Smoke Bomb (Smoke Series Book 3)

HUCK

You didn’t truly heal from loss. I knew that all too well. When I’d lost my parents, they’d left me Hayes. He hadn’t been taken. It was what had gotten me through my darkest times and my grief.

As I lay in my bed with Trinity asleep in my arms, the words in Hayes’s letter kept replaying over in my head. I couldn’t help but think that he had known once I saw her, was around her, that I would want her.

He had made it sound like she would need me, but fuck if it wasn’t the other way around. Hayes had left me Trinity. I had always believed we were born, we lived, we died. Dust to dust. Made sense. No faith in supernatural beings or powers. I dealt with facts.

Until now.

Sometimes, things happened that couldn’t be explained. My walking into that house and finding her six months after my brother’s death couldn’t have just been a coincidence. Or fucking luck. The more I tossed it around in my head, I couldn’t help but think my brother had had a hand in it. That he was watching over both of us, even after he was gone. Which meant my facts might be bullshit after all.

I looked down at Trinity’s head on my chest. Just having her made the bad shit easier to accept. Knowing that she was mine, I could deal with the pain, regret, loss. My little brother had known somehow that she was for me. He had also known if he told me that in a letter, I’d send someone else to watch over her.

My arm tightened around her body. “I love you,” I whispered, knowing she was asleep but needing to fucking admit it anyway.

She moved then, and her head tilted back until those almond-shaped eyes met mine. The room was dark, but I could see the different emotions flickering within those depths. Earlier today, she’d almost told me the same thing, and I stopped her. Then, I lied about why. The truth was, I hadn’t wanted the first time I heard her say those words to be tarnished by the grief that the letter had caused.

I had also wanted to say it first.

“Did …” She paused, then blinked a couple of times. “Did I dream that?”

A smile tugged at the corner of my lips. Damn, she was cute.

“What exactly?” I asked, although I knew what she was asking me.

A frown wrinkled her forehead, and she dropped her eyes, then moved her head back to where it had been. “Nothing,” she whispered.

I rolled her onto her back and held myself above her. “Oh no, you don’t,” I told her as I leaned down to press a kiss to the corner of her full lips.

“I was dreaming,” she said, then lifted her head just enough to kiss my lips.

“Hmm,” I replied as I pulled her bottom lip between my teeth. “Tell me what you were dreaming then.”

She made a sexy little sound and arched her body toward mine. “Nothing.”

I trailed kisses over to her ear. “That stings, baby,” I whispered in her ear.

She tensed, and her body went still beneath me. “What?”

I leaned up enough to look down at her and ran my knuckles down her cheek and over her mouth. “I tell you that I love you, and you call it nothing.”

Her eyes went wide, and then she wrapped her small hands around my wrists. “I wasn’t dreaming?”

I slid my knee between her legs and pushed them open. “No,” I replied, reaching down to hook her left leg over my arm before sinking inside of her slick opening. “Not fucking dreaming.”

Her hips lifted to meet my thrusts as she cried out.

“The only pussy I want.” My voice was thick with need as I pulled back and then filled her again. “You’re mine.”

“I was going to,” she panted and then moaned, “tell you.”

I slammed into her harder. “I want to hear it while my dick is deep inside you.”

“OH!” Her nails bit into my arms. Turned me on every damn time.

I pushed her thighs open wider and drove into that sweet cunt, then held myself there. Our gazes locked, and her pussy clenched me.

“I love you.”

Just hearing her say it turned me into a desperate man. I reached down and ran my knuckles against her jaw. She was perfect.

My fingers dug into her right thigh that I was holding as I pumped into her tight heat. She rolled her hips underneath me. Nothing had ever felt better than being inside her.

“You own me,” I told her as my balls drew tight and I felt myself getting closer. “Come on my dick, baby,” I urged her, brushing my thumb over her swollen clit.

As if I could control her orgasms on demand, she cried out my name and began to tremble beneath me. The warm gush soaked my cock and balls, sending me shouting her name as my body jerked, emptying my release inside of her. Marking her. Knowing the only man she’d ever have inside her was me.

The last jolt of pleasure rocked me, and I held her hips so that we stayed connected.

“I fucking love you.” My voice was hoarse from the shouting.

The shy, sated smile that came over her face made me feel like I owned the damn world.

TRINITY

THREE MONTHS LATER

The summer was almost over, but no one let Florida know that. Even with the umbrella shading me somewhat, it was hot as I lay out on the lounge chair by the pool. Huck had returned last night after being gone for business for three days, and we had slept very little. When we were apart, he came back, wanting me to the point of exhaustion. Not that I was complaining. I loved nights like that.

My eyes kept wanting to close, and I started to drift off to sleep when a touch on my bare stomach startled me. My eyes opened, and Huck was sitting beside me, running the back of his finger from under my breast to the top of my bottoms. He was home earlier than I’d expected.

“Hey,” I said as his gaze moved from my stomach to meet my face.

“Did you put on sunblock?” he asked me.

“Yes, sir.”

He smirked. “That’s the kind of shit that gets you fucked.”

“Wearing sunblock?”

He slid his hand inside the front of my bottoms. “Calling me sir.”

I laughed and opened my legs for him.

He cupped my pussy, but didn’t do anything more.

“Before I get distracted,” he said, “we need to talk.”

The serious way he had said it had me scooting back and sitting up. “About?”

“Something important.”

These past few months, we had grown closer. He’d faced his grandparents with their lie about Hayes’s death. His grandmother cried so pitifully that I truly felt sorry for her. It had been clear she was haunted by her grandson’s suicide. There would be no family get-togethers for Huck and his grandparents though. I wasn’t sure he’d ever forgive them. Even after his grandmother had admitted to being the one who had mailed him the letter.

There were times I would let my old fears in and worry that he would tire of me or realize he wasn’t in love with me. But somehow, he always knew when I was struggling with my insecurities and did all he could to reassure me. Which only made me love him more.

The Huck who had run hot and cold only ran hot now. When I wanted to touch him, I no longer held back, for fear of being denied or unwanted. I went with him to the shop several days a week. He was teaching me to ride horses at the ranch. For once in my life, I felt like I belonged. I had a home. It was wherever Huck was.

When he didn’t say anything more, I realized he was waiting on me to say something.

“Okay,” I said, clasping my hands in my lap.

“I’m working on how to begin,” he replied.

I felt a sick knot in my stomach.

“That doesn’t sound good,” I whispered.

His eyebrows drew together in a frown. “I guess it depends.”

I bit my bottom lip. “You’re scaring me.”

“Baby, when are you going to stop expecting the worst?”

I wasn’t sure that day would ever come. “I don’t know. You just look serious.”

He grabbed my leg and tugged me closer to him. “Do you remember when I told you that if you tried to leave me, I’d tie you to my fucking bed?”

I smiled and nodded.

“Last night, when you cried my name and came on my dick, what did I say?”

“That I fucking owned you,” I replied, feeling the heat in my cheeks.

He nodded, then ran his hand up my leg. “It’s not smart. Loving me,” he whispered. “But damn if I’m gonna let you stop.”

“Loving you is out of my control, but it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”

“I’m not a good man.”

I smiled at that. “You’re right,” I agreed. “You’re a bad man. But that turns me on.”

He chuckled. “Is that so?”

“Yep. But I’m messed up in the head.”

He reached up and brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “You’re perfect.”

I wasn’t, but if he wanted to think so, I would not argue.

“You’ll never know just how fucking dark I am. If you knew the shit I’ve done, that I do, you wouldn’t love me.”

I wrapped my hand around his arm. “You’re wrong.”

He closed his eyes. “What if I told you that I’ve tortured people for revenge?”

I was sure he’d done more than that. “They must have done something very bad.”

He laughed and pressed a kiss to my lips. “You love me, no matter what?”

I nodded. “Yes.”

“Fuck,” he groaned and pulled me into his lap and buried his head in my chest as I straddled him. “I’m possessive, dangerously so. Although I didn’t know that until you.”

I ran my hands over his head. “I’ve noticed.”

“If anyone touched you, I’d kill them,” he said, lifting his head to look at me.

I saw it in his eyes. Something I had wondered about. I had told him about his grandmother’s call, telling me Tabitha was dead. We hadn’t spoken any more about it, and oddly, no one had called me again to discuss it. But I still thought about it at times.

“If you want to tell me that you already have, don’t,” I whispered. “Because I think I’ve known for a while.”

He was quiet as his eyes stayed on mine.

“Huck?”

“Yeah?”

“Is that all you need to tell me? Just about all the murders you could possibly commit in the future if someone breathes in my direction? Trust me, I’m aware. I recently checked to see if there was an obituary or missing person post for Jonathon Kilgore.”

I already knew about Roy being a missing person. I didn’t say that though.

“Do you want there to be?” he asked me.

“NO! I absolutely do not!”

A slow grin spread across his face, and when Huck smiled, it made everything that had ever been wrong in my life okay. The past no longer mattered. Just this. Us.

“I’m so fucking in love with you that I can’t concentrate if I don’t know where you are and what the hell you’re doing. I’ve even wondered if love is a strong enough word for this shit you’ve done to me.”

I brushed his cheek with my thumb. “Yeah, that’s hot,” I told him.

His big hands grabbed my thighs and jerked me closer until our chests touched. The hard ridge of his erection pressed against my pussy, and I rocked against it just a little.

“Don’t. Not yet. I gotta finish,” he groaned.

“Okay.”

“I’ll never let you go. You’re not ready now, and I understand that. I’m not ready to share you yet anyway, but one day, I want to knock you up. I want you to be the mother of my kids. My life has dark shit that I will never let touch you, but I can’t live it without you.”

My eyes stung with unshed tears as I looked at him.

“I was gonna do this on one knee, but you went and pressed that sweet pussy on my dick. I’m sure as fuck not moving you.”

One knee …

I stopped breathing.

Huck took my left hand in his much larger one, then kissed my fingers. When the cool touch of metal brushed against my skin, my gaze dropped from his to the diamond ring he was sliding on my finger. It was a large princess cut white diamond with a twist of smaller diamonds. I stared at it, unable to believe what I was seeing.

“I want forever. I want you to have my last name. I want you.” Huck’s voice was thick with emotion.

I lifted my gaze to meet his. This beautiful, massive, possessive, dangerous man wanted to marry me. This wasn’t something I had ever allowed myself to fantasize about. He never spoke of marriage.

“Say something,” he whispered.

I looked back down at the ring. “Huck, I would have said yes to you with a ring from a gumball machine.”

A low, deep laugh vibrated his chest. “Damn, I could have saved a lot of money.”

I lifted my eyes to meet his and let the tears roll down my face.

His world scared me. This life wasn’t always going to be easy. But as long as I was loved by this man, I could face anything.