She was his. He would die for her. He would die without her.
As he collapsed beside her, his breathing harsh, his own groan startled him as he eased his condom-sheathed cock from inside her.
Small, rippling little tremors shook her as he eased his arms around her and pulled her close to his chest. He would make her get up in a minute, drag them both to that monstrously big bathtub he had glimpsed in her bathroom.
She would be tender, sore, if he didn’t take care of her. It was her first time, she deserved to be spoiled, eased. To be cherished.
Twenty-five years old, and she was still innocent. It didn’t matter what reasons she gave for her innocence; he knew better. She had waited. Waited until the pleasure was too extreme to deny, until she found a man who could match her. One she could be wild with. One who she knew would allow her a measure of the freedom she searched for so desperately.
Once this was over, he would take her to a special practice range, where Durango Team trained in the summer. And he would teach her how to protect herself, how to watch his back, how to watch her own. How to keep herself safe until he could reach her if something happened while he was out of the country.
He would take her to the safe houses, teach her how to prepare herself in case she had to run. He would train her, ensure her safety as he fought to ensure his own. And he would pray.
Because God help him, he couldn’t lose her. He had waited. For too many years he had endured the loneliness that filled his soul until he found the woman who could ease the bleak shadows that filled it.
He was a man without a home, without a family. A man who had once known a warm hearth and a family’s love and then experienced a betrayal that had nearly destroyed his soul.
All those years ago, he had hidden Tansy and their unborn child for fear of what was coming. He had taken her to the hunting shack in the Bayou that his family had owned and he had left her there until he could find the detective he worked with and could secure a safer location.
He had left her alone, and only one person had known where she was. The person who had caught him slipping into the home he had once known to steal the key to the old boat that he needed to get to the shack.
His mother had stared at him with such hatred, with fury. But he had never for a moment believed she would betray him. That she would tell his enemies where they could find Tansy and her unborn grandchild.
His mother had betrayed him. And he had never forgiven her. Just as he had never forgiven the rest of his family for turning their backs on him.
He had lived with it endlessly. Daily. Until Emily.
Until her laughter, her sense of adventure, and her need for freedom touched his heart. Until her loyalty, her willingness to forgo that need, touched his soul.
She was a woman worth fighting for and a woman worth living for.
She was the dream he never believed could become reality.
Fifteen
THERE WAS SOMETHING MUCH TOO natural about waking up in Kell’s arms, Emily thought the next morning. He had wrapped around her like a human blanket, arms and legs encasing her, his chest a solid warmth at her back.
The blankets were on the floor, pushed there sometime during the night as she flowed over him, taking him again, crying out with the pleasure and the explosive releases that tore through her.
>
Yes, she thought with a smirk as she stared drowsily at the wall across from her. Releases. Not just two or three, but climactic pulses that seemed to merge, one into the other, until she had no breath left to cry out with the shattering ecstasy.
After that first time, he had immersed them in her large tub, the steamy water encasing them in liquid warmth as he just kissed her. Just held her.
There had been no demands, just his arms around her and a sense of belonging that she had refused to delve too deeply into.
“You scare me when you do that.” His sleep-roughened voice grumbled behind her.
“Do what?” She smiled. She couldn’t help it. There was something too sexy about his scratchy morning voice.
“Think.” His hand smoothed up the outside of her leg to her hip as his erection began to prod at her rear. “When you think, things get dangerous.”
“Baloney.” She turned, smiling up at him as that lazy quirk tugged at his kiss- and sleep-swollen lips. “I’m never dangerous.”
“You were thinking the night before you took that wimp Dyson to the strip club that first day,” he pointed out. “I thought he was going to have a coronary as he chased you in the back door.”
“You were there?” Her eyes narrowed on him.