Page 90 of Boomer
Sliding her hand along his jaw, she lifted her head and kissed him, softly stroking his mouth with hers. He resisted for a moment, then slid his arms around her and took control. “So, it’s all right not to get over their deaths?”
He looked away. “Yeah. Who really does that?”
“No one.”
He nodded.
“Maybe it’s enough that we remember how they lived, not how they died,” she whispered.
“Maybe,” he whispered back.
But something changed, a slow, seductive awareness gradually took hold. She could feel the subtle change in Boomer from relaxed to aroused in how he shifted against her and the way his flattened palms slid around her waist and up the slope of her spine. She stared down into his brutally handsome face, felt herself respond to the desire darkening his eyes. Then he pressed his cock against her, hard and thick.
“Carter…” she whispered, the one word filled with a wealth of emotion that struck a chord deep within her. She wanted to take advantage of Boomer’s magnificent body and his full heart. She wanted him again, ached to lose herself in his sensual kisses, the knowing stroke of his hands, and the heat of his mouth tempting her beyond thought or reason. Judging by the dark desire sparking to life in his gaze, he craved the same things.
She touched him, calm and fearless, and whispered, “Let me show you nightmares have no power.”
Taylor felt him open to her, not just his body, but the weight he carried. The tension in his muscles had changed. There was something deeper in the way he moved. Something desperate. Something reverent.
She didn’t know what it was. But she felt the shift.
She held him tighter, just in case he needed the strength to stay.
He wantedto tell her she didn’t understand. He hadn’t told her everything. Not yet. Not about the fallout. The spiral. The way he drank himself out of his own marriage. He knew the full truth would come due eventually. Knew she’d ask what happened after Mike. He wasn’t ready to say,I fell apart, and someone paid the price for it.If he said her name, Lila, it would mean admitting he’d failed love before. That he might fail it again.
Could he have her, could he deserve her? In his past, everything he ever wanted was ripped away from him in the end. He didn’t need more pain, didn’t think he could stand it.
But he said none of those things. The words simply wouldn’t come. All he could think as he stared down into that earnest, angelic face was that he wanted to hold her. Just for a little while. Just for what was left of the night. He wanted to hold her, and kiss her, and find the comfort she so innocently offered.
It wasn’t as if he didn’t need her…. Longing welled inside him, and he reached out to touch her, to ease the ache, to fill the hole in his heart. She sank against him, so small, so fragile. His…for the moment…for the night…for a memory he could hold forever. In this room, all was still except the beating of hearts, the caress of flesh against flesh. All that touched them was a warmth that glowed from needs within. Every sense was heightened. Every sense was filled. The fragrance of her skin. The hardness of his muscle. The taste of tears, of gentleness, of desire.
The sound of breaths catching. The growl of passion. The contrast of light skin on dark. The delicate lacework of her lashes as they swept against her cheek. The planes and angles of his beard-shadowed jaw. He reveled in the way Taylor immersedherself in it all. Boomer soaked it up greedily. He touched her like a blind man trying to see with his fingertips, tracing the lines and gentle curves. Fingers fanned wide, he skimmed her jaw, her throat, the slope of her shoulders. He cradled her breasts, then let his touch flow downward, over her ribs to her tiny waist, along the subtle flare of her hips. As he mouthed phantom kisses across her eyelids, along her jawline, his fingers explored her most tender flesh.
Taylor whispered his name, and need shuddered through them both. He wasn’t an easy man to love. He had branded himself unworthy, thought of himself only in terms of his flaws. He would push her away in the name of caring, break her heart to give her what she deserved.
But she came to him. She came to him and offered him everything she was, everything her heart could hold. Without words. Without strings. He took her in his arms, and he gave and she took.
One arm hooked behind her gracefully arching back, Boomer bent himself over her and took her breast in his mouth. Her nipple budded beneath the coaxing of his tongue, and he drew on it hotly, greedily.
She lay back and stretched her arms above her head. He held her there, pinned to the mattress. His eyes locked on hers as he kneed her legs apart and settled his hips against hers.
Taylor’s breath fluttered in her throat, not with fear but with anticipation. She offered herself totally, opened herself, wound her legs around his hips, and he filled her. Slowly. Inch by inch. His eyes on hers. Giving her more than he could spare, being welcomed and embraced by the warm, tight glove of her woman’s body, pressing deeper, deeper, until she gasped his name.
When the joining was complete, he pulled her into a fierce, unyielding embrace. It felt endless, yet never enough. Theymoved as one—body to body, need answering need, hearts locked in the same relentless rhythm. Pleasure crested in wave after wave, each peak stealing his breath before the next carried him higher. Boomer surrendered to the heat, the bliss, the silent refuge she gave him. There was no right or wrong, only Taylor, sweet in strength, and the way she made him forget the rest of the world.
He told himself this was enough. That giving her his body, his hands, his trust in the dark would make up for what he hadn’t said. But the truth pressed against his ribs, sharp and waiting. If he truly believed he deserved her,why was he still hiding?Why couldn’t he say her name? Lila. The woman who stood by him until silence pushed her out. The vow he broke from inside. The love he lost not to war, but to the war inside himself.
He wanted to give Taylor everything, be everything for her. He wanted to press her to his heart and never let her go. She filled up the hole inside him, flooded all the pain away, made him believe for a moment he could start over…with herhave a family…have peace…find forgiveness. But that would require courage, requiring him to tell her all of it. She’d said she loved him, and he could barely breathe around that knowledge. He understood his heart; he knew he was already gone. He’d told her he was lost, and he was. He wasn’t ready for any of it, but he should have been. Taylor had the capacity to look at him, see him, know him… If he would let her…and not even blink at his own personal hell.
He wasn’t ready, because he couldn’t fail her and now…Ansel, and if he thought for one minute that he was going to break her heart, he would have never begun this beautiful thing they were building.
He would tell her about his past when he could breathe past the trauma. When he could face what happened to Mike. Whenhe could finally explain why he’d let his marriage bleed out in silence. She deserved to know.
He’d thought he didn’t deserve happiness. But Taylor…she changed everything.
How could he say it?I’m not the man I pretend to be. I broke someone who loved me once. I might do it again.That would break her trust, not deepen it.
Maybe it wasn’t bitterness. Maybe it was fear.
