Fingertips tease his sensitive skin beneath, tickling and pressing, as I hollow my cheeks out with each slide down and subsequent suck back out. I look up at him and can’t help the satisfied smile that tries to form despite his place in my mouth. Colton’s head is thrown back, lips pulled tight in pleasure, and the muscles are strained in his neck. The sight of him slowly coming undone would have me wet and wanting if I wasn’t already.

I fist my hand around him and work it in circular motions while I bob my head up and down over the remainder of him. He groans, turning to steel in my mouth, and in an instant he is dragging me up the length of him, my nipples aching from the skin on skin contact.

His mouth is on mine the minute my lips are within reach, a greedy clash of lips, tongues, and teeth as he dominates the kiss, taking what he wants even though I’m giving it up more than willingly. He shifts our position in the blink of an eye so I am on my back, atop the pillows propped behind me. He scrapes his eyes down the length of my torso, a mischievous grin lighting up his face as he looks at my panties and then back up at me.

“I’m out of practice,” he says with a shake of his head and a flash of his lone dimple. And then despite the carnal need raking though every one of my nerves, I can’t help the laugh that falls from my lips as the fabric of my panties is ripped in half. “There,” he says, lowering his mouth to my abdomen and pressing a kiss there. “Much better.”

And it’s not the kiss in itself, but the unexpectedness of his lips holding still momentarily, just below my navel, that sobers the moment for me. But at the same time, makes it that much sweeter. His eyes are closed and his lips are pressed atop the womb that held his child, and chills immediately race across my anticipatory flesh.

After a moment, his lips make their torturously slow ascent up my rib cage to my breast. I can feel his heated breath, the slide of his tongue, the suction of his mouth as he closes over my nipple, and I cry out involuntarily. The sensations his mouth evokes are like a lightning strike to my sex, my inhibitions singed and body lit afire.

“Colton,” I pant as the ache in my core intensifies and fingernails score the skin on his shoulders as his mouth pleasures and hints at things to come. When my nipples are tightened and teased so thoroughly they’re on the edge of pain, he moves back up my body. One of his hands fists in the back of my hair, holding my curls hostage, while the other slides down my body and slips between my legs.

I hold my breath in that space of time between feeling his fingers move my thighs apart and them actually touching me. Lungs robbed of air and body full of anticipation, Colton brands his mouth to mine in a soul-searing, gravity-defying kiss, and just when it leaves my head spinning and desire spiraling out of control, his fingers part me and stake their claim. His mouth captures the moan he coaxes from me as my nerves are expertly manipulated. Heat ignites and a rapturous moan emanates from the back of my throat as I am entirely consumed and completely undone by Colton.

His fingers coated in my arousal slide back out and up to add friction to my already throbbing clit. “Ah!” I can’t help the garbled cry as his fingers connect, sensations overwhelm, and emotions swell. His fingers stroke and his mouth tempts the skin along my neck as my body climbs the wave at a rapid pace. My nipples tighten and thighs tense as desire ricochets through me and then comes back to hit me ten times harder.

And I am lost. Stepping into an oblivion that’s assaulting all my senses, and overwhelming all thoughts. My hands grip his arms and my hips buck as my body detonates into a million splinters of pleasure. The only thing I hear besides my pulse thundering in my ears is a satisfied groan falling from his lips.

Within a second of riding out the last wave of my orgasm, Colton is shifting, pushing my thighs apart with his knees as he places the head of his cock against my still pulsing entrance.

And then it hits me—breaks through my hazy state of desire—and shocks me back to my senses. I push against his chest, shaking my head. “Colton … we need a condom …” I tell him, reality hitting me stronger than the climax tremors still rumbling through me.

Colton’s body tenses and his head snaps up from where he’s watching our connection. He angles his head and just stares at me, the only sounds in the room are my still shuddered breathing and the soft strains of Stolen on the speakers overhead. But the way he looks at me—as if I am his next draw of breath—halts any further protests from my lips.

“I don’t want to use a condom, Rylee.” His words startle me but more than that, it’s the way he says them, resigned disbelief laced with irritation.

But why?

Disbelief because I ruined the mood to ask? Irritation because he has to now? “C’mon, Colton, don’t be such a guy. I know it doesn’t feel the same but we need to be smart and—”

Colton’s sudden shift in the bed, pulling me up and into him so I straddle his lap, surprises me so much that I abandon my protest. His hands find the nape of my neck, thumbs framing the sides of my face, and his eyes bore into mine with a reverent intensity that I’ve never seen before. “No, Ry. I don’t want to use a condom and it’s not because of lack of feeling. Fuck, baby, I could have burlap wrapped around my dick and I’d still feel you.”

I want to laugh as my mind tries to figure out just what Colton is telling me. “What do you—what are you trying to say?” And even though he hasn’t answered me yet, my heartbeat quickens and my fingers start to tremble.

I watch him swallow, his Adam’s apple bobbing, and his lips turn up in a ghost of a smile. He shakes his head slightly as that smile deepens. “I don’t know how to explain it, Ry. That night was horrible. It was something that will forever be etched in my mind—you, me … the baby …” His voice fades as he shakes his head softly, looking down for a moment because I know he’s still trying to come to terms with the fact that we lost a baby together. He exhales a shaky breath, and when he looks up the raw honesty in his eyes has me holding my own. “I was scared shitless,” he says, leaning in and brushing the most tender of kisses against my lips before kissing my nose and then leaning back. “It still scares me every time I think about it and what could have happened. I—I’m just not sure how to even explain it.” He blows out a loud breath, and I can see the need in his face to try and capture the right words to express how he feels.

“Take your time,” I whisper, knowing I’d give him all the time in the world if he asked for it.

He rubs his thumbs back and forth on my cheek, goose bumps dancing over my skin at the poignancy of the moment. “A part of me …” His voice breaks and I can see the muscle in his jaw tic as he attempts to control the emotion I see swimming in his eyes. “… a part of us died that day. But it was the part of me that I’ve been holding on to.”

When he refers to the baby as ours, my breath catches in my chest and my hands reach out to hold onto his biceps.

“I sat in that waiting room, Ry, with your blood, our baby’s blood, on my skin and I don’t think … I don’t think I’ve ever felt so fucking alive.” That soft smile is back on that magnificent mouth of his, but it’s his eyes that captivate me. Those sparks of green that are pleading, asking, and searching to make sure I understand the words—spoken and unspoken—that he is telling me right now.

He looks down at his hands for a beat, emotion flickering over his face as he remembers how he felt before looking back to me. “The blood of a baby I’ll never meet, but that was something we’d created together …” The gravel of his voice breaks on his last words, but his eyes remain steady on mine, making sure I see everything in his—grief, disbelief, loss.

“All the emotions … everything that was happening … trying to process it all felt like taking a sip of water from a fucking fire hose.” He exhales another breath, closing his eyes momentarily as he becomes overwhelmed with the memory and how to best explain it. “And I still don’t know if I’ll ever be able to process it, Ry. But the one thing I do know,” he says, his fingertips tightening on my cheeks to reinforce the certainty of his words, “is that when I sat in that waiting room and the doctor told me … about the baby … feelings I never thought possible filled me,” he says, eyes unflinching and complete reverence in his voice that causes my heart to swell with hope for things I never thought I could imagine.

His thumb wipes away a tear that runs down my cheek I didn’t even know I’d shed and he continues on. “And sitting there in that damn hospital room, waiting for you to wake up … I realized what you meant to me, what we had created together—the best parts of us combined. And then it hit me,” he says with so much tenderness in his eyes that when I go to open my mouth to say something nothing comes out. He smiles softly at me, darting his tongue out to wet his bottom lip. “I realized that what she did to me doesn’t have to happen again. That I can give someone the life I never had, Rylee. The life you showed me is a possibility.”

I bite back the comments that rush into my head as Colton’s words break down every last form of protection I’ve ever woven around my heart. My fingers tense on his biceps and my chin quivers from the emotions coursing through me.

“No, don’t cry, Ry,” he murmurs as he leans in and kisses the tracks of tears coursing down my cheeks. “You’ve cried enough already. I just want to make you happy because fuck, baby, it’s you that’s the difference. It’s you that allowed me to see that my biggest fear—darkest goddamn poison—wasn’t really a fear at all. It was an excuse for me to not open myself up by saying all I could do was bring pain and pass my demons on. But I know—I know—that I could never hurt a child—a baby that is my own flesh and blood. And I sure as fuck know you could never hurt one just to spite me.”