Total pages in book: 79
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75656 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 378(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 252(@300wpm)
“You can say nice things. I won’t get cocky,” I tease, and when he laughs, his abs clench, pushing his cock deeper. He kisses me, and I’m shocked by how close to him I feel. Not just physically, but emotionally.
When I pull his shirt off over his head—because the only thing sexier than a fireman in a tight t-shirt is a fireman without his shirt—he returns the favor, and soon we’re both fully naked, skin to skin, and it’s glorious.
His torso is all hard lines, old strength, and the kind of muscle that was built for use, and it momentarily distracts me from how good his cock feels inside me. I run my hands over his shoulders, his chest, and those thick muscles that flare on the sides of his chest, and I’m like a kid in a candy store. I want everything all at once, and Weston’s giving it to me.
With my hands greedily squeezing the backs of his shoulders, I shift my focus to where we’re joined. I lift nearly off of him, sink down again, then grind myself against him over and over.
Weston grips big handfuls of my ass, urging me on, helping me when I slow, spreading me wider, pressing in deeper, and keeping up a rhythm as I steadily build toward a climax.
When it comes, it’s shattering, and made even more unbelievable when I realize, through my haze, that Weston is coming, too. He squeezes me tight and lets out a long, low groan as his cock pulses, and my pussy throbs around him, wanting to take everything he’s got.
We ride through it together, both of us clinging to each other as our bodies fully let go.
He pulls me close at the end of it, kissing my forehead and smoothing my likely wild-looking hair back from my face. After a shuddering breath, he says, “You should be cocky, sweetheart. I don’t think I’ll get over that anytime soon.”
I might blush if my body weren’t already flushed with pleasure.
He kisses me, then tucks my head against his chest and strokes my back.
As the glow fades, a little flicker of guilt ripples through me. Despite the men’s assurances, something ingrained in me says being with more than one man is wrong, like I’m being reckless and making up for the years I’ve been alone.
But the three of us are being open and honest, and resting here in Weston’s arms doesn’t feel wrong. As I trace a nearly invisible scar I find on his shoulder with lazy fingertips, I think about this man’s quiet strength, his warmth, and his incredible patience.
Our encounter was playful and emotional, and different from what I shared with Buck, which felt intense and raw, yet soothing at the same time. But it’s all new, and maybe being with them again will be different. Despite my reservations, I hope I have a chance to find out.
They’re different men, yet they share the same common threads that attracted me to Tyler all those years ago: Honor, protection, giving care without keeping score.
I haven’t fallen for them because I’m faithless, but because some part of me already knew them. The things I loved in Tyler hadn’t died with him. They’d survived in the men he trusted most. The brothers who had carried him, mourned him, and come back from hell with pieces of him lodged in their hearts.
Maybe the guilt I’m carrying isn’t loyalty, but fear.
I’m afraid of leaving Tyler behind and afraid that being loved again would expose how badly I want it. Afraid of losing control.
But I can’t live my life ruled by fear.
Weston’s arm tightens around me as he strokes my shoulder. His lips brush the top of my head. “You all right?”
I draw in a long breath and give it some thought. Maybe letting myself be loved and cared for doesn’t have to feel like betrayal.
I lay my hand over Weston’s heart and feel his warmth and strength surrounding me. “I’m good.”
He squeezes me closer against him. “Good.”
CHAPTER 27
CALDER
The first cigarette butts Buck and Weston found were too soggy from melted snow to tell us much. When I find two clean ones outside the station, faint Cyrillic lettering stands out near the filters.
By now, we know Tyler is at the center of this. The vandalized team photo in Elena’s house made sure of that. The cigarettes don’t change the why, but they give us a where. The lettering doesn’t prove anything by itself, but it points in a direction we’ve all been avoiding.
It’s enough to make me stop putting off a call I should’ve made sooner.
Bruce Noland was on my team before Tyler’s platoon, back when his knee was still intact, and mine hurt less in the cold. He got out a few years before us and landed in Naval Intelligence, where he does the kind of analysis work that still puts blood on his hands, just from farther away.