Page 23 of Guarded Hearts

Bracing his arms on the bed on either side of her, he hovered over her. The tip of his cock probed at her drenched folds.

“What do the star tattoos mean?”

Was she stalling? Could he blame her?

“Buddy of mine got the same tats—one star for each mission. After a while, there were too many missions to keep getting tattoos.” His voice was ragged with need. His blood pulsing.

She wet her lips. Then eagerly opened to him…

And he slid home.

The gasp they shared filled the air, followed by a moan when he withdrew nice and slow.

Her inner walls clutched around him.

“Give me your mouth.” He didn’t even wait for her to concede—he slammed his down on hers.

The wild dance of their tongues went from needy to carnal. The thunder of her heart mixed with the noises of bliss they made as he steered them toward the cliff of insanity.

She clung to him, fingers spread across the hot steel of his back. Each stroke of his cock shot her higher and higher. Her mind blanked on her worries about her stalker and instead stars sparkled in the back of her mind.

Her pussy squeezed Carson’s cock.

“Fuck, I can’t hold on much longer. Come with me. Come with—” He broke off, mouth open on a silent bellow.

She made the mistake of looking into his eyes at the moment her orgasm struck.

God, it magnified the sensationso muchmore.

Her insides clenched and released hard and fast, milking him.

When she came to her senses, he was lying beside her, looking down at her, a crinkle between his dark brows.

“You okay?” His gruff voice reminded her of the last time she spoke to him, when he told her that he’d come back to Wyoming before going off to boot camp.

A sharp pain lanced through her heart. The last thing she wanted to do was feel anything for Carson Malone ever again. She’d finished that chapter of her life, had closed the book.

“Layne?” Concern burned in his eyes.

She swallowed hard and twisted her face away. “I wasn’t going to do this. I was never going to see you again. I hate you for what you did to me.”

He jerked as though she’d slapped him.

“For what I did to you?”

She pushed into a sitting position, dragging the comforter over her nudity. “You never came to Wyoming before you left.”

He blinked at her. “I got called to boot camp early. It’s not like I could tell the Navy to wait until I had my summer with you. I had no choice but to go, Layne.”

“What?” The word escaped as a hot rasp.

He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Fuck. I know my family never told you—my dad ended up injured and they never came here that summer.”

Stunned numb, she shook her head to lift the confusion.

He firmed his jaw, a glint of anger sparking in his eyes. “That doesn’t explain why you never wrote back. I wrote youevery dayof training. Then as I moved around, I wrote as much as I could.” He narrowed his eyes at her, the torment he believed she caused him clear. “Your picture was with me every day until I was taken prisoner!”

Prisoner? Dear god, this man had suffered unthinkable things that she couldn’t begin to imagine.

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