32. Rhett
RHETT
I bend and take her mouth, and though I aim to go slow, with Boone sleeping ten feet away and Cade outside on watch, it’s not a gentle kiss.
It starts that way, until Wren makes a small sound and grips the front of my shirt, and all my careful intentions go up in flames.
I turn us, putting my body between her and the room, and back her up against the wall, cupping her head so she never feels the wood. Her fingers slide into my hair, her nails lightly scraping my scalp, and a groan climbs out of me.
She kisses like she argues, direct and brave enough to ask for what she wants.
I drag my mouth away from hers, down to her jaw, then to the exposed line of her throat. Her head falls back against my hand.
“Tell me to stop,” I say against her skin.
“No.”
“Wren.”
She pulls my mouth back to hers, and I’m gone.
I lift her, and her legs wrap around my waist like she belongs there. Like she’s always belonged there. The heat of her presses against me through too many layers, and my hands close too hard on her thighs before I tell myself to loosen my grip.
She can take it, but I’m too close to forgetting the difference between wanting and taking.
“I’m not breakable,” she says, like this woman’s reading my mind, and my control fractures.
I carry her down the hall into my room, kick the door mostly shut behind us, and set her on her feet beside the bed.
For a second, we stare at each other. The urgency is still there, clawing under my skin, but there’s something deeper moving with it.
Wren grabs the bottom of her sweater and pulls it over her head, and my breath hitches. She stands there in front of me, soft and bare and beautiful, the low light of the lamp in the corner tracing her body’s curves. She’s trembling, but her spine is straight.
“Do you know what you are to us?” I ask. I drink her in, but don’t touch her yet.
“Tell me.”
“Everything.” I cup her face in both hands. “The woman we protect, the woman who challenges us, the woman who walked into our cabin and made it feel like a home before we had the sense to realize what that would mean.”
Her eyes shine, and now her lip trembles, too. “Rhett.”
“You belong to all of us.” I brush away a single tear with my thumb. “Even when it’s only me touching you. You’re ours.”
Her breath shudders, and she whispers, “And you’re mine.”
I kiss her again, slower this time, and treat her with the reverence I wasn’t patient enough for before.
I skim my hands over her shoulders, down along her back, and around the curve of her waist. I lower my mouth to her breast and take my time, licking, sucking, and biting, until her breathing turns ragged.
When she says my name again, I lay her on the bed and follow her down. Impatient, she reaches for my shirt, and I help her take it off. Her hands slide over my chest with a tenderness that could break me as easily as a bullet.
I cover her hand with mine and pin it over my heart.
Her gold-edged eyes look up at me. “I can feel your heart beating.”
“For you.”
Her eyes widen, and her body goes still for a beat.
Some men can say pretty things easily. Boone can make anyone smile, but I’ve always been better with decisions than declarations. I’ve never meant anything as deeply.
I lower my hips to hers, and kiss her mouth until the shine in her eyes turns to heat. When she works her shorts off her hips, I move down her body and make love to her pussy until she’s whimpering and moaning my name.
When she tells me she needs more, I push off my jeans and sink into her wet heat, and she arches beneath me with a sound I feel in my bones.
I go still inside her, every muscle in my body locking.
“Rhett?”
“Need a second.”
Her hands frame my face. “Are you okay?”
No. Yes. I don’t know.
I’ve been hunted, shot at, blown off my feet. I’ve held men together with my hands and given orders that sent soldiers into fire because the mission demanded it.
Nothing has ever felt as dangerous as being inside Wren Hollis and realizing I’m not holding anything back from her anymore.
She has all of me. The good, the bad, and the ugly.
“I’m trying not to lose my mind,” I say, so she won’t be concerned.
Her smile is wicked when she says, “Maybe lose it a little. I like how that feels.”
A rough laugh breaks out of me, and I move. I draw my hips back, then push into her, slow and deep and completely. Her fingers dig into my back, reminding me Wren has never wanted to be handled like something delicate.
I pull back again and thrust in harder, then harder. She lifts her hips to meet me, then wraps her legs around me and pulls me even deeper with a demand that scrapes me raw.
I give her what she asks for, and she gives me everything I could ever want.
The bed rocks and her nails mark my back. She says my name again and again, until I cover the sound with my mouth because Boone is out in the main room and Cade is on comms, and the selfish part of me wants her all to myself for one night.
She comes apart beneath me, and I follow her down, holding her like I never want to let her go. My body loses control, and I empty myself inside her, wanting to give her everything.
I shift to the side before my weight gets too heavy, but she makes a sound of protest and wraps herself tighter around me.
“Stay,” she says, so I do.
I roll us onto our sides and pull the blanket over her without letting her go. Her head fits against me like we were carved from the same piece. She slides one of her legs between mine, and my heart seems to swell big enough to press against my ribs.
“You scared me earlier,” she says.
“When?”
“When you were on the phone. You sounded like you were turning yourself into a weapon.”
I stare over her head at the wall. “That’s what I know how to do.”
Her lips brush my chest. “But you’re more than that.”
She says it like it’s easy. Like she hasn’t just called out the one fear I ignore. I know how to be a Ranger, a brother, a team leader, a business owner, and a protector. Those are roles with clear missions. Being something more than that is harder.
“You don’t have to carry the responsibility alone just because you’re the oldest by four minutes,” she says.
I huff out a breath. “They told you that?”
“Boone did. He also told me you’ve been trying to keep them alive since you were six.”
I should be irritated, but I’m not. I’m too tired. Too open right now.
Too hers.
I kiss her again, and my entire body responds like I haven’t just had her.
“Sleep,” I tell her before I let myself get carried away.
Her eyebrow arches. “That sounded like an order.”
“It was.”
“You’re bossy after sex.”
“I was bossy before sex.”
She smiles, and my heart aches like it never has. She settles against me, and her breathing evens out after a couple of minutes, but I lie awake thinking, because having Wren asleep in my arms gives me clarity like nothing else.
I don’t know what the next few days will bring, but I know what I’m fighting for. It’s not an operation, business, pride, or even territory.
It’s her. And my brothers. And what the four of us are together.
It’s Boone asleep with a pistol within reach because he trusts me to wake him if I need him.
It’s Cade outside in the dark, guarding all of us without needing thanks.
It’s Wren, here beside me, her hand over my heart.
When the time comes, I know I’ll be exactly what they need me to be. Leader, weapon, shield, man.
And when I carry the weight, I won’t be carrying it alone.