Page 57 of Fearless

“I don’t think I can walk,” she breathed, tilting her head to the side to look at me.

“I’ll carry you, baby. Always.”

Removing my hand from her pants, I sucked my fingers in my mouth, groaning at her taste.

“Fuck,” she grunted. “Now I really can’t walk.”

Quinlan

He made good on his promise, carrying me straight up to my bedroom after stalking around the first floor to make sure all the doors and windows were secure, of course. The door had barely closed behind us when he set me on my feet and stripped us both out of our clothes. He stood, staring at my body for so long I started to cover myself, thinking he didn’t like the subtle changes the baby was responsible for, except he stopped me.

“Never hide your body from me.” His deep voice penetrated the silence. “I’m in awe of your beauty, Quin.”

“Give it a few months. You may not feel the same.”

He stepped closer, twisting a lock of my hair around his fingers.

“You’re right, I won’t.” I closed my eyes to shut out the hurt his words caused, but a sharp tug on the hair he still had in his grasp had them opening once more. “I’ll love you even more. I can’t wait to watch your body grow with our baby. For so long, I thought I’d never have this…a family of my own.”

“Why?”

I knew something had happened to him while he was in the Army, however he’d never shared the details with me.

Taking my hand, he led us to the bed and after moving the sheets aside, he crawled on top, pulling me down beside him with my head on his chiseled chest. His arm circled my back as I began to run my fingers through the small patch of hair splattered across his torso. We were quiet for what seemed like hours before he began to speak.

“I loved being a Ranger. It was all I ever wanted to do with my life. Then the unthinkable happened.”

His grip on me tightened infinitesimally as he recounted being captured and held hostage for three days with his fellow soldiers. A steady stream of tears flowed from my eyes at the pain I heard in his voice when he told me how he was forced to watch them being tortured, day in and day out.

“Their cries of pain and our captors’ demands for information haunted me for years,” he concluded.

“Do they still?” I sniffled.

“Not any more, baby.” He kissed the top of my head.

“What changed?”

“You,” he said simply. “I was drowning in guilt and I knew I couldn’t be the man you deserved until my demons were laid to rest, once and for all.”

“There was nothing for you to feel guilty about, Alec.”

I tried to sit up, wanting him to see the sincerity of my words, but he quickly rolled us. Leaning over me, he bent his head, kissing away the wetness on my cheeks.

“I know that now. It took a long, hard conversation with my brothers and Pop before I realized my silence ultimately saved all our lives. If I’d have given those bastards what they wanted, none of us would have made it out of there alive. For five years, I used my lack of physical injury as a weapon of self-condemnation, shutting everyone out in the process.”

“But that’s over now, right?”

“It was over the minute you walked into my life, Firefly.”

He pressed featherlight kisses to each side of my mouth before his lips touched mine, sparking a flame of desire which went straight to my core. I raised my hips, trying to get closer to him, but it wasn’t enough. It would never be enough.

“Please. I need you, Alec,” I moaned as he moved down my body, taking a nipple between his teeth, tugging the turgid peak before sucking hard.

“Quiet, baby,” he demanded. “You have to keep quiet or we’ll stop.”

Not waiting for my response, he resumed his ministrations, switching back and forth between my sensitive breasts, giving them equal attention. I reached between us, wrapping my fingers around his cock, which felt like steel encased by silk. He was so thick they didn’t touch, but that didn’t stop my hand from twisting up and down his shaft. He groaned when I flicked my thumb across the tip, catching a drop of precum.

“Quiet, baby, or we’ll stop.” I gave his words back to him.

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