on his bed.

It wasn’t his scent that overwhelmed me, or the size of his body or the care in his touch. It wasn’t the sound of pleasure that crawled up his throat as he lay me down and stroked into my heat. It wasn’t the cocoon of dark and false sense of safety I felt in this impossibly masculine Marine’s bedroom.

It was everything.

And it was all at once.

Water filled my eyes, and I sucked in a breath.

His slow grind immediately stopped and light from the hall cut across the angles of his face as he frowned. “I’m hurting you.”

As natural as breathing, I cupped his face. “No, no, you’re not.” Not my body.

His gaze briefly cut to my hand, my arm, as if taking in my gesture, then landed back on me. For one heart-crushing moment, he stared at me like he knew me. Then his lips landed on mine and he was flipping us.

The size, the width of his cock, he was so big he stayed buried inside me as he settled back against the headboard and held my waist. His chest rose with an inhale and his penetrating stare shifted to something I couldn’t decipher. “Talk to me,” he quietly demanded.

Talk to him.

While he was hard and inside me.

A stranger.

“I have nothing to say.”

“You have so much to say, it’s more inside you than I am.”

If the lights were on, or the curtains were open to the setting sun, he would’ve been able to see the heat on my face. “We’re strangers.” But it didn’t feel like it.

“Strangers can’t talk to each other?” Firm and reassuring, his hands moved up my sides.

“That’s what you want to do? Spend your last hours talking to someone you don’t know?” My voice may have spoken the words, but it was my tone that asked the question.

Without any reaction to my sarcasm, his thumbs reverently stroked the underside of my breasts. “When that someone is you, yes.”

All the things I wanted to say waged a war with what I should say. In a life where a single word was measured in obligation and repercussion, I wasn’t sure I knew how to converse anymore. But this giant warrior of a man was letting me straddle him, and he was letting me just be.

His breath came and went from his chest. His hands held and caressed and stroked. His cock pulsed every time I shifted, but he didn’t push.

I had the floor, and he made sure I knew it. Without words, but with actions.

I didn’t know this game.

I only knew Nathan’s brand of manipulation.

But Nathan wasn’t here.

Garrett was. And after tomorrow, he would be gone forever.

“This feels real,” I blurted out.

Nothing in his expression shifted, but his eyes, they changed. “Why can’t this be real? ”

“You’re not saying this, you’re saying we.” This game I knew. He was dancing around real words.

“Why can’t we be real?” he instantly repeated, adjusting the pronoun.

I was stark naked and his hard length was inside me, and a moment ago it felt as natural as breathing, but all of a sudden I was keenly aware of my vulnerability.

Placing my hands on his washboard abs, I leveraged myself up.

“Hey, hey, hey.” He caught my wrists. “Don’t pull away.”

“I’m not.” I was.

“You are.”

“You don’t know me,” I accused.

His voice softened. “It feels real to me too.”

“You don’t want real with me.” Not if he knew.

“What did I say about telling me what I want?”

“You’re leaving tomorrow,” I pointed out, only because it was easier than anything I could’ve said about myself.

“You’ve already left.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“The second I laid you on my bed, the woman in the kitchen I came inside disappeared.”

I fought for distance from the ache in my chest. “Call it what it is. We fucked.”

“I came inside you,” he corrected, before dropping his voice and adding, “I don’t do that.”

“Well neither do I,” I snapped.

“Then how isn’t this real?” He dropped his hand to where our bodies connected and caressed my clit with a single stroke that sent shock waves through my body. “How are we not real?”

Oh God, I wanted him to make me come again. “You came inside me once.” I fought for control of my voice. “That doesn’t make it real.”

“You don’t believe in love at first sight?” Brazen, naked, vulnerable, he asked the question with complete and total honesty.

I smirked to hide my shock and the crushing ache that immediately followed. “Lust isn’t love.” My chest caved in on itself as a flood of tears I refused to shed rushed in a torrent against the dam of my emotions.

No animosity in his tone, he pointed out the obvious. “Relationships have been built on a lot less.”

My head spun and my heart hurt. “Now you’re talking relationships?” I forced an incredulous tone.

“You don’t want one?”

I blinked before I recovered enough to speak. Then I threw out cruel words. “You just want someone to come home to.” I justified my callousness, telling myself he’d said as much.

Not one thing changed in his patient, honest tone. “Not someone. I want to come home to the quiet, reserved, wild-haired beauty who hides behind sharp retorts and haunted eyes.”

I started when he said haunted eyes , but then I threw it right back on him. “You can’t hide the war you fight in your eyes.”

“I’m not trying to,” he said with complete honesty.

I climbed off him, not knowing what I regretted more, the instant loss of his body inside mine or cutting off the most real conversation I’d ever had.

I didn’t have time to contemplate it, he grabbed me before I could get up. I was on my back and he was pushing my thighs wide with his knees in about half a second flat.

Settling his massive body between my legs, he braced himself on his arms on either side of my head and hovered above me as he stroked my cheek. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t pull away.” He brushed my hair back from my face and kissed my collarbone. “Don’t leave.”

I didn’t want to get away from his scrutinizing attention, and I didn’t want to leave. I wanted to hide here in his condo in the sky forever. But I couldn’t.

I turned my head so I didn’t see his eyes on me when I said what I had to. “I have to leave sometime. ”

He gently grasped my chin and brought my face back to his. “Do you?”

“You’re leaving.” It was the easier response.

He stared at me. His chest rose and fell, his eyes held mine and then, ever so slightly, he tipped his chin and gave me too much rope. “Stay here until I get back.”

“I have my own place,” I lied.

“We both know that’s not true.”

“What exactly do you think is going on? Right now, between us?” I was stupid enough to ask, and even stupider to hope.

His chuckle held no humor. “I’m unsuccessfully trying to offer you a place to live in the hopes that I not only get inside that sweet cunt again, but that the woman attached to it will be here when I get back.”

Completely thrown by his statement, I let my guard down. “Are you always this honest?”

“You want me to lie?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “Life’s too short.”

All I knew was lies. “Life’s short no matter what anyone says.” I knew that all too well.

“Even more reason to seize it,” he countered.

“Is that what you were doing when you joined the Marines?” There didn’t seem to be any certainty in that kind of choice past sacrifice and valor.

The slight tip up of the side of his mouth that had been lingering since his half chuckle completely disappeared. “No.” He inhaled. “I was running away.” His finger pushed an errant curl off my forehead. “Like you are now.”

“I’m not running.” I was underneath him.

“Three months.” He brought his lips to my ear and whispered, “Stay here. That’s all I’m asking. That and your real name. Would that be so hard? Twelve weeks of your life rent free?”

A day was hard. “Brookelyn is my name.”

He kissed my neck and rocked against my entrance. “No it’s not. ”

Desire shot through my core, and I stupidly let my thoughts bleed out. “What makes you so sure?”

His mouth moved to my throat. “Because you didn’t answer when Dax called you.”

“Not answering every time someone calls my name means it’s not my name?” I hadn’t answered because I was shocked to see Nathan. I still didn’t know how he’d found me.

“No.” Garrett mercilessly dragged the head of his cock the length of my heat. “Not denying it does. Do you still want me to come inside you again?”

Oh God . He felt too good, and I felt too weak. In that moment, nothing could’ve made me say no, not even a gun to my head.

“Yes,” I whispered.

He shoved into me.