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He wanted that role now. He wanted to show up, not just as a protector, but as a presence. Like Tex. Like Bondo. Menwho didn’t just fill the space of fatherhood. They earned it every damn day.
Maybe…maybe Brian would’ve wanted that too. Maybe he’d trusted Dagger to be that man. Maybe he’d always known Dagger could love them, Quinn and the boys, in a way he never had the strength to.
The thought made his chest ache.
Would Brian have approved? The question haunted him.
But a deeper one followed.Did it matter anymore?
Because Quinn deserved more than a ghost. She deserved more than the weight of a dead man’s memory. She deserved someone who would fight for her, love her, hold her steady when the world shook and let her soar when she needed it.
God help him, wanted to be that man.
Maybe it wasn’t too late.
Maybe it started right here… with her hand still on his chest, with her body warm beside him, with the doubts and choices waiting for him to overcome, to choose. All he had to do was toss out everything he’d thought he knew. But Brian’s ghost didn’t just haunt Quinn, and they had more baggage to discuss.
She huffed a breath. While he was soul-searching, she was getting turned on. He felt it in the way her hands now moved over him. When she raked her nails down his body to his aching dick, he hissed in a breath, moaning softly when her hand closed around his thickening cock and pumped.
His hips arched off the mattress. “You trying to get my attention, babe?” he growled. “Waking a sleeping giant?”
A laugh, light, teasing, unmistakably female. “Full of yourself, hmmm?”
“I’d rather be full of you,” he murmured, opening his eyes, his voice rumbling with intensity and raw emotion.
She shivered, her breath suspended as she took in his words. In response, her hand pumped him again, and his hips lifted, theshock of pleasure sent his groan into the deeper bass of his voice. She exhaled heavily, her voice barely a whisper. “I’m not one to waste opportunity, and it was right there all ready for me. Were you dreaming about me?”
“Always,” he whispered back, turning his head and capturing her gaze. His dreams were always filled with this woman. “But compared to this…dreams don’t even come close.” The humor drained from her eyes, but the simmering desire flared as she lifted herself up and full-body pressed him to the mattress. Her pelvis replaced her hand, her breasts crushed to his chest.
He didn’t see it coming.
One second, she was just looking at him, that gaze rich with something deeper than warmth, darker than longing. A storm brewing in those whiskey-colored eyes, honeyed and molten, full of things she hadn’t said and maybe never would.
The next, she was on him like a tempest, like she couldn’t bear the space between them a second longer.
Then she kissed him.
Not soft. Not tentative.
It was a claiming, hot, urgent, a collision of mouths and breath and need that sent his blood surging. Her lips parted over his with a kind of reckless surrender, but there was a demand behind it too. A challenge. A command.
Without any warning, she took him deep inside.
Feel this.
In slow, tantalizing increments, surrounding him inch by inch until he was enveloped in her tight, wet heat.
Want this.
Once he was buried to the hilt, she arched into him and moaned as she rode him with a tormenting rhythm. Desperately he locked her hips against his. She fought him.
Want me.
His control shredded beneath it as she settled deeper on him. Hauling in a ragged breath, he dragged his hands up her back, releasing his hold on her hips, and she launched an assault on his senses. She tasted like heat and sin and something sweeter than memory, and God help him, he wanted to drown in it. He deepened the kiss instinctively, angling his mouth over hers, sliding his arm across her back, anchoring her to him.
Her body melted into his, not passively. No, she pressed into him like she wanted to fuse them together, like she needed to feel him with every inch of her skin.
“Kade.” His name was a plea, as heated a caress of her mouth, her body laying siege, starting a war that he was determined to win. “I’ve always wanted you like this.Forever. Wanted to take you, touch every inch of you, fuck you.” Her fingers dragged up his chest, curling around his neck, nails grazing his jaw as her mouth moved with growing hunger. He experienced a rush of emotion so overwhelming that it left him reeling.