by Christa Wick
He staggered a step back. I knew the feeling, felt a flare of deep pain shoot through my chest as if we'd both been stabbed with the same blade or shot with the same gun.
Shaking my head, not caring that the tears were already flowing, I gestured toward the drive. "Go home, Collin."
"I don't have one."
He straightened, his gaze like it had been that last day in the hospital. He studied me as if he didn't quite know who I was. Reaching out, he scratched at a spot of peeling paint on the side of the porch.
"Haven't had a home since before I enlisted. I have places I own—"
"This isn't one of them anymore," I reminded him, my tone as hard as I could make it.
He acknowledge the fact with a slight nod, but then he reached out and curled his hands against the sides of my face. "What will it take for you to stop hating me?"
Hate him? I loved the stupid idiot, but I had to love myself, too, and the two loves weren't compatible.
When I remained mute, he filled the silence.
"I thought I was protecting you by sending you away." His hands moved, threading in my hair as he stepped closer. "That was just a lie I told myself so I wouldn't feel bad. If it was only about wanting to protect you, I would have kept you next to me."
His chest pressed against mine. His mouth grazed the side of my face, the pressure so light I could feel the tremble in his lips.
"I was protecting me," he confessed. "From losing you, from guilt... It was something you never realized, love, not once in all our time together. You had all the power. You still do."
He stepped away, his hand dipping into one pocket. The ring came out. He didn't offer it to me or even look at me, just ran it round and round his fingertip as he continued speaking.
"I'm done fighting other people's wars, baby. Done keeping other men's families safe."
His voice caught and I thought for a second the ring would disappear from sight forever this time.
"There are horses coming tomorrow." He met my gaze again. "Rescues."
For a moment, I forgot about the ring. Horses? Tomorrow? Did the man not realize what a huge responsibility even one horse was!
His free hand reached behind him to slide a picture from his back pocket. He showed it to me without offering it, as if he intended to keep this one for himself whether I let him stay or forced him to leave.
The picture was a close up. I stood with my forehead touching Corabelle's long nose, my hand against the side of her face. My mother had taken it the day after Evan had forced Ray Haynes to leave his job as foreman on the farm. I hadn't quite felt like I lost my father all over again with Ray's sudden absence, but close. It was more like a favorite uncle who had stepped in after my father's death. A man who had taught me to ride and selected my best and longest friend—the horse I sought comfort from in the picture.
Leaning in, Collin kissed the tears streaming down my cheeks. When his arms wrapped around me and pulled me to him, I didn't protest. The picture disappeared into his back pocket, but the ring didn't. He pressed it into my palm and curled his fingers around my hand.
His lips pressed against my ear. "I thought the farm could offer second chances…for horses and children..."
Softly, so softly I wouldn't have heard it if I hadn't been hanging on every word, he finished.
“For me."
18
Mia
Three Months Later
"Just stay against the wall and observe," I softly directed as Collin edged a toe over the threshold to the horse stall for the third time in an hour.
"She seems agitated," he whispered.
Crouched on the business end of a thousand-pound quarter horse in labor, Ray Haynes responded with a muted chuckle. For nearly three months, Ray and I had been locating and transporting endangered horses to the farm. Saved just two weeks earlier, this was our first pregnant mare. Undernourished when we found her, the labor promised to be a rough ordeal. Ray also thought it would be her first delivery.
"Well, she has a hundred pounds of foal waiting to come out—and a nervous hen pacing outside her stall."
Collin cut the stable manager a look before his gaze fixed on me with renewed concern.
"Ease back, Mia," Ray warned. "She's about to roll or stand."
He was right. The exhausted mare did a half roll to get her hooves under her then pushed up on shaky legs. The instant she did, there was a sound like someone had turned a faucet on.
Collin snapped to attention. "What the hell was that?"
I brushed a hand across my mouth to erase a grin.
"Water breaking," Ray answered with another quiet chuckle.
The water sound continued, a minute passed, the end of a second one drew near.
"How much?" Collin asked.
"Up to seven liters," Ray said. "Sometimes more. With the shape she came in, I'd say about five."
Legs trembling, the mare folded to the ground and rolled onto her side, her breath coming in harsh pants. Knowing she would be down for several minutes before she regained the energy to stand again, I risked a glance at Collin.
His dark gaze tried to order me to his side of the barn. I shook my head, refocused my attention on the mare. Much as I wanted to, I didn't reach out to stroke her head. Ray and I were still little more than strangers to the animal. Ray also had a philosophy to stay close enough to intercede in an emergency but no touching during labor. It wouldn't really comfort the mare, anyway, and could result in a life-altering injury to one of the handlers.
The sound of water flowing shut off.
"She'll still give little spurts," Ray advised. "And pretty soon it will look like she's trying to blow a white balloon out her vulva. That's the amniotic sac."
I risked another glance at Collin just in time to see a shudder pass over him. The visceral response surprised me. He had seen far worse in combat. As often as not, he had been the cause of it.
"Stand back," Ray warned again.
This time it took two rocking rolls and a lot of trembling legs before the mare was standing. Her braided tail twitched and lifted, the first few inches of amniotic sac beginning to protrude in a bubble about the size of a golf ball. Over the course of five minutes, the bubble could have fit a human head inside it.
In between focusing on the mare, I kept sneaking glances at Collin. The birthing process made him uncomfortable. It wasn't the fluids—it was the mare's discomfort, her borderline distress as she groaned with fatigue and her big belly moved with contractions, all four legs held rigidly straight whenever she was on her side.
The process distressed him because part of Collin wasn't in the stables with me and Ray. The most primitive part of his brain was in Baghdad in a situation he could not control beyond his own actions.
"She's ready," Ray said, motioning me to stand and give the mare a wide berth. "I see a hoof."
Two more minutes would pass before he saw the second hoof. When the nose appeared, Ray jerked his head in a signal for me to leave the stall altogether as the mare stood once more.
Collin immediately wrapped his arms around me, his lips pressing lightly against my temple. I moved my head, nuzzling his cheek as I continued to watch the foaling.
"You're shaking, love," Collin whispered in my ear.
I clutched the arm that cradled me to him, drawing strength from his warm flesh and the distinct smell of his body that infiltrated all the surrounding stable odors. He kept me grounded, kept my mind from venturing into the painful past as his had.
"That mare came in weak, but she'll be okay," Collin promised, giving me a little squeeze. "They'll both be okay. Ray doesn't look the least bit worried."
He was right. Even after all the years I had spent in Ray's presence as a child, Collin could already read the man like an open book.
"Might need my catcher's mitt," Ray joked with a whisper as the entire head and most of the front legs' length made it out of the mare. "Next push is going to get the shoulders out."
I nodded. Not because I knew he was right, but because I was rooting for the mare, rooting for the foal. She had spent most of her life in a filthy, narrow stall, underfed with flies constantly plaguing her. She needed to be in the fields running, her foal by her side.
"Here we go!"
Ray got his arms under the foal's chest as soon as the shoulders cleared. He helped it gently fold to the ground and dragged it across the thick hay bedding until it was far enough away from the mare so she couldn't, in her exhaustion, step on it. The distance also meant she couldn't kick Ray in the head as he quickly tore through the amniotic sac and massaged the foal's torso.
"He's breathing," Ray announced, his voice quiet once more to avoid startling the mare. Leaving the foal, he approached its mama and tied off part of the sac that still trailed from her.
"That's as big as a bed sheet," Collin whispered in my ear.
"For a twin bed," I agreed.
Together, we stood outside the stall for another hour, Collin's arms around me. The foal's successful birth felt cathartic. His first stumbling, shaky steps brought a whoop of joy from all of us.
Ray came over to the side of the stall and brushed away what looked suspiciously like a tear from his grizzled cheek. With a nod at Collin and me, he gestured toward the stable doors.
"Past midnight. Billy'll be here soon. Plenty to ooh and aah over in the morning."
Collin started tugging me toward the exit before I finished nodding my agreement.
"I'll walk you over to the main house," he said once we were outside.
Finding his hand, I clasped it. When we reached the porch, I didn't let go.
"Come inside," I said. "Don't go back to the guesthouse tonight."
Collin didn't argue, just followed quietly after me. He locked the door, set the alarm, then drew me into a passionate kiss that shocked me.
Despite all the nuzzling in the stables, our lips hadn't touched since Dubai. Not even the night he deeded the horse farm to me and pulled me into his arms, his ring in my hand. I gave him back the ring that night and he had slept in the guesthouse ever since.
Collin's nose brushed at my ear, his voice a warm rasp when he spoke.
"Love…"
Just one word, half command, half question. Neither of us knew what would happen next. This was new territory for us, but we would explore it together.
Carrying me into the bedroom, Collin placed me on the edge of a king-sized bed. Like all the furniture in the house when he deeded it to me, he had purchased it with an eye toward my tastes. Fresh paint, flooring, curtains…only the architecture of my childhood remained.
Sinking to his knees, he coaxed my legs apart and rested his hands against my hips.
He was still Collin Stark, Executive Badass of a private military company, but this wasn't the boardroom or a security op. Neither of us was quite sure where to start after all the pain and pleasure that had passed between us.
Start at the top, I told myself. Reaching out, I grasped the collar of his denim work shirt. Emotion flickered across his face—its flavor unlike anything I expected.
It could have been easy in that moment…with that look…to think he no longer wanted me this way, that the passion exhibited in the entry room was just another type of restitution for the pain he had caused me.
Pushing the doubt down, I unthreaded the first button, then the second. Reaching the third, my nail snagged on something. Collin rolled his lips, licked quickly at them before his tongue disappeared. I unthreaded the third button then fished out the object that had caused his nervous lick.
A necklace, stainless steel by the weight and feel of it.
At its end, the ring he had pressed into my hand three months earlier.
Another ending between us could have begun at that moment. Maybe the final ending.
Leaning forward, I planted a loving kiss on his forehead then proceeded to unthread the remaining buttons and help him strip the sleeves from his arms. A white t-shirt waited beneath to thwart the urgency burning low in my gut.
The same nervous expression repeated across his features.
He looked down, his lips parted and moving with an unvoiced explanation. His hand jerked across his torso to a spot he just had to scratch at. A tell—something he couldn't control at that moment when our actions were about so much more than sex.
I pushed his hand down, lifted his arm and studied the spot. A two-inch scar.
In the time we had spent naked together before a bomb ripped our relationship apart, I had studied every inch of his flesh. This scar wasn't part of my Inventory of All Things Collin Stark. But it was healed, the redness of a fresh wound long gone.
"Take it off," I ordered, gesturing at the t-shirt.
He stripped it away as I kicked out of my shoes and moved up the mattress. Spreading my legs, I patted the open space between them. He followed me up the bed and kneeled for my inspection.
As if he were a book written in Braille, I traced my fingers over his torso and arms, learning new lines and unnatural depressions where the flesh had been torn into or torn out.
Where there had been one bullet scar in the back of his right shoulder the last time we made love, he now had three such scars. The second one was on his bicep where Evan had shot him. I used it as a guide to estimate the age of the third scar on his lower abdomen.
"This was right after Dubai?"
He nodded, eyes closed as I looked over him.
A shallow but long slash ran across the top right quadrant of his torso, starting close to his shoulder and running straight up to the small, brown areola of his nipple. Another slash ran across his stomach.
I couldn't keep counting. My stomach wound tighter with each new injury I catalogued.
"You went on a mission right after Dubai?"
Another short nod.
I didn't know how to process the fact. He had nearly been killed, so had I. And there had been the other loss that day that I didn't want to revisit.
"Why?"
"I had to make you safe," he answered, his dark blue eyes finally open and staring deep into my gaze. "I was too weak to do it any other way."
I shook my head. Weak? Not this man. Never. But vulnerable, yes.
"Still not sure I was wrong, though…not about sending you stateside or keeping you in the dark about what I was doing."
"But staying away after?" I asked. "Ignoring the effect your continued silence had on me…ignoring me?"
"Love, I watched you every day on a monitor."
My head jerked randomly, my hands pulling back from touching him at the same time. He caught them, held me firm.
"I'm afraid you'll do it again," I said. "Push me away, lock me out."
Collin drew me into his arms, let me place my suddenly wet cheek against his shoulder while he ran his fingers through my hair.
"I love you," he said, his words muffled as he pressed his lips to my temple. "I am always going to love you. But I can't promise I won't be stupid again…that's the nature of being stupid in the first place."
My chest bounced against his as a weak laugh took possession of me.
Collin opened a space between us, his finger sliding under my chin to lift my gaze.
"Baby, I'm not asking to put the ring on your finger tonight. I'm just asking permission to love you…to love you in a way I haven't been able to before."
19
Collin
Seeing the spark of consent in Mia's green eyes, I wrapped my hands around her calves and pulled her body straight along the bed. Keeping her legs spread, I nestled my lower torso between her thighs, my mouth falling even with the soft curve of her throat.
When my lips met her flesh, she squeezed at my hips, her mound pushing upward.
Always responsive, my Mia.
I expelled a shaky groan. Since Dubai, the genie had been kept in the bottle. That was far too long. Yeah, my hand had efficiently serviced me more than once in that time, always while images of the woman beneath me shimmer
ed inside my head. But I didn't take another lover.
It would have felt like cheating—I was still in love with Mia and half certain she still loved me.
"You stopped…" Her confused tone trailed off as she finished with a shaky exhale.
Looking up, I flashed a grin.
"Just strategizing the best way to get you naked."
My hands curled with the need to shred the fabric. Sucking a deep breath in, she pushed her breasts upward.
"These are snaps, not buttons," Mia offered, her lush bottom grinding against the mattress, teasing us both as my cock swelled close to bursting within my jeans.
I yanked on the work shirt's bottom hem, the snaps popping open all the way up to the collar like a string of firecrackers. A sleeveless tee and a bra hid beneath. I pushed the tee up over her breasts and groaned to see that the bra had a front closure instead of a hooked back. I slid a little lower, used my teeth to undo the closure. With the luscious flesh spilling out to greet me, my mouth tracked right to suck and teethe at a full breast and pouting nipple.
Palming each globe, I moved between them as they began to quiver with how tightly Mia held herself. Studying her beautiful face, I reassured myself she wasn't having second thoughts.
"Love, you really need to come, don't you?"
She didn't answer with words. Her hips pushed hard and quick against me as her eyes rolled upward and her shoulders lifted off the mattress.
Seeing the passion burning through Mia, I made quick work of pulling her jeans and panties off. There was too much familiarity between us—with too much time between—for me to stoke her need with a long, hard tease.
Planting my mouth against her wet pussy, I breathed in her scent. We were both sweaty from the time in the stables, but there, between her legs, she was like clean morning dew on dark green grass.
With my mouth pressed between her plump labia, I began to tongue inside her pussy. She dug her nails against the back of my head, tried to drag me up a few inches to work her clit.