Page 69 of Too Lethal to Love

But Beth hadn’t got stuck on cry. She hadn’t gotten stuck at all except on that stupid black widow crap. If anyone was tough enough to handle the risks of being in a relationship with him, it was Beth.

Sighing, he scrubbed the stubble on his chin. “The demons I’m talking about are the ones that told me I couldn’t get close to a woman until I was out of the military because I was afraid of leaving her behind.” He sighed into his hand and blew out his fears like an extinguisher to a five-alarm blaze. “Afraid of abandoning my family. Thanks to grief so bad, so strong, Livvie and I lost my mom before she died.” He laced his hands behind his neck and squeezed the gut-wrenching words out for good. “And then she did die, and Iblamed myself for not realizing that she was alone and scared and maybe just needed someone to be strong when she couldn’t.”

Beth touched his cheek. “That’s why you felt the need to help me, wasn’t it? Because you didn’t want me to go through it all alone.”

He nodded as he leaned into her palm. The softness of her skin absorbed the last of his worries. “I knew the risks my father took each time he deployed, and I was proud of him for it. But the only risk my mom took was loving a man who chose a lethal career. But now I know that she understood the risks too, and even though the worst scenario broke her, it didn’t break her completely. Gran set me straight about how hard she fought to build herself back up after Livvie and I left for college.” He moved her hand from his cheek and laced their fingers together as the broken parts of him mended at their touch. “Now I’m fighting for you, Beth. Fight for me.”

She placed their joined hands over her heart. “I’m so sorry. For you and your mom.”

“I don’t want your sympathy.” He squeezed her hand to accept her understanding and support though. “What I want is for you to realize you deserve happiness.” His voice rose along with his desperation. He couldn’t admit his love until she accepted that the three gravestones in the cemetery weren’t her fault. “You are not cursed.” He gently shook her shoulders to drive home his point. “Not. Cursed. Understand?”

“I’m trying, but you can’t be the next boyfriend I mourn, Kane.” She shrugged him off and backed away. “And I get what you are saying. You are less likely to die than any other soldier out there, but my heart can’t take it.” She placed her hand over the beating organ. “It never pounded like this forthe others. It won’t just break if something happens to you. It will explode and leave me in a billion jagged pieces.”

His heart sped up. “What are you saying, Beth?”

Tears welled in her eyes. “I’m saying I think I’m falling for you, but I’m scared and…”

He yanked her against him. Cupping both cheeks in his hand, he silenced her protests with a kiss. When he came up for air, two words that scared him more than any mission he’d faced but felt right burst from his lips against hers. “Marry me.”

Beth jerked her head back. Her heart stuttered as she stared at Kane. “What?” Had she heard him right? She waited another erratic heartbeat, then another, but his lips didn’t twitch into a smirk. Was he serious? “Did you just ask me to?—”

The ludicrous question disintegrated on her tongue as his lips crashed to hers. The kiss, no, the onslaught, shocked her heart into overdrive.

“You heard me right, sugarplum.”

His words hummed across her skin in a desperate yet firm confirmation as he kissed her so hard, so deep she didn’t doubt his sincerity, but she doubted her sanity because her first instinct had been to say yes.

“Marry me, Beth. You said that you can’t lose another boyfriend. Marry me and I won’t be your boyfriend. I’ll be your husband.”

“Kane.” Her breath hitched on his name. “We can’t.” The idea was absurd. Certifiably ridiculous, yet…

A vision of him in uniform, waiting for herat the end of the aisle in her favorite church by the Washington Monument flashed in her mind.

She shook her head. “No. You’re not making any sense.”

“You know what doesn’t make sense? The fact that my cock isn’t between your gorgeous lips yet.”

Her jaw fell open. Watching him go from hardened warrior to joking cowboy still awed her. But his one-eighty frommarry metosuck my cocktriggered a riot of need in the place that burned for him again.

He smirked as he caught her bottom lip between his fingers. “See what being married to me will be like? Constant one-liners.”

And a constant ache to taste.

To suck.

To indulge in every part of his gloriously flawed and magnificently rebuilt body.

She reached for the button on his black pants and yanked it open, powerless to stop herself, even if she wanted to. “And what about the marriage thing? Was your proposal a one-liner too?”

“What do you think?” He pushed her hand to his erection.

She smiled at his sharp inhale. “I think you’re insane.” But God help her, she was just as insane as him because she dropped to her knees in the middle of the wildest conversation she’d ever had.

A low growl grated from his throat. “My proposal should make perfect sense in your mind.”

The only thing that made sense was finally tasting him. Cupping the bottom of his shaft with one hand, she drew the tip into her mouth. His cock felt like his body. Satin over steel. So did his groan. Like pure, silky pleasure rasping from a rough warrior. His eyelids drooped as he wound his handthrough her hair. She sucked him in a bit deeper, swirling her tongue around his rigid length and hummed against him.

“Was that an agreement, sugarplum?”

---