Page 75 of His Forgotten Colton Fiancee
“The others, you go into automatic. Recovering evidence, doing field investigations and you can’t get personally involved because emotions prevent you from doing the job to the best of your ability.”
“What happens when you do get personally involved?When it’s someone you know, like me?”
He looked her square on. “That’s the worst.”
She took his hand, turning it over to examine the scar tissue. West stiffened but did not pull away.
“That’s how you got this,” she said softly. “It happened when they died. Talk to me, West. I loved you enough to agree to marry you. Can you love me enough, and trust me, to share with me what happenedto your family?”
Ever since they’d met, West wanted to erase his past, start over again. Quinn would be his new beginning. But the explosion had sent them both hurling backward—Quinn because she lost her memory, and West because he’d nearly lost her.
“Not now. Someday, I promise.”
She gave him a searching look. “Can you tell me how you got that scar?”
Once she’d asked him the samequestion and he’d clammed up. Now, here in the wildness and the cool air, he felt ready to share. Maybe because after seeing her lying so pale and still, he didn’t want to spend another minute regretting his choices. If he expected Quinn to be honest with him as she regained all her memories, then he should reciprocate.
West fisted his hands and slowly forced his fingers to open. He staredat his hands. His mother used to say that he had beautiful hands, like those of a pianist. Or a surgeon. She’d wanted so much more for him, a profession where he wouldn’t walk into danger every day and she’d have to wait up, wondering if he’d survived yet another day. Waiting for the terrible phone call that something happened, that the man you married was never coming home.
In the end, itwasn’t his mother who got that phone call.
“Burn. I was trying to get into a house on fire, and burned it.”
Quinn watched him, but he was no longer with her in the forest, in the clear, crisp South Dakota air. He was seventeen again, arrogant, confident and ready for a night of sex with his girlfriend.
A night he figured he’d always remember.
A night, as it turned out, he longedto forget.
She lifted his hand to her cheek, rubbing against it, catlike. Soothing him. Suddenly he needed her in a way he never had. Telling her had ripped open his heart, and he bled all over again.
West curled his other arm around her waist and held her tight, resting his cheek upon her head. Inhaling the scent of her, all woman and apples. Quinn smelled like home, cider and pie, wheresmiling mothers greeted you at day’s end with admonitions to wipe your feet, dinner would be ready soon,Are you going out again tonight, West?
He’d lost so damn much as a teenager. Turning to a career as an FBI agent fed him purpose, but he hadn’t really lived.
Not until meeting Quinn, and daring to risk love again.
West lifted his head, took her face into his hands. “I love you,Quinn Colton. I think I loved you from the moment you sassed me back at your store. I don’t know what will happen to us, to this...but I’m not letting go. Ever.”
He lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her. West moved his lips over hers, teasing and light, letting her grow accustomed to him. Letting her set the pace. God, he did not want her scared, not of him. He wanted her willing, pliantand eager. To Quinn, he was all but a stranger.
To him, she was his heart, his reason for breathing and for life to be truly lived. Not living to work, to spend all his time hunting down killers and psychopaths who devalued human life. But to come home each night, knowing she was there, knowing her sparkling gaze would lift his weary spirits, her bubbling laughter would erase the horror ofbody parts and burns and death, and her warm, soft body would chase away the ice shield he threw up to keep others away.
Quinn Colton had penetrated his outer armor, and he’d let her. Only Quinn saw him as he really was—not a heroic FBI agent dedicated to the job and catching the bad guys, but a wounded teenager who fought each day to find renewed purpose in his own shattered life.
Quinnopened her mouth beneath his, darted her tongue out to lick him. She slid her arms around his neck, drawing him closer.
She looked up into his darkened gaze. West’s breath hitched. “You sure about this?”
Quinn moved West’s hand to cover her right breast. “Absolutely. Make love to me, West. I don’t care about anything else right now.”
Quinn had never felt more certain of anything inher life. She couldn’t recall much about her time with West, but now that didn’t matter. She only wanted to be with him. She didn’t care that he was an FBI agent.
They were only a man and a woman, with this burning need between them.
He took her into the bedroom, snapped on a light. West tugged the shirt over his head and shed his boots and pants. Breath caught in her throat.
He lookedup with a grin as he kicked his clothing aside. Dark hair covered his chest, stretching from nipple to nipple. Muscles layered his flat abdomen, his biceps. She glanced down at his genitals. His thick shaft was long and erect.
