Always Conall (Bitterroot #2) (14 page)

I never wanted to leave this moment.
Ever. I only wanted to savor this extraordinary feeling, to cherish every tremble, to soak up all the emotion that swirled around us.

My lips ventured across her cheeks, up over her eyelids. At her brow, I buried my face into her hair and breathed in deeply, filling my nostrils with the sweet, fresh scent of her shampoo. I could feel her breathing start to normalize after the exertion of our passion, and her body began to relax and soften.

Shifting slightly, I rolled to the side, pulling her with me, instantly mourning the loss of our intimate connection. Her arm limply fell from my hip, and I reached down and threaded my fingers through her tightly clenched ones, soothing the stiffness with a gentle caress of my thumb.

As I looked down at her flushed features, her eyes drifted closed again, and she began to relax into an exhausted languor.

“Baby, I don’t want to let go of you yet,” I murmured languidly, “but do you need to touch base with someone about Mattie?”

Her dark lashes fluttered up once, and then again, as she sleepily shook her head. “Brynn has her. She said she’d see me when she sees me, that Mattie could spend the night.”

Then her eyes drifted closed once again, as though the weight of the world lay on them. Her breathing evened out and slowed, brushing lightly against my skin. Feeling myself following suit, I gingerly pulled free from her warmth and slipped from the bed to remove the condom. I tossed it in the bathroom garbage and rested my hands on the pedestal sink, looking long and hard at myself in the mirror.

What kind of man was I?
I’d left her so long ago, the only person left I cared about. Who cared about me. I was such a dick.

She’d be so much better off without me.

As good as she’d felt, as good as she’d tasted, I knew with every fiber of my being that she’d be better off without me.

But unable to resist the pull of her delicious little body in my bed, I returned to her, pulling the soft flannel sheets back beneath her and sliding both of us in between. I gathered her against me, tucking her close to my side.

And for the first time in five years, I slept like a rock.

Conall

“Conall…”

Somewhere in the night, I heard her whisper my name, a breath in the darkness. I felt the smooth brush of her leg brush against mine, her thigh grazing my half-erect dick, and I immediately became hard as granite. The smell of her warm skin filled my nostrils, the essence of sex still surrounded us. In a dreamlike state, my body turned towards her as her evocative moan sounded against my ear.

Long shadows drawn from the full moon stretched across the room, and the light filtered in to illuminate her pale curves. As if in a trance, my fingertips traced the perfect swell of her breast, down the tapered in skin of her stomach, and along the gentle flare of her hip. My lips covered hers and she blossomed beneath me, opening up to me, clutching me to her.

It all felt like a dream, one I had regrettably woken from so many times over the years. Rolling her beneath me, I slipped inside her, feeling her sharply drawn breath against my neck and surrendering to her warm, wet heat with a ragged groan.

Holy fuck, she felt good
. Amazing. Everything I’d remembered and more. Like nothing else. No one else, and hell if I hadn’t tried to find this with others over the years. Every chance I had. But nobody had even come close. They’d all been hollow shadows, paling to the brilliance of what I felt with Sage. There was a sense of completion when I was inside her, a wholeness that had eluded me my entire life.

I slowly rocked against her, burying my face against her neck as I savored every second.
The slide of her sweet pussy, tightly squeezing around my cock as I angled myself to rub along her clit with every stroke. Every time I withdrew, I could feel her muscles gripping me to hold me in. Every time I pushed back inside, her body welcomed me and drew me even deeper.

Her fingertips feathered up my back, curving around my shoulders and down my arms to grasp my biceps.

“Conall,” she exhaled as one of her feet slid up the back of my leg.

I circled my hips, changing the pace and the motion, watching her expression alter in the faintly lit room. Her eyebrows drew together as she began to tremble against me. She curled into me, her breathing started to catch, leaving her body in quick puffs of air that softly fanned my chest.

The stunning feel of her satiny skin, the sound of her gasps and the scent of our passion, it all culminated as her muscles contracted for a long moment. I slowed even more, pressing into her as far as I could with one last concentrated thrust, holding there and drawing out the pinnacle of her release until she pulsed around me. Her body shook and her fingernails cut deeply into the skin of my arms. Her quiet sob filled the air as I collapsed on top of her and spilled my love inside.

“
Conall…” she exhaled brokenly. “Oh, Con…”

Slowly, Sage’s
breathing evened out, her pulse slowed. Her tight hold on my arms twitched and lessened. I shifted our bodies, and, with a drowsy sigh, she curled back into me, barely conscious. As I watched her drift back to sleep, my mind began to become more alert. The dreamlike haze began to fade and, with a jolt, I realized we hadn’t used a condom.

Sweet
Jesus
, wouldn’t that about serve me right if I knocked her up again. It was actually fucking alarming. I already had one kid that didn’t know me.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I was the biggest dickhead in the whole world. I held her, wanting to protect her, but feeling a sense of panic rising inside me.

The urge to run.

But I couldn’t do that to her. Not again.

Never again.

I climbed out of bed and stood naked at the window, staring for a long while out into the dawn. The sun was just starting to peek over the mountaintops, and its light painted the smoky sky bright orange, reflecting on the scant clouds.

Sage shifted in the blankets, and I looked over to see her tugging the blue plaid flannel sheet that draped across her torso. With her legs kicked out from beneath, it grazed the bare skin of her hip and rose to barely cover her perfectly soft breasts. Her pale skin glowed warm as the sun rose, and dark hair spread out over my pillows.

Fuck, she was beautiful.
She literally made my fingertips tingle with the need to trace them along her satiny rounded cheek. Asleep, she looked so young. With her features relaxed, she reminded me of the girl she had been.

That girl reminded me of Mattie. And the ache in my chest grew as I wondered how many of Sage’s characteristics Mattie had picked up. Watching her giggle the other day, watching her run and play, it had been like stepping back in time and seeing Sage.

At once, the possessiveness towards my daughter battled with the anxious uncertainty of this situation.
What did I know about being a dad? What the fuck kind of father would I be?
She’d be better off with anyone else. Maybe if I hadn’t shown up and fucked shit up for her, Sage and Jeff would have ended up getting married.

My mind rebelled at the thought. For all I knew, he might be a great guy and might make an awesome father, but I still didn’t
like the fucker. And I sure as heck didn’t want him to be a dad to my kid. He’d had Sage. He’d had what was once mine.

But she never should have been mine. That was never the role I was supposed to play. I was never supposed to touch her. Matt would have gone apeshit if he’d known.

Fuck
.

Matt
.

For so long, I’d felt all kinds of guilt. I’d thrown myself into basic training as a way to release the anger. Running drills until I felt like I was going to drop. Putting every conscious thought I had into making myself a mindless drone, emotionless. I wanted to kill something or someone. To experience
something worse than the pain I’d felt from essentially killing my best friend. Something to replace the gutting sensation of Sage standing on that lakeshore in her muddy skirt, sobbing that she loved me.

But no matter what, it stayed buried deep in my heart. Through the years and the flashes of firefight, she called to me. Through the nerve-wracking waiting for terrorist attacks and the horrific sights and sounds of battle, I could hear her, see her,
smell her everywhere I went. I could feel her clutching at my heart, never releasing me.

I’d almost thought that, by coming back, by catching a glimpse of her, hopefully smiling and happy and living a full life, it would finally ease that torment. It would release this hold she had on me. I had hoped that I could slip in and out of town unnoticed and that bitter, empty feeling would finally ease.

But it had only gotten worse.

Because I hadn’t realized that I’d left part of me with her, too. A little blue-eyed reminder that I’d abandoned her when she needed me the most.

And right then, it hit me. How badly I wanted what was right here before me. All of it. How badly I wanted to hear Mattie’s little voice call me
daddy
. I wanted to feel Sage wrapped in my arms every night and every morning. I wanted their laughter and their love. I wanted to erase the past five years and do it all over, staying with Sage and going through it all
with her
.

As the sun finally cleared the jagged peaks, I finally realized that I simply had to be the father that little girl had made me. I had to be Mattie’s dad. There was no longer the question of whether I would be good for her.

I simply had to be.

God only knew what that meant for Sage and
I. I wanted her so badly, but I’d also fucked up epically when I left her. I sure as fuck didn’t deserve her forgiveness after the hardships she’d endured when I bailed. I’d been a complete dick when she showed up here yesterday, too. I had become incredibly frustrated by her desire to keep things platonic. And it had manifested in anger, my pride beaten down over her lack of faith. Even if it was warranted.

Her eyes fluttered open, showing a fragment of confusion as she looked around the room. Then, she looked at me. The confusion was replaced by wariness tinged with desire as her eyes roamed my bare form. The concern gained control, though, as her gaze locked with mine.

“I want her to know who I am,” I said softly. “I want to… I want to be her dad.”

There was a slight hitch to her breath.
A pause. Then she quietly replied.

“I can’t keep her away from you. You have as much right to see her as I do.” She took a deep breath and swallowed hard as she rose up to rest on her elbow. “But I want you to understand something. Mattie
really
wants a daddy. Like almost obsessively. And your track record doesn’t give me a lot of confidence that you’ll stick around.”

I looked back out the window momentarily, tasting her words.
Understanding her fears. Those same thoughts whirled around in my head constantly. They had since I saw Mattie that first day back in town.

Walking over to the bed, I sat on the edge and looked down at the only girl I’d ever loved until I’d met her daughter.
My daughter. Our daughter.

“She looks so much like you.
Like you did when you were little. When you used to follow Matt and I around, annoying the piss out of us.” I smiled tenderly as I touched her cheek. “I still see you with blonde hair, you know. The whole time I was gone, you were always right there on my mind. Everywhere I went. Every situation, from the good to the horrific. Sometimes, thinking of you was all that kept me going.”

Her fingertips trailed down my arm, tracing the lines of my tats. “Well, she was
always
what kept me going,” Sage said. She lifted her gaze to look me in the eye. “She was all I had left in the world. She’s all I have now.”

A crushing weight began to fill my chest, that dread of thinking nothing would ever be as I’d come to hope. Sage’s tremulous voice in the quiet morning echoed through my head as she continued.

“But this isn’t really about me. It’s so much more than that. It would
crush
that little girl if you become her daddy and then leave, Conall. You really have no idea how much she wants that. And as much as I know I have no right to keep you away from her… I want to so badly.”

“I’m here, Sage,” I argued. “I know I wasn’t before, but I didn’t know. I’m here now, though.”

“For how long?” she asked sadly. “How long until you run again? Until things get too raw and you leave behind those of us who care about you? Because if you’re not one hundred percent behind her, if you have the slightest doubt in your mind that you can stay, it would be better that she doesn’t even know.”

“You’re not telling me anything that I haven’t told myself,” I growled as I turned and grabbed my jeans. Pulling them on, I could feel the frustration begin to build inside me again. “Fuck, Sage, why do you think I didn’t want to come back. Why do you think I left in the first place?”

I looked back at her as I buttoned the fly of my jeans. Sage had risen to sit upright, her feet tucked underneath her, holding the blue plaid flannel to cover her nakedness. Her eyes sparked with a latent hostility that seemed to simmer below the surface.
Fucking hell, she was sexy.
As hard as I tried to keep it down, knowing this was some serious shit we were discussing and that I had to keep my head in check, but,
my God
, the sight rippled through me and set me on fire, making it hard to fasten the last few buttons.

“You left because shit got too hot to handle,” she seethed. “So how do I know you’re not going to do that again?”

“But I’m back.”

“But I don’t trust you to stay.”

“Then what was this?” I asked vehemently. “Last night? Why are you sitting there stark naked in my bed?”

“You were there, Conall. It
’s not like I did this all alone.”

“Honestly
,” I coldly stated, “I was trying to chase you away.”

“What
?” She gasped with a tortured look. “That’s why you slept with me? That was all for show?”

“I tried for the last five fucking years to forget you. But I never could. Every woman I was with became you. I hoped it would fade, but it only got stronger and stronger.”

Her breath caught painfully in her throat, and tears filled her eyes.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” she quietly asked herself in a choked voice. Her watery eyes spilled over, leaving wet trails down her cheeks. “Why the fuck do I keep falling back to you? I try to stay away, to get away from this feeling. And for a little while, every now and then, I feel strong. And then, something happens and all my strength and fight is just… gone.”

The remorse cut through me. “Fuck, Sage.” I crossed over to the bed and pulled her tightly into my arms. Her slender shoulders shook as she took a bracing breath, and I pressed my lips to her forehead. “I’m always making you cry.”

“Were there a lot?” she quietly asked after some time had passed.
After her tears had lessened. “Were you with a lot of women?”

Ashamed, I nodded, yet tried to find a way to justify it. “I just wanted to forget you,” I finally whispered.