He didn’t scream, but he damn sure groaned. And though he didn’t want to, he ended up coming in her throat. Not that she made any moves to let him go when it happened. Brooke fastened her mouth around him and drank him in while he tried to remember how to breathe.

When it was over, when he was spent and limp, he still managed to flip her over and devour her with his lips and teeth and tongue until she clutched his head and moaned. “Oh Cade. Cade… Yes, yes, yes…”

They fell asleep in each other’s arms, exhausted but happy. Max slept too. Cade woke up a couple of times, but everything was quiet and still. Brooke slept wedged against him. Some women moved as soon as they wanted to sleep, but not Brooke. She curled into his body and stayed there.

Each time he woke, she was still there. Maybe flipped, but still pressed to him. He didn’t mind. In fact, he took the opportunity to touch her. He toyed with her nipples, skimmed his fingers down her belly and over her mound. She made noises, but she didn’t try to move away. No, she tried to move toward him.

He thought about dropping between her legs and licking her into another orgasm, but she needed the sleep, so he didn’t actually disturb her. There would, hopefully, be plenty of time for more hot sex together now that they’d smashed that barrier.

He woke for the last time around six thirty. Later than he usually did, but considering last night’s departure from her place and then the totally unexpected sexual encounters, he’d had a long day yesterday.

Brooke still slept. Max was asleep as well, though he’d wake in a heartbeat if Cade moved. The dog had been really good throughout the night, but the motel was fairly quiet and nothing had disturbed him enough to bark.

Cade reached for his phone and checked his texts. There were messages from Hacker telling him to call when he could. If it had been urgent, Hacker would have said, so Cade didn’t worry about waiting. When Brooke woke or Max wanted out, Cade would call back.

He had no doubt his teammate was on top of things. Hacker was an interesting dude. He didn’t talk about himself much, but it was clear he came from a moneyed background. The dude had monogrammed cuffs, which Cade had discovered at one of the weddings they’d been at. Cade had never seen monogrammed cuffs before. Hacker also wore cuff links, and his blazer had gold buttons on the sleeves. He drank red wine, and once when Cade had called him at home, he’d heard opera in the background.

Hacker had gone to college, but he’d dropped out before completing a degree or he’d likely be an officer. What made a guy like that decide to be a grunt—and not just any grunt, but a Special Operator, which meant there’d been a lot of hard training and deprivation along the way—was beyond Cade.

For him, the choice had been an easy one. Growing up in the Mississippi Delta with a mother who worked two jobs just to get by and knowing he’d never be able to go to college or likely do anything beyond getting a job at the local garage, the military had been a no-brainer. Three squares a day, a roof over your head, medical care, and a paycheck along with the promise of college?

Yep, he’d signed up and hadn’t looked back. That he’d ended up in HOT was a bonus he hadn’t planned on. Turned out he was good at fighting battles, and he was relentlessly cool in the face of danger. He’d wanted Delta Force, but when he’d learned of the existence of HOT, he’d wanted that even more. It had taken a lot of hard work, but he’d gotten command of his own squad eventually. Echo was all his, and he took pride in leading his guys through thick and thin.

Brooke turned in her sleep, presenting her back to him. The covers inched down until her spine was exposed. He pushed them down even more, until he could see her naked ass.

Such a pretty ass. He wanted to gather it in both hands and hold it while he thrust inside her and made them both come.

He put an arm around her and pulled her close, her back to his front, content to just hold her until she woke. She made a soft sound in her throat, and then she wiggled her shapely rear against him.

He reached up to cup a breast, and she made that sound again.

“You’re awake, aren’t you?” he murmured as he pinched her nipple.

“Getting there. Mmm, somebody’s hard.”

“Somebody definitely is.” He kissed her shoulder. “You up for a little fun?”

“So long as that fun involves you inside me, yes, I am.”

He skimmed his fingers down her side, around to the back of her thigh. “You want to turn over or see where we get this way?”

He had to ask her these things because he didn’t want to scare her. If she were anyone else, he’d take the lead and do what he wanted, knowing that her pleasure was foremost in his mind and that the end result would be good for her.

“Do what you want, Cade. I trust you.”

His heart squeezed hard at those words. She trusted him, and he didn’t take that lightly. He was honored, of course. But he also wanted to growl and claim her as his to anyone who dared to think differently.

His woman. His lover. His to protect and cherish and give multiple orgasms to.

He urged her thighs up and out of the way so that she was practically clasping her knees, and then he skated his fingers through her wetness. She was hot and silky, and he nearly groaned at the feel of her.

Cade grasped his cock and pushed it into all that heat and liquid heaven. “God, you feel good,” he told her. “So perfect.”

“So do you.”

He wanted to thrust quickly until he came, but he was mindful of what she’d said about being sore last night. So he moved slowly, deliberately, pulling all the way out before gliding in again.

He hooked an arm around one of her thighs, spreading her wide. Then he found her clit and strummed it like a fine instrument while he continued to slide into her. She gasped and shook—and then she cried out, her body trembling as a climax ripped through her.

He let her leg go, kissed her shoulder while she dragged in first one breath and then another.

“Oh, wow, I missed that,” she finally said when she’d come back down to earth, his tongue still on her shoulder and his cock still deep inside her.

He didn’t like to think about her doing this with anyone else. About another man giving her pleasure.

“Then you need more,” he told her. He pushed her onto her stomach, prepared to stop if she protested or showed any fear at the movement, but she didn’t.

He withdrew from her body, lifted her hips, tucked a pillow beneath them, and grasped her waist as he knelt behind her. “You okay?”

“I will be when you make me come again.”

That was all he needed to push inside her and start moving, riding her gently at first and then harder as need overtook him. She came again quickly, meeting his thrusts with equal force, stiffening as the wave crashed over her.

Cade didn’t have time to marvel at her response because his own crisis grabbed hold of his balls and didn’t let go until he was utterly drained, groaning as he came so hard he saw stars. They collapsed on the bed together, a tangle of sweaty limbs and labored breaths.

Cade rolled away to give her space. Brooke turned over, lying with her eyes closed and her luscious body on full display. He devoured her with his gaze, taking in her small, perfect body with big tits, wide hips, and a glistening pussy that he wanted to taste again. Her belly was flat but also soft. Not hard like his, but smooth and soft like someone who worked out but didn’t deprive herself of food.

“I love being with you, Cade,” she said finally, though she didn’t open her eyes. “I’m sorry I kept you at a distance for so long. I’m sorry it took something like this to let you into my life for real.”

“Two weeks isn’t all that long. We were still getting to know each other.”

“I know.”

He rolled to his side and fondled her nipples. She sighed. “Be truthful with me, Brooke.”

Her eyes snapped open, her baby blues meeting his gaze. She looked wary. “I have been.”

“I know that, angel. But I want you to be truthful with yourself too. You experienced a trauma two years ago. You aren’t suddenly cured because we’ve had sex. You still need to process it.”

Her lashes dropped over her eyes. “I’m fine. I feel great.”

He sighed. “Baby. Promise me.”

She reached up and ran her palm along his jaw. “I promise to see my therapist. I promise to tell her what really happened two years ago.”

He dipped his mouth to hers and kissed her. “I’m glad. Because I want to keep doing this with you, Brooke. I want to move forward with you, and I don’t want anything to stop that from happening.”

“It won’t,” she said.

He wasn’t sure he believed her.

---

Cade got up and dragged jeans on over his naked body, then pulled a T-shirt over his head and scrubbed his hands through his hair. Brooke watched in awe. She didn’t think she’d ever seen a sexier man than Cade Rodgers.

He was comfortable with himself, and he damn sure knew his way around a woman’s body. His tongue should be a registered weapon. His cock—damn, his cock ought to be licensed as a clear and present danger to her peace of mind. She’d been with other men, but she’d never wanted to get that acquainted with their cocks.

Cade’s, however… Well, she could spend a lot of time licking him like a lollipop and never grow tired of doing so. Most dicks were not memorable. Most were unattractive. But if Cade sent her a dick pic, she’d make it into her wallpaper.

Okay, maybe not her wallpaper. Decency standards and all. But she’d damn sure use it to get herself off when he wasn’t around.

“You want to go out, Max?”

Max jumped off the couch and did a few whirls. Then he barked.

“Hey,” Brooke said. “No barking.”

Max woofed more quietly the next time. Cade laughed as he grabbed the leash. “Be thinking about what you want for breakfast,” he said as he clipped on the leash.

“Your cock,” she said automatically.

Cade’s nostrils flared. “Angel.”

She didn’t know who the hell she was turning into, but she trailed her fingers down her abdomen and into the wetness below. “I’m going to shower. Maybe you can join me?”

“How many times can you…?” He shook his head. “Yeah, I want to join you. Gotta take the dog out first.”

“Better hurry.”

---

She’d just turned on the shower when Cade returned. She was standing in the bathroom, utterly naked, when he came inside and looked at her with that intense I’m going to fuck you look he had.

He stripped out of his clothes and left them where they landed. Then he picked her up and she wrapped her legs around him. He made her feel like she weighed next to nothing as he stepped into the shower with her.

It was a small shower, the water tolerably warm but nothing to write home about. The tub was actually porcelain, a holdover from days gone by, and the shower head sprayed an anemic stream of water on them.

He backed her into it, fused his mouth to hers. Brooke threaded her arms around his neck and kissed him for all she was worth.

No, in some ways she didn’t recognize the person she was with him. But in others, she knew she was who she was supposed to be. Who she would have been without the trauma of her past.

He lifted her up and then brought her down on his stone-hard cock. Brooke gasped as he filled her. She weighed nothing in his arms. Absolutely nothing.

He held her with one arm beneath her ass, lifting her again and again as he fucked her, his other hand on her breasts, pinching her nipples. Brooke clung to him, let him take her where he wanted, knowing it would be good for them both if she gave up control.

She was sore, and she was happy. Cade drove himself home inside her until she caught fire and came in one long, shuddering moan that seemed to go on forever. She could tell when he came because he finally pushed her back against the wall and ground his hips into her, grunting when his climax hit him.

When it was over, he helped her wash, helped her remove the semen that dripped down her thighs, and then he washed her hair and rinsed it for her. She spent far more time than she should soaping his body, exploring the hard muscles, until finally he took her hand and peeled the sponge out of it.

“No more,” he told her. “Not this time.”

They finished their shower, then got out and dressed, exchanging kisses as they did so. It was such a normal thing, other than the cheap hotel room, and it made Brooke’s heart sing.

She was in love with this man, for the first time in her life, and she wanted to keep feeling this way. She didn’t want to think about the past or about Scott and the man in the corridor, but she knew those things were waiting for her. They hadn’t gone away at all.

After they dressed, Cade tucked his weapons into the holsters he’d secreted on his body. She watched him do it, her heart throbbing. This was his life. Guns. Violence. Danger.

It scared her. What if something happened to him?

“Breakfast?” he asked her when he was done.

She nodded, her throat tight, her mind still caught in the grip of her fear for him.

He tilted his head. “Something wrong?”

“No, nothing.”

His brows drew together. “Don’t lie to me, angel. It’s the guns, isn’t it?”

“It’s what you do. I know that. I just worry.”

“Don’t worry. I’m the nightmare standing between you and those who would harm you. Never forget that.”

Her stomach trembled inside. “I won’t.”

His phone rang before he could say anything else. “Yeah.”

Brooke watched his expression harden, his jaw tighten, and her nerves popped like a high-tension line. His gaze lifted to her, his brows drawing down.

“We’ll be there in an hour.”

“What’s wrong?” she asked when he dropped his arm to his side.

He didn’t stop frowning. “Bert’s daughter has been abducted.”

Brooke blinked. “Bert? Bert Lewis, the security guard at my building?” Logically, she knew that’s who he meant, but she was having trouble processing it. Who would abduct Bert’s little girl?

“Yes, that Bert.”

Her stomach twisted before falling into her toes. “Oh my God, what happened? Who took Amy? Why would they go after her?”

He came over and put his hands on her shoulders, ran them down her arms. It soothed her, but barely.

“There’s no easy way to say this, angel.” He hesitated. “The Espinoza Cartel—those are the men that Scott was selling weapons to—they’re the ones who took her.”