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He dropped his head back, staring at the ceiling and fighting the dark urges inside of him.

Forest would kill him if he knew the things Colton was thinking about his baby sister. Her father and probably a handful of ranch hands who’d become her protectors over the years, too.

Question was why Meadow required a protector at all. Most women were able to handle themselves by her age. But she was more vulnerable. Maybe her big blue eyes made her a target for her innocence.

Goddamn if Colton would be the next asshole to try to take advantage of her sweet sensuality.

He couldn’t lay a hand on her ever again. He wouldn’t. This was Forest’s little sister—he was supposed to be watching out for her, protecting her.

Not being the thing she needed protection from.

When she told him she was a virgin, that alone tested his control in the worst way. He wanted to tear her apart and help her discover the sounds he could pull from her sexy, inexperienced body.

He wanted to train her in the ways he liked it. Rough and raw.

And ruin her for any other man.

Again, he pivoted to face the spray. Hot water struck him in the face, but it did nothing to wash away this pounding desire he felt for her.

Forest had to know what a woman like Meadow would do to him. After years of fighting together, hunting terrorists through godforsaken conditions, Forest knew Colton better than anybody in the world.

And guys talked about things like women. Yes, he and Forest had touched on the darker acts that got Colton off. Forest had had his kinks too, though they weren’t as hardcore.

Colton had spent his entire life wanting that control, both in the bedroom and on the battlefield. It got him in a lot of trouble in his youth. The military tried to knock it out of him but failed.

No one—and he meant no one—could rein him in in the bedroom. His private life stayed private.

If he wanted to make a student of Meadow?

Fuck, he couldn’t go there.

Yet Forest had sent him here to help his father keep the ranch afloat. While leaning up against a building they were staking out, he and Forest talked for hours into the night.

Colton told him about his own family, how they hadn’t been able to control him the way they wanted and so they sent him away at an early age. That only succeeded in placing so much distance between them that they felt like strangers. These days, he didn’t speak to them at all.

Forest was close to his father and sisters. Ever since his mother’s death following a car accident on a slick mountain road, he realized the importance of family.

That led to more stories spilling out of his friend, about how hardened their father had become since losing his wife. All that strictness came down on Meadow, who was just a floundering teenager at the time.

Meadow was immature, stunted because of the tragedy. Forest confessed he worried about being killed in action and furthering her pain. At that moment, he’d turned to Colton and made him promise that if he died, he’d go to the ranch and watch over not only the legacy built by generations of Graceys, but his sister too.

Meadow.

She wasn’t immature anymore, at least not in the physical sense. Her banging body was all woman. Curves in all the right places and legs for miles.

He drowned in images of his palm on her ass. His fingers stretching over the ripe curve.

Fuck! He gripped his dick to stave off the desire coursing through him, but it did nothing. He gave it a jerk in his fist, fast and rough.

Then he released it and planted both hands on the wall, head bent.

Forest would never approve of him toying with Meadow. Hell, he’d told her to wait to give herself to somebody who loved her. That man was not Colton. He wasn’t even capable of love.

A hard pounding noise blasted through the bathroom.

He whirled toward the noise, mind already searching out the location of his weapons. He’d traveled here with a concealed carry and a knife. Both were stashed underneath his bunk but within reach if he needed them.

More pounding rattled the door, followed by a holler. “You’re using up all the hot water, asshole!”