She tried not to smile, but not very well. “I’ll see what I can do.”
“How about we do this?” He kissed her, his tongue sliding along hers in a kiss that spun out and made her melt.
At 2:10 in the morning, they were both exhausted. But it didn’t stop them from making love with soft caresses, long, deep kisses and their bodies moving together in a sweet, urgent, loving joining that somehow, some way, made their intense connection deeper and stronger.
In Hunt’s arms, she let go of the grief and trauma of the day and reveled in the love and life and joy he brought out in her in an elemental way.
And Hunt was a gift that kept on giving.
So she gave herself over to him and lost herself in their bodies moving together as his deep and even thrusts eased her tired body and washed her heart in comfort and warmth. Their joining reminded her she was alive and happy even in her grief and desperation to find her niece and make sure she was safe.
Hunt kissed her, touched his forehead to hers, his heart beating against hers. “It’s going to be okay.”
She placed her hand on his handsome face, a face she wanted to wake up to every morning for the rest of her life. “I know it is, because I have you.”
Hunt overwhelmed her in the nicest way with kisses and his body caressing hers, distracting her from what happened, what she couldn’t change, and reminding her of the precious things she still had in her life.
She clung to him, this moment, all the love overflowing her heart, and the pleasure that overtook her and her Wilde man.
And he wasn’t done taking care of her. After they held each other and their breathing eased back to a normal rhythm, Hunt slipped out of bed, went into the bathroom and came back with the bandages and ointment for her wounds. She lay there, letting him tend her as the fire popped and crackled.
“Do you know how she died?”
“In the morning, Cyn. Let’s just take a few hours for us. We need it.” He lay behind her, pulled the covers over them, snuggled her back into his front and kissed her shoulder. “I almost lost you again.”
“Never going to happen. Now that you caught me”—she gripped his arm banded around her middle, the tease about how often he caught her speeding and now he’d captured her heart, too—“you’ll have to keep me.”
“It’s why I brought you, and no one else, here.”
She caught his eye over her shoulder. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I brought a couple girlfriends here before the renovation. They hated the one-bedroom dump. They wanted to remodel and redecorate it into what they wanted. I already had a vision for what it could be. What I wanted it to be when I brought the woman I wanted to make a life with here.”
“But you brought me here before we really started dating.”
“You interested me long before that. I thought we’d be good together. And when you realized I was serious and didn’t hesitate to open up and tell me what you wanted, I thought why not start where I want us to end up. And here you are. With me.”
“I’m here, in your house, because a madman threatened to kill me, then tried to do that because I told him I’d rather be set on fire than let him ever touch me.”
Hunt rose up on his elbow. “Is that why he set the fire and didn’t... ?”
“Kill me another way,” she finished for him.
“Damn. I knew he was dangerous, but that’s a whole other level of revenge.”
“He once gave my sister a black eye because there was a leftover spot of something on his dinner plate that didn’t come off when she washed it.”
“Then it’s good you’re here with me. At least I’m armed. Hopefully that will deter him from doing something else stupid instead of turning himself in.”
“He’s never going to do that. After today, he’s got no way out. You might not have been able to get him for killing my sister and the burglaries before, but now you’ve got her body, my eyewitness testimony that I saw the mask and stolen goods in his possession and that he tried to kill me. His only out is to run, but we both know he’s not going to do that. We want justice. He knows we won’t stop until we get it. He’ll have no peace because of it. And because he knows we’ll never stop, and he blames us, like he always blamed Angela for the bad shit he did, he’ll want his vengeance. Heneeds it, or he has to face the hard truth, that this is all his fault. And he will never do that.”
“Then it’s even more important for us to stay vigilant and for you to—”
“Not run toward danger with nothing to defend myself but my rage for him.”
He settled behind her and hugged her close. “Yes. That.”
“Have I thanked you for saving me?”