Page 35

SINCLAIR

Denver’s side of the bed is empty when I wake up. I smile when Monty crawls up from the end of it, his tail wagging.

“Hey, Boy,” I coo. “When did you come and sleep in here?”

It must have been the early hours of the morning because Denver and I didn’t sleep until then.

Now I understand why he sounded smug and chuckled when I asked him if he could come again so close together last night.

Because after that first, gentle time, he made love to me again.

Then again. Then again. Each time getting a little faster and rougher than the last.

This morning, I’m aching. But it’s a good ache. A great ache.

“Do you know where the big grump is?” I ask Monty as I rub behind his ear.

Monty wags his tail at the sound of a phone ringing from outside the room.

“Stay here and be cozy.” I kiss him on the head and tuck him beneath the covers where he lets out a sigh and watches me as he rests his head on Denver’s pillow.

I climb out of bed, but all of my clothes are in my room. I literally have nothing to put on, not even a pair of panties. I bite back a smile. Those are still in Denver’s pocket.

His white shirt is hanging on the back of a chair, so I saunter over and pick it up, inhaling the scent of him from the collar.

How can a man smell so good? It’s musky and hot and earthy all at once.

So deliciously sexy. I can’t believe I’ve known him for six years and never gotten close enough to discover how incredible he smells.

I slide my arms into the cool cotton and do a couple of buttons up before wandering from his bedroom in search of him.

A deep rumble of voices is coming from behind a closed door further up the hallway.

His office. I haven’t been inside since we arrived at the cabin, but I’ve peeked through the open doorway once or twice, trying to imagine him sitting in there at the giant rustic wooden desk, the giant windows showcasing the deep forest behind him.

I open the door and slip inside the room quietly.

Denver’s eyes lift beneath his dark, lowered brows, capturing mine immediately.

He’s sitting at the desk in a black T-shirt, his biceps straining against the fabric as he rests forward on his elbows, his cell phone lit up with a connected call in front of him.

“They’ve done a good job,” my brother says.

“They have,” Denver replies, his eyes roaming over me in his shirt, dropping to my legs where the fabric ends mid-thigh.

“But they haven’t been able to find out how he got it?”

“He’s refusing to say anything,” Denver says.

“I’ll inspect it myself before we do anything else.”

“Understood,” Denver says to Sullivan, his attention fixed on me as I wander around the room, running my finger along a bookshelf filled with books on military subjects.

There’s a picture of a group of men all wearing green combat gear, rifles slung over their shoulders. I pick it up and study it until I find a familiar pair of green eyes flecked with gold.

“Sinclair giving you a hard time?”

I turn around at my brother’s question and raise my eyebrows at Denver. He clears his throat, his eyes darkening as I put the photo down and slink over to him.

“She’s fine. Her self-defense skills are coming along,” he says, watching me as I spin his desk chair so there’s space on the floor in front of him for me to drop to my knees.

“Bet she loves having free rein to come at you. You’ve always had a way of getting under her skin.” Sullivan chuckles.

Denver jerks his head, glaring at me as I palm his hardening dick through his sweatpants.

I nod slowly, loving the way his jaw clenches like he’s pissed as I pull the waistband down and take his dick out. It’s glistening on the tip, and I moan quietly as I lick the drops off, enjoying the flavor on the tip of my tongue.

Denver’s hand scrunches into my hair, tilting my head back. His eyes are on fire as they meet mine.

“Stop,” he mouths.

“Make me,” I mouth back.

He lets out a low curse as I wrap my lips around him and suck the head of his dick, letting the tip of my tongue trail along the slit, licking up the drops of arousal that are flowing from it.

“You still there?” Sullivan asks.

Denver’s grip on my hair tightens but all it does is make me suck him with more determination.

“Yeah. Just bad reception here sometimes.”

“All right. I’ve got to go anyway. Tell that sister of mine to take it easy on you.”

“I told you, she’s good.”

Sullivan snorts. “You can admit it, I bet she’s busting your balls.”

Denver’s lips press together as I suck him off faster, my hand tugging on his balls at the same time.

“I mean it. She’s… good,” Denver grits again, the muscles in his neck tensing as he looks at me with a heated glare.

“See you when you get back to the city,” my brother says. Then he’s gone.

“What are you doing?” Denver growls the moment the call disconnects.

“What I want to,” I reply simply, before continuing.

His grip in my hair is almost painful as he starts thrusting his hips, fucking my mouth, like he’s punishing me.

“You can’t walk in here looking like that in my shirt and start blowing me when I’m on the phone with your brother. What were you thinking?” he hisses.

I can’t reply because my throat is full of him, so I gaze up at him instead, batting my eyelashes as his cock thickens inside my mouth.

“You think you can look at me like that, Princess? And I won’t be angry with you?”

I bat my lashes some more.

“Fuck,” he groans, holding my eyes. “Fuck,” he grunts again, his hips speeding up and his fist clenching in my hair. “Fuuuuckkk….”

Hot cum fills my mouth as his cock explodes over my tongue. I whimper and do my best to swallow it, but there’s so much, and it keeps coming. Some spills out of the side of my mouth, running down my chin.

“Jesus, Sinclair,” Denver growls, watching as I swallow another mouthful and more escapes the corners of my mouth.

I moan, sucking harder, loving the way his lower abs shudder as the final drops fire over my tongue. I lick them up, gulping them down with a happy sigh as I slide his cock from my mouth.

For a moment, we just look at each other. Then Denver’s eyes narrow as he reaches forward and uses his thumb to swipe up his cum from my chin.

“These lips,” he says, pushing his thumb up to them and smearing his cum over them. “I shouldn’t know how they feel sucking me off, Sinclair. I shouldn’t know what they taste like.”

He reaches down and hauls me up into his arms, pulling me into his lap.

“I shouldn’t fucking know,” he repeats before kissing me deeply, sliding his tongue over mine and tasting himself inside my mouth.

He pulls back with a throaty groan and sucks and kisses his way up my neck and over my chin, collecting the evidence of himself on his tongue before pressing it back past my lips in another searing kiss.

“But you do,” I muse as I kiss him back. “And you’re going to have to get used to it, because I like the way you taste when you come.”

He grunts, deepening our kiss as I use his own words back at him. We kiss until I break free.

“I thought you were in the SEALs,” I say, glancing at the photograph I was looking at earlier. It’s the only one in the room.

Denver shakes his head as he presses soft kisses to my neck, breathing me in at the same time.

“I wasn’t.”

“How did I not know that?” I ask, still studying the photos. I don’t know much about the military. But I know enough to see that the green he’s wearing with the other men in the photographs isn’t a SEAL uniform.

“You never asked,” he says against my neck, still kissing me.

Guilt swirls in my gut. This is a huge part of his life, long before he came to work for my family.

And I know nothing about it. I always knew he’d done something in the military, but I never bothered to ask because I told myself I didn’t care.

I didn’t see the point in getting to know the man who barely looked at or spoke to me unless his job required it.

I was too caught up in my own life, too focused on launching my modeling career.

But look where that’s gotten me. I didn’t even see my mother’s affair coming because I was so damn self-absorbed. Then I lost her and my brother before I could ask her why she did it. Ask her if she loved Neil more than she loved my father. If she was going to leave us all for him.

I push Denver back until he meets my eyes. “I’m asking now. Tell me. Please ,” I add when his lips press together.

“Not much to tell.”

A vein in his temple is pulsing and I swear if I hooked him up to a lie detector now, the needle on it would be going haywire.

I look back into his eyes, a spark of hope glimmering in my chest as he lets out a long sigh and starts stroking my thigh absentmindedly with one hand.

“I was part of Delta Force. It’s a special missions unit of the armed forces.”

“Oh,” I breathe. “Sounds serious.”

“It was.”

“Do you miss it?”

His jaw tightens but he doesn’t answer. Instead, his gaze tracks to the photo I’d been studying.

“Do you still see any of them?”

“The ones who are still alive, sometimes, yeah.”

“Denver,” I whisper.

His eyes come back to meet mine. “Don’t be upset for me, Sinclair. We all knew the risks doing a job like that.”

“This is why you worry so much,” I say, finally beginning to understand. “Why you sleep with your gun under your pillow and always sit facing the doorway.”

“Threats are everywhere. That’s why I wanted to train you. So you’re prepared if you need to be. But at the same time I don’t want you overthinking it. That’s my job.”

“That doesn’t mean you’re immune to death, though. I mean…” I swallow the lump in my throat that appears whenever I think of my mom and brother. “I’m so sorry.”

He sighs, tracing figures of eight over my thigh with his thumb. “No one is immune. But when you’ve held your friend’s bodies together as they’ve died in your arms, you have to find a way to keep going.”

I lift his free hand in both of mine. It’s huge in comparison. But despite the power in his hands, I know how gentle they are. I know what it’s like to be steadied by them, to be held by them when I’ve thought I was about to fall apart.

Like when he caught me and asked if I was okay at their funeral.

And I know what it’s like to be stroked by them, to have their fingertips pressing into the skin on my hips and thighs as he’s driven himself inside me and made me come for him. Then had them cupping my face as he kisses me so tenderly like I’m his one gift he’s allowed himself to have.

I press a kiss to the center of his palm and then rest my cheek against it.

“You can always talk to me if you want to. I don’t know what that must have been like for you. But I do know grief.”

His eyes soften. “I wish you didn’t.”

I give him a small smile. “I wish you didn’t either.”

We stare at one another as he strokes my cheek.

“Why didn’t you use your word yesterday?” he asks softly.

“Because I stopped not wanting to know what it would be like to feel your hands on my body. And your mouth on mine. I don’t know when exactly. Only that I did. And I wouldn’t change a thing.”

He inhales slowly, studying me. His eyes pinch like he’s thinking about something he would rather ignore.

“I can’t say no to you. You know that, don’t you? I’d do anything you asked of me.”

My heart lifts, then immediately drops at the heaviness in his voice. He says it like it’s a bad thing. Like it’s the worst thing.

Like he wished it wasn’t true.

“Anything? Like make me eggs for breakfast?” I ask, eager to do something to dispel the seriousness from his expression.

The weight in his shoulders eases and his lips curl up a fraction. I run the tip of my finger over them. “I like your nearly smiles now that I’m starting to see them.”

“Do you?” he rumbles, his voice deep and delicious again.

“Yep.”

“Well, they’re yours.”

“Mine,” I muse. “I like the sound of that, Brute.”

He slides a hand around my neck and pulls me to him, kissing me again. I sink into it, warm and protected in his arms. Butterflies dance in my stomach as his grip on my thigh tightens and his dick starts hardening in the gap between our bodies again.

This can’t just be a close proximity thing from being stuck here in the middle of this forest together, can it? Not when it feels like so much more.

I sigh into his mouth as he kisses me, my name a soft groan on his lips.

I want to believe it’s more. Because this is Denver, and the thought of him not looking at me the way he does, and touching and kissing me like this now that I know how it feels…

it’s not something I can imagine, or even want to imagine.

But despite how much has happened since we arrived here, I have no idea what will happen once we return to the city.