He doesn’t hate me. He doesn’t resent me. He doesn’t blame me at all. God, he’s an amazing man.
“Thank you for not blaming me.”
“It. Was. Not. Your. Fault,” Tate ground out. “Christ, you were willing to let some dirt bag violate you to keep me from dying.”
“How did you disarm both of those guys and manage to get the gun away from the other one?” She wished she could have seen Tate’s lightning-fast actions that had disarmed three men at once and killed a fourth one with their own gun. And he’d already been wounded.
“Desperation and training,” he growled. “There was no way you were putting that beautiful mouth on that asshole. I’d have to be dead first.”
The vehemence and savageness in his declaration made her heart skip a beat. When had anyone ever cared about her that much? Certainly, the agents in her team were like friends, and they’d protect her as much as she’d be willing to protect them. But none of them had this wild possessiveness toward her, this raw desire to keep her safe. “I didn’t want you to be dead.”
“What did you want me to be?” he rasped.
“Exactly like you are right now.” Dressed in only a pair of flannel pajama bottoms, his usual fuck-me hair that seemed to occur every day from pulling on a winter hat to take Shep outside, Tate was every woman’s wet dream. His body was hard beneath hers, and when his smoky eyes flared with heat, he was irresistibly, impossibly, undeniably the sexiest man alive. Tate Colter would always be just a little too cocky, arrogant, and untamed. But she liked him that way because he was also kind, sweet, and gentle: traits that were hidden beneath a hardened exterior. Sometimes he was a conundrum, but Lara understood him more and more every day.
Because we’re so damn much alike.
Nothing and nobody had tugged at her feminine instincts like Tate did. She’d spent years being tough, trying to keep pace in a male-dominated profession. She couldn’t afford to be anything except businesslike and impersonal, better than everyone else at what she did because she was a woman, and she had lived for her job for a very long time.
I want to live for myself, just for a little while.
She pulled herself up on her elbows and stared down at Tate’s perfect, muscular body. The flannel nightgown she wore was far from sexy, but he still looked at her as if she were a Playboy centerfold and he was a horny teenager.
“I think I made you a promise when you were in the hospital that I’d like to fulfill right now,” she said seductively. Her finger ran down his muscular chest. She had wanted to lay her hands on this man, pleasure the hell out of him, since the moment she’d made that vow.
“Not until your face is healed,” he demanded roughly.
“It doesn’t hurt.” Lara loved seeing the hunger in his eyes.
“Then kiss me,” he challenged as he speared a hand through her hair.
Careful not to lean on his chest, she leaned down and let him pull her mouth to his. She might have been the instigator, but Tate immediately took control. He licked, bit, and teased her lips before his tongue slid into her mouth to conquer her completely. She moaned against his lips, her tongue eagerly bantered with his.
He ravaged.
She surrendered without a fight, opened to him as he claimed her mouth as his, tenderly but dominantly. Her body caught fire as she became tangled in a web of desire so potent that her entire body trembled with need.
This is exactly how a kiss should be.
It should always be as life-altering as the assault to her senses was from Tate’s embrace right now.
Her hand crept down his abdomen, relishing every defined muscle and indentation her fingers stroked over as she explored him. Finally, she jerked the drawstring on his pajama bottoms, eager to touch him.
Tate ripped his mouth from hers. “Lara, don’t. I want you too damn bad right now, and your face is still healing.”
“I don’t need my face,” she purred. “Just my mouth. And my cheek feels fine. The swelling is gone and it’s painless.”
She made contact with his enormous, erect member immediately because Tate was commando, nothing but flannel covering his hard erection. As she moved down to his knees, she yanked on his pajama pants. “I want you naked,” she said boldly. She didn’t want anything between her and Tate right now, and she quickly pulled the flannel nightgown over her head to reveal her bare body underneath. Her confidence faltered as she heard a low, reverberating sound come from Tate’s mouth. But as she glanced at his expression, it was pure molten heat; his covetous eyes devoured her body.
She tugged on his pants, even more eager to feel the proof of his arousal. His cock popped out of the material as she drew it down; Tate lifted his ass to help her.
“My leg is scarred up,” he said in a warning voice.
Tate actually had small scars everywhere, according to his history in the Special Forces, but they made him look like a warrior, and they made him even more dangerous and attractive. Although Lara winced for the pain every one of them had probably caused him, they didn’t make him one tiny iota less desirable. They were part of Tate. And Tate was beyond perfection to her.
His leg was scarred, and she gasped as she pulled the pants from his feet and tossed the flannel to the floor. “Oh, God, this must have hurt like hell.” She traced the healed dark scars lovingly.
Tate moved to put his leg under the covers at the bottom of the bed, but she grabbed it before he could hide it, and kissed the scars as she made her way up his lower body. “Don’t. There isn’t one thing about you that I don’t find incredibly hot,” she told him in a husky, shaky voice. He’d gained these scars saving lives, protecting their country, and no doubt by doing a mission that was incredibly risky. “You’re my hero, Tate Colter.” She palmed his cock as she moved next to his hips.
“Christ, Lara. You’re killing me,” he grumbled in a tormented voice.
She smirked at him as she lowered her head. “Then I guess I’ll just have to bring you back to life.”
Lara wasn’t exactly incredibly experienced with tasting a man, even though she’d bragged to Tate to make him stay in the hospital. Instinct took over as she twirled her tongue around the tip of him and licked the droplet of moisture from the head. She closed her eyes, and savored the taste of him: warm, masculine, and heady. After she licked up the inside of the shaft, she finally took him into her mouth; his member was so large that there was no way she could take him completely. She wrapped her fingers around the base of the shaft, and moved them in time with her mouth as she devoured him.