“These are happy tears, Stryker.” She smiled.
He smiled and began to kiss the tears, taking them off of her skin, then he slowly kissed her eyelids, taking away the tears that hovered on her lashes. But the kisses didn’t stop there. His arm slid around her waist, pulling her closer to him as he kissed her nose, then her chin, then down along her jawline. Her breathing hitched as she arched her neck, giving him access to her sensitive skin.
He pressed gentle kisses against her throat. “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there for you.”
“You were with me the entire time, Stryker. You were in my heart, giving me the courage to keep going.”
He moaned softly and pressed kisses to her collarbone as his fingers began to work quickly and deftly to unbutton her shirt. Soon, he had it opened, and he paused for a moment to pull back and admire her breasts wrapped in the clingy lace of her bra. He had picked it out for her when he had gone to get her fresh clothes to wear home from the hospital. “Anya, you don’t realize—you just don’t see… You’re beautiful,” he murmured.
She reached up to unbutton his shirt, her fingers moving just as quickly as his had done only seconds earlier. Her only hindrance was that he was attempting to remove her bra at the same time.
Finally, they were both completely nude, and Stryker was trying to maintain control. He had been craving Anya for weeks. He needed her so he could feel whole again.
He gently lapped at her stiffened nipples, causing her to moan and writhe on the bed, her hand tangled in his hair. When he drew one of the firm peaks into his mouth, she gasped and arched off the bed, and he smiled to himself. Yes, she was his. She belonged with him, together forever. If she would take him.
His fingers trailed along her side, and he caressed the sensitive skin of her hip bone. She had lost weight while he’d been gone. He would need Snap’s help to get her health back on track. With Snap’s cooking, she was certain to gain back the weight she had lost.
His fingers moved farther inward, and she drew in a deep breath as they played with the dark curls at the apex of her thighs. She trembled as his fingers dipped lower and slid over her slick folds. His own breath hissed out of him as he felt how excited she was, and it took all his control not to make his move at that very moment.
Instead, he continued teasing her nipples as his fingers played with her, until he slid one finger into her tight canal. “Stryker!” she cried out, her fingernails digging into his scalp as her hips leaped beneath his hand.
“Anya, I want to go slow. I want to make love to you. I want to—”
Her hands caught his face, drawing his eyes up to hers. “And I want you. Now.”
The passion in her face nearly sent him over the edge. He grabbed the condom he had set to the side in hopes that things would progress this far and rolled it on quickly. He carefully settled his body between her legs and moaned as the head of his erection moved across her desire-soaked triangle. “Stop me if I’m hurting you,” he said, staring deep into her eyes, and she nodded, licking her lips in anticipation.
Slowly, slowly, he eased into her and hesitated when just the head was inside her. She moaned and wiggled her hips, trying to take him farther, but he held perfectly still, not allowing her to get what she wanted so badly. He eased in a little farther, and she groaned, her hands pulling at his hips.
When he was halfway sheathed, he pulled back and she whimpered at the loss of him within her body. Urgency was burning within him, but he wanted to make sure she was pleasured before he found his own release. He once again entered her, going in halfway then pausing. He began to thrust gently, never going past the halfway point, unsure of how much longer he could maintain control.
“Stryker, please…”
Her throaty and breathless plea nearly sent him over the edge. He surged forward, filling her to the hilt, and she cried out in pleasure. The feeling of her body adjusting around his girth was almost more than he could take. He was breathing heavily and had braced himself on his forearms so he wouldn’t put too much of his weight on her. He looked down at her and groaned as he saw the passion across her face.
“Did I hurt you? Am I hurting you?” he asked, struggling to talk as his body throbbed with pleasure and the need for more.
“Oh, no, Stryker, no…you feel so incredible…so good. Please, Stryker, please don’t stop.”
It was his final undoing. He began to thrust into her rapidly, and she arched her hips to meet each one of his thrusts, her fingernails digging into his ass cheeks as she encouraged him to go faster—harder.
“Anya…Anya, I don’t know how much longer I can last…”
Her breathing became more rapid, and she began to make the small sounds in the back of her throat that he’d come to learn meant she was on the verge of coming. “Come with me, Anya. Come with me…” His words broke off, and his voice joined hers in a cry of pleasure as her body began to clench around him and his body tightened just before he released in her.
His orgasm was powerful, and he struggled to continue thrusting into her, but his legs seemed to have lost all of their strength. He felt her continuing to pulse around him and knew she had found her ecstasy too, and he moaned as he rested his forehead against hers, still breathing heavily.
“Anya, I’m sorry. I had wanted to go slow. I had wanted to make love to you the proper way. I had wanted to—”
Her soft chuckle interrupted his words and his thoughts. “What, exactly, is the proper way? Because if it is anything different than what we just did, I don’t think I want it.” She lifted her chin and pressed her lips to his briefly, and he shivered as another wave of desire washed over him. Would he ever have enough of this woman?
With a low groan, he rolled off her and pulled her against his side tightly, quickly discarding the condom in the nearby wastebasket. She lay sprawled limply across half of his body, still trying to gain her breath. “I’ve said it before, and I don’t know if you heard me. And if you did hear me, you might have thought it was a mistake. But I mean it. With all my heart, I mean it.”
Stryker’s heartbeat had been about to return to normal, but it picked up in speed at her words. “What did you say?” he whispered.
She lifted her head and looked down at him with satiated eyes. “I love you, Stryker. I love you more than life itself. I love you so much my heart aches when I don’t get to see you. I love—mph!”
He kissed her deeply, passionately, intensely. “I heard you say it before,” he admitted when he finally pulled away from her. “And I was too afraid to believe it. But I wanted to believe it. I wanted to believe that you could love someone like me. I don’t deserve it. But I will treasure your love till the day I die. Because…” He smoothed her tousled hair back away from her face. “I love you, Anya. I love you more than I ever thought a human being could love. You are my heart and soul. Without you, I’m just a shell of a man.”
“Stryker,” she breathed his name as a promise, as a prayer. She pressed her lips to his, and they spent several long moments tasting each other again, as if they would never be satisfied.
Stryker ended the kiss and ran his fingers along her delicate features. “I have something very important to ask you, Anya, and I don’t know if now is the right time, and this probably isn’t the right way to go about it. But, will you move here to the ranch? It’s for your safety, but it’s also because I can’t imagine going to bed every night without you in my arms, or waking up every morning without holding you tight. I need you in my life, desperately. Will you move out here to be with me?”
She smiled at him and pressed a kiss to his forehead, his cheeks, and lightly on his lips. “I’m yours, Stryker. Forever and always. I love you. And I can’t imagine being without you either. Yes, I’ll move out to the ranch.”
“Will you tolerate me being overprotective of you? At least until we catch the guy behind all this chaos?”
; “Somehow, I have a feeling you will be overprotective no matter what, regardless of whether you catch this person or not.”
“Oh, we’ll catch him. It’s what we’re good at.”
“I’d say you’re good at many things,” she murmured, a slight blush tinging her cheeks.
“Mmm. I may be good, but I’ll only get better with practice. A lot of practice.”
She giggled, a sound that warmed his heart, and he rolled her onto her back and stared down at her. “You know what comes next, right?”
“Umm…some more practice?”
His eyes widened, and then a burst of laughter escaped him. “Yes. That will happen in the very near future. Very. But I’m talking a little further out than that.”
She drew in a deep breath and her gaze searched his face. “What?”
“Marriage. Then children. Lots of children.”
She licked her lips, then gave him a sly smile. “You’re getting ahead of yourself, sailor. Don’t you have to ask the question first?”
“Oh, I’m getting to that. Have no fear, bella. It’s coming.”
Keep reading for a sneak peek at the next book in Holly Castillo’s thrilling Texas Navy SEALs series!
Coming February 2020 from Sourcebooks Casablanca
Chapter 1
The sound of shots fired in the distance stopped him in his tracks. He listened carefully before dropping and rolling into the nearby shrubs. He paused, his body tense and ready to move the moment he heard a sound. The crunch of dry brush underfoot brought a smile to his face.
He pivoted toward the sound and aimed through the shrubs. His target let out a startled shout a split second after he fired. Chuckling, he stood, lifting his safety goggles.
“Shit, Phantom! You didn’t have to hit me where it really hurts!” Santo groaned, glaring at his close friend and BUD/s partner in crime.
Phantom’s grin only broadened. “You should have been paying attention to your surroundings.”
“As if anyone ever knows where you are,” Santo fired back. “Your name is Phantom for a reason.”
“Over here!” another voice called out. “Phantom brought him down.”
“You know, just wait until it’s your turn, pal. I’m going to hit you right in the cojones,” Santo muttered as he glared at the paint gun splatter from Phantom’s shot on his upper thigh.
“That’s if you can find me, punk.”
“No, that’s when I find you. Care to make a wager on how fast I make that happen?”
Phantom held up his hands and shrugged.
“Did I hear someone say ‘wager?’ If there’s betting going on, I need a piece of the action.” A large man walked into the small clearing where Phantom and Santo stood, the afternoon sun beating down on them.
“Buzz. Nice of you to join the party,” Phantom clapped the big man on the back, earning a glower.
“Nobody said this was a race. You could have given the rest of the team a chance to catch up.” As Buzz finished ribbing Phantom, several other men stepped into the clearing and began to laugh at Santo’s frustrated expression.
“He took you down in less than eight minutes. That’s a new record,” Stryker, their SEAL team leader said, joining in the laughter.
Santo shook his head, though he, too, started to smile. “Glad you’re all having a good laugh.”
Together, the six men teased and joked their way back to their equipment shed to put up the paint ball guns and goggles. Stryker held Phantom to the back of the group, giving them some distance, and Phantom’s gut told him his team leader didn’t plan to chat with him about his record-setting target practice for the day.
He sighed. After four hours of intense PT and a run through the hot Texas sun for their paint ball training drill, he had looked forward to a hot shower and a cold beer. He shook his head at himself. He must be getting soft if such a light day made him ready to ring out before the afternoon was over.
If a new mission had come up though—his gut clenched at the thought. They had just wrapped up their last mission nearly a week ago. A surge of adrenaline pulsed through him at the thought they could be headed out again.
“How are things going in the horse industry?” Stryker asked, surprising Phantom. It was the last thing he had expected to hear.
“Good. I’ve got to say, working and training quarter horses is a lot different from the thoroughbreds I grew up with.”
“When are you planning to get out into the community with them? You know that’s a critical component of our assignment here.”
Several months back, Admiral Haslett had approached Stryker to put together a team of SEALs to go undercover in Hebbronville, Texas, a small town near the border with Mexico. Their cover was as a group of close friends who had gone in together to purchase the massive ranch to raise cattle and horses, all while covertly keeping their ears to the ground for illegal activities in Mexico, Central and South America that posed a threat to Americans. The more they could do to eliminate crime south of the border, the safer it would be for immigrants, asylum seekers, and everyone else at the border itself.
Their last mission had involved taking down a drug cartel that obviously had connections within America, but they hadn’t yet identified the players on the American side. The team had succeeded in bringing down the cartel and the drug lord, but it was obvious that there were larger stakes involved.
“To get out into the community with the horses means competing them. I’ll need to understand quarter horse shows a lot better before I take that step.” Instantly the image of a determined, energetic woman popped into his head. Elena Garcia had been the horse trainer for the ranch’s prior owner, up until two weeks ago when Phantom had told her they were no longer in need of her services. His intentions had been to secure their undercover mission, but he was beginning to doubt his hasty decision.
Stryker paused and turned to face him, a knowing look on his face. “You need to talk to Elena.”
Phantom scowled. “I can make it without her help. I just need a little more time.” Even to his own ears his argument sounded weak.
Stryker shook his head. “Admit that she’s your best chance at being able to network and get involved as quickly as possible. Things in the criminal world aren’t going to slow down while we get our shit in gear. We can’t waste any time. Your job is to gather intel in the community. You can’t do that working the horses out here on the ranch. We’re SEALs. We’re the experts in our field, but outside of it, we go to the experts in theirs, and Elena is the expert you need.”
Phantom gripped his paintball gun tightly. He suddenly wished they had another drill to run so he could take out his frustration. “I’m not sure the best tactic to approach her.”
Stryker smirked. “Business is business. Anya talks about her all the time, and it sounds like the woman is smart as hell. If you come at it as a business proposition, I’m sure she’ll take us back as a client.”
When it came to business, Phantom often deferred to others who had a gift for such things. He knew how to track an enemy for miles and sneak up on him in total silence. He knew how to be a deadly force in nearly any situation. His experience outside of an assigned mission tested his nerves. He had to remind himself it all served their ultimate goal—defuse a hostile situation with minimal casualties. He’d have to take one for the team.
“I’ll call her tonight,” he relented. Stryker’s fiancée Anya and Elena were best friends, which meant he had to handle the whole thing even more delicately.
“It’s best to handle this type of transaction face-to-face. Calling her could put you at a disadvantage. Who knows—she may demand double the previous fees.”
“That could still happen if I meet with her in person.” Phantom doubted Elena would try to double the fees regardless. She didn’t strike him as a person driven by money.
“Not as l
ikely. Go out and meet with her tomorrow. Maybe you can even convince her to come back to the ranch to see that you haven’t destroyed her years of hard work training those horses. I’m sure Anya would be thrilled to visit with her for a little while.”
Phantom nodded. One way or another he was going to convince Elena to take them back as a client. He cringed. He just hoped she didn’t hate him for cutting her loose in the first place.
* * *
Elena barely lifted the reins and the horse jumped forward, moving swiftly and smoothly beneath her to cut out the heifer from the small herd gathered in the arena. She balanced her weight in the saddle, shifting left to right to guide the horse, barely touching it with her heels. She had trained it to respond to her body’s movements, not to the feel of spurs against its side or the bite of the bit in its mouth.
It wasn’t the way some cowboys she knew worked the range. There were bad ones out there who were notorious for digging their spurs into a horse’s flesh until its hide became tough from misuse and a horse could become nearly unresponsive to a bit in its mouth because of being yanked around constantly. Those practices were outdated, and with the use of proper training for both the horse and rider, a lighter hand could be utilized.
Fortunately, the ranch she worked today employed her methods and style out in the field, and none of the ranch hands wore spurs to guide their horses. She smiled as the horse began to move without cue from her, having honed in on the heifer she wanted to cut from the herd and aggressively pursued moving it out. A few short minutes later, the heifer had been separated from the herd and she chuckled, patting the horse’s neck as a reward.
A couple hours later the sun had climbed, and she decided it was past time to take a break. She dismounted smoothly and led the horse, the third she had worked with already that morning, over to the trough for a long drink of water. She began to scratch it between the ears, a favorite with horses as it was always a difficult spot for them to scratch on their own.
A SEAL Never Quits Page 28