He shifted, the soft friction of his velvety skin, warm and delicious as if her skin made him restless, his breath suddenly getting ragged. He groaned softly, the sound vibrating through her.
“Too tight,” he whispered.
She looked down the length of his body, to the bulge that was testing the give in those indecent shorts. “So they are. What should I do about them?”
“Take them off…please.”
She cupped him through the fabric, the thick, hidden length of him, and he groaned, his hips thrusting hard heat against her palm.
Oh, Ancestors… What was she doing? What was she thinking?
This was the man she’d pushed away. The man she’d told herself she didn’t deserve. The man who believed in everything she had abandoned, faith, tradition, connection, family, while she stood hollow and terrified in her own skin.
Still…
She wanted him like he was the first breath after drowning.
“Bailee,” he murmured again like a lifeline, voice low, water dripping down his chest in slow, devastating lines.
It hit her like a blow.
The way he said her name.
He was every piece of her she’d buried, heat and heritage and all the things she’d exiled herself from, woven into muscle and breath and the quiet gravity of a man who had bled for her.
In this very hotel, he’d bled for her.
“How exactly do I get you out of this sorry excuse for SEAL gear?” She squeezed. “Although, I’m not complaining about how they look on you, I do wonder how you get…” She cupped his balls, fondling them. “...out of them. Is there a secret code? A password? Classified documents I have to read?”
“Fuck,” he said, his tone full of amusement, the laughter cascading out of him. “You’re a hard woman.”
“You’re the one who’s in a hard situation. I just need data.”
“There’s no zipper…” he gasped as she ran her hand up, brushing against the fabric just enough for him to feel it. He said something guttural in their native language, something to the tune of You’re killing me, woman of mine.
“Button, button, who’s got the button?” she sing-songed, and that chuckle was cut off as she undid the strap that was threaded through an O-ring. He panted, dropping his head. “I think I’m in a unique position to interrogate you for a confession.”
“That so?”
“Yes. For all the SEAL wives out there who confess that these are standard issue, minuscule inseam, that toes the line of inappropriate.”
“You want me to betray the shorts? Bailee, that’s treason.” She rubbed her palm over the head of his dick, and he clasped her waist tight. “Fuck me,” he whispered.
“That would be the outcome, my strong warrior.” She pulled the waistband away from his body. “Ooh, it’s getting really tight in there. Don’t make me do verbal torture, like how good it will feel to slide into my wet, slick body.” She exhaled softly, her words filling her with a wealth of emotion that struck a chord deep within her, too.
Eyes closing, she leaned forward and pressed her lips to his. His mouth was soft and yielding, a heavenly temptation she couldn’t resist. His lips parted, and he accepted her need to deepen the connection, to slide her tongue inside and curl around his, dragging him into a hunger so dark and hot she burned with the intensity of it.
He kissed her with a fierce urgency, and she kissed him back with an abundance of need and something else far more profound that echoed in the farthest recesses of her locked-up soul, an emotional, intimate bond that rocked the foundation of the solitary woman she’d made herself into.
He needed her. He was hurting, aching, lost in the fever. The torment was clear on his face.
He broke the kiss, his face contorting with pleasure and pain. “Bailee, if you’re going to take me, let it be real.”
Her knees nearly gave. Her breath stuttered, sharp and thin. She leaned into him because she didn’t trust her own body to hold her upright. Something inside her broke. That he would still offer himself to her, not with anger, not with demand, but with that soft, sacred plea, unraveled the knot she’d bound around her heart. He wasn’t asking for her body. He was asking for her truth. For the part of her that had always run. For the woman she’d buried in fear and silence.
“This couldn’t be anything but real. You’re such a man.” She popped the button, and the fabric parted on his deep groan and hard exhale. She pushed the tight fabric off his hips, down his legs, where he kicked them away.
“They’re standard issue, scandalously worn by men who are proud of what they represent,” he whispered.
