But it feels like should is a word that is starting to lose all meaning.
Need, want, destiny, fate…
Words I’ve never had much use for slam into my mind like bullets pounding against a barricade.
The SEALs taught me to push down my desires and work for the good of the team, but all I can think about now is me and my woman and doing whatever it takes to make sure we can live our lives together.
It’s wrong. I know it’s wrong.
But I can’t stop.
And it doesn’t feel wrong.
It feels like heaven.
CHAPTER NINE
Tessa
I sit in the passenger seat, my body feeling raw and hot from what we did at the cabin.
As we pull up outside my house, I almost pinch myself to prove this is all real. The sun still hangs in the middle of the sky, blaring down with afternoon brightness, and yet so much has changed since I left for the hiking trail this morning.
I glance at our rundown two-bedroom, the façade fading, the paintwork chipped. The curtains are closed which tells me that mom still isn’t home from her date with Liam. One of the holdovers from her schizophrenia is that she still has to close all the curtains, a vestige of paranoia she can’t quite shake.
She’ll probably be gone all day, knowing them.
“Are you okay?” Trent asks.
A shiver moves over me at the rumble in his voice.
I remember how he looked looming over me, his rock hard manhood sliding slickly between my breasts. My sex sizzles at the thought of it, my womb making my hole flutter and wet and needy.
“Yeah,” I tell him, glancing at him, taking in the sight of his possessive eyes and silver streaked hair. “I guess I’m wondering what happens next.”
“Yeah.” He nods, his jaw tight. “It’s a bit of a goddamn mess, isn’t it?”
“What do you mean?”
He laughs gruffly. “Do I really have to explain?”
I stare at him, and he smirks.
“Since when did you get so sassy, Snapshot?”
“Maybe I was always sassy,” I banter. “You just never took the time to notice.”
“Of course I didn’t,” he growls. “You were just a kid. You were my daughter’s best friend. I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but you were invisible to me back then. Just another family friend.”
“And now?” I whisper, aware I’m fishing for compliments but not really giving a damn.
“Now… you’re everything.” He moves his hand as if to touch me, but then he remembers where we are and grips the steering wheel instead. “I don’t want to hurt Angela, but I can’t imagine a life where we’re not together forever. I can’t imagine a life where I don’t put a baby – a thousand goddamn babies – inside of you.”
I turn to the house, my heart pounding heavily in my chest, through my body. My panties rub against my sex, my body screaming at me to drag him inside and let him take me, for the first time, the most magical time. Let him drive that unbelievably huge cock inside of me and explode and make me pregnant.
Once I’m pregnant we won’t have a choice.
We’ll have to tell Angie.
Will it destroy her?
“Did you feel this way about Lucy?” I ask.
Lucy was Angela’s mother. They split up when Angie was tiny.
“No.” He sighs. “I’ve never felt this way about anybody. I was convinced I couldn’t feel this way about anybody until yesterday. Jesus, that sounds so fucking crazy when I say it out loud.”
“But you were together for years,” I murmur.
“Yeah, and breaking up was the best thing we could’ve done,” he says. “I didn’t feel anything for her. It’s a horrible thing to admit. But it’s the truth. Angela was an accident… the best accident a man could’ve wished for. Don’t get me wrong. But an accident all the same.”
“I never knew that,” I whisper.
“Angie never told you?”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t really like talking about that stuff. I try to respect that.”
“Maybe I shouldn’t say, then.”
“Say what?”
He frowns, his hands getting tighter on the steering wheel.
“She’s never told you why we broke up? I was going to stay with her. That’s what a man does. That’s what a man is supposed to do when he makes a woman pregnant. Even if he doesn’t feel what he wished he did, he stays by her side while they raise their child.”
“But she cheated on you,” I say.
He flinches. “So she told you.”
I nod. “Right after she passed. She was so messed up. She hated her one second and loved her the next. She was so confused. She told me as I held her.”
“Loyalty is the most important thing in a relationship,” Trent growls. “In the military and in… in love, it means everything.”
He pauses before saying love, as though the word is unusual to him like he’s still suspicious about its meaning.
“I agree,” I say passionately. “Whenever I dreamed about the man I’d end up with one day…”
Meaning, whenever I dreamt about him because I’ve crushed on him for as long as I can remember.
When my mind drifted off to fantasies of families and a husband and love, it was always Trent standing there.
But even after everything, I find myself not wanting to come across as too eager just in case I freak him out.
“Yeah?” he prompts when I trial off.
“I always knew loyalty would be the most important thing,” I say. “The idea of cheating on somebody, of being cheated on, it sickens me. It’s why my dad left.”
Tears crack my voice and I shake my head, as though I can force them away.
His knuckles turn white on the steering wheel.
“Do you have any idea how badly I want to hold you right now?” he growls.
“You can’t,” I say, voice shaking. “You know how Youngstone is.”
He sighs and stares firmly at me, waiting for me to go on.
“My dad cheated on my mom dozens of times,”
