Page 33 of Mine to Protect

“Okay, see this guy? This is the husband of the first woman who went missing.” Fingertips on the screen, I spread them wide to zoom in. “He’s a head taller than all the people around him, and look at the cuffs of his T–shirt. If he breathed too deep, they’d rip apart.” I swiped to the next. “And this guy. I mean, the low-dip tank top is a dead giveaway, plus his anaconda arms.”

“Anaconda arms,” Cas chuckled. “Is that even a thing?”

“Yes,” I responded defensively. “Well, it used to be. Haven’t been around a lot of girls recently to be in the know for what’s said nowadays.”

Before I could swipe to the next example, a hot hand wrapped around my wrist. The iPad slipped from my grasp and fell to his hard stomach. “Tell me one thing about you. One thing so I’ll stop feeling so damn stupid obsessing over a woman I don’t even know.”

Obsessing? That word should’ve caused fear, but instead, a flood of relief washed through my veins.

This wasn’t just a one-way street. He felt it too.

The thumb circling the underside of my wrist created a reverberating shock through my veins with each pass.

“I’m not that interesting,” I whispered as I licked my lips.

“One thing. I’m not asking for much here, Lady. And make it something terrible so I’ll be able to stay away, like I should.”

Lady. My middle name. Keeping my focus on his still-brushing thumb, I smiled as I spoke. “My name. I’m named after my great-great aunt. Most people knew her as Lady Bird Johnson, which is why my nickname has always been Birdie. No one ever uses my middle name. Well, except you. And bonus answer, I kind of like it.”

“Me too. Suits you.”

Cas’s hand inched up my arm until his palm pressed against my cheek.

Turning my face to his, I kept my gaze on his chest. “I don’t know what’s going on. It’s… I haven’t—”

“This is me hanging on by a fucking thread. Every second you’re in the room, it’s torture to stay away. I want you in ways I haven’t wanted in a long damn time. In ways I shouldn’t want you. Tell me to stay away, Lady. Make me stay away.”

He pulled me closer, brushing his nose against the sensitive skin of my lower neck and inhaling deeply. Every thought, every nerve and sensation narrowed on the places he touched. Every breath, every brush of his skin against mine sent a wave of lust and heat to my core, increasing my already rapid breaths.

“Make me pull away,” he whispered so softly that it almost got lost in the sounds of my heavy breathing.

Too long ago. Way too long ago was the last time a man made me feel this way—needed and desired and okay with allowing it. And not just allowing it, butrequiringit.

Make him pull away? Heck no. I wanted this.

Slick lips tentatively pressed against my pulsing vein, urging a trembled moan to pass my lips. His hand tightened around the back of my neck, making it arch and giving him more area to explore.

“Fuck, you taste good.” He dragged the tip of his tongue up the length of my neck before wrapping warm lips around my earlobe. “What are you doing to me?” he whispered into my ear. “I should stay away from you, for your own good, but I can’t. I want to taste every inch of you, hear you when you feel safe enough to let go, feel you giving me the control to make it the fucking best you’ve ever had.”

Words stuck in my throat, and all energy went to my pounding heart, on the verge of a heart attack. Yes, to everything he said. Yes, and tack on a please to the end. It’d been so long. Too damn long.

Now, with him, it was time to end the ten-year dry spell.

11

Cas

I couldn’t stop.

I needed to pull back. To stop tasting her delicious skin. Stop fantasizing about the way she tasted elsewhere. Stop my roaming hands.

But I couldn’t.

Call me selfish. Call me disturbed and an asshole, but I wouldn’t stop. She was too much, yet at the same time I couldn’t get enough. The sense of belonging enveloped me each time our skin touched, a type of belonging I’d never known, even in the marines.

This was home. She was home.

We were meant to be together. Somehow in this crazy world, we led different paths to be here—two royally fucked-up paths—but we made it to each other.

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