THE WATCHERS: 6 Military Romance Bundle

by Kristina Weaver

  He keeps at me until I’m panting through swollen, slick lips, and then he lifts his head, looking down at me as his hand starts to explore. He touches me everywhere, ignoring my breasts and sex, just taking in my skin and the textures with a thoroughness that has me writhing and begging for more.

  And then the boobs. The boobs. I almost scream, and I do start yanking at my bonds when he closes his lips around my flesh and sucks strongly, his movements unhurried and perfectly timed with the beating of my heart. It hurts, feels good, and hurts some more, as he uses his tongue and teeth to make me so wet I feel my honey coat my thighs.

  Blaze is a master at this, though I sense that it’s not so much control as it is his need to just enjoy it all. He worships me as if this is the culmination itself.

  “Please.”

  “Not yet. Still so much to take,” he groans, moving to the other breast with unconcealed pleasure.

  Minutes pass as I jerk and wiggle, trying to get closer because the void centered between my legs has gone from aching, to painful need, to flat out desperation.

  I can smell my arousal in the air, a thick perfume that he relishes as he takes in deep breaths and keeps sucking me.

  He moves only when he’s ready, when I’m delirious with sensations and so exhausted from the need that I feel languid.

  “Oh God!”

  His mouth on me is…it’s everywhere. I feel his lips, his tongue, his face as if he’s trying to get so close he’ll never be apart from me. He doesn’t go for my clit as I so badly need him to, no, just as he warned. He goes in and tastes it all: my juices, which make him growl in a wild snarl that vibrates into my sex; my labia, which he adores as if they’re a treat he’s been long denied.

  Blaze is truly just wallowing, as he said he would, and while I’m going crazy for release, I also feel myself break a little and wallow in what he gives as he takes. It’s about what he makes me feel as he shows me with his body that he loves every inch of me.

  I feel…perfect. Unfulfilled and clinging to sanity, but so…wanted, like I’ve never been wanted in my life.

  By the time he moves again—this time stroking my inner thighs and just staring at me—I am all his, every single inch of me: my body, he owns that completely; my heart, that was already half his but now, now it beats for him; my mind, it screams at me to make him love me because it knows that I will never have this with anyone else.

  “I need you now, Evie. See me? I’m so hard for you.”

  Hard? His shaft is furiously swollen and so engorged the head is streaming pre-come like a river as he hunches over me, plants his hands beside my shoulders and shifts his hips.

  His thrust is another torture altogether, and I feel every inch, every silky slide, and every ridge as he sinks in slowly with a groan. I moan out loud, insensible words that have no meaning but beg him for it all.

  I’m wet enough that I take him easily despite his size and thickness, and when he’s all in and our groins are flush, he just stops and closes his eyes, seeming to delight in the feeling of my wet heat sucking at him.

  I won’t last. I know it. I can already feel the tension building. All I need is one thrust, not even friction on my clit. He doesn’t move an inch though, and I almost scream when his blue eyes open and peer down at me.

  “It’s so warm inside you, Evie. I could stay like this forever and come.”

  No! Yes. Oh God, I don’t know. I wail inside as tears start streaming and leak down my face into my hair. What I feel right now is frightening, right, and so full that I can’t make a single coherent thought rise to the fore.

  At this moment, all I need is to see him, and feel, and that’s the moment I know what he feels and why he is the way he is. He’s too full of feeling, bursting with it, and he needs his woman to know it too, to feel the overspill and share in it.

  I do. I feel like I could explode with everything he makes me feel, and I do. I shatter and come so hard I scream out on a long wail of achingly pleasurable love.

  ***

  Blaze

  The moment she came without my moving, I knew I was fucked but good, but I don’t even care anymore because it felt that awesome. Her heat, the silky pull as she started convulsing, her muscles swallowing and licking at me…

  I have never come so hard in my life without at least moving, but I did. I filled her inside and out and bellowed so loudly I saw black spots appear in my vision from lack of oxygen.

  I almost passed the hell out at the end when my balls tightened that last time and shot so hard I felt ripped in two.

  Best and worst moment of my life when I came to and saw Evie beneath me, her face flushed and perfect as she lay there in a dead faint. I didn’t panic as I could have because I felt it too and know that what we shared was too powerful to put into words.

  I untied her when I could get my legs to stop shaking and fell down beside her, exhausted, elated.

  Terrified to my soul because I knew, as I know now hours later, that if I don’t pull back somehow, I will never recover when she goes back home. She’s everything I have ever wanted and so much more because with her, I know she’s feeling it too.

  So here I am, Evie’s body plastered to my side, her soft snuffles wafting breathily into my ear, and I can’t sleep as exhausted and wrung out as I am because I need to think before she wakes and looks at me with those vulnerable blue eyes.

  Dammit, Blaze. Sex. Just sex.

  But it wasn’t. I knew it from the first meeting of our lips when she melted and took it all, letting me have what I needed without complaint. She’s…mine.

  If I want her.

  I do, I really do, but I won’t have her because I can’t. She’s too dangerous, too…too everything for me. I’ve been here before and I got hurt, and I can safely tell you that I never once felt this way before.

  Not once.

  With Evie…I feel more, want more, crave more. Even now, after coming so hard my balls ached afterward, I want at her again. This time I want to mark her, cover her in me, and watch her writhe—mine, owned, marked.

  With a curse, I lower her to the bed gently and roll away, grabbing my pants and pulling them on before stalking for the door and stomping downstairs.

  I need a reminder of what I risk. I need a good stroll down memory lane to convince my mind that doing this again with Evie isn’t a good idea. So, I sit down on the couch and grab the old wedding album I keep beneath the couch.

  The photos show me smiling adoringly, my face split with youthful wonder as my wife smiles into the camera, the courthouse at our backs. I was so damned happy and full of life then. I can’t now understand how I ever felt that way to begin with.

  I did though. I was open and happy and the world held possibility. I used to joke around all the time and prank the other guys. I loved laughing and making them laugh, and God, Gunny, he was right there with me through it all, even that last time we worked together just after I got divorced.

  I shut down then, wouldn’t utter a word, didn’t laugh with the guys or joke, just did my job and prayed that the hole I felt in my chest would fill up somehow.

  It didn’t. Instead, we lost Gunny, and not too long after, we called it quits because that life was just not a life anymore. I moved on though. I adapted and made myself the very thing I always hated, because this way I feel nothing.

  It’s easy. I’m used to it and nothing hurts me now.

  At least it didn’t used to until I looked into deep blue eyes tonight and saw myself reflected in Evie’s eyes. She felt it, too. I know she did, and that right there is why I can’t do this, not again.

  I won’t risk feeling just to have her walk away, because I felt so much for that brief moment, that I know this time it would kill me.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Evaline

  I felt him pull away the moment he left the bed. Even in sleep, so wrung out, I would have sworn I couldn’t move if someone held a gun to my head.

  And yet, here I am, moving, slowly c
reeping down the stairs because I need to see him, but part of me is just terrified of what I will find if I do see him.

  That moment when I saw Blaze, really saw him, was so good and bad, I don’t know how to explain it without sounding like an asshole. I’m beat, conquered, defeated by a love so strong it terrifies me just to contemplate it.

  Blaze…

  He’s my something. Most people would call him the one. My soulmate. Kindred spirit. I could call him many things, but to be utterly honest, I don’t think he’s any of those because those words seem so tamed compared to what we shared and what I feel.

  We hardly know each other, and yet I do know him. He takes his coffee with milk but no sugar…nasty.

  He hums in the shower and shaves every second day—I think because he likes the feeling of stubble on his cheeks since he’s always rubbing at it.

  He likes red. Most of his shirts are red, though he swaps out with black, and his closet is a reflection of that.

  He’s right-handed, but he eats with the left and catches a ball with it when he plays with Batshit, that weird looking dog.

  The thing that I know most, though, is that he’s a little broken and doesn’t seem able to get past what happened to him and his marriage. That disturbs me because I’ve kind of decided that he’s my something, the one person that will never leave me alone.

  He may go off to work, but he’ll always come back because I need him to, and he needs to as well. At least I hope he’ll feel that way, because I want him to so badly it hurts me to think he won’t.

  I creep down the stairs silently and peek around into the great room, spotting him in the middle of the sofa as he looks down at something I can’t quite see.

  I’m about to turn and creep back upstairs because I don’t want to disturb him, when he raises his arm and I catch a glimpse of—

  Is that…?

  No, it can’t be, because I know he’d never be callous enough to actually have sex with me and cherish me so thoroughly only to…

  It’s his wedding album, I think dazedly when I see his smiling face gazing down at a pretty blonde who smiles right back at him, her face so lined with joy it brings tears to my eyes.

  My heart is beating so hard I don’t know how he can’t hear it or the pain as my chest splits open.

  “I’ll never forget you.”

  I hear the words, and it all just stops for me. Everything. The pain. My budding and fragile love. The pleasure we shared that was still strumming at my nerve endings.

  It all ceases as I turn silently and walk back up the stairs and into his room on wooden, numb limbs. I’m an idiot, a romantic fool who sees only what she wants to see and insists on that silver fucking lining, no matter that it’s shit someone’s handing me and not a freaking prize.

  How could I even think for one stupid minute that he’d feel this love and want for me? And God, how can I feel betrayed when the truth is I am not, not really?

  We don’t know each other, and this was just sex. He warned me, and for God’s sake, I told him I was all in for it! I was…am…I don’t…this is all my fault, I think, as I slowly sink onto the bed and crawl under the covers, my mind racing one moment and sluggish with fatigue the next.

  I can’t blame him. I can’t be angry. I have no right to feel betrayed or lied to because he didn’t lie to me. I lied to me. This is so classic Evie that I want to laugh at myself for the idiocy of it all.

  I saw, I wanted, I thought stupidly that if I just went at it full steam ahead that I’d get what I wanted, because yeah, I am the fool that went and did the clichéd love at first sight bullshit like a freaking ape.

  Me. Idiot. How you doin’?

  As I lay there for long, long minutes just breathing and forcing my emotions back so that tears don’t come, I think of Jericho, my attack, Kimber, Geek, and I just feel drained.

  I’ve been working so hard for so long that my whole life is all about these people and these things that I don’t think I even know where to start looking for answers to the problems I have.

  First, I love my brother, and I have since the moment he walked up to me and I looked into eyes just a shade darker than mine. I love him and I need him, but I’m too afraid to say it because he’s not mine, is he? Not really. I’m just Evie, the sister he never forgot and swore to look after if I ever needed it.

  Then comes Kimber. I love her too, and she’s the sister I never had. She’s been my rock, my confidante, my biggest fan. But she’s also my worst enemy because sometimes all she sees is what she wants and not me at all. I’ve worked and slaved for years to make our dreams come true only to attain that goal and have her tell me it’s not enough. And now I have to do more? Work harder? Take it all onto my shoulders because she’s not satisfied?

  I can’t.

  Not because I can’t physically do it, I have before and I made it out the other side in one piece, but because, well, because I don’t want to! I like the online business and working with only three seamstresses because I have the freedom to move around a bit now.

  I could work from anywhere and just send the designs to the girls to put together. I could finally go on those buying trips to find rare fabrics, or just see more of other cultures to incorporate into my work instead of looking at it all though my computer screen.

  I could move closer to Jericho like I want to, like I need to, and build a relationship with him instead of living in an apartment I pretend to like because at least it’s better than the crappy one I had before.

  I could finally get a dog! Something I have always wanted since my foster mom’s old Chihuahua died and she refused to replace him.

  I think of the attack last because, I have to be honest, it terrifies me to have to admit that I almost died and still could. Blaze and Jericho are convinced that I am still in danger, and you know what? I believe it.

  I can’t risk myself just because I have commitments. Merle told me once, “You can’t keep a promise if you’re too dead to breathe.”

  So yeah, here I am. My life is a wreck of emptiness, unhappiness with where I’m forcing myself to go, and to make it all worse, I feel sad and guilty because I want to hate Blaze but I can’t.

  It wouldn’t be fair to him, and the truth is if I do, I’d have to give up what I just found, and I won’t. I refuse. It was everything I need—have needed—but never knew.

  I want Blaze for as long as I can have him, and yes, when it ends because it probably will, seeing as the man is still in love with his wife and staring at old wedding photos, I will hurt.

  That’s inevitable. That’s life in all its unholy unfairness, but as I force myself to breathe and think, I know a few things that I won’t and can’t ignore anymore.

  I want a family with Jericho. I want to be close to him and get to know him and Cleo, and I want to be here when they finally have babies. I want barbecues with the guys and Sunday church with Cleo, because she always complains she needs a church buddy since Jericho refuses to go under the excuse that he’d fill the church with smoke when he started burning from the hypocrisy.

  I do not want to go to those meetings, because I just do not want Geek to be in some fancy rich-lady stores, where they’ll sneer at it because the price is too low and may make them seem cheap.

  I want Geek online and then, maybe when I have the energy for it, a small store that I can manage and run to showcase all my work.

  I want to just be and live—for once—in my life…instead of always looking ahead and thinking of everything else but what I want.

  So yeah. Me. Decisions. Hard ones that make me ache and feel like hell.

  First off, if Kimber doesn’t want to be in business with me the way I envisioned it and the way we agreed to at the beginning, she can sell to me.

  I may not give her the price she wants, but it’s better than being stuck with me if that’s the way she wants to see it. The meeting that I told Blaze was cancelled? I lied, by the way, don’t be sanctimonious and judgy. I really did not want tha
t one in the first place. I am not going to that one, and fuck anyone who doesn’t like it.

  Instead, I’m going to do one thing for me now, and that is to spend what time I have with Blaze.

  After that, I will sit Jericho down and tell him how I feel, and I refuse to even accept it if he doesn’t feel the same. I won’t move here to make him feel better, or so he can run my life like I know he wants to. I’ll do it because I want to be his sister and not his responsibility.

  The rest can wait, as can my fear of what happens if they don’t find the man who hurt me. That’s all on Blaze, but I trust him.

  As soon as those decisions are made, I feel light and free from the burdens that have been plaguing me. The only thing left now is my aching heart, but that, too, can wait because I want more time, and dammit, I will have it.

  I must have fallen asleep sometime later because when I come to again, it’s to the feeling of Blaze sliding back into bed and pulling me into his side.

  “Hmm?”

  “Shh, go back to sleep, Evie.”

  I do, smiling as I wrap an arm around him.

  ***

  “Evie.”

  I ignore Jericho’s growl and glare at Blaze, as he flips another burger and pretends not to notice the daggers shooting from my eyes. The damn man has been an asshole the last day and a half, and this just takes the cake.

  He made plans with Jericho and Cleo to come over for lunch and swimming when I told him expressly I do not want to deal with my brother so soon.

  Did he listen? Not once. Instead, I got his blank look before he dialed the number and told me to behave when I tried to punch him in the nuts. Freaking coward! I say coward because he’s gone back to ignoring my wishes and only comes near me for sex, which is vanilla in comparison to what we had before.

  Oh, it was good, don’t get me wrong or think I was not satisfied. The man made me come multiple times and even seemed satisfied himself. No wallowing though, and I freaking hate it!

  I want adoration, worship, obsession, not this bullshit wham-bam nonsense that leaves me drained and strangely unsatisfied. I want the crazy-eyed hedonist who made me feel as if I was everything to him in that moment, because at least then I felt some sort of love.