Chapter 16
At this moment, everything faded. It was just her and Dakota, and her desire to have him was nothing short of desperation.
Her whole body vibrated with such a powerful surge of adrenaline, there was no stopping her.
Her eyes roamed over him as she pulled the tank over her head, slipped out of her panties as she crossed the room to where he was standing.
“Bailee,” he whispered, his breathing ragged, his voice husky.
With a jerk, she met storm-soaked bark, rich and burning at the edges as they bored into her, searing her with that aching look.
Color slashed across his high cheekbones.
His gaze raked down the length of her naked body.
His eyes lingered on her chest, and in response, her breasts swelled, and her nipples tightened even more until they were almost painful.
She reached him, and he was so still, as if he was carved out of granite. She leaned into him, and when the throbbing tips of her breasts touched the hard, damp wall of his chest, she gasped at the exquisite pleasure.
He clasped her to him, the exquisite feel of his hard, ridged belly, thick, mouth-watering erection, and heavily muscled thighs aligning so perfectly with hers, sending arousal thrumming heavily through her veins. His dick swelled against her.
He shifted, the soft friction of his velvety skin, warm and delicious as if her skin made him restless, his breath suddenly getting ragged. He groaned softly, the sound vibrating through her.
“Too tight,” he whispered.
She looked down the length of his body, to the bulge that was testing the give in those indecent shorts. “So they are. What should I do about them?”
“Take them off…please.”
She cupped him through the fabric, the thick, hidden length of him, and he groaned, his hips thrusting hard heat against her palm.
Oh, Ancestors… What was she doing? What was she thinking?
This was the man she’d pushed away. The man she’d told herself she didn’t deserve. The man who believed in everything she had abandoned, faith, tradition, connection, family, while she stood hollow and terrified in her own skin.
Still…
She wanted him like he was the first breath after drowning.
“Bailee,” he murmured again like a lifeline, voice low, water dripping down his chest in slow, devastating lines.
It hit her like a blow.
The way he said her name.
He was every piece of her she’d buried, heat and heritage and all the things she’d exiled herself from, woven into muscle and breath and the quiet gravity of a man who had bled for her.
In this very hotel, he’d bled for her.
“How exactly do I get you out of this sorry excuse for SEAL gear?” She squeezed. “Although, I’m not complaining about how they look on you, I do wonder how you get…” She cupped his balls, fondling them. “...out of them. Is there a secret code? A password? Classified documents I have to read?”
“Fuck,” he said, his tone full of amusement, the laughter cascading out of him. “You’re a hard woman.”
“You’re the one who’s in a hard situation. I just need data.”
“There’s no zipper…” he gasped as she ran her hand up, brushing against the fabric just enough for him to feel it. He said something guttural in their native language, something to the tune of You’re killing me, woman of mine.
“Button, button, who’s got the button?” she sing-songed, and that chuckle was cut off as she undid the strap that was threaded through an O-ring. He panted, dropping his head. “I think I’m in a unique position to interrogate you for a confession.”
“That so?”
“Yes. For all the SEAL wives out there who confess that these are standard issue, minuscule inseam, that toes the line of inappropriate.”
“You want me to betray the shorts? Bailee, that’s treason.” She rubbed her palm over the head of his dick, and he clasped her waist tight. “Fuck me,” he whispered.
“That would be the outcome, my strong warrior.” She pulled the waistband away from his body.
“Ooh, it’s getting really tight in there.
Don’t make me do verbal torture, like how good it will feel to slide into my wet, slick body.
” She exhaled softly, her words filling her with a wealth of emotion that struck a chord deep within her, too.
Eyes closing, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his.
His mouth was soft and yielding, a heavenly temptation she couldn’t resist. His lips parted, and he accepted her need to deepen the connection, to slide her tongue inside and curl around his, dragging him into a hunger so dark and hot she burned with the intensity of it.
He kissed her with a fierce urgency, and she kissed him back with an abundance of need and something else far more profound that echoed in the farthest recesses of her locked-up soul, an emotional, intimate bond that rocked the foundation of the solitary woman she’d made herself into.
He needed her. He was hurting, aching, lost in the fever. The torment was clear on his face.
He broke the kiss, his face contorting with pleasure and pain. “Bailee, if you’re going to take me, let it be real.”
Her knees nearly gave. Her breath stuttered, sharp and thin.
She leaned into him because she didn’t trust her own body to hold her upright.
Something inside her broke. That he would still offer himself to her, not with anger, not with demand, but with that soft, sacred plea, unraveled the knot she’d bound around her heart.
He wasn’t asking for her body. He was asking for her truth.
For the part of her that had always run.
For the woman she’d buried in fear and silence.
“This couldn’t be anything but real. You’re such a man.” She popped the button, and the fabric parted on his deep groan and hard exhale. She pushed the tight fabric off his hips, down his legs, where he kicked them away.
“They’re standard issue, scandalously worn by men who are proud of what they represent,” he whispered.
She straightened, sliding her hand over his erection, her thumb rubbing the silky head, slick with his seed.
She laughed softly as he thrust uncontrollably into her hand, pressing her body against his, her lips trailing along his gorgeous jaw.
She licked her way down to the base of his strong throat, where his pulse beat strong and steady.
“One thing is for sure. There is nothing…nothing standard issue about your gorgeous ass.” She moaned softly and shifted her hands up through the power of his wet hair, twisting the silky, too-long strands around her fingers, and dipped her mouth lower, to the hard planes of his chest. She sent her mouth over his flat nipple, biting his deliciously erect nub, then suckled him strongly.
He tasted so good, she wanted to devour more of him.
Her mouth moved lower, reverent, hungry, claiming the places she hadn’t let herself touch.
Not like this. Not when it meant so much.
She pressed soft, open-mouthed kisses down the hard terrain of his chest, tasted the salt still clinging to his skin.
Every inch of him felt like a map back to herself, sweat-slick muscle, the curve of his ribs, the powerful slope of his abdomen where she dragged her tongue in a slow, deliberate line.
Then she saw it.
The scar.
Just above his hip. Faint. Jagged. A ghost in the flesh where the bullet had gone in. Where she had almost lost him.
Her breath caught.
She didn’t ask. She didn’t need to.
She bent low and pressed her lips to it. Gentle. Unforgiving. Her hands flattened against his waist as her mouth lingered over that wound like she could take it back. Like she could undo the pain he’d suffered in silence. Like she could speak apology in the language of skin.
He flinched.
Not from pain.
From memory.
From feeling her there.
Her lips softened, then firmed. She kissed him again. Slower. Deeper. A promise pressed into the scar.
Bear’s hands trembled as they threaded through her hair, the first sign of his restraint beginning to slip. His voice came raw, scraped from somewhere deeper than bone. “You don’t have to do that.”
She lifted her face, meeting his eyes, her breath shuddering between them. “I can’t help myself. With you, I can never help myself.”
Her fingertips traced up the lines of his obliques, mapping the sharp grooves carved into him by time, discipline, and sacrifice.
She followed the trail of her hands with her lips, her tongue, leaving heat and devotion behind.
His muscles jumped beneath her touch, and every time he gasped, she kissed him again.
Like she was trying to teach his body a new memory to replace the old one.
Not violence. Not blood. But her. Her mouth. Her want. Her truth.
Tonight, this surrender was all about recognition.
Her mouth moved over the inside of his thigh, and he groaned low, trembling now, his control fraying thread by thread.
But she didn’t linger. She rose, kissed up the line of his torso again, chased the water trailing down his chest like it was something sacred.
She wanted to remember the way he tasted when the world was stripped away, sunset and sweat and salt and man.
When her lips found his again, she poured everything into that kiss. Every apology. Every ghost. Every moment she’d shut him out and every hope she didn’t know how to name.
Still, he let her lead.
Still, he didn’t demand.
Still, he let her choose.
She pulled back just enough to whisper against his mouth, “Let me show you what it means to take.”
His breath stuttered. His hand curled at her jaw.
He didn’t kiss her again.
He lifted her.
Big hands slid beneath her thighs and in one fluid motion, he gathered her against him, rising with effortless strength.
Her body curved into his instinctively, slick heat pressed to the hard swell of his erection, her breath catching at the raw contact as he walked her to the bed like a man carrying fire.