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The sensations rolling through me were just the tip of the iceberg. Nathan had just begun.

Very carefully he draped my legs over his shoulders so my knees bent and my calves fell down his back. He pressed a trail of kisses up the inside of my thigh and then he pulled one of my folds into his mouth and began to suck.

I jerked up off the table, the sparks of heat so intense that I thought I might burst into flames. He took his time with each and every part of me. There was no place neglected. By the time he made it to my center, I was shaking with need. I couldn’t control it. It’s like my body didn’t know how to be still; there was just too much passion running rampant beneath my skin.

“Please, Nathan,” I said, wanting to reach out for him but needing my elbows for support.

His tongue delved into my opening and I cried out, completely not expecting that he would use his tongue that way. It was so intimate that it was partially overwhelming. In and out his tongue moved, creating the same kind of action his hips would make if he were between my legs. He didn’t delve too deeply inside me, but it was just enough.

His lips pulled at my clitoris and rolled around, massaging it.

I gasped and arched upward.

In one final act of freaking epic proportions, Nathan gripped my hips and towed me even farther forward. My backside was no longer touching the coffee table. He was completely supporting my weight and his face was totally immersed… well… you know where.

My entire world splintered apart. I shattered like a too-hot light bulb. Pieces of me flew everywhere, scattering around us. I couldn’t think; all I could do was let the feeling of the orgasm ripple through my depths as my stomach muscles clenched over and over again.

He didn’t stop licking, but his tongue gentled, bringing me back to Earth in the best way possible.

I collapsed against the hardwood surface of the table. Sweat actually beaded on my forehead and my legs still trembled.

Oh. My. God.

I should’ve probably been embarrassed. Yeah. No. I wasn’t going to be embarrassed about that. It was mind blowing.

“I’m never going to look at this coffee table the same way again,” I said as Nathan pulled back just slightly. He slid me a little farther onto the table but still supported my legs with his shoulders.

“You’ve got to be the hottest woman I have ever met.”

I pushed up onto one elbow and shoved at the hair falling into my eyes. “You’re not so bad yourself.”

He looked smug. His lips were slightly swollen and his cheeks were flushed. I glanced down at the tent he was sporting in his pants.

“Looks like you could use some attention,” I purred.

He grabbed my panties off the floor and slid them around my ankles. “It’s not about me right now.”

“Then what’s it about?”

“You,” he whispered, gliding the silk back up my legs. “Only you.”

I sat up, swaying a little with the movement. I felt drunk. I felt woozy. I was completely and totally relaxed.

He smirked. “Besides. You’ve had all you can handle of me right now.”

“You don’t think I can handle you?” I said, stubbornness crawling into my tone.

Nathan scooted forward on both his knees, wrapping an arm around my waist and using his free hand to tuck the hair behind my ear. “I know you can. I’m actually a little worried I won’t be able to handle you.”

Something inside me softened. I laid a hand on his cheek. “I’m not gonna hurt you, Nathan Reed.”

He smiled a little sadly. The longing in his eyes pulled at my heart.

“I know you wouldn’t. Not intentionally. But not all hurt can be prevented.”

What did he mean by that?

28 Nathan

Life is fragile. A man knows this from the time he’s just a boy, but for me, it didn’t really sink in until I watched men die around me.

Before I went to Afghanistan, I was young. There was a freedom I always felt, like life was limitless and so was time. I didn’t really think about how we could be here one moment and gone the next.

And then I went to war.

I watched men—good men—die. I watched the fear in their eyes as hostile people shot and attacked us. I heard the yelling, the screaming. Desperation and gunfire laced the air and sounds of the explosion still haunted my every waking hour.

When I returned home, I wasn’t the young man who left. I felt old. I felt hardened, and I glanced at men who I used to be like and felt angry they could be so innocent. I wanted to rage at them; I wanted to tell them they had no idea the time they wasted.

I wanted to tell them that everyone has an expiration date and they needed to start living like it.

But I didn’t.

I couldn’t give out advice I wasn’t living. Lead by example. It was something I tried to lay as the foundation of my career in the Marine Corps. To me, that meant being a Marine, a man that my peers could look up to. It meant showing others how to live with actions.

But my actions went against everything I learned in Afghanistan.

Instead of living life to the fullest and making the most of every minute, I sort of withdrew. I shied away from things I really enjoyed, from the people I really loved, because living life to the fullest felt too hard.

Living life to the fullest was dangerous.

It was easier to avoid commitment, avoid attachments, and be solitary because part of me thought it would hurt less. Some of those men were like brothers to me. Their lives ended in the blink of an eye.

I went and stood at their funerals and watched their loved ones cry. I watched Prior’s wife cry over his gravesite while she cradled the baby daughter he never got to meet.

How was that fair?

How was it fair that he died and I got to live?

What made my life more valuable than his?

And so I retreated. I spent my days working out and filling my time.

I didn’t want to live that way anymore.

Honor was the light that flooded my darkness. She was the glasses to my partially blind eyes. Her kisses were like balm to my wounded soul. Her determination to survive even when odds were against her was my wakeup call.

I told her I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to handle her. I didn’t mean sexually. I had that shit handled. That woman turned to putty in my hands. I meant emotionally. Honor was the kind of woman that would make me fall. It would be hard and fast, and once I was in love with her, I knew I would love her forever.

What if she died too?

What if I gave her everything I had and then she was taken from me?

I wouldn’t survive it.

But I didn’t want to live without her either.

I steered the Jeep in between two white lines and shifted it into park. I glanced out the windshield and did a double take. I hadn’t planned on coming here. I left her standing at the front door, wearing those tight jeans and furry boots, and I went on autopilot.

I glanced at the sign in the window of the shop and laughed.

It was the kind of laugh that expelled some of my worry and replaced it with a lighter feeling—a feeling of rightness.

It was time I made more out of my life. I would forever mourn the men that died, but I couldn’t act like I