“My brother, Abel. He’s dead because I hesitated. If I had shot that boy before he pressed the button, Abel would still be here. They would all still be here.” He pauses for a moment, looking down at the vine of bloomed roses.His team.
“Each one of those men joined and agreed to the terms. Same as you. You all know that coming home is never guaranteed, and you do it anyway. I think it says more good about you that you hesitated than it would if you hadn’t. Abel didn’t shoot him either. Instead, he used his body to protect yours. Sounds like your mom raised protectors. Courageous men who put the lives of others before their own. Sounds pretty hot if you ask me.”
My seductive smile must signal to him that there’s no going back for me because he grabs my thighs and wraps them around his waist so that he’s still seated on the bed, and now I’m straddling him.
“So you’re in?”
“I’ll admit I’m not a fan of this halfway across the world stuff, but-”
“I’ll quit. I’ll quit right now.”
“Pretty sure it doesn’t work that way, right? Can you just quit? Without consequences?”
“Not necessarily, but-”
“No buts. You could go to jail. You’re not quitting for me.”
Eli’s face falls and his eyes seem to dim.
“Vaughn, please don’t-”
His voice cracks as his hands tighten around my hips. His fear is crushing, so I rush to stop this train of thought. “I said I’m not a fan. It’s also not a good enough reason to not be with you. Don’t you think the casual murder thing would repel me if anything was going to?”
Eli lets out a heavy breath, and his shoulders lose their previous tension. His forehead falls to my chest before he speaks. “You were going to leave me if I had a wife and a kid.” There’s a touch of humor in his tone, but there was nothing funny about meeting Abigail for the first time. That stunner of a human with that adorable freaking kid.No way I could compete with that. I wouldn’t even want to.
“That’s a hard line. I fancy myself a one and only kind of girl.”
His quiet laugh shakes my body.
“You’re the most incredible thing to ever happen to me. Everything I do for the rest of my life, I want to do it with you. I want to hear all your stories from these lips.” He reaches up and swipes a thumb across my bottom lip. “I don’t want to be a part of anything that isn’t centered around you. You have made the suffering bearable. There have been plenty of women in my life who made the good days better. It’s only you who can pull me out of the fire, even though doing so means you get burned with me. There’ll be good days, and I want to have them with you. There’ll be more bad days, too, and it’s only you I want to be miserable with. I just-”
“You love me.”
“See how you’re finishing my sentences? That’s definitely something to build on.” There’s a joking lilt to his voice and a smile in his eyes when he continues. “And you knew. You didn’t tell me.”
“Ha! Let me paint a little picture for you. We’re in the kitchen. My legs are wrapped around your waist. You’ve got both hands on my ass, and you’ve just put your feelings into word format, having no idea that those words spell love. THEN, I tell you ‘Eli, you’re in love with me’.” My pause is meant to give him time to take in the scene I’ve laid out and realize that information would not have been well received in that moment, but he just looks at me...confused, as usual. “I don’t think you would have liked being told that you’re in love with a girl you’ve only known a couple of months.”
The confusion dissipates from Eli’s beautifully masculine face as he brings one hand up, fisting it in my hair. He pulls my face down to his so that he can nip my bottom lip.
He speaks while brushing his lips lightly across mine. “Everything that comes from this incredible mouth is nourishment for my soul.”
Damn. Well, he just delivered the greatest compliment I’ve ever heard. Nourishment for his soul? Thank you, Jesus, that I’m not a puddle on the floor.I suppose it’s time for an admission of my own.
“I knew the night I met you that you could be important to me if I let you. What I felt when you touched me...that scared me. It doesn’t scare me anymore.” Taking his face in my hands and making aggressive eye contact, I spill my secret. “Elijah Washington, I, Vaughn Webb, am hopelessly and incurably in love with you.”
His smile could spark a forest fire, and those dimples could store the water needed to put it out. I’ve never seen him this happy.I did that.
“What if I told you there’s more?”
“More what?”
“More to the story of who I am. How I ended up in the Navy. What I really do for them.”
There’s more. Of course, there is. It just doesn’t matter. Nothing that happened before matters.
“If you want to tell me, I’m ready to listen. If not, that’s fine. Nothing you tell me will change anything between us.”
There’s a heavy, considering pause before he speaks. “How can you be sure?”
