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“Then say it.” Shark shrugged. “You’ve been walking around with all this shit in your gut for how long? Say it. Make hersee it. You’ve never been the silent type.”
Dagger let out a slow breath. The fire inside him was burning hotter now, not wild, but steady. Focused.Determined.
“No more waiting,” he said quietly. “No more hiding behind guilt or ghosts. I’ve loved her from the goddamn minute I saw her. I’m done pretending that’s not the truth.”
Tex finally spoke from the doorway, arms crossed. “Then go give her something real to hold onto.”
Dagger nodded once, jaw set. He didn’t hesitate. The time for that shit was over. SEALs assaulted, that’s what they did. It was in their DNA. He stalked from the gear room, down the hall, his focus narrowed, his heart pounded with more adrenaline, more determination than he'd ever experienced in his life. He used the key card she had given him right before he shed his gear. The meaning was clear. My space is your space. I want you here. She wanted him close, in her bed, in the goddamn wet, hot ecstasy between her legs, so deep, so hard she would never forget it was his flesh and blood body, his aching dick, his heart that she had. Brian didn’t have her anymore.
He entered her room, looking around for her, spoiling for a fight that was either going to open her up or close her down. Either way, she would think about what he had to say. The words like the tip of the spear inside him, and fuck he needed her topushback.
He strode to the bathroom, the shower running. The door was ajar, and he pushed it open then got coldcocked by Quinn. Her eyes were closed, her back arched. While he watched, her hands covered her firm breasts, sliding over hard nipples, her voice soaking into the steam rising from the water, his name nothing but mist.“Kade.”
He shuddered with the sound of his name, the way she whispered it like it was the very air she breathed, and the rest of him he’d been holding back out of fear, unraveled. Oh, fucking hell. His body went still.She loves me.Against all the freaking odds.
Steam curled like ghosted breath in the dim light, whispering across the glass door, veiling his reflection until even his own eyes became strangers. Something inside him went quiet.
Not the silence of control, the kind he’d mastered his whole life. This was different.
Stillness. Not restraint. Peace. Not force.
The kind of silence that didn’t need to overpower a room to be felt.
Water streamed over her, cascading against the tile like rainfall on jungle leaves. Not thunderous. Not violent. Just... persistent. Steady.
He realized, he’d always seen himself as the weapon. The blade. The strike. But maybe he’d been wrong all along.
Maybe he wasn’t the knife.
Maybe he was the water.
The element that carved canyons, shaped stone, broke down even the hardest edges, not by force, but by presence. By staying. By softening. By never leaving.
He watched her ignite in front of him, and his dick went rock hard.
He’d experienced so many levels of lust in his life. Lust for control. As a boy he’d lost that when his father left, when he died, when his stepfather was absent. That tough-fisted feeling in him gave him dominion over his environment, emotions, and relationships, armored over any vulnerabilities that would hurt him. It was why he excelled at his job, finding order in chaotic environments. His lust for justice fueled his interest in obtaining that elusive trident, and he would always stand against perceived wrongs. He lusted for so long to make an emotional impact on Quinn. He wanted her truth…their truth, and it wasn’t until he got close to her that he’d felt alive. He’d fought against his need for her, thinking his autonomy would be threatened, and again he’d been wrong.
She opened her eyes and saw him. Her lips parted, and she flowed toward him like a living flame. Her eyes were luminous, burning whiskey fire. Without speaking, she reached for the hem of his shirt, and in his newfound revelation he remained still. She stripped the garment from him, her hands all over him, over his chest, his biceps, his abs, then her hands were at thewaistband of his pants, and as she unzipped them, he toed out of his boots and socks. She cupped him, and he groaned, rode her clenched hand hard and tight over his pulsing dick, then she drew him toward the shower.
Inside, caught up in that stillness that seemed like a part of him, he turned his hand upward, watching a single drop fall into his palm, gentle, unassuming, and yet powerful enough to erode time itself.
Was that what Quinn had seen in him? Not shallows, but the depth beneath it? The current beneath his calm?
She surged against him, an eternal flame. She didn’t burn him. She baptized him. He let it happen. Not with resistance. With reverence.
God, he’d spent so long trying to stay hard enough to survive her.
But what if the answer wasn’t hardness at all?
What if it was surrender?
What if the only way to hold her fire was to let himself be reshaped, not by dominance, but by devotion?
A slow breath left him.
Not a sigh. A release.
For the first time in years, he didn’t feel like he was drowning. He felt like water, fluid, grounded, powerful not in resistance, but in letting go…the tide always returned. In her fire, he found his flow.