Chapter Twenty

The glow of Colton’s tanned skin in the glow of lamplight was something Meadow couldn’t look away from. She traced a finger along the point of light on his chiseled shoulder, down to his hard pec.
When she circled her fingertip in a loop around his nipple, he lay his hand over hers.
She leaned onto one elbow, rippling with amusement. “Is the big, tough former Navy SEAL…ticklish?”
He applied pressure to her hand.
“You are!”
“Woman.” The word came out as a warning.
“Mmm. Let’s try this instead.” She ducked her head to his chest and delivered a slow lick to his nipple.
A growl bubbled in his throat, and he pressed a palm against her nape, pinning her in place.
Laving his nipple led to tasting the rest of him.
All of him.
When she brushed her lips across his swollen cock head, she looked up into his eyes.
“Fuck, baby!”
With another noise of want, she took him in her mouth. The velvet steel slipping along her tongue, tasting of both of them, had her squeezing her thighs together in pleasure. She never knew loving someone this way would feel so good. So right.
She wanted to hear him moan her name over and over again, until he was hoarse with it.
Setting out to get what she wanted, she drew his hard length into the back of her throat. A low moan drifted past his lips. He gathered her hair off her face and watched as she sucked his cock deep before gliding off the length again.
“Hell. God. Fuck!” His disjointed grunts spurred her to keep going. She drew off his erection, keeping just the mushroomed head between her lips.
“I’m going to blow in that pretty mouth of yours if you don’t—ah!” He fisted his hands in her hair, pulling the mass, igniting Meadow.
She wrapped her hand around the base of his cock and jacked him into her mouth while sucking him deep, then shallow. Soon she found the rhythm that had his hips jerking off the bed and him burying his cock in the back of her throat.
A heady power overtook her. She wanted him to let go for her—to show him exactly who he belonged to as much as he’d owned her a few minutes before when she splintered on his hot tongue.
He rocked his hips upward. On a low grunt that turned into a roar, he began to spurt. Meadow swallowed fast, taking every drop, closing her eyes on the feel of him and the taste of the man she loved.
When he collapsed to the bed, arm flung out and the other hand tangled in her hair, she slowly released him and crawled up his body.
His almost black eyes burned into hers. “Give me your mouth. I have to taste myself on you.”
A whimper bubbled past her lips as she let him claim her mouth in a kiss to end all kisses.
If the house went up in flames right now, she wouldn’t move away from Colton.
After long moments, they broke the kiss. She rested her head on his chest and shut her eyes, breathing hard. “When you’re recovered, I’m ready for round two.”
“Is that right?” She heard the smile in his tone.
“Mmhmm.”
“Then maybe I should smack this.” He swatted her ass cheek once, sharp enough to spread the sting through her. “Since the sound turns me on.”
She rolled her body against Colton’s. The need to never leave this bed was enormous. How long had they spent in it, just pleasing each other with their mouths? They hadn’t even gotten to the next round yet.
“What hold do you have on me, woman?” He slapped her ass once, the motion sweeping her cheek upward.
She panted with the sudden need to feel him inside her, stretching her wide.
With a soft cry, she moved to straddle his broad body. When she took his cock in hand and angled it toward her soaked pussy, their gazes caught and held.
The pleasure-pain of sliding down his long erection had her crying out. He echoed the sound with an animalistic one of his own. When she was seated with him fully inside of her, her pussy snug up against his body, her heart skipped.
“I love you.”
His eyelids hung heavy, under them came a blazing passion, from his deep-as-night eyes.
“You shouldn’t love a man like me.”
She rocked her hips front and back. “Too late.”
“You deserve better.”
She swung them side to side. “I have the best there is.”
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Then don’t ever hurt me.” Her chest heaved with the ecstasy drilling through her on every stroke of his cock. “Colton!”
He let out a groan. Cupping her face, he drew her down to kiss him. The way he so thoroughly showed her with his mouth just how much he wanted her made her mind spin.
He was in love with her, that much was evident. How could she make him state the words she needed to hear so badly?
“Yes! Colton!” She took him hard and fast, setting a pace to drive him as wild as he was driving her. Her pussy clamped on his length. Her insides tumbled.
Her heart shattered into a thousand pieces…but every piece belonged to him.
As she came apart for him, he cradled her close and whispered her name while his lips grazed her temple. Her cheek. Her lips.
“I love you! Fuck, Meadow!” He pumped his hips into hers.
When the liquid heat of his cum drenched her pussy, she let her eyes slip shut on the sensation. He loved her—she knew he did.
Loving her late brother’s friend there came a weight. She’d never leave Colton—it wasn’t even possible for her to walk away at this point. But the tremendous pain she carried with her made her realize Colton’s was just as heavy.
The guilt he bore over Forest’s death wasn’t something that would just go away, now or ever. He could only work through the painful knowledge that whatever he’d done—or thought he did—had been the end for her brother.
After lying on his chest for long minutes, she opened her mouth. Shut it again.
He eased the hair off her forehead and directed it behind her ear. “I know you want to ask me something.”
She remained silent, battling with whether or not the timing was right. But what better time than when they’d just shared their bodies in a union of love so strong that she couldn’t fathom leaving him.
“Meadow?” His tender tone stole the words from her mouth.
“You said you did something that got Forest killed. What was it?”

The last thing that Colton wanted to discuss with Meadow after what they just shared was what happened the day Forest lost his life.
The deep pain he carried with him everywhere had seemed to grow and swell over the past few weeks since he arrived at the Gracey. Now that he knew the people his command had hurt—no, wrecked—he couldn’t bury it as deep.
If at all.
“Meadow—”
She cut him off. “You’re going to have to tell me sometime, Colton. Why not now?”
“Because you’re not ready.”
She rolled off him onto her back, staring at the ceiling. A fierce determination blazed on her face, some inner glow lighting up her features as though she was just as mad as he was.
Hell, she might be.
He pushed out a sigh. There seemed to be no way around what she was asking of him.
The story that had been scattered in segments all over his brain now came together. It hovered like a cloud in his mind. The words, when they did come, came slow.
“There was a woman.”
She tensed.
“Not a woman like that. A villager. She lived in the village we attacked. After the battle was all over… Well, she was begging for us to take her with us, to save her. She’d just watched enemy fire take out her family. But we couldn’t take her with us.”
“Go on,” she said softly.
“Forest and I walked away and knew she was going to be taken hostage and probably wouldn’t survive it. After we left, that night we made a plan to go back for her.”
“Oh god.”
His throat clamped off with the memory of that fated day.
At his side, Meadow fell silent, listening with all of her ability, as if she’d miss something or he would leave it out. Not that she’d ever know. He could make up some story now.
But he wouldn’t.
She deserved to know what he’d done. What he was.
“I had a direct order not to leave my post that night. Yet I did. And I took Forest with me.”
His throat worked on a hard swallow. “We got back to the village pretty quickly. The enemy had come back to reclaim their dead. Slipping past the guard was easy. Finding the woman was not. We stayed too long. Next thing I knew, a gun was pressed into my temple and Forest was…dead.”
He could never share the detailed memory of how it happened with her. He’d already said too much.
Meadow’s eyes were so large and luminous.
Meadow brushed her hand over his shoulder, down his arm. “It’s all right. It’s okay, Colton. You were trying to help that woman.”
He fisted his hand on the mattress. “If I hadn’t disobeyed, Forest would be alive. He would never have taken that hit.”
A rough noise barked from him, like a wounded animal, as the terrible guilt and pain poured out of him for his friend, at long last. Meadow made a sound too, one of empathy and understanding. She wrapped her arms around him, drew his head down on her chest and held him while he struggled through his emotion.
His lips twisted in an effort to hold in a sob. With extreme force of will, he held the noise trapped deep inside.
But having the words out was enough. He wasn’t going to cry for his friend—not again, and sure as hell not in front of his goddamn sister. But the purging of what happened that day spread a calm over him like a balm to an open, festering wound.
Meadow held him, whispering soft, senseless reassurances. After several seconds, his mind blanked. The lump in his throat cleared away, and he drew a full breaths of fresh air.
Tinged with her personal scent that drove him absolutely crazy.
He gripped her sides, lifted his face and kissed her hard. The passion blazing through his soul on the heels of so much emotion spurred him to take her. To claim and own her.
She didn’t protest, only kissed him back, tangling her tongue with his and digging her fingers into his spine. As she spread her legs, urging him inside, he held her stare—and in one hard shove, filled her with his cock.
“I love you,” he ground out.
“I love you, Colton!”
“I’m never going to stop. You better get used to having me around.”
She wrapped her legs around him, holding him tight. “You can try to walk away, but I will hunt you down and bring you back to me. You belong to me the same way that I belong to you.”
Their gazes clashed, and in one smooth glide, he began to fuck her.