Chapter Twelve

O aks pushed open the glass door leading to what appeared to be an enclosed outdoor space. He shot Shiloh a glance over his shoulder. “Come on.”

“I thought you said we can’t go outside.”

“This isn’t outside. Not really. The walls are made of privacy glass. On the outside, they only reflect the mountain.”

His eyes sparkled in the soft glow from the string lights crisscrossing the ceiling of the enclosed and covered deck. The dim lights reflected off the glass walls, making her feel as though they were in a private cocoon. The only thing missing was the chirp of crickets and the leaves rustling in a peaceful evening rhythm.

Just over the threshold, she paused, and Oaks let the door drift shut behind them.

She studied her surroundings. The warmth of the space surprised her until she saw the source: a small gas fireplace with two comfortable chairs set in front of it. The chairs had fluffy cushions and even a throw blanket was draped over one, the long tassel kissing the wood floor.

“Wow,” she breathed. “What other rooms do you have hidden away in this big house of yours?”

He wove his fingers with hers, tugging her lightly to bring her forward. “Oh, you know. The usual. Towers to lock princesses away in. The dragon’s lair.”

She nodded, feet moving toward him without her even willing them to. Her body just wanted to be close to his.

“No ranch house should be without those.” The teasing note of his voice sent desire skittering over her body. Her nipples pressed against her bra, and her breaths began to come faster in anticipation.

He drew her toward the seating area. Flames flickered in the fireplace, adding a layer of romance to the moment.

She didn’t want to be feeling these things. Shouldn’t be feeling them.

Quickly, she took one of the seats and folded her hands in her lap. “This is…really nice, Oaks. And unexpected.”

“Maybe it will make up for the months you spent cooped up in your apartment.” Assessing her mood in a blink, he took the other seat. She let her gaze roam over his muscled arm. If he stretched it out, he could easily touch her.

She nodded. “I hardly know what to do with all this space on the ranch. Riding with Colt was exhilarating…before it got scary.”

His stare roved across her face. “When everything calms down, I’ll take you out again.”

She swallowed hard. When things calmed down, she would no longer be in danger, so she’d have to leave the ranch…and Wyoming.

And Oaks.

She eyed his muscular arm resting on the chair and his fingers, loose and open, just inviting her to tangle hers with his.

Just like when her feet moved of their own accord, so did her hand. When she settled her hand over his, he looked up at her. Surprise rippled across his handsome, rugged features, then just as quickly the expression transformed into a smile.

She couldn’t stop herself from getting up and slipping into his lap. His strong arms enveloped her, and she snuggled against his chest with a sigh of pleasure.

“Now this is nice,” he rumbled into her ear.

“Mmm.” So was the hard length of him stirring against her bottom. She wiggled slightly.

“Mm- hm .” He skated his hand to the hem of her top. When she didn’t protest, he eased it underneath.

At the brush of his callused fingers against her sensitive skin, she let out a gasp, and he claimed her mouth with a hard pressure, kissing her like a drowning man finding precious air.

She cried out, twisting in his arms to straddle him. The wide seat of the chair seemed made for this kind of hanky-panky.

Digging her fingers into his scalp, she dragged him further into the kiss. The deeper growl of desire rippled through her body, raising goose bumps along her skin every single place that his body touched hers.

When he trapped her nipple between his fingers and pinched it through the fabric of her bra, she arched into his touch. The exquisite pressure on it sent electricity through her body. She rolled her hips into his, dragging a deep groan from the roughened cowboy.

She tore her lips away. “I want you.”

He dropped his forehead to her collar bones, nuzzling her breasts. “I want to be inside you.”

“Stretching me.”

“Fucking you hard…”

Their gazes locked.

“And deep.” Her chest heaved as she fought to drag air into her lungs.

Before she could draw a full breath, he tore her top off and cast it onto the floor. She leaned into the open palms, ready to cup her breasts.

“Oh god!” She gasped at the pleasure of him kneading her breasts through her bra. A second later, it hit the floor too, and he replaced his hands with his lips.

She rolled her body, rocking up and down on his stiff erection while he sucked her nipples. Raking her fingers through his hair, she moved to his spine and pinched the cloth of the thermal shirt he was wearing, yanking it over his head.

A beat of desire pulsed between them. Each of his fingertips set against her back branded her. If she looked in the mirror, she would swear she was wearing his marks.

The marks of a Malone.

He jerked his cock against the V of her legs, raising a shiver of need inside her. When he gripped her hips and guided her to his feet, she stood before him, top bare. He was still seated, and the difference in their positions gave her some small thrill of power.

Slowly, she slipped off the rest of her clothes. Those steely eyes followed her every move, heightening the throb in her core.

When she planted her hands on his splayed knees and leaned in to brush her lips across his, he reached for her. Before he could take control, she dropped to her knees before him.

His eyes were twin candles illuminating the space more than the twinkle lights. The intensity of his gaze as she unbuckled his belt and worked open his fly thrilled her. When she ran her hand down his stiff length, his eyes slitted with lust.

Darting her tongue across her bottom lip, she drew his cock free of his black briefs. The mushroomed head was swollen and shiny with need. She couldn’t stop herself from leaning in and running her tongue around the sleek head, then pulling it into her mouth.

“Fuck!” He settled his hand on her head. The slight pressure of him pushing her down on his cock, silently asking her to take him to the root, was a wild turn-on. Her pussy flooded. Her nipples hardened.

He smelled crisp and clean and tasted like man and salt. She sucked him into the back of her throat, suctioning until a drop of precum wet her tongue.

In slow increments, she withdrew, savoring the growl that vibrated through him. Shudders rolled down her spine. She wanted to make him feel good more than anything right this moment.

Her lips wrapped around his thick girth, taking him deep again.

“Oh hell. Christ, honey.”

After only three more dips of her mouth, he stilled her with a hand on her shoulder and hauled her to her feet. “My turn.”

Her eyes hooded. She stepped back, allowing him room to stand. He lowered his jeans and underwear and kicked free of the garments.

When he straightened, he hooked an arm around her body, lashing her against his hard length. They shared a moan as their mouths collided in a deep, tongue-tangling kiss. She didn’t realize he was walking her back a step until the chair hit her calves. Then he eased her onto the seat.

“My turn.” He dropped to his knees.

“Oaks…”

He hooked one of her legs over the chair arm, exposing her wet pussy to him.

Her chest heaved. Her pussy pulsated.

Looping her other leg over the arm, he splayed her wide. Lowering his tongue to her slippery folds, he delivered a long lap from bottom to top.

She stifled a cry of pleasure that soon turned to a groan as he plunged his tongue into her core and began to fuck her pussy with heated strokes. As his thumb brushed upward across her clit, it stiffened. Aches of need gripped her. She watched him eat her pussy with purposeful moves, each one threatening to steal her mind.

And her heart…well, looking into his burning stare as he brought her to a shattering release…she felt her heart shifting in her chest.

Pressure compounded. She shot higher. As he stroked his tongue up her slick folds and sucked on her clit, she jerked her hips in the rhythm of his tongue as a hot trickle hit her core. She came on a swallowed cry. Unable to stop herself, she pinched her nipples to extend the ecstasy stealing through her body.

Slowly, her splintered mind returned, and she looked into his penetrating stare. He lifted his face, damp with her release, and gave her another of those sexy smiles.

“You’re beautiful when you come.”

On a ragged sigh, she cradled his jaw, swiping her thumb over his lips. “Get inside me.”

“As you wish, Mrs. Malone.”

Her heart rate spiked. Fake license or not, he didn’t sound as if he was joking about her new title. He swiped his thumb down her pussy to her soaked entrance. She sucked in another gasp of pleasure as he gathered her juice on his thumb and then drew it to his mouth to lick off.

Her mind was still scattered when he reached for his jeans and found a condom he had stashed in one of the pockets. Watching a big, hard man roll a rubber over his thick length only had her throbbing harder with desire.

He took a seat in the other chair and waved her over to him. “Straddle me.”

She moved to do just that, her thighs clamping around his.

“Now sink down on my cock. Nice and slow.”

Breath hitching, she did as he instructed. The thick head spread her pussy before he slid inside in one smooth glide. She took him to the hilt, her core pulsing around his swollen head settled so deep.

“Fuck, honey! I feel you milking me. Jesus fucking—aghhh!” His eyes rolled back in his head, and his jaw clenched hard as she began to ride him.

Over and over and over again.

Each soft slap of their bodies filled the silence. Their moans were the background music. Every stroke shot her to the brink of insanity. And she never wanted to return from the ledge where she teetered.

With his callused fingers stretched across her ass, he angled her to take him even deeper. Their mouths melded in a long kiss that sent new sensations to her heart.

She could love this man.

She was halfway there already.

When she felt his muscles stiffen around her, and his fingers dig into her backside, she watched his face ripple with passion.

“I’m close. I’m right…” he jerked his hips, lifting her, “fucking…there!” His release sent her careening down the other side of that ledge she’d been clinging to. On a cry, she came with her man.

Claiming him in a brand-new way even if he would never know the truth of it.

* * * * *

“How’s it going over there, Dutch?” Oaks called across the horse stalls.

His friend and fellow former SEAL glanced over the wooden stall at him, the noise of his pitchfork scraping the wooden floor pausing.

The watery sunlight stretched across the floor, but it cast more shadows than it did patches of light. Oaks’s brows drew together as he realized the path of his thoughts weren’t positive. And whenever he happened to be with Decker doing barn chores, he always focused on the bright side of things.

Together, they’d seen so much. Done the unspeakable. Their team barely got Decker out of that torture pit in Gaza where he spent three days as a captive. Since that day, Decker hadn’t uttered a single word.

Oaks scrubbed a hand over his face to dispel the expression he was sure to be wearing. The last thing his buddy needed was to pick up on Oaks’s own stress.

Decker offered him a single nod—about the only thing he got by way of a response.

He finished sprinkling fresh straw on the stall floor and stepped out into the middle of the barn. “You know, back when I was a kid, this barn only had six stalls.”

His friend turned his head to give him his attention. The scars he bore on his face were livid white in the glimmer of light streaming in through the high windows, but the ones on the inside would take much longer to heal. If they ever could.

The doctors were hopeful that in time, Decker would have a breakthrough, and Oaks held his breath, waiting for that day to come.

“Six stalls for six Malone kids. That was before Willow came along, of course. When she got her own pony, we had to build on.” He looked along the row of stalls. The ones on the left were set aside for Willow’s horses. The ones on the right…well, some of those were Willow’s too.

Decker knew this too and gave a soft snort—the closest he ever came to words these days.

They continued to work in companionable silence. Oaks hooked a dusty horse blanket over his forearm and walked outside. The cool breeze was refreshing over his face. As he shook the dust from the blanket, he automatically looked to the house.

He almost hadn’t been able to leave Shiloh’s bed. Gently extracting his limbs from the tangle of hers had left a hole in the middle of his chest where a dull pain still throbbed.

He brushed his fingertips over the spot, thinking of the night they’d spent together.

He couldn’t feel these things—shouldn’t. When he enlisted, he always swore he wouldn’t have a woman in his life because he couldn’t guarantee he’d return from a mission. Then he did return, and that vow changed to staying single because he never knew if some trigger would throw him into a PTSD episode that landed him in treatment in his own facility.

Dammit, he wasn’t getting a choice in this, was he? He wanted Shiloh too much. And that protectiveness he felt toward her was impossible to ignore.

Decker came outside carrying a feed bucket. He walked over to the hose spigot on the side of the barn and sprayed out the metal until it gleamed. Oaks watched him for a long moment.

Ranch life helped the guys who came here. The peace of the land imbued every person who visited with a sense of serenity, including Shiloh.

With each day that passed, a bit more of the strain around Shiloh’s eyes faded. When he finally slipped out of her bed and stood staring down at her beautiful sleeping face, he saw a settled quality on her that he never expected to see so soon, if ever.

She’d been through an ordeal, just like Decker. While she didn’t have physical captors standing sentry outside her apartment door, keeping her locked inside the way Decker had been in that hole, it was the same. She’d suffered in her own way.

In Oaks’s life, two major events had changed him. One was when his best friend and fellow SEAL, Eric, decided he could no longer face life. The second was the day he and a reconnaissance team rescued Decker. Both those men were the reason Oaks was so passionate about helping his fellow brothers-in-arms.

Now he pondered if a third event was affecting him just as much as the others. Only this one seemed different in a brand-new way. When he married Shiloh in order to save her, he hadn’t questioned what he could have done different; like he did with Eric and Decker.

When it came to Shiloh, he had no regrets.

His buddy finished rinsing the bucket and walked past him with a nod of acknowledgement. He disappeared back into the barn, leaving Oaks outside, staring at the house.

Knowing that a threat had come so close to Shiloh left him with a knot of anger in his gut. He’d managed to get her away from Vanya and all the way to Wyoming in one piece, yet someone had come too close to her with that drone.

The bastards would pay. Oaks no longer cared about a black stain on his soul. The minute he had her asshole ex in his sights, William would be a stain on the concrete.

He walked back into the barn and draped the blankets over their respective stalls. Decker stood at the back, just beyond the double doors that were thrown open to air the place out. He always wore his hat tipped low enough to conceal his eyes, but Oaks realized with a start that he’d nudged it up and was gazing out at the pasture.

Oaks drifted down the long aisle between stalls to join him. In the distance, several horses grazed against the backdrop of the mountain.

“You know, growing up, I never realized what the ranch really can mean to a person. When I left the military, I wasn’t excited about moving back home. But Carson asked for my help, and family’s always meant something to me.”

Decker stood at his side, silent but steady.

“Over the past year or so, I’ve come to see the kind of peace the place offers, and not only to me. You may have heard that I got married unexpectedly and brought my bride to the Black Heart.”

His friend nodded.

“In a few short days, I saw the magic this place worked on her too. She’s a hunted woman, and she felt safe here with me. Then something happened that frightened her. Now…I’m not sure I’m right about the ranch healing my…my wife. I’m not sure I can keep her safe.” He met Decker’s stare for a heavy heartbeat before turning back to the view.

The jagged peak of the mountain pierced the pale gray sky. The snow-dusted summit was wreathed in clouds. Down here, the breeze was crisp and scented with pine, but up on that mountain, it would be cold, cutting.

“I’ve always thought of that mountain as a guardian.” He shook his head slowly at his own fantastical thought.

“Me—” Decker’s voice was guttural and grainy. His wide eyes met Oaks’s as they both realized that for the first time since their team got him out of that hole and the screaming stopped, he’d spoken.

Heart racing with excitement, Oaks gave him a nod of encouragement.

Decker opened his mouth and tried again. “Me…too.”

Tears burned at the back of his eyes and stung his nose. He didn’t dare let one drop in front of a man who’d made a huge leap today. Decker deserved that much respect.

Oaks ducked his head. His friend turned and walked back into the barn. He didn’t say anything else, but he didn’t need to.

As they continued with the chores, his mind drifted again and again to his friend’s breakthrough. When Decker saw someone else needing help and support, he pushed through the walls he’d formed around himself and reached out to Oaks in a show of solidarity. Maybe he’d only needed the lure of helping Oaks through his struggle to break down his own walls.

Last night, Oaks felt like he’d broken down some of Shiloh’s walls too. For those precious seconds they shared, the glow in her eyes lit up his whole world. The passion in their coupling forged a deeper bond between them.

Judging from the expression in her smoky blue eyes, his feelings were not one-sided. She felt the shift in their relationship too.

What would happen after this was all over? Would she rebuild her life while he returned to the grind of work on the ranch and as a bodyguard or would she stay and build a life with him?

He gazed at the house. Behind those walls was a woman who’d barged into his life and taken it over.

A step on the plank floor sounded behind Oaks. Decker stepped up next to him.

“She changed me, Dutch.”

“I see that.” His low voice was an unused rasp of vocal cords.

He nodded. “I don’t want to let her go when this is over.”

His friend’s hand came down on his shoulder, a comforting weight he hadn’t felt in the time since Decker was taken captive. Neither one of them had words for that kind of bond.