Capturing Peace (Sharing You 0.5)(38)

“Exactly,” I whispered when I looked back at the screen.

“I don’t know what you’re getting at, babe.”

I took a deep breath in before looking at him. “All those pictures—and there’s a lot of them—were taken in the last couple years.”

“Yeah . . . ?”

“Whatever happened for you to have your demons, when did it happen?”

Coen straightened and continued to stare at me without responding.

“Was it before—”

“There were missions throughout the last five years, it’s from all of them.”

“The main thing,” I pressed. “There has to be something crucial that happened. I don’t doubt there was bad shit every time you were sent somewhere. But I also don’t doubt there was something huge that is tormenting you.” When I realized he wasn’t going to answer, and that I’d probably asked way too much of him, I clicked out of the pictures and curled in on myself. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”

“Two and a half years ago.”

I looked up into his haunted eyes, and ached to help him somehow.

“It was two and a half years ago. About four or five months before any of those pictures of me. I, uh, deleted all the pictures of me from before that time.”

I just nodded when his eyes focused back on me. That’s what I’d been worried about. Not that the pictures of him weren’t incredible, but somehow, I’d known. Coen was always, even subconsciously, hiding the place where his demons resided.

“Come here,” Coen said suddenly.

I shot him a look but gave him my hand to pull me up.

“Follow me.”

“Okay . . .” The word trailed off as Coen pulled his shirt over his head, and continued walking toward where all the equipment was set up.

Flipping off a few things, and switching others on, he moved his camera and played with it for a while before coming back over to me.

“You ready?”

“Um, I’m actually kind of lost right now. You took off your shirt and I started staring, and then you were playing with everything . . .”

He grinned before grabbing the bottom of my shirt, and slowly pulled it off my body.

“What are you—”

“I’m showing my girlfriend that she’s more beautiful than any of the girls she saw in those photos. I’m about to do my first shoot with someone. And if anything will be covering my face, it will be some part of you.” Unclasping my bra, he slid the straps down my arms before letting it drop to the floor.

“Coen,” I said breathlessly, my lips pulling into a grin. I knew he was distracting me, I knew he was distracting himself . . . but I didn’t care. I loved that he was doing this.

“And, besides, that bed and couch are both new. I knew if I ever wanted you on anything in this studio, I didn’t want it to have been touched before or to have any memories tied to it. They were delivered yesterday . . . so I think we should break them in, what about you?”

I smiled and leaned up to capture his bottom lip between my teeth. “My parents can’t see these pictures.”

He laughed. “Or your brother.”

We started standing. Both keeping only our jeans on as we posed chest to chest, his chest to my back with his tattooed arms covering my breasts, and me behind him—clinging to his body. Then he moved me so my back was against the wall, legs around his hips, chests flush as he tortured my lips with teasing bites.

By the time he released my legs, and began unbuttoning my jeans, I’d forgotten we were doing this in front of his camera.

He finished pulling my jeans off before walking us toward the large bed and getting us both on top of it. Holding his body over mine, I ran my hands over the hard muscles in his arms and hiked one bare leg up around his hip. It wasn’t until the flash that I realized why he’d been slowly moving my arm until it was covering my exposed breasts, or why he’d continued nudging my head back with his nose to hang off the side of the bed. Through this slow-building, erotic type of foreplay we’d started on, he was still positioning us, still making sure I was somehow covered, and, I’m sure, still making it all look effortless.

Because with him, it was.

And it was soon after, when he pulled off my underwear, and allowed me to rid him of his jeans and boxer briefs as he tossed aside the remote for the camera, that I realized I was no longer okay with not having a forever with Coen Steele. As he slowly made love to me on that bed, I knew that I’d fallen in love with him, and anything less than forever wouldn’t be enough.





Chapter Nine

Coen—September 25, 2010

KNOCKING QUICKLY ON Reagan’s door, I glanced at my car and blew out a quick breath before facing the door again right before it was flung open.

“Coen!”

“What’s up, bud?” Grabbing under Parker’s arms, I lifted him into a hug before throwing him over my shoulder.

He laughed wildly and slapped on my back. “Hey, I thought you weren’t strong!”

“I’m not.” I gasped, and stopped walking. Letting my legs shake a little, I acted like my knees were buckling under his weight. “You’re too heavy for me.”

“No, I’m not!” he squealed.