I’ll hold you steady, his gaze says. Always.
“I still can’t believe you want me,” I whisper.
“Believe it,” he snarls. “Or, rather, don’t.”
“Don’t?”
He laughs darkly.
“I don’t want you, Kat. I need you. I can’t pretend to explain it, but … Listen, when I was in the SEALs, I was a cold bastard. Perhaps there was something broken in me that I was able to shut down my emotions so easily. I don’t know. Whatever it is, it made me well-suited to turning my body and my mind into a machine, into getting the job done. I went to war and I served well, and then I established my business, and at no point, through any of this, did I ever feel … well, anything close to what you make me feel.
“Jesus fucking Christ, Kat, the second you walked into my office, it was like forty-two years’ worth of feelings just slammed into me. I knew then that you were what I’d been waiting for, all these years, the reason for my coldness … so that, shit, so that I could aim all my feelings toward you. I don’t know if that makes sense. I’m not exactly what you’d call a poet.”
I blink away warm tears.
“It—it makes sense,” I whisper.
He leans down and kisses the tears, just like he did when I told him about Omar and Rusty.
“But don’t get all emotional on me now, Kat,” he rumbles, sounding primal and freaking powerful. “Because just because you make me feel more than I ever have before, it doesn’t mean I’m turning into some Victorian gentleman who merely wants to dote on you. I need your flesh. I own your flesh. And it’s time my seed tasted the tight wetness of your soaking wet pussy.”
With a movement so quick I struggle to believe a man of Colton’s giant size could make, he sweeps me off my feet and cradles me toward him. I giggle and let my head fall against his chest, panting as shock and exhilaration stampede through me.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get used to the way he so easily carries me, the way the jocks used to carry the cheerleaders through the corridors in high school, and then there was me, half-looking from the library when I glanced up from my book.
Now Colton carries me through the corridor of a hotel suite they could only dream about, past the sconce lights and finally to a carved ivory door.
He opens it with his shoe and the door swings to reveal a four poster bed, a door to an ensuite, and an entirely separate section dedicated to the floor to ceiling windows, comfortable couches from which to overlook the city.
The sconce lights flicker in the walls, imitating flames, but there’s nothing imitation-like in the flames that blaze between me and Colton as he carries me to the bed.
“Fuck, I need to see you,” he growls, dropping me down and then leaping over the top of me like me the predator he is.
I gasp and squeal as he slides his hands up my legs, grabbing my skirt in bunches and then leaning up so that he can pull it over my head. He must sense some insecurity in me because he stops and stares intensely into my eyes.
“You’re beautiful,” he says, a note of somberness in his voice. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever laid my goddamn eyes on and you’re mine, Kat. You don’t have to be self-conscious. I’m damn near exploding here just looking into your eyes. And the memory of how you squirmed and writhed for me when I was between your legs, it makes me feel like I’m going to fucking erupt. But I wouldn’t waste my seed. It belongs inside of you.”
“Okay,” I whisper. “I’m sorry. I’m just a little nervous.”
“It’s fine,” he says, voice gruff and somehow soft at the same time, a just-Colton combination. He leans down and lays a surprisingly tender kiss against my forehead. “Just let your body do what it needs to do.”
I let the courage of his words flow through me as I raise my arms so that he can tear the dress from me.
He rears up like a bear, regarding me fiercely, tension causing his square dominator’s jaw to go tight as his eyes flit over my breasts and then down over my belly to my sex.
“Fuck,” he snarls. “I need those tits. I need to taste where your milk is going to come from.”
“Hang on a sec,” I murmur, sitting up so that I can reach around and unhook my bra.
But Colton can’t hang on.
He grabs the front of my bra and tears it free, the clasp popping.
He tosses it to the floor and then pounces predator-like on my bare breasts, sucking one nipple while his free hand grabs and lightly twists the other. I start twitching involuntarily, as though my body is an instrument responding to his virtuoso’s hands.