Chapter 11
ELEVEN
Mason wasn’t good with words. Never had been. He could infiltrate a bunker in under thirty seconds or field strip his weapon in the dark, but ask him to string together a sentence about feelings and he’d rather take a bullet.
But this…Elin standing in his bathroom doorway, wearing nothing but his T-shirt, hair still damp from the shower, looking at him like maybe she didn’t hate him after all…this he could work with.
“You gonna just stand there?” There was a teasing note in her voice but also uncertainty, as if she wasn’t quite sure she belonged.
In three strides, he crossed the room. Thinking was what got him tongue-tied and stupid. Acting was better. Doing was better.
He closed his hands around her waist, thumbs slipping beneath the hem of the shirt to find her bare skin underneath, and Christ, she was soft. Warm. Real in a way that made his chest tight.
“Liam.” The way she said his name—just his name, nothing else—sounded like a question and an answer all at once.
He captured her lips, pouring all the things he couldn’t put into words into the press of his mouth against hers.
He’d always known Elin was important to him. But somewhere between her showing up and now, she’d become the most important thing in his world.
That scared the hell out of him.
But it didn’t scare him enough to stop.
As he angled his head and swept his tongue along hers, she made a small noise, curling her fingers into his shirt. He walked her backward until her shoulders hit the doorframe.
Immediately, he broke the kiss, bracing one hand above her head and anchoring a hand on her waist.
“Okay?” he managed, pulling back just enough to check her eyes.
“More than okay.” Then she was pulling him back down, kissing him with an urgency that matched the thunder of his pulse.
His control, never his strong suit when it came to her, started to fray.
He wanted to take his time, to memorize every inch of her, to make sure she understood what she meant to him.
But she was tugging at his shirt, nails scraping lightly against his stomach as she pulled it up, and his brain short-circuited.
He stepped back just long enough to yank the garment over his head. The way she looked at him—eyes hooded and hungry and soft all at once—made him think maybe they could make this work after all.
She reached for him, tracing the line of his jaw down his throat to his chest where old scars intersected with newer ones—a roadmap of every mission, every close call.
Her touch felt like a brand, and he committed every detail of this moment to memory—the way lamplight caught in her hair, the flush spreading across her cheeks and the rapid flutter of her pulse visible at her throat.
He caught her hand, brought it to his lips and pressed a kiss to her palm. Her breath hitched. Such a small thing to make her react like that, but he filed it away, greedy for every response he could draw from her.
“Come here,” he said, low and hoarse, guiding her away from the doorframe and toward the bed.
She came willingly and didn’t hesitate to scoot backward across the mattress.
He stared at her, unable to move. Fuck, just the sight of her in his bed—his shirt riding up her thighs, her hair spilling across his pillow—ripped at his self-control.
Again, he fumbled for words that felt too big for his chest.
He could show her, though.
He followed her down, settling his weight carefully over her, mindful of every point of contact. She parted her legs, wrapping them around his waist, and the feeling of her pressed against him with only fabric between them made him groan.
Somewhere down the hall, he heard the muffled voices of his teammates, but they felt a world away.
This room, this moment, was theirs alone.
Elin settled a hand over his fly. His cock surged. “Tell me what you want,” she whispered against his ear, and the question almost undid him.
Everything. You. This. Forever.
But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t risk scaring her off.
So he kissed her slow and deep, tasting surrender in the sweetness of her lips. Then he found that spot below her ear that made her gasp. She tangled her fingers in his hair, holding him close. Maybe this was a language he could speak after all.
He explored the dip of her waist, the flare of her hips, then lower to the soft curves of her thighs.
She whispered his name like a prayer. He was drunk on it, drunk on her. All his discipline, all his training in patience and control, and Elin unraveled him with a single word.
When his lips found her throat, she arched beneath him, her pulse thrumming against his mouth. He could feel his own heart hammering in response, a rhythm that synced with hers.
“You’re killing me,” she breathed, and there was laughter in her voice but also need, desperate and raw.
He lifted his head to look at her—really look at her. Flushed and disheveled and more beautiful than anything he’d ever seen. “Good,” he gritted out.
Because she’d been killing him since she walked into that war room and made him remember what they had.
Impatient now, they stripped off each other’s clothes until there was nothing between them but heat and want and this terrifying, wonderful feeling blooming in his chest.
“I’ve got you,” he murmured against her skin, and it was both promise and plea. I’ve got you. Please don’t go. I’m yours if you’ll have me.
Though he couldn’t force out the words, she kissed him like she understood every syllable he couldn’t say, like maybe she was saying the same things back.
They moved together, slow and sweet and then urgent and desperate. He tried to be gentle, but she urged him on with words and touches that made his vision blur.
She wound her fingers around his throbbing length and looked into his eyes when she gave him a slow jack.
Shudders of pleasure tore through him and ripped a growl from his throat.
Unable to withstand her for another second, he lowered himself between her splayed thighs. Their gazes locked as he poised the head of his cock at her slick folds.
“Take me.” Her whisper raised the hair on his nape.
There were no words for what he felt as he slowly eased his cock inside her tight heat.
They began to move, hips rocking, hands searching for places to land. He clamped one on her hip and yanked her up into him, watching ecstasy overtake her beautiful face.
He sank deep on a groan and eased back out inch by inch, eyes falling shut on the sensation of being with this incredible woman he never wanted to let go of.
In a rush, his orgasm swelled at the base of his spine. “I’m close, angel.” His jaw worked with the effort to hold back so she could get there first.
“Liam!”
He lightly pressed down on her clit, strumming it with just the amount of pressure he knew would send her over the edge. In seconds, she was shaking around him, gasping his name like it was the only word she knew.
Only then did he give in to the pleasure pounding at his core. In harsh jerks, he gripped her tight and rode the sensation until he collapsed over her, breathing in the scent of their mingled bodies.
When they were tangled together, panting, she traced absent patterns across his chest. He laced their fingers together, bringing them to rest over his heart. Maybe this was what people meant when they talked about finding home.
He pulled her closer and pressed a kiss to her forehead. Just maybe, he didn’t need to be good with words after all.
Not when he could show her instead. Every day. For as long as she’d let him.
He hoped that was forever.
* * * * *
Elin woke to cold sheets and an empty bed.
She lay still for a moment, staring at the ceiling of Liam’s room, listening for sounds in the attached bathroom. Water running. Footsteps. Anything.
Nothing.
Of course. He was probably already in the gym or wherever SEALs went at oh-dark-thirty for whatever hypermasculine bonding ritual they had.
She checked her phone. She’d gotten maybe three hours of sleep, and her body ached in ways that made her flush even now.
His room was military-neat except for their clothes from last night, which made a trail from door to bed like breadcrumbs in a forest.
Only this wasn’t a fairy tale.
This was a friends-with-benefits situation, or whatever you called it when you fell into bed with a man who made you forget your own name but never dropped a word about his feelings.
She scrubbed a hand over her face and raked her fingers through her tousled hair.
She knew what this was going into it. Liam was the strong, silent, and emotionally unavailable type. The type who showed her heaven with his hands and mouth and then failed to acknowledge that it meant anything.
Knowing it didn’t make her feel better. No, it left her chest tight and her fists curling with the need to punch something.
Preferably Liam’s rugged, chiseled jaw. Or maybe his perfectly godlike nose. But then she’d break her hand and that would keep her from doing her job.
She gathered her clothes and dressed quickly. Slipping out of his room, she looked around, hoping she didn’t run into anybody. Luckily, the mansion was quiet at this hour.
She made it to her own room without encountering anyone. While she showered away the evidence of their passion, she tried very hard not to replay every moment in vivid detail.
And she failed spectacularly.
By the time she made it downstairs to the kitchen, she’d given herself a firm talking-to. Keep things professional. If they had to speak, she’d keep it casual. She could do this.
The kitchen smelled like coffee and bacon. Alyssa sat at the large table, looking pale and picking at a piece of dry toast. Sophie was at the stove, and May poured orange juice into glasses with the focused intensity of someone trying to act normal.
“Good morning.” Elin headed straight for the coffeepot.
“Hey.” Sophie glanced over her shoulder. “You look tired.”
“I was up late working.” Not technically a lie. She had been working. Before.