Erik moved, his hips pumping in time with the pulse galloping in his ears, hating every retreat and reveling in every return. Her face was the definition of rapture, eyes heavy-lidded, pupils blown, and mouth opened wide like she was waiting for him to fill it with his cock. And the strings of whispered pleases and oh God, yeses mixed in among the moans was the audible assurance that she was as lost to this as he was.
Her nails dug into his triceps and yet he barely felt them. He wanted to tell her more, tell her harder, but he didn’t want to scare her or ask for too much. The sex would be enough. It had to be enough.
No sooner did he finish the mantra than she lowered her head, latched on to the tendon where his shoulder and neck merged, and clamped down with her teeth. Erik hissed in a breath through a clenched jaw and growled on the exhale as the endorphins he craved flooded his system.
If he’d thought he could shock her with his need for rough treatment, he’d been dead wrong. Not only did she not shy away from it, but she gave every bit as good as she got. Releasing her hold on him, she gave him a feral smile right before pulling him in and crushing her lips to his.
Fucking perfection. That’s what his Livvie was.
Without breaking their wild kiss, he moved away from the wall and walked them to the dresser. He perched her ass at the edge, palmed the sides of her head, and continued his assault on both her mouth and tight little pussy. After several minutes, or fuck, maybe it was an hour, they wrenched apart to catch their breath, and what he saw stopped him in his tracks.
Her lips were red and puffy, hazel eyes bright with lust, and cheeks flushed pink. Sweat dampened her face and smudged her mascara. Staring at her, he used the pads of his thumbs to further smear the black makeup over her alabaster skin. She was breathtaking, like a tormented angel, reveling in her own torment, and maybe even his.
“So fucking perfect,” he said as he stroked her long hair back from her face.
Her eyes went all soft, and she leaned in to his touch on a long sigh. That’s when everything clicked into place for him. He loved Olivia, was in love with her. Wholly and completely—heart, mind, body, and soul. His love reflected back at him in her eyes, in the way she looked at him, as if he was the only thing and everything all rolled into one. And he wanted her to see.
Gritting his teeth, he pulled out of her and helped her down before turning her to face the large mirror over the dresser. One of his hands splayed over her belly while the other wrapped around the front of her throat, protective and possessive. “Look how beautiful you are, baby,” he said all raspy and next to her ear. “You’re mine, Livvie. You belong to me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. She slipped her right hand along the back of his head and pulled him down even more, offering her neck to him like a sacrificial lamb. He attacked her shoulder, blazing a trail of licks and bites up the length of her neck and back again.
Unable to hold back another second, he kicked her feet apart, lined himself up, and in a single thrust, shoved home.
Home.
For so long now, the place he most considered home was the Roxbury firehouse where he and his band of brothers lived and worked. But this…being inside this woman—hell, Olivia herself—felt more like home than anything else he’d had in his life. It’s where he belonged. Where he wanted to stay. Now and for always.
As he set up a steady rhythm, Erik watched her face in the mirror, watched as the sensations of being filled and stretched by him burned in her eyes. He fisted a handful of her hair and pulled, banding his free arm around her middle to hold her against him. He fucked her in front of the mirror and committed every detail to memory. Him larger and darker, her smaller and fairer. Sweat made their skin glisten under the glaring overhead light. With every thrust, her tits bounced on his forearm and his balls slapped the swollen lips of her pussy. Carnality at its basest, its finest.
“Yes, yes, yes!” Her cries spurred him on, faster and faster. The noises they made mixed with the blaring music still playing, creating a soundtrack of grunts, pants, and moans with the staccato sounds of wet flesh smacking together.
She reached back and he felt her nails bite into the sensitive skin on the backs of his thighs, right under his ass. “Fuck!” Erik couldn’t hold on much longer. The fire raced down his spine, and his balls pulled in tight. Using the fingers of one hand, he pinched and twisted a nipple, making sure to keep the pressure on. His other hand moved to her mound, the heel of his hand pressing in just above her pubic bone to create more friction on her G-spot while he rubbed and slapped her clit, pushing her toward that razor’s edge between pain and utter bliss.
“OhGod—ohGod—ohG—”
He nipped her earlobe hard enough to make her gasp. “Wrong name,” he growled. “Who’s fucking you?”
“Erik.”
He rubbed over her clit harder, faster. “Who do you belong to?” He gave her pussy a sharp smack for emphasis, making her jump on his cock. Jesus fuck!
“Erik!”
“Goddamn right. Now come for me, Livvie baby.”
With that, Erik released his hold on her nipple, letting the blood rush back to the distended nub, and pinched her clit to finally send her over. Throwing her head back on his shoulder, she screamed as her body rocked with tremors, and her cunt gripped his cock, convulsing and dragging him over the brink. He buried himself to the hilt one last time and roared through the orgasm that exploded through him like a mortar tearing through a tank cannon.
As they slowly came back to the real world, Erik wished they’d ended up in the bed. His leg muscles burned from the exertion of staying slightly bent to compensate for her shorter height, and all he wanted to do was roll over and hold her while they fell asleep. But first he had to get them there.
Pulling out of her was a special form of torture, but he forced himself to step back and let his semi-soft dick slip from her heat. “Come here, sweetheart,” he said softly, placing a kiss at her temple before scooping her up against his chest.
She wrapped her arms around his neck as she tucked her face into the crook of his shoulder. He laid her on the bed and covered her up, then turned the music and lights off on his way to the bathroom to clean up.
He did a cursory check in the vanity mirror, taking inventory of the physical damage. He had multiple scratches and dozens of tiny crescent-shaped indentations from her nails, but none of them were quite as impressive as the teeth impressions near his shoulder. Raising a hand, he traced the pattern with the tip of a finger, the sight of her mark on him was like a balm on an ache only she could touch. Only his Livvie.
When he returned with a damp washcloth, his heart swelled to near bursting in his chest at the sight of her, lying on her stomach and hugging a pillow with a sleepy smile, waiting for him to come back. And he would, now and for always. He knew it as sure as he knew his own name. He’d never do anything to put her at risk, and he’d do everything he could to make her feel loved and cherished.
But after gently cleaning her, he had to make sure she was okay with everything. Setting the cloth off to the side, he said, “Hey, gorgeous.”
“Hmm?”
“You don’t regret what we did? Not freaked out by any of it?”
Olivia’s features softened; it was a look he’d come to know well. A woman with a heart as big as hers, who empathized to a fault, couldn’t not wear that look at least once a day. Her compassion was one of the many things he loved about her.
“C’mere,” she said, rocking to her side to make room for him under the sheet with her.
Eager to have her in his arms, he stretched out and tucked her against him. Her head rested on his shoulder, but she lifted it to meet his gaze. She appeared rumpled with that freshly fucked look, and if he wasn’t so exhausted, it’d probably stir his libido for another round.
“Hear me when I tell you this, Erik.” She brought her hand up to cradle the side of his face, the gesture at once soothing and upsetting because of the bandage on her palm. “Are you listening?”
He raised his eyes back to hers as he stroked her hair and nodded, wary of attempting to push any words past the lump in his throat for fear they’d come out cracked.
“Good,” she said warmly. “I don’t regret a single moment. You gave yourself to me every bit as much as I gave myself to you. There’s nothing more beautiful than that. As long as we give each other what we need, nothing is considered wrong. A sexy-as-hell man taught me that.”
The steel coils of doubt and guilt that had been winding their way through him, squeezing and choking him, finally unraveled and allowed him to take a full breath as they shrank back into the shadows. Exhaling, he felt the pricking of moisture behind his eyes, and his throat tightened for a whole new reason.
Olivia settled back in and laid her head on his chest as Erik stared at the ceiling and ran her long hair through his fingertips. He thought she fell asleep until she spoke softly in the darkness. “Will you tell me about that day?”
She sounded unsure, like she wasn’t sure she should ask or maybe she expected him to get upset. Normally, he’d shut down any talk about that mission, but he knew now that she was it for him, so regardless of what might happen tomorrow or the next day, he needed to lay himself bare and stop hiding all the shit he’d rather she not see. It was time to bite the bullet and open up.
“We were already two days into what was supposed to be a six-hour op. The boys and I were assigned a snatch-and-grab mission for a high-profile extremist near Basra. The bastard kept giving us the slip, but we lucked out and pulled some solid intel from a local source on his location, so we went with it. We reached the compound and I called in to signal our position, but our radios were down due to interference from the electrical equipment inside the compound.
“Normally, we wouldn’t go ahead without being able to reach operations, but this would be our only chance to catch him, our only chance to end the chaos and horror he brought on the people of his country and mine.
“So I gave the green light, and we stormed the compound. One hard knock on the door and we found out real fucking quick what hurt was. They’d rigged the entry with explosives. Soon as it popped open, the breach team vanished in a shit-storm of smoke, fire, and steel. Hell, Smoke is lucky his night vision cut out when it did and he stalled to fix it just before the blast went off. If he hadn’t, he’d have a lot worse than just burn scars to hide.
“But we’re rangers, and rangers don’t quit, so we didn’t let the breach hang-up stall our violence of action. We poured into that shithole like a swarm of militant wasps, and you know what we found? Fuckall.”
“What do you mean?” she asked carefully. “The guy wasn’t there?”
Erik shook his head once, still in disbelief. “It was a bad tip. The intel was misguided, the source planted. I lost two men—two brothers—because of shitty intel and an even shittier decision that I made. It’s my fault Smoke is who he is now, and it’s my fault Harley and Jazz lost their lives that day and left behind families. I may not have detonated the bomb, but they died as a direct result of my command, and that’s just as bad…if not worse.
“That’s why I started questioning my judgment after that explosion at the power plant. It reminded me of how I failed my men as a lieutenant, their leader, and their friend. It was my call to make. I made it, and even though some of the guys had doubts about the situation, they followed me,” he said. “My decision led to two of my men dying, others wounded, and Smoke—well, you saw firsthand what he has to see every day for the rest of his life. He won’t even entertain the idea of dating because of what he looks like beneath his clothes. That’s on me.”
“Does he blame you, too?” she asked.
“Fuck no. Sometimes I think that’s worse than if he did.”
“If the roles would have been reversed, and you were the one who was injured in the line of duty while following your friend and lieutenant, would you blame him?”
“I know what you’re doing, but it’s not the same.”
Olivia pushed up onto her elbow and looked down at him, her golden hair cascading over her shoulder and spilling over his. He waited for her to argue or say something, but all she did was stare at him. Not with judgment or disappointment or even frustration, but something that looked like acceptance and love…and still she didn’t speak.
Aw hell, she was using his own technique on him. Then again, he supposed in a lot of ways shrinks were similar to interrogators. They both knew how to get people to say what they didn’t want to say. And damn if she wasn’t good at this shit.
Sighing heavily, he said, “It’s the same. But it doesn’t make it any easier to swallow.”
“Maybe not yet. Give it time.”
“It’s already been years and I haven’t gotten very far.”
“You’re only now starting to deal with any of it. It might as well have happened a few months ago for as much as you’ve dealt with your guilt since coming back.” Olivia placed her soft hand on the side of his face and gazed deeply into his eyes. “You are a strong and honorable man. There is nothing you wouldn’t do for your country, your city, and your brothers. Those are all things you know and have confidence in.
“Where you lack in confidence right now is your ability to lead. But you’ve been leading your company for years now without incident. That’s literally thousands of calls where you brought yourself and your men back safely, or at least without any fatal injuries. That’s amazing in itself, but let’s look at it from another angle. Dozer, Smoke, Bowie, and Preacher: Do you think any of them are particularly dense or maybe have a death wish?”
“Not a chance. Those guys are sharp as hell. They might be adrenaline junkies, but we all are to some extent or we wouldn’t have chosen the careers we did. That doesn’t mean we have a death wish. Aside from Bowie, anyway.” When her brow knitted together in concern, he used his thumb to smooth out the wrinkles marring her flawless features. Shaking his head, he said, “Leave it alone, sweetheart.”
She gave him a wan smile. “Sorry, force of habit. Okay, so then you can agree that there’s no way in hell your guys would’ve signed up to work under you if they had any doubts about your ability to lead them and make the right calls. They were all there that day, and as you pointed out, Smoke has lasting scars. If anyone had reason to doubt you, it would be them, and yet they follow you into burning buildings without hesitation, over and over again. You will heal, Lieutenant Erik Thomas Grady. I promise you that.”
This woman was a miracle, a Godsend sent to rescue him. Maybe it was karma or the universe’s way of repaying him for the people he’d managed to rescue over the years, both as a ranger and a firefighter, he didn’t know, and frankly, he didn’t care. All that fucking mattered was that she was his.
“Livvie, I—” Love you. Erik fought an internal battle. Tell her… Don’t tell her… He wanted to, so fucking badly. The words were heavy in his soul, on his tongue, and he wanted nothing more than to set them free, to let her know just how much she meant to him. But he couldn’t. Not yet. “Thank you.”
She smiled. “You’re welcome.” Then she gave him a kiss that was at once sweet and sensual, just like her, and burrowed back into his side, falling asleep in mere seconds.
Resting his cheek on the top of her head, he held her tight, stroked the smooth skin of her arm, and tried to reassure himself that not saying it was the right thing to do. It’s not that he didn’t want to tell her exactly how much she meant to him, but he couldn’t put that on her now. It wouldn’t be fair to her. Once he got his head on straight, he could offer her love from the kind of man she deserved. Then he’d be free to prove his unconditional love for her every day for the rest of their lives.
Because despite the incredible gift she’d given him tonight—despite the fact she’d proven to him beyond the shadow of a doubt that she could handle it when the darkness consumed him—it still killed him to know he hurt her during his flashback, and he couldn’t help but worry that it might happen again. His brain, his ac
tions—it was all too unpredictable.
Erik planned to talk with Dr. Marion about it tomorrow. He had to know what the odds were of this happening again; if just by being with her, he was putting Olivia in danger.
Danger…risk… A chill raced through his veins as he realized something else. Something he’d thought of and then shoved into the back of his mind the day Livvie had told him about her husband’s death. At the time, their relationship had barely gotten off the ground so he justified ignoring the one thing about himself that made him a terrible match for her.
He was a goddamn firefighter. A man whose survival odds have been a constant gamble, from the time he turned eighteen and entered the army to the time he entered the fire service at twenty-eight. Erik’s job was a game of Russian Roulette. Slip in the bullet, spin the chamber, snap it in, cock the gun, pull the trigger. Odds were good that all he’d hear is a click and he’d make it through the end of his shift safe and sound. But there was always that chance. The chance that someday that bullet lines up just right and makes Livvie a widow…again.
Flashes of her crying at his grave had beads of sweat popping out on his forehead that he swiped away with the back of his hand. Taking a slow, deep breath, Erik closed his eyes and pushed the images of leaving Livvie behind from his mind. It was something else he’d have to think about, but not right now.
For now, he’d cherish holding her in his arms and feeling her soft breaths skate across his chest. There was a good chance he’d have to let her go until he could get his shit together. He just prayed it wouldn’t be permanent, because living without her would be an entirely new kind of hell. One he wasn’t sure he could survive.
…
Olivia woke from being jostled in the middle of the night. The bed was literally shaking. As her eyes adjusted in the darkness, she turned over to face Erik, concern gripping her heart with sharp talons, despite the fact that she’d suspected this might happen tonight.
He was in the middle of a nightmare. He lay on his back, the sheet twisted around his legs, his body covered in sweat as he jerked and writhed, fighting off some invisible attacker in his mind and mumbling unintelligibly.
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