by Kati Wilde
“Not into sharing?”
“Not at all.”
The smile’s still there but that’s deadly serious. And I don’t mind. I’m not into sharing, either.
Raising his head, he looks me over, tweaks the big messy bun on top of my head. “Did you take a bath?”
“I was going to. But now…” I slide my finger down his chest and abruptly realize—“You’re not wearing your kutte.”
After wearing it all day. After wearing it all week. Although wearing the Few’s colors wasn’t his choice, he had been wearing them as often as he used to wear his Hellfire Riders kutte, displaying them as if he were just as proud to bear them. Not just on the farm. Everywhere.
His smile fades. “I’m not.” Pressing a kiss to my forehead, he says, “Go ahead with your bath. I don’t mind sitting my ass down for a bit, and watching you will be a good way to pass the time.”
“Okay.” Especially since passing the time with him usually means talking. And god—I love talking with him. It’s so easy. As if we never spent ten years barely saying anything to each other.
I scoop up my towel and head back to the big tub filled with bubbles and steaming water. Gunner draws a deep breath.
“Is that the bomb stuff you bought today?”
“The bath bomb, yeah.”
“You’re going to smell so fucking good.”
I grin and slide in. “That’s the idea.”
Actually, the idea was to shave my legs and sip wine and find a cheesy movie to rent, but this is better. And watching his perfect ass in those jeans as he drags the desk chair over beside the tub is a thousand times better.
“Grab a cup,” I tell him and point to the bottle of pinot noir sitting on the edge of the tub. I’ve already filled one of the hotel’s paper coffee cups half full. “We’re extra fancy tonight.”
“Shit. I’m even fancier than that.” He reaches for the wine and takes a swig straight from the bottle. “We might have something to drink to.”
I go still, watching him. “Oh yeah?”
Slowly he nods. “You hear anything from the farm?”
I shake my head. Grace and I have been texting lately, but nothing today. “I think Grace has classes all day.”
“I’ll be real interested to see how Mama spins it to her,” he says. Then, “We might have Stone’s location.”
It’s so unexpected I can’t do anything, just stare at him—then finally say on a shaky breath, “Really?”
“Really.”
And I still can’t read him. I can’t tell if he’s being careful not to get my hopes up too much, or if his family’s involvement simply destroyed any good feelings he would otherwise be having, after finally getting a solid lead.
Carefully, I tell him, “Whatever your family did…Stone’s not going to blame you.”
And I think I hit that nail right on the head. As if in pain, he closes his eyes, lips pressed flat. Roughly, he says, “Anna—”
“I don’t blame you for Chef, either.”
“Jesus.” Voice hoarse, he shakes his head and his chest lifts on a deep, ragged breath. Finally he looks at me, his gaze tormented. “I should have done something about it. A long time ago.”
“Like kill all your brothers? Kill your mom?”
His gaze doesn’t waver. “Maybe.”
“And I think that would hurt a lot more than this does.” Fingers dripping, I reach for his hand and love that he leans forward without hesitation and takes mine. I squeeze his fingers tight. “It’s done. We’ll find Stone. It’ll be okay.”
Another long, deep breath—then he nods, leans back in his chair again. “I’ll be heading out tomorrow morning. Saxon is flying a Rider down to drive you back to Pine Valley in my truck.”
“I can drive it back.”
“Not alone. Not until this is finished.”
“Okay.” It doesn’t matter if I drive or sit. Either way, I’m going home.
Which is good. Because it means we’re that much closer to getting Stone.
So my heart shouldn’t be hurting like this.
I reach for the wine, take a sip, try to ease the pain in my throat. It doesn’t. Trying to swallow just makes it worse.
So does saying, “Good,” while nodding and nodding. “It’ll be good to get Stone back.”
Watching me, Gunner says softly, “Then why that look?”
Oh god. I can’t even hide from him anymore. He always sees when I’m hurting now.
So it doesn’t do any good to lie. “I just…I’ll be sad to leave here.”
“Santa Rosa?”
“The hotel.” My voice is so thick. “It was…a good vacation.”
“Yes, it was.” Leaning forward, he takes my hand, lifts it to his mouth. His intense gaze never leaves my face, even as touches his lips to my wet fingertips. “So maybe you’ve come to love me a little, if leaving this place makes you sad? That’s good, sweetheart.” His voice is thick, too. “If I’ve got a little bit of your heart, I’ll figure out how to get the rest.”
A little bit of it? I want to laugh but I can’t, because my chest is so tight—and I’m scared. So damn scared. Sitting in a warm bath with the man I love, who’s overwhelmed by the thought that I might love him a little. By the hope I might one day love him more. And I’m sitting here, terrified that everything so perfect about this moment and this past week will vanish the moment we leave.
So tiny and scared and afraid of being hurt if I expose my heart. But I need to.
Because I think he’s scared, too. And he shouldn’t be. I can’t bear that he is.
My hand trembling in his, I say, “Do you really think you won’t get the rest?”
His eyes close, and his hand holds mine tighter, his lips press harder to my fingers. “Maybe. If this information isn’t good… Or if we’re too fucking late—”
“For Stone?” The very thought makes my heart tighten more.
“Yeah.” His voice is a strained rasp. “I promised I’d bring him home. And if shit goes wrong…I lose you both. Because there’s no fucking chance you’ll keep falling after that.”
“You’re wrong.” Holding his hand so hard, I shift around to face him in the bath, bracing my elbows on the edge of the tub. Carefully I cup his clenched jaw in my palm. “You won’t lose us. And you’ll never lose me. I want you to see something. Can you grab my phone?”
He almost seems glad that I’ve told him to do something—as if he can distract himself from these tortured thoughts. Letting go of me, he snags my phone from the table where I left it.
I wave my wet hands at him when he holds it out to me. “Just open the photos, swipe back through them. I’ll tell you when to stop.”
Leaning back on the edge of the tub, he turns so I can see the screen as he begins rolling through my photos. The reference photos and landscapes from the farm. A picture of me in a towel—
He pauses. “This is what you sent Jenny?”
“Yeah.”
“You need to send it to me.”
“I’ll send you naked ones. Keep going.”
“I’d rather take the naked one now—” Abruptly he stops, his body rigid with tension. “Why the hell did you keep this one?”
The picture that Chef took of me, bound and bleeding. “I don’t know. I just…don’t like deleting photos. Even bad ones.”
“Yeah, well. Anna didn’t need to be here.” His voice is harsh. Without hesitation, his blunt fingertip taps against the trash can, then confirms the deletion.
And…okay. That one I don’t really mind losing.
“Did you delete it from Stone’s phone, too?”
He doesn’t answer. Because the photo I wanted him to see is the next one. It was taken the same night—less than a half hour before I got home and Chef snapped the other photo. And Gunner’s already looking closer, not sharing the screen anymore but peering closely at it, his eyebrows drawn and his face tense, as if he’s not sure what he’s seeing.
But what he’s
seeing isn’t what it really is, anyway. “I don’t like showing anyone how much I’m hurting,” I tell him softly. “So this is hard. Because that selfie…when I took it, I was hurting more than I ever have.”
And it shows. Maybe the photo that Chef took didn’t bother me very much because I’ve seen myself looking more hurt. Not bloodied or bruised but just broken, eyes shattered and without a single shred of joy or hope anywhere in my expression.
He swallows hard but his voice is still thick rasp when he says, “It doesn’t say what I thought. In that heart. On my chest.”
“What did you think?”
“‘Anna was here.’”
“No,” I whisper, and all at once my eyes fill with tears, as if I’m still writing what I did.
Anna was never here.
But I was. I didn’t know it. But I was.
A shudder rips through him and he tosses the phone onto the bed as if he can’t bear to look at it anymore. Turning, he catches my face, tips my head back to look up at him. “You said then it was a reminder. A gravestone.” The gravel in his voice rips at my heart. “Sweetheart. What the hell made you look like that?”
“Because I thought it was true,” I whisper and my tears slip over. “Because I’d hoped and hoped for so long that I’d be more to you than just Stone’s sister. But I knew you wanted simple and it hurt so much. So I told myself, ‘That’s it, Anna. No more.’ And I needed to remind myself why I couldn’t keep hoping. That I had to stop.”
“No, sweetheart. No. Ah fuck.” A tortured groan rips from him and he buries his face in my hair, his arms sliding around me to lift me from the tub but he just holds me, my wet body to his chest, and the tortured sounds don’t end. “No. Ah fuck, no. I’d have stopped it, Anna. Ah sweetheart. I’d have stopped you hurting. Ah fuck. Fuck.”
Abruptly he pulls back. My face cupped in his hands, his gaze desperately searches mine, his eyes glistening. “You stopped hoping?”
“Yes.”
He’s absolutely still. “How long did you hope?”
“Gunner—”
“How long?”
A pained breath shudders from me. “A long, long time. Since I met you. But I tried not to. Because every time you pushed me away and—”
“I didn’t know it hurt you when I did.” Face bleak, he shakes his head. “I didn’t think it mattered to you. Why did you never say it did?”
“Because what was I supposed to do? Slice my guts open in front of you? Every single time, I was the one coming on to you. Every time. I invited you into my bed. I invited you out. I threw myself at you. Each time you pushed me back. How many times do you have to shoot me down before I’m afraid of being shot again? How many times do I throw myself at you? Fifty? If a guy did that to a girl, he’s a fucking creep. Why do you think I didn’t say?”
“So you didn’t want to hurt. And I’m not blaming you, sweetheart.” His gaze tender, his thumbs slide over my cheeks, wiping away the tears. “Why would I blame you for protecting yourself when everything I did was to protect you, too? Are you still afraid of being hurt?”
Under that intense gaze, I can’t even pretend to hide this. “I’m afraid this will end when we find Stone.”
“This?” Gently, he kisses me. “No.”
His sweet confidence has my eyes filling with tears again. Because I can’t be so sure, yet the way he holds me without any doubts of his own makes it easier to say, “But nothing has changed. Your family is still—”
“No,” he says softly and kisses me again. “Not an issue anymore.”
Good. Good. And I’ll make him tell me more soon, but—“And the next time there’s a threat? Will you draw the line between us again to protect me? Because you loved me, but apparently never enough to step over the line. I was never enough for you to take that risk for. Not until some fucker beat me up.”
His brows lower, darkening his features. His fingers tighten. “You were enough. You always were.”
“No. Because it was ten years, Gunner.” Pain tightens my throat. “Ten years, you left that line standing between us. I know now it was about protecting me. To keep me from getting hurt. The thing is, you knew I might get sick any time. You knew that death might come from right from inside me—that your family might be the least of my worries. I was running around the world because I was so afraid of it. And you knew that, too. But you still never stepped over the line.”
“Sweetheart.” With another groan, he pulls me completely out of the bath, swings me up in his arms. “You wanted to live as much as you could. You think I could risk shortening that? But here’s the selfish part of me. I thought all you wanted was sex—and that wasn’t worth risking you. But if what you’re offering is your heart? I’ll do anything. So if you’re wondering what’s changed? It’s this.”
Gently he lays me on the bed, kissing me as his hands work between us, belt buckle clinking, zipper rasping. Then he’s deep inside me, and I’m gasping with the pleasure of it.
“What’s changed?” The raw emotion in his pale eyes burns straight through me. “Is that now you’re mine. And I’ll never give you up.”
“Gunner—” I whisper but the hard thrust of his body breaks his name into a sharp cry.
“And this.” He rocks against me, his gaze locked to mine. “Now I know you were hurting because we weren’t together, and I’ll never hurt you again.”
But this hurts. In the best way. Panting, I wrap my legs around him. “Please—”
Fiercely his mouth claims mine, his cock thrusting deep, harder and harder, until I’m gasping and poised on the edge.
Then he stops and growls against my lips, “Now I know you love me, Anna. And that changes everything,” before fucking into me again, and I’m coming hard, so hard, clinging to him with everything I am as he comes to his own release deep inside me.
His mouth softens, and gently he kisses away the tears at the corners of my eyes before raising his head to look down at me. “Knowing you love me changes everything,” he says softly again. “And all of these years, Anna—If you had known why I was staying away, that it was just to protect you, that I was dying for wanting you…what would you have done?”
It would have changed everything for me, too. “If I’d known you loved me? I’d have gone after you. I’d have worn you down. And I’d have never let up.”
“Then are you going to let up now? Are you going to let this fear get in the way? Because it’ll fucking kill me if you walk away,” he says hoarsely. “You going to do that to me now?”
“No,” I whisper on a shuddering breath. “And if you ever told me that we have to go back to being what we were—to keeping it simple—it would kill me.”
“I’ll never tell you that. Never. I’m going to give you that future you want, sweetheart. And whatever is in that future…in our future, we’ll face it. Together. No more lines between us. All right?”
I only nod and kiss him, because my throat’s too tight to answer with words.
“Now,” he says and reaches for the phone. “This photo. You look so fucking hurt, baby. It kills me just to see it. You want to get rid of it? Because you don’t need this reminder anymore. We should do another picture, maybe one of your pussy, and I’ll write ‘Gunner was here’ with my tongue.”
Giggling, I snatch the cell before he can trash the picture. “No. Because here—this is what I wanted to tell you. To show you. Because in this photo, you already had my heart. Even not really knowing much about you. That’s how I kept a tiny piece of it to myself—telling myself that I didn’t really know you. Just a tiny piece that I tried so hard to protect. Because the rest of my heart was yours. And now…knowing you, you have that tiny piece of my heart, too. You have it all. And that’s the difference between this…” I extend the phone out over our heads, snap the picture. “And this. Look at us. Look how much I love you.”
“Ah fuck,” he says and his voice is hoarse again, but he’s not looking at the photo. He’s staring at me, his eyes glit
tering, his hand clamped to his chest. “Shit. This is why you started crying when I said it. Oh my fucking heart. Say it again.”
“I love you.” When he groans and clutches his pec, I grin and lean in, flicking my tongue against his lips. “Does it hurt? Don’t worry, baby. I’m going to make you feel real good again. Maybe I’ll be the one who goes down and writes ‘Anna was here’ with my tongue.”
With a laugh, he claims my mouth again.
And grabs my phone.
33
Anna
When the knock comes on the hotel room door early the next morning, I’m already dressed. No need to wake up—neither Gunner nor I slept last night. Now I’m sore and tired and more hopeful than I’ve ever been, happier than I ever dreamed.
Gunner opens the door. I don’t need to see his face to know he’s grinning when he greets the huge man standing there—Bull, the Hellfire Rider who’ll be escorting me home.
But apparently Bull didn’t only come to pick me up—he also brought Gunner’s kutte with him.
“The prez said you’d need this,” the big man says. “The other brothers are waiting for you down in the lot.”
Gunner’s throat works as he takes the Riders’ colors. He turns to face me when he slides into the kutte, his pale eyes blazing, and it’s like everything in the world settles into place when that leather settles over his shoulders again.
And I do more than hope. For once, I trust that everything will be all right. Because Gunner’s wearing that kutte again, so it has to be.
My throat a thick lump, I give him a thumbs up. “Looking damn good.”
Looking as he should.
With powerful strides, he crosses over to me, catches my face in his callused hands. “I’ll bring him home, sweetheart.”
“I know.” I do.
“And everything will change for you and me.”
I’m too overwhelmed to speak, so I nod, then he’s kissing me long and deep.
Too soon he lifts his head, says hoarsely against my lips, “I love you, Anna.”
“I love you, too,” I tell him, and he kisses me hard again.
