Bring Down the Stars (Beautiful Hearts Duet #1)(86)

“I’ll watch out for him,” Weston said. “I promised I would.”

“And who watches out for you?”

“Connor,” he said. “The platoon. Myself. I’ll be okay.”

I looked to see him looking down at me in a way I’d never seen before. His blue-green eyes soft. His mouth, always a grim line, now slightly parted. His lips…

God, why am I staring at his lips?

“I’m scared for you, too.” My voice was small under the thrashing of my blood. I tore my gaze away, but my eyes were drawn right back to him when he spoke.

“You are? Scared for me?”

The tremor of vulnerability in his voice cracked my heart. Then his demeanor hardened again and he shook his head. “Don’t be.”

“How could I not be worried for you both?”

“We’ll be fine.” He snorted a dry laugh and leaned his hip at the edge of the couch and crossed his arms. “Connor will be more than fine. He lives a charmed life. The other guys will stick to him like glue, so his luck rubs off on them.”

“I wonder if he’ll have time to write to me.”

“Do you want him to?”

I nodded. “I need his letters to stay close to him. When we’re together, he’s not the same. I don’t get the same feeling from him as I do from his words. I don’t feel that electricity.”

I felt it now, though. And it was coming from two feet away. The air around Weston was always electric. A crackling force field that kept people away, fueled by his barbed tongue and acid wit. If I reached through it to touch him, no doubt I’d be shocked. It would hurt like hell.

But I want to try…

The thought sent a jolt through me. Why? Why was this happening? Why were my cheeks inflamed and my heart beating hard? I tried to force my alcohol-induced thoughts to go somewhere else, anywhere else but Weston.

“Stop looking at me like that,” Weston snapped.

I blinked to see him glaring back at me from the edge of the couch. I gripped a cushion for support.

“Sorry, I’m…a little wasted myself.”

“I’m going,” Weston said. “Night.” He strode to the door, but then froze with a hand on the knob. His back to me as he said, “Connor’s an idiot for not fucking you one last time before we ship out.”

The tone and language made my eyes flare. Weston turned around and his intense stare pinned me to the couch. Another jolt of electricity surged through me. I fought for words in the jumble of thoughts and emotions, soaked in tequila, each one more heated than the last.

“Well, that’s crude,” I managed. “You’re trying to pick a fight with me? Right now?”

“Nah, just being honest,” Weston said. “If I had a girl like you and I passed out the night before we’d be separated for months? Maybe longer? I’d curse myself every night while jerking off in my bunk or the latrine. Thinking of what I could’ve had one last time.”

“Why are you saying this…?”

My words trailed away as an image filled my mind: Weston with his eyes closed, his fist curled around himself. Stroking hard to thoughts of me. My face in his head. My name in his mouth. Coming for me.

Slowly, like a cat, he walked over to the couch. He planted his hands on the cushions on either side of me. His gaze moved over my face and lingered on my mouth.

“I’m drunk,” Weston said, though his eyes were clear and sharp as always, a fire burning behind the blue-green ocean that no one could see…unless they got as close to him as I was.

I nodded, my lips parted. “Me too,” I said. “You should go.”

“I will,” he said. “Say goodbye to me, Autumn.”

“Goodbye, Weston.”

For half a heartbeat, we lingered in that moment, then broke it at the same time. I gripped him by the lapels of his shirt and pulled him to me. His hand snaked behind my head and into my hair.

And we kissed.

Hard. Unrelenting.

I kissed Weston.

Something I’d never felt before ripped through me. A heat heavy with words, thoughts and emotions. All unspoken. All of it in Weston’s mouth. I could taste him. I bit his lower lip. Licked his upper lip. Sucked on his tongue. Taking and taking, but I couldn’t get enough. All the while he fed on me, crazed like a lion at the kill.

What’s happening…?

I was falling sideways and backward on the couch, and Weston was sliding onto me, all of his lean, hard weight against me. His mouth crashed into mine, opening and taking my kiss—taking it from my mouth in a delicious sweep of his tongue. Demanding. Almost cruel. Yet beneath that savage kiss, my body loosened like water. I melted in his arms while he lay over me, hard and unyielding.

God, what are we doing…?

The answer broke through the onslaught of Weston’s kiss, rose between our rasping breaths and whispered: Finally

This.

Now.

Finally.

His arms slid under me, holding me so close—as close as he could—while his mouth worked over mine with relentless desire. Never breaking for breath, as if he were running the race of his life.

Finally.

My arms snaked around his neck, my fingers sliding into his hair, then down his back. His muscles lean and hard under his shirt. I wanted skin. I wanted heat. I wanted all of him.