OH MY GOD. HE CAME inside me.
He fucking came inside me.
I felt it. Every drop of his release, oh my God, I felt it.
This man holding me was everything. Everything I’d ever wanted.
“Chica,” he rasped, his lips, his thumbs, brushing at my cheeks.
I didn’t even realize I was crying.
“Talk to me, baby girl.”
I couldn’t.
Waves slapped at the boat. André’s seed was inside me.
I was a woman.
I was finally a woman.
Because of André.
My head swam and another man shook my foundation.
Hero.
This was what Hero had done. This was what he hadn’t done.
Fractured thoughts sifted together in waves.
This was what Hero had given me. The gift he’d never taken. He’d kept himself from me. To give me this. This feeling, this fullness, this belonging. That was why. All those years, all those nights, all those stolen moments. None of it was like this. His seed had never been inside me.
André Luna was inside me.
My breath hitched, my past fell, and I fucking lost it.
I didn’t cry. I sobbed. Uncontrollable ugly sobs broke free. Shattered disillusion, self-hatred, guilt, joy, fear, hope, want, I sobbed at it all. I covered my face at my utter loss of dignity and completely lost control.
“No, beautiful.” Holding me tight, still buried deep inside me, André stepped back and sat on one of the bench seats. “Don’t hide from me.” He gently pried my hands away from my face. “Give me everything, chica.” He sweetly tipped my chin and kissed my lips. “That’s why I’m here.” He kissed my cheek, my ear. “This is why I’m inside you.” His fingers threaded into my hair. “Give me these tears,” he whispered. “Give me your words. I’m right fucking here.”
I wrapped my arms around him and let go. My head buried in his chest, my body filled with his, I grieved.
My mother, my life, Hero, Candle, the father I never had, everything I’d ever lost, I grieved for it all. I’d never understood this life, I’d never fit, nothing had ever made sense until this very moment.
A perfect moment, in an impossible situation, on a boat.
This was where I fit.
“We’re in the middle of the ocean,” I cried, pathetically splintering my thoughts.
“Gulf, baby girl.” A smile on his lips, André kissed my forehead. “Don’t be scared. I got you.” He pulled back just enough to look into my soul with brown eyes full of understanding. “I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
A fresh wave of tears flowed. “I know.”
A smile, so pure, so full of joy spread across his face. “You feel me.”
I couldn’t hide it. I didn’t want to. “Yes.” I nodded, smiling through my tears.
His thumbs swept across my cheeks. “You okay?”
“Yes.” I was, but I didn’t understand how. If I lost him now, I would never be okay. How did that make someone okay?
The gorgeous angles to his face sharpened as he turned serious. “This changes things.”
“I know.” But he didn’t. He couldn’t. He didn’t grow up like I did. It didn’t matter what we’d just done. This wasn’t him maybe giving me a child. This was so much more.
He studied me. “I need the words you’re keeping back, chica.”
I wasn’t even surprised by his perception anymore. It felt so natural to be with him, so right, but also terrifying. “I’ve never done that.” I didn’t know how else to explain.
He grasped the side of my face. “I know. You told me.”
“It’s different.” I felt his length pulse once inside me and I shivered. “You don’t understand.”
“Chica, I know.” Both of his hands cupped my face, and he touched his lips to mine once. Then he stared into my eyes like he could see every vulnerable piece of me. “I’ve never come inside a woman. I grew up traditional. You saved yourself for marriage, you picked one woman, you pledged till death do you part, then you made bambinos. I’m no saint. I didn’t follow the fucking rules. You know I’ve been with other women. But this?” He glanced down where our bodies were still joined, and sucked in a sharp breath as he pulsed inside me. “This?” He drew his thumb through my folds and spread our wetness over my stomach. “I was saving.” He looked back up at me. “Trust me, I know.” His forehead touched mine. “You feel me. And I feel you.”
Like rough earth, his voice spread out and caught me, while his words lifted me up.
We floated. We fit. We held on to each other.
And I fell in love.
“Not so different,” I whispered.
“No, chica, not so different.” He smiled and his eyes sparkled brighter than the sun on the water.
Inhaling past the beautiful ache in my chest, I did the only thing that felt right. I hugged him.
His soft chuckle filled my ears as his acceptance filled my heart. He wrapped his arms around me and hugged me back.
“Are you laughing at me?” I knew he wasn’t. But the old, comfortable defenses were all I knew.
“Oh, chica. This is gonna be a ride, isn’t it?”
I love you. The words, burning my throat, pushing at my chest, they ached to come out. But I’d never said them, and I wasn’t sure I knew how. “Better get out now while you can.” I was only half kidding.
He laughed harder and his cock shook inside me. “You think you can get rid of me after that? Mierda, chica.” He dragged a heated gaze over me. “I just had the best sex of my life.” He grinned. “I’m not going anywhere.”
Uncomfortable and foreign, but so, so right, my own smile spread across my face. “The best, huh?” I was already thinking of ways to top it.
He instantly sobered. “Do you know what you do to me when you smile like that?”
I dared to shake my head.
“You make me fall, mi amor.”
I gasped, and he kissed me.
Tender and sweet and nothing like the man who’d just thrust into me so hard, I felt him all the way to my womb. His lips danced across mine as his huge hands cupped my face then sank into my hair.
With a feral groan, he pulled back and smiled. “You have too many clothes on, chica.”
“Yeah?” He definitely had too many clothes on. Ripped with muscles from years of conditioning, his body was a work of art. “What are you gonna do about it?”
He groaned, sexy and delicious, but then his smile showed back up. “You playing with me?”
My heart skipped every time he smiled at me. “If you have to ask, I’m doing a shit job of it.”
He laughed, and I moaned as his thick cock pulsed inside me. I didn’t know where to put everything. Him, us, this feeling in my chest.
Sensing my discomfort, he grabbed two handfuls of my hair and thrust just enough to keep himself inside me as he turned serious again. “You good?”
I nodded. “I’m good.”
“And this morning?”
“What about it?” I hedged.
He studied me a moment. “Why were you drinking?”
I sucked in a breath and exhaled, wanting to both push him away and pull him closer. I wanted space, but I wanted him to come inside me again. The polarizing emotions were so new, I didn’t know what to do with them. I’d spent six months alone and three years before that being an accessory to Candle’s life. Before that? I was invisible to everyone except Hero once a month. I’d always felt like an island. Which was so damn ironic as we drifted in open waters.
“Hey, you okay?” André quietly asked.
“Yeah.” I brushed my hands over his arms, remembering the first time he’d smiled at me. His face had lit up bright enough to wreck my whole world, and that’s exactly what he’d done.
I didn’t tell André I’d been drinking because I didn’t want Candle to come home. Or that I didn’t want to think about death every second of every day. I didn’t say I’d wanted a brown-eyed marine to show up and tell me he’d made a mistake turning me away six months ago.
And now here I was with none of those things and, yet, all of them. But just like everything else in my life, it was messy and complicated, and the real felt just out of reach.
André kissed my forehead. “Why do I have the feeling that I just missed your life story?”
A small smile touched my lips. “I should be concerned with how you do that.”
“Do what?”
This whole time, he was still inside me and I felt his arousal growing. I couldn’t not feel it. He was thick and long and so damn consuming, he touched me everywhere. “Read me.” It was as if he could read me better than anyone, even Candle, but I could read him too. And right now, the quizzical expression on his face was telling me he had something to say.
He gently brushed my hair off my shoulder. “I like the longer length.”
“You didn’t answer me.”
Half of his mouth tipped up. “You didn’t ask a question.”
“You’re thinking about how you can read me so well. And I’m wondering how you do it, so just say what you were thinking.”
His chest rose and fell, and his gaze drifted to the ocean. “I’m no hero, chica.”
He was exactly a hero. A war hero and my hero. And probably everyone who he’d ever helped would say the same thing. “I’m calling bullshit.”
He gently eased out of me, and I immediately felt the loss.
Leaving a chaste kiss on my lips, he set me on the seat next to him. In two quick moves, without getting up, he tucked his glistening cock in his jeans and did up his zipper. Grabbing a water and opening it, he leaned back and handed it to me. “I can read you because I was trained to.”
I took the bottle. “Okay.” The cold water on my parched throat was like heaven until I felt his seed leak out of me in a rush and soak my dress. I looked down. “Damn.” His cum ran down my leg.
He smiled like he was a rock star and casually took the water from me. “So fucking sexy.” Gulping half the bottle in one sip, he just sat there. One arm on the bench seat, one behind me, he looked relaxed and smug, and like my sex-wet dress was a good thing.
“Are you going to just sit there or help me?” How much more was going to leak out?
He grinned. “Too many clothes on, chica. I told you that.”
I whipped the dress over my head and sat back down, bare assed on Neil’s fancy boat seat. “Better?”
He glanced at my bra as if unfazed. “Almost.”
I unhooked it, tossed it on top of my dress, and turned back to face him. “Now—”
He pinched my nipple, then eased the sting with the pad of his finger. “You’re so fucking perfect, chica.”
Sharp need shot straight between my legs, and I wanted him back inside me, but I forced myself to concentrate. “What does it matter what you were trained to do?”
He moved to my other nipple and repeated the assault-caress, then his husky, rough-edged voice threw words at me as if he were seducing me. “I can read you because the Marines trained me to be an observant killer.”
My nipples aching for more, I spread my legs. “And?”
Not needing any more of an invitation, he sank one finger inside me and watched my pussy as he slowly stroked in and out. “And I know when you’re lying, or hurting, or when you’re gonna move….” He looked up at me and shoved a second finger in. “I know when you’re gonna let go.” He twisted his fingers up and curled them, directly stroking a spot that bowed my back and made my hips gyrate.
Oh my fucking God. “What are you doing?” My head fell back, and I gripped his wrist, shoving him deeper.
“Making you come.” His thumb hit my clit the same time his mouth covered my nipple.
I flew apart. Keening into the ocean breeze, my nails digging into him, I shamelessly rode his hand through my climax.
His mouth on me, his fingers buried deep in my pussy, his husky voice cascaded across my skin. “Why were you drinking, beautiful?”
“I wanted you to come back for me.”
He slowly stroked my pulsing pussy, feeding my aftershocks. “I thought about it every day.”
“Then why didn’t you?” His fingers worked me, breaking an intimacy barrier I didn’t know how to cross alone.
“I thought you were his and that you just wanted out. I didn’t want to be that to you. I wanted you coming to me on your own.”
Oh my God, this man. “I did.”
“You looked afraid.” His thumb brushed my overly sensitive clit. “That moment before you took your dress off, I saw fear.”
“I wasn’t afraid.” I didn’t think it was possible, but I wanted to come again.
Feather soft, his thumb coasted in a widening circle. “In general, no, beautiful, you’re not afraid. You’re more like a wild mustang.”
“I’m not….” I panted. Goddamn, I couldn’t concentrate when he was touching me. “I’m not a horse that needs to be broken in.”
He chuckled. “Maybe I am.”
He wasn’t. He was perfect. “You don’t need anything.”
“I need you,” he admitted, but then he paused for half a heartbeat, as if considering what he was about to say. “And I want you to come work for me.”
The brief shot of adrenaline to my system when he’d said he’d needed me was instantly doused. “No.” I bit back the sting of his words, and pulled his hand out of my pussy. Moving back, I subconsciously tried to put space between me and my feelings.
Not letting me get far, he lifted me back onto his lap as if I weighed nothing, then he lowered his voice. “I said I need you.” His fingers sank into my hair as he held the sides of my face. “Don’t mistake what I need for what I want.”
God, I wanted to entertain the thought of working with him, just to be with him every day, but I wasn’t going to be his employee. I wanted more, and for once in my life, I wasn’t going to settle. “I’m not a pity hire.”
His cock pulsed against my thigh as he gripped a handful of my hair and pulled, hard. “No, you’re not.”
My eyes closed, my back arched, and I sucked in a breath of pure, shocked desire. Wetness flushed between my legs, and every part of my body turned to liquid submission. Tingling from the strands of my hair straining against my scalp, electric pulses shot straight to my cunt, and I groaned.
Hot breath, then wet heat closed over my nipple.
He bit me.
Oh my fucking God.
I barely heard his zipper going down over the sound of the waves hitting the side of the boat. His mouth popped off my nipple only to bite the other one then he was bringing my head back up.
“Look at me, chica,” he demanded.
I opened my eyes.
His fierce brown gaze, the color of an alpha-sized storm, zeroed in on me. “There’s not a single thing I pity about you.” He shoved into me.
My guttural cry flew across the churning swells of the ocean.
His mouth slammed over mine, his tongue went for broke, and he fucked me like a wild stallion.