Seducing the Bachelor (The Bachelor Auction Returns Book 3) (22 page)

“Witch.”

She arched up and he thrust into with more power, causing her to hiss “yes,” timed with each thrust. He tried to hold himself back, not wanting it to be over, but watching himself glide in and out of Talon was one erotic ride.

“Keep your eyes open. I want to watch you go over the edge.” He grit out and Talon, her eyes hazy with desire and skin flushed, obediently looked at him.

“I love you,” she whispered, cupping his cheek.

It should have been a buzzkill, terrify him to his toes. Instead, he kissed her, captured her words, and managed to pull away just in time to watch her body convulse in orgasm seconds before he joined her.

“Talon.” He lay on top of her, bracing himself a little so she didn’t take his whole weight. “It’s not that I don’t want to try,” he said. “I’m just not the man you think I am.”

Her hands cupped his face. “You are the best man I’ve ever met.” She kissed him. “The best. You are kind and responsible and respectful and everything I…”

“I’ve killed people, Talon.”

She sat up. “I know.” Her voice was soft. “You’re a soldier.”

“A lot of people.”

She looked at him and he wasn’t sure what she saw.

“It was your job, Colt. You were following orders.”

“I had a choice.” He tried to put some space between them but she sat up further, pressing her bare chest against his back, and he didn’t have the willpower to pull away. She felt so perfect, made him feel whole in a way he hadn’t before.

“I joined the army to get away from my…uncle,” he said the word even though what he’d learned from the attorney and the will put everything he’d believed in doubt. “And I scored off the charts on shooting. I shot a lot at targets as a kid. It was the one thing I could do with my uncle that didn’t cause problems, but I couldn’t bring myself to kill an animal like that until…”

She wrapped her arms around him more tightly. Kissed her way up the trunk of the juniper tree on his back.

“I liked the challenge, Talon. I loved finally being good at something. Fitting in. Being needed.”

She smiled. “It was a job, Colt. Not who you are.”

“Do you know what they call me? I got a nickname. Other rangers think it’s cool. They want to be like me. Like I’m some sort of legend.”

He forced himself to turn and face her. Her sweet smile would have broken his heart if he had one.

“I think a lot of men get nicknames. You probably had one for football. Still, isn’t who you are in here.” She touched his chest and laced his fingers in hers and kissed his hand.

“I want you to know.”

She didn’t let go of his hand. “Okay, tell me.”

And then he found he couldn’t say the word out loud in this bed that had become almost a sacred space for him. A place where he had loved a woman as much as he had ever imagined possible and beyond. And still she hadn’t rejected him. She hadn’t judged him once.

He leaned forward and whispered the word in her ear.

“That sounds like a stupid video game avatar,” she said in disgust. “They should show more respect. It’s not a game, what you do.”

And then she climbed up on his lap and wrapped herself around him, laid her head on his shoulder, and, after a beat of surprise, he held her back.

“Are you afraid of me now?” He asked after a long time.

“You’re still you. You’re not some juvenile testosterone-fueled teenage videogame fantasy, stalking homicidal maniac, shooting people indiscriminately. Slayer, my ass.”

Colt pulled back and stared at her in disbelief. It was the first time he had heard her even remotely swear, but her eyes were sparkling with indignation.

“I’m glad you told me,” she said, curling back down on the bed and tugging him to join her. He lay on his back and she tucked her leg over him. “But I think it’s a stupid name. You have an important job. You take it seriously like you take everything. You respect your job, and what you need to do, and the other soldiers should respect you and your skills and the unfortunate fact that there are lives you have to take to keep others safe.”

“It’s not a lack of respect,” he said, still reeling at her response. He thought she’d be repulsed. Frightened. Not want him around Parker.

She saved lives. She wanted to be a vet and have an animal sanctuary where both animals and people who volunteered could heal. And he had taken many lives. And most likely would again.

“You have an early flight,” she said, nestling into him more deeply, her head on his chest now. He played with her hair. “You should get some sleep.”

He smiled as she hit a remote that took the dimmer on the light all the way down so the room was dark, the moonlight wouldn’t come until later, as dawn approached. “Not that easy to sleep with a naked woman in my arms.”

“You don’t have to sleep.” She invited. “I just said you should.”

He sighed, feeling more content that he had in a long time. He hadn’t wanted to tell her at first, and then he’d thought there’d be no reason, but he’d kept so much back from everyone for so long, that he’d wanted to share this piece of himself with her. Maybe she was right. It was just a piece of him. Not the whole of him.

“Was it hard to do?” she asked in the darkness.

“There’s a lot of learn,” he said, thinking of the weapons, and working with his spotter, and adjusting for wind and other factors and the knife-edge of waiting. The focus had come naturally. The drive for absolute precision, for perfection had been instilled in him at the ranch the hard way. The only thing good to come out of his childhood.

“Colt, you told me you didn’t even hunt as a child, which is such a normal thing for a Montana kid. And I’ve see you take spiders outside.”

“I thought of them as targets,” he said after a long time into the silence, not even sure if she were still awake. “Not people. I never think of them as that. And that’s why I can’t try to contact you or think about you. I have to get in my zone to operate like that. To do the job. To function like that. I have to be totally separate from myself. And I won’t be able to function properly if a piece of me is still here with you and Parker.”

He could feel the pulse in her neck kick up, and she swallowed hard, and that killed him. Just killed him. Her eyes searched his in the darkened room for the longest time. He wanted to look away, but if she were brave enough to try to look into whatever soul he might have left, he should have the stones to let her. But then she surprised him, by smoothing her hand over his heart in a rhythmic circle. Then she placed his hand over her heart.

“You will always be here, Colt. I will keep you safe, and I’m glad you know how to do your job and keep yourself safe. Keep thinking that way, and if you don’t come back to me, back to us, back to Marietta, I want you to find that sense of home and of belonging where ever you decide to go, Colt. You deserve a lot of happy.”

He stared at the play of the shadows on the ceiling and walls for a long time while he listened to Talon breathe deeply beside him.

*

“Talon,” he whispered.

Talon woke up disoriented. She opened her eyes and saw Colt dressed and standing beside the bed. “Oh, is it morning?” she asked, confused. She sat up. Registered his two bags by the door, the fact that he’d showered. She caught his hand.

“I’m sorry to wake you.” He sat on the edge of the bed. “I wasn’t going to, but I want you to hold on to something for me.”

“Of course.” She tried to pull her scattered wits together. He was leaving. Leaving. And she wanted to remember every moment and every detail and every word. “Anything.”

He had something in his hand that glimmered in the faint moonlight peeking through the window.

“This is the one thing I have from my past,” he said. “The only thing I kept that’s part of me.”

She reached for a light, but he stilled her hand.

“I was wondering if you would hold on to it for me. Keep it safe.”

“Of course.”

She looked down at it but all she could see was a square or rectangle of worked and etched silver and then some sort of stone in the middle.

“Will you wear it?”

She nodded, overcome. She’d never had a gift from a boyfriend before, and it was something from his past that he wanted her to keep safe, to wear. That had to mean something, didn’t it?

Please let it be symbolic
.

He put the chain and pendant around her neck and then threaded the complicated clasp together. She crossed her fingers under the sheet and mentally chanted “please, please, please, come home safe to me.”

The silver was warm against her skin as if he’d palmed it for a while before putting in on her neck. His thumb traced her cheekbone.

“Go back to sleep, Talon. You can catch another hour before your shift. I fed Dude so he’s good for a while.”

But she got up. “I’ll walk you to the door,” she said. “I can make you breakfast.”

“I’ll get something at the airport. Besides,” he said as she followed him into the kitchen. “Nick just drove up and I don’t need him to see you naked. I’d have to kill him.”

She rolled her eyes. “Not funny.”

He laughed and then ducked back into the bedroom and came out with the khaki t-shirt. He looked at her then the t-shirt. “It definitely looks better on you.”

He slipped in over her head, and she hugged the fabric to her, hoping it would retain his scent forever.

“Bye, Talon.” His lips briefly touched her cheek and then he was gone.

T
alon tried not
to tick off the days on the calendar, or the weeks or months, or notice it was still more than a month away from Colt finishing his six months active duty requirement. One more month before she could wait and hope. Her hand, like it so often did, wrapped around the pendant until the fused glass ball, swirling with different blues, streaks of green, and a hint of metallic glint seemed to warm. She read the inscription daily, “you are my world” and even though Colt hadn’t had it made for her, he’d given it to her for safe keeping. Something from his childhood, which had to mean something.

Had to, even though most of the experiences from a childhood had been disappointments and change and what had felt like abandonment, this time, this man could be different. He wasn’t at fault for what had happened before. And she was an adult now. In charge of her life as much as a person could be. She couldn’t lump him in with her past pain, although some days it was easier to talk herself off that ledge than others.

Parker made it easier. He was busy even though school was out, and he was fired up about the rodeo that was coming to town this week. Almost all the downtown businesses had decorated their storefronts, and Talon had heard the chamber was hosting a contest for the best themed window display. Of course, the Main Street diner had participated, and Talon had enjoyed the whole process of brainstorming ideas and then working on painting the wood cutout cowboys on bucking horses, which one of the brothers of the diner’s chef had made in his home woodworking shop.

She’d always loved art classes and had taken an embarrassingly long time with one of the cowboys making him look as much like Colt as possible, which had brought her a lot of pride and pleasure and more than a little embarrassment and sympathy when Tanner, Meghan, and Leanne had noticed the resemblance. She knew she should start the process of emotionally moving on sooner than later, but there was always time to grieve for lost dreams. Hope was something to hold on to.

She heard one of the line chefs call one of her table numbers and she jumped guiltily. Usually, she was too busy during her work to get lost in her thoughts. She served the breakfasts and then returned with the freshly brewed coffee to choruses of thank-yous. She cleaned off another table, tucked the tip in her apron pocket and looked up as the bell on the door rang. An arrestingly beautiful woman hesitated for a moment, scanning the diner and then she moved forward.

“Hi, welcome. Table for one? Do you want to sit at the counter or a table?” Talon asked, cheerfully grabbing a menu. Hard to believe this women went anywhere alone. She was so beautiful in an ethereal and exotic way if there could be such a combination. Talon chided herself for staring.

“Wow, that’s a beautiful necklace,” Talon said, noting the turquoise and silver necklace that nestled on her bare skin between her exposed cleavage. “And belt. Are you an artist?”

“An attorney,” she said, sitting down at the table.

“There’s an art to arguing.”

The woman smiled, just a quick twitch of her lips, and Talon caught her breath. She really had it bad if she started picking people’s features apart and noticing little things that reminded her of Colt.

“Sorry,” Talon started. “Coffee?”

“Yes, please, and lots.”

Talon laughed and returned with a large mug and an assortment of sugars, natural sweeteners like agave, since this woman didn’t look like she was from around here. Bailey Zabrinsky dressed a little fancy like this and definitely wore a lot of jewelry to advertise her jewelry-making business, but this woman was wearing a silky, black button-up shirt that was not buttoned up very far, which showed off her lightly tanned torso far below where a hint of a lacy bra would break the deep plunge of the V-neck and exotic necklace that also had, were those claws, like from a real animal?