His ugly smile returned. “Right. Collier killed your ex-boyfriend. That sounds logical to me.”
She set her half-eaten cookie aside. “Okay, if you want the truth, I have to warn you that it’s not very flattering to me.”
His eyes brightened.
“You see,” she said, sighing, “Ronnie had his good points. He was a nice guy, really. But I…” She studied her feet, the little dot pattern on her blue socks. “Breaking up with Mercy was…it was like amputating a limb. Not to be melodramatic, but I didn’t really recover. It wasn’t fair to Ronnie to date him, when I wasn’t able to commit to him. I held on for a while. I guess I thought that if, given enough time…”
She shook her head, lifting her gaze again to meet his. “But then I brought Ronnie home, and Mercy was here.” She bit her lip. “It was like magnets coming together. It was like gravity pulling. Poor Ronnie. He knew I was unfaithful to him, and it hurt him badly, I think. But what was I supposed to do?” She shrugged. “I’ve only ever loved Mercy. Ronnie didn’t have a place here. When he stopped coming around, I figured he’d gone home to Georgia. I didn’t think he’d been killed. My God, what got into Collier?”
Grey snorted. “I forgot you were a writer.”
“I’m sorry?”
“That was a pretty story, but that’s all it was.”
She gave him the softest, most innocent expression she was capable of mustering on short notice. “Agent Grey, I don’t know what happened to Ronnie.”
“And let me guess. Mercy doesn’t either?”
“No,” Mercy’s voice sounded from the kitchen doorway, drawing both their attentions. “I don’t.”
Of all the times for him to get his ass out of bed, Ava thought with an inward curse. She was about three seconds from escorting Grey out the door, and here came Mercy, all scowly-faced, to complicated things.
He no longer used crutches, but still wore a clunky brace on his left knee. He was in sweatpants and a long-sleeved black shirt that clung to his skin, highlighting the weight he’d lost while he recovered. His high cheekbones had a hollowness to them, sharp shadows cutting down across the narrow planes of his face. His nose looked more prominent by contrast. His hair was tied back in a knot today, and that added to the harshness of his thunderous expression, his lips pressed into invisibility.
He braced a hand on either side of the doorjamb, aggressive, threatening. “You don’t have to talk to him,” he said to Ava, eyes latched on Grey. “He’s got no reason to be here.”
“No, he doesn’t,” Ava agreed, tone light. “I’ve been telling him that. I think he was about ready to leave.”
Grey didn’t respond. He was staring back at Mercy, his complexion a notable shade paler. He was afraid. Of course he was; everyone was. He’d heard about the towering Cajun biker with the heinous reputation among underground circles. As was always the case, the flesh surpassed the imagination.
Ava cleared her throat. “Agent Grey.”
He snapped around to look at her. “Uh…oh. What?”
“You were just leaving.” She smiled.
“I…right. Yeah.” He frowned. “Yeah, I guess I was.”
“I’ll walk you out.”
He let her shoo him toward the door, but paused halfway through, a hand on the frame. “My card,” he said, extending one toward her between his first two fingers. “If you think of anything.” Dimmed though it was by the sudden fright of seeing Mercy, his smile was still threatening. “I have a feeling we’ll see each other again, Ava. Give my best to your family.”
She slammed the door in this face and locked the deadbolt.
“You–” Mercy started as she turned around, and she waved him to silence.
“Wait.” She walked past him into the living room, then to the entryway, so she could watch Grey’s department issue Tahoe back out of the drive and recede down the street. When he was safely gone, she returned.
Mercy was sitting at the table, bum leg stretched out before him, but looked no less murderous. This time, his black gaze was turned on her. “You let that fucker in the house?”
“Telling him to fuck off would have only made me look guilty.”
“You are guilty,” he said through his teeth, “and he knows it. That’s why having a goddamn conversation with him is so dangerous.”
Eight weeks she’d endured his sour temper, and she didn’t think she could take it for another day. “How is it dangerous?” she asked, flapping her arms in a helpless gesture. “He’s got no body, no physical evidence, no witnesses, no video, no nothing. He’s got nothing on either of us.”
In a frustrated huff, she went to the counter, snatched up the plate of cookies and slammed them down on the table at his elbow, cookies leaping on impact. “I baked you cookies, asshole. Eat some of them so you’ll stop looking like the Crypt Keeper.”
She closed her eyes the moment she said it, tears burning behind them. How many old reruns of Tales From The Crypt had she watched with Mercy when she was nine and ten? Curled up like a cat at his side, his long fingers stroking idly down her back. Every time she became furious, some tender memory would sneak up and bite her in the ass, toying with her raw emotions.
When she opened her eyes, he was staring at her with a tortured blend of anger and deep, deep sadness, his face tight and spare, his eyes large, hard and soft at once. He swallowed, throat working. “Why are you doing this?”
“Baking cookies?”
“Throwing your life away.”
Ava blinked at him, uncomprehending. “What?”
He glanced away from her, eyes falling to the plate, his long lashes curled against his cheeks. Pretty lashes for a man. As black as the rest of his hair. “You’ve done nothing but take care of me for two months.”
“Well I wouldn’t say nothing. I do brush my teeth and shower.”
“You know what I mean,” he said, sharply, eyes cutting back to her. “Looking after me – that’s what you do now. That’s your life.”
She made an exasperated sound. “For right now, yeah. But not forever. Mercy, you got hurt, and I’m your wife. Of course I’m going to take care of you. Do you think I shouldn’t?”
No answer.
“Let me tell ya, honey,” she said mockingly, “you’ve made it as difficult as possible. Where the hell did this touchy, grumpy teenager come from? I want my lusty Frenchman back. Any chance he’ll make a return appearance?”
“I’m being serious.”
“So am I!” She shoved her hair back. “I have tried…God, Mercy, I’ve tried all this time, to get you well, because at this point, I don’t know what’s going to bring you back to me. You’re not you.” The tears welled again and she blinked them back. “Why is this happening? What did I do wrong?”
He blinked too, and swallowed again; the movement in his throat looked like it pained him. “Ava–”
“No, I want to know what the problem is. What is so wrong that you don’t even want to look at me? You haven’t touched me–” She couldn’t make herself say it because it hurt too badly to realize: He hadn’t touched her, not carnally or casually, aside from the most basic and necessary contacts. “Don’t you get it?” she whispered. “We’re free! Larsen’s dead. The Carpathians are finished. Mason and Ronnie are dead and Mason’s dad is gonna do so much time in jail. Mercy.” She dashed at her eyes. “It’s you and me now, and we don’t have anything to run from anymore. We’re free,” she repeated. “So why don’t you want to love me anymore?”
She watched the pain spread upward, from his throat to his face, pulling hard at all the sharp angles of bone, bringing a bright, glittering light into his eyes. “My little girl.” His voice was thick. “That’s not it. You know it isn’t.”
She lifted her brows, inviting him to explain.
Again, he glanced away from her, and then came back, gathering the words he wanted to use. “I have the same nightmare every night. Every night, when I throw you off the bike, you hit your head. Hard. And you’re
unconscious. And then, after Larsen and his boys kill me, they come for you, and they…” He shook his head. He didn’t have to say what they did. They both knew what would have happened had she blacked out.
“But that didn’t happen,” she said, voice gentling, as understanding dawned. She stepped in closer to him, between his spread legs, and reached to brush a stray hair back along the crown of his head. “I wasn’t hurt that badly. And I got to Larsen before he got to either of us.”
He tried to smile, but it faded quickly, his expression anguished as he tilted his head back and stared up at her. “I’ve sworn, for years and years, to protect you. That’s what I do. Forget pliers and fingernails – what I do best is keep you safe. At least, it used to be.”
“Merc–”
“I killed those bastards the night they came into your room. I saved you when I needed to. I left you when I needed to,” he added in a whisper. “Mason and Ronnie – handled. It’s what I do,” he repeated. “It’s the best, maybe the only good thing I’ve done in my whole miserable life, keeping a special little girl safe.”
She felt the burn of tears again, as they fought for release.
“And then I took you to New Orleans,” Mercy continued, the pain raw and quivering in his voice, “and I introduced you to monsters, and I told you horrible things, and I almost got you killed.
“I don’t even begin to know how to apologize for that. To atone for it.
“I was supposed to keep you safe, and I failed.”
When he went to duck his head, she caught the hard planes of his jaw in her hands and tipped his face to hers again, saw the wetness of tears standing in his eyes. She wanted to collapse, fall against him and cry into his throat until there was no more anguish left to shed. But instead she sniffed and forced a watery smile and said, “But why does it have to be one-sided all the time? Don’t I get to keep you safe sometimes? Is it not okay for me to protect the person I love most in the world?”
His jaw clenched inside her hands. “No,” he said, but it was a weak, emotional protest, and she knew it.
She said, “ ‘Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.’ ”
His brows lifted, startled. “Brontë.”
“You were wrong about something,” she said. “About it hitting me later. About me being in shock.” She shook her head. “Killing Larsen wasn’t a horror. The idea of losing you was. Don’t paint me in such a pure light,” she said, one hand dropping to his chest, pressing over the tattoo of her teeth against his heart. “I’ve got some of that soul in me. There’s nothing too terrible to contemplate when it comes to you, my darling monster.”
His hands at her waist pulled her in tight, so that her forehead pressed down against his, so they could struggle against the tears together.
“I’ve got something else to tell you,” Ava said. Something she hadn’t wanted to tell him while he was stewing in his own guilt and anger. She reached down for one of his hands, guiding it beneath her sweater, and pressed it to the skin of her stomach, down low, urging his fingers into the waistband of her jeans, so they’d be in just the right place.
He sucked in a breath; his fingers flexed lightly against her belly, pressing, like he was searching for what was still too small for either of them to feel. It was his voice, the wonder in it, the way it choked, that sent the tears spilling over her lashes, finally, and down her face. “You are?”
“Nine weeks, the doctor says.”
“The cottage,” he said.
“On purpose this time,” she said, struggling with crying and talking at the same time.
He reached with his other hand and captured the back of her head, pulled her face close and fitted her tear-wet lips to his. That was when, amid the churning happiness and grief, a raw, basic lust came roaring up in her blood, making itself known, reminding her how many weeks it had been since they’d had one another.
She opened her mouth against his, flicked the tip of her tongue against his lips. She wanted her husband, needed him desperately.
His hand that rested against her belly shoved roughly down into her jeans, cupped her sex through her panties.
She pulled back with a little gasp. “Oh, Merc, do you think you can with your knee?”
He tangled his hand in her hair, pulled her into a crushing kiss, forced her down into his lap so she straddled the thigh of his good leg.
God, yes, she thought, as his other hand came out of her jeans and he used both to attack her sweater. Thank Jesus.
He made a growling sound of protest as their lips came apart long enough for her sweater to lift over her head. And then after, as her hair fanned back into place against her shoulders, his eyes went to her breasts, the white lace of her bra, the exposed stretch of stomach, still flat this early in her first trimester.
His eyes looked huge and ferocious in his thin, pale face; he breathed through his mouth, tendons in his neck straining, chest heaving as he took one tortured moment to drink her in.
Then, with leashed frenzy and extreme tenderness, he circled her throat with one massive hand and bent her back over his arm, pressing his mouth to the delicate skin above her breastbone, where her pulse fluttered in her chest.
Ava speared her fingers through the tight sheets of his pulled-back hair, loosening the knot, pressing her fingertips against his skull. Clinging to him as he buried his face in the hollow between her breasts and the fingers at her back sprang the bra clasp with one efficient movement. She felt the band go slack, the straps sliding down her arms. He nudged the cups aside with his nose, kissed her breasts, sucked briefly at each tightly drawn nipple.
She wanted hours of this. She wanted days and days in bed with him, nothing to do but get reacquainted.
But he pulled away and lifted her, kissed her mouth again, his tongue shoving roughly between her lips. “Later,” he murmured, between kisses. “Later…I’ll take real good care of you.” He cupped her breasts, squeezed them. They were tender and swollen with the pregnancy and the pressure of his fingers made her neck weak. “Jesus, I just…” He bit her lip gently. Teased her nipples with his thumbs. “I don’t know…”
“It’s fine,” she assured. “I know what you mean. I know, sweetie.”
It was too overwhelming.
She shoved up his shirt, smoothed her hands across the warm skin of his chest, fingers skipping lightly over the surgical scars where the bullets had done their damage. It was too much. She wanted to put her mouth on his chest, suck delicately at his flat brown nipples until he rolled her onto her back and paid her back in kind. But there was this urgency driving them. Too long apart, too much distance, too much emotion.
She reached into the drawstring waistband of his sweatpants and his cock fitted against her palm. She felt the strain in him, the acute pain of this sudden, super-intense need.
“Shit,” he said through his teeth. “Come on, we have to get on the floor.”
She curled her fingers around him and gave a hard tug. “I can take care of you right here.”
“No,” he gasped. “I need on top.”
He needed to be the man again. It was one thing to pull her astride him when it was his choice, another when he was an invalid.
With a silent, internal chuckle, she agreed, and in a clumsy, fevered rush, she pulled him down on top of her on the cold tile of the kitchen floor. Her skin was too flushed for her to feel the chill. And he slid an arm beneath her bare back, sheltering and shielding, while he supported his weight with the other.
Ava lifted her hips, shoved down her jeans, managed to kick them off. The panties she left on, sweeping the lace to the side as she guided him to her entrance.
He couldn’t be delicate, and she didn’t want him to be. He came into her with one powerful downward thrust, filling her, driving her hips down against the tile.
And then he held very still, and nuzzled the side of her face, and whispered to her in French. Relief. Joy. The dazzling return of this physical closeness.
/> Ava pressed upward against him, a surge like a wave, lifting hips, rolling spine, breasts thrusting into his chest.
And then his hips began to move, a ferocious driving rhythm, his breath striking hard against her ear. She helped him, danced with him, gasping and straining as she felt the spiral begin, the dizzy weakness pulsing through her blood as the pleasure wound tighter.
He held deep inside her as he came, crushing her hips to his, letting the small, involuntary flexing of his back move through both of them. The tears tracked down her cheeks. Her fast, fierce orgasm set the room to spinning. She clung to his shoulders, murmuring nonsense as the luxuriant pulses rippled through her again and again.
He didn’t pull away. He shifted to his side and bundled her into his chest, their bodies still locked together, the aftershocks still too staggering to fight.
“Fillette,” he said, kissing her forehead. “Christ.”
She rested her cheek against his heart, its familiar, reassuring gallop.
That was how Maggie found them five seconds later as the back door opened.
Ava heard the key in the lock, had time to say, “Oh, shit,” and then her mother was standing over them.
“Oh,” Maggie said. She didn’t sound surprised or scandalized. She turned her back to them, busying herself with closing the door and setting her grocery bags on the counter.
Ava hated rolling away from Mercy, but she did, scrambling for her jeans and sweater.
“Mercy, I take it you’re feeling better,” Maggie said, her back still turned to them.
He sat up and leaned back against the legs of a kitchen chair, adjusting his shirt and sweatpants. He stretched his legs out before him, wincing a little as the left protested. “Yes, ma’am. A lot better.” He sent Ava a wink as she clasped her bra and shoved her arms into her sweater.
“Good,” Maggie said. With perfect timing, she turned back just as they were both decent. She propped one hand on her hip and fixed Ava with a motherly look. “Please tell me you at least told him that you’re pregnant.”
Ava gaped at her. “How did you…?”
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