Chapter Seven

Abby

I wake up to the press of lips against my skin and my body burning with heat.

A cry slips past my lips when my robe is parted and a wet mouth closes around my nipple with hot suction. I buck on the bed as pleasure floods my tummy, wet heat pooling in my core.

“James.” The name slips out of my mouth before I can even make sense of what is happening.

I whimper when his calloused fingertips trace my other nipple, pinching the bud between his fingers, groaning against my skin when they harden under his teasing. He releases the nipple from his mouth with an obscene pop before shifting his attention to the other.

“Oh, God,” I whimper, writhing on the bed as he traces his hand down my stomach to the spot between my thighs. I already know what he’s going to do, and yet nothing prepares me for the pleasure that shoots up my body when his thick digit delves between my wet folds and grazes my clit. I jolt hard against him, my back arching, but he uses his thigh to pin me down on the bed.

“I haven’t had a wink of sleep, convinced myself that I could wait…” he growls, and my eyes snap open. I meet his heated gaze and feel a shudder rock through me at the desire I read in them. “I need to taste you, gorgeous. Feel you cream under my tongue.” His hooded eyes carry a dangerous glint in them as he starts kissing a path down my stomach.

With whatever strength I can muster, I try to hold his gaze, but it becomes impossible with every press of his tongue against my skin. I should do more, but there is something about lying on the bed naked—vulnerable—with this bear of a man having his way with me and touching me in places no other man ever has that turns me on and makes me desperate with need.

My lips part with a whimper when he slides his middle finger into my sex. I’m still a little sore from yesterday, but even that doesn’t seem to matter when his tongue strokes the center of my sex. My hands spread out, and I fist the bedsheets, screaming out when his mouth closes hotly around my sensitive bud even as he drives his thick digit into my sex.

Christ, I need to keep it down.

This is an inn with people in it, and I need to be quiet, but I can’t grasp reality long enough to make a sensible choice. He doesn’t allow me that chance with his hungry mouth and the finger stroking me fast.

James is like a man possessed with the way he licks at my sex, sucking at the sensitive bud and lapping at the wetness he is causing. I pull hard at the sheets, my back arched off the bed as I feel a storm build up in my core. It’s strong, and I know I am hardly prepared for the wave of pleasure that is about to sweep through me.

“Oh, God! James!” I sob when he adds another finger inside my sex, thrusting fast even as he flicks his tongue over my aching bundles of nerves, breathing heavily as he brings me to the brink of my orgasm, the pressure growing so intense my legs begin to shake.

It is stronger than I was anticipating, and perhaps that was my first mistake, thinking that I can ever anticipate what this man is going to do to me.

My hips rise off the bed, and a scream tears from my throat as the world explodes, leaving me momentarily blind. Black spots shoot behind my eyelids as James brings me to climax. He hooks his finger in my sex and grazes a pressure point I had no idea existed, and that sends wet heat rushing out of me in a spurt, and I would be horrified if my entire body wasn’t trembling. I attempt to lock my legs at the pressure, but he doesn’t allow it, his tongue flexing on my sex until I am sobbing from the sensitivity.

When his hand finally leaves my sex, I fall back on the bed, but he’s not done. He’s suddenly on top of me, those dark eyes wild with desire. When he leans down to kiss me, I taste myself in his mouth.

His kiss is hungry in the way he takes me, brutal in the way his lips sweep over mine.

“Goddamnit, gorgeous. You taste better than I could have ever imagined. That was so fucking hot, the way you came all over my tongue,” he rasps against my lips. “Can you do that on my cock too?”

“James!” I gasp at the hard press of his cock entering me. He is so big. Christ, I don’t imagine this is the average size for men—James is too big to be considered average anything—and I wince slightly as his massive girth stretches me.

“Fuck, baby, you feel like you’ve never had a cock in you,” he grinds out roughly, slamming the rest of his cock into my drenched sex. “So fucking tight!”

The pleasure that was waning comes back in a storm when he starts moving, sliding in and out of me in rough strokes, causing the bed to creak under us, but James doesn’t seem to care. He looks too far gone for that as he pulls out and slams back inside of me.

I could grow addicted to this, I realize. Not just the act itself, but watching this man lose control. When we met yesterday, he was the epitome of strength and control, and I never thought he would let go the way he does with me.

His forehead is streaked with sweat, and those beautiful blue eyes are dark with lust. His muscles are strung tight, and I can see the veins on his temples popping, and I question how many girls have seen him like this.

How many have had this man take them hard and raw?

No, he’s mine.

I wrap my arms around his neck and force him down on me, my lips slamming on his possessively. Until yesterday, I hadn’t ever kissed anyone, and the press of lips is awkward at first, but I don’t care to think about that.

James is mine as much as I am his!

This small-town hero belongs to me and only me.

“Fuck, baby,” he pants when our lips break apart for some much-needed air, his hips grinding against me slow, and his eyes lock on mine. The moment is so intimate, it has my heart clenching in my chest. “You’re so fucking gorgeous.”

Did I just say that I could grow addicted to this man? No, that doesn’t cover it. The feeling this man arouses in me feels too deep for the word “addiction” to even cover it. People recover from addiction, but this feeling and its intensity threaten to be a permanent fixation—unhealthy and all-consuming.

All mine.

James is all mine!

His rough fingers press into my hips as he hammers his cock into me, and I rock forward to meet his thrusts, the intense feeling in my core returning with a vengeance. “Harder, please,” I beg, raking a hand up his chest and grazing his nipple with my fingertips. He hisses, so I do it again, dropping my eyes to his chest, and that’s when I notice them. “James!” I gasp at the small circular scars on his chest. There are two right above his pec and one above his left shoulder. My fingers are trembling when I bring them up to graze the spots. “James…”

“It’s okay,” he says, as if I am the one who needs comforting, and my eyes shoot to his in confusion. His expression looks pained, but I can tell it’s not pain from his healed gunshot wounds. “I’m okay, baby.”

He drops his forearm above my head and swallows my whimper with his kiss as he starts pumping into me, faster and harder, sliding his massive shaft in and out of me with hard strokes, and I forget everything, including my own name. Nothing in this moment matters but this man and the way he makes me feel.

“Close,” he rasps into the kiss, dropping a hand between us to strum my clit, and I jolt against him, sobbing as he brings me to yet another intense orgasm. I wrap my arms around him, needing to feel his breath against mine as I climax with a sob, my sex cinching hard around his cock, and it sends me right over the edge.

His muscles seize under my fingers a second before he explodes, snapping his hips hard and pumping his cock into my pulsing sex, filling me with his hot release. His muscles strain over me as he rocks forward, and I hug him harder, longing to feel every shuddering inch of his body pressed against mine.

His breathing is labored as the climax wanes, and James slumps against me, dropping his deliciously heavy body on top of mine. I stroke his massive back, brushing my mouth over his shoulder as my thoughts return to the scars on his body.

I want to ask him about them, but what if it brings up terrible memories? I don’t want to hurt him with my questions, but I also can’t stop thinking about it.

“You are doing that thing again,” James whispers into my ear, his voice deep and heavy, sending goosebumps licking up my skin.

“What do you mean?” James lets out a sigh before pushing off me to roll on the bed, bringing me with him.

“I can tell when your mind is running wild with thoughts. If you have questions, I’ll give you answers.”

I bury my face in his chest, the side without the scars, before bringing my finger up to trace them. “Do they hurt?”

“They don’t,” he responds. “It’s been months.”

“What happened, can I ask?” I whisper tentatively.

“We were ambushed,” he says with a bitter laugh, but there is nothing humorous in his tone. “We were deployed to support an allied unit overseas. We received the wrong intel and found ourselves in the middle of an ambush. We were pinned down until backup arrived. It was a long night, and there were casualties on both sides.”

I’ve always thought that my life sucked because I lived in a room where I could hear the couple next door arguing, but I was able to sleep peacefully in that little apartment because someone like James was there to shield me and take the bullets for me.

I lean in and press my lips over the scars. “I’m sorry. I’m glad you are here.”

James combs his fingers through my hair and grabs a fistful, tugging my head up before his mouth sweeps over mine in a hungry kiss. “I would take a hundred bullets for you, gorgeous. Fire a hundred to protect you. You are mine.”

I stare dazedly at the man and question for the first time if my coming to Valor Springs had nothing to do with learning about my mother’s roots, but developing my own in this little town.

I never imagined that I would fall in love with anyone. That I would look at someone and see my entire future.

“Yours,” I whisper, brushing my lips once more over his to express with my body what I can’t quite say. The kiss shifts into something dirty and desperate, and soon, he is entering me once more. Our lovemaking this time is slow, filled with unspoken promises.

Vows that neither of us voice, but can read in each other’s eyes when they meet.

He wraps his arms around my body as I ride his shaft. There are promises written in those fiery eyes watching me with so much affection. Something I know is reflected in my own eyes.

When we come, we come together. Our arms locked in an embrace and hearts beating as one.

Whatever happens after this—whatever truths I learn—at least I have James.