Chapter Eight
“Angel?”
Cade walked the length of the street, scanning the cars parked in the small lot, occasionally calling her name. One of the regulars from the Come Again had seen her by the apple cider booth, and then someone else mentioned seeing her walking by the post office.
He’d been around the block twice, back through the town square at least three times and he still hadn’t found her.
He shouldn’t have left her like that. He hadn’t wanted to say anything, offer her anything he couldn’t deliver on, until he’d talked to Ethan. But he should have said something that would have guaranteed she wouldn’t disappear on him.
And it wouldn’t have bothered him half as much if Scottie or Angel’s grandmother knew where she’d gone, but neither of them had seen her either.
He started back toward the square when the sound of a cell phone ringing stopped him in his tracks. He didn’t see anyone on the street, the closest people half a block up. He glanced around. Maybe someone had left their phone in their car.
The ringing stopped just as Cade spotted the little black bag with pagan symbols on it by a tire. The same one he’d seen Angel with earlier?
He snatched it off the ground, hoping he was wrong and it wasn’t Angel’s purse at all.
The phone rang again as he pulled it out of the purse Bryce Lancaster lighting up the screen.
Cade’s gut clenched. Maybe she’d just dropped it. It didn’t mean anything had happened to her. Stomach twisting, he slid his finger across the screen answering the phone. “Hello?”
There was a pause, and then deep male voice demanded, “Who’s this?”
He blew out a nervous breath, praying there was a reasonable explanation for Angel’s purse lying in the street. “Cade Marshall.”
“And what are you doing with my sister’s phone, Mr. Marshall?”
Angel hadn’t told him a lot about her brother the night she’d spent at Cade’s, but she had mentioned Bryce was a lawyer and former District Attorney.
Scottie walked down the street toward him.
“Hold on,” he said into the phone, focusing on Scottie. “Did you find her?”
Scottie shook her head, and the sick sensation in his gut got a thousand times worse.
“Where’s Angel?” Bryce demanded.
“We don’t know. She was here…” He broke off not wanting to worry her brother in case it turned out there was a logical explanation for her disappearance, but at the same time he’d want to know what was going on if the situation was reversed.
“In Sapphire Falls?”
“Yeah.”
Bryce cursed. “Where is my sister now?”
“I can’t find her. I left her for a few minutes and when I came back she was gone.” He’d been such an idiot. He should have brought her along, or left her with her grandmother.
Her brother said something muffled to someone in the background on his end, then spoke into the phone. “Has she seen Lewis?”
“Lewis?” Cade repeated. “I don’t know who that is.”
Opposite him, Scottie paled. “Her ex-boyfriend.”
“He’s been stalking her,” Bryce interrupted. “I’ve been trying to get a hold of her for the last hour. We think he might have headed for Omaha in the last couple days, but we’re still trying to confirm. I wanted her to be on the lookout for him, just to be on the safe side.”
“She had a boyfriend who’s now stalking her?”
Scottie shook her head then shrugged, not doing a great job of clarifying things for him, but with Angel missing the details didn’t matter so much.
“He certainly has been persistent in trying to talk to her,” Bryce clarified.
Jesus. “Is he dangerous?” He clutched the purse he couldn’t imagine that Angel would have dropped by accident.
“There’s been some mild vandalism, but that’s all.”
Until now. Bryce didn’t need to say the words. Cade got the message loud and clear.
“How well do you know my sister, Mr. Marshall?”
“It’s Cade.” Seeing as he planned on getting to know Angel and her family much better, he might as well make that clear right from the start. “And I know her better than you probably think.”
He knew Angel had worried that she’d be exposing her family by telling him the truth, and he didn’t want to cause problems if she wasn’t supposed to out herself, but he couldn’t afford to play the clueless card. Not if there was a chance her life was on the line.
“Tell me he’s just some ordinary asshole and she can easily protect herself against him.” She’d managed to keep a massive coffin from toppling over. She’d have to hold the advantage if this guy got anywhere near her.
“He’s an ordinary asshole,” Bryce said, sounding a little amused, “but that doesn’t rule him out as a threat.” Bryce paused to speak to whoever was in the background. “I’ve got a friend coming who can help find her. Her name is Tate and she’ll be in Sapphire Falls sometime in the next two hours. She’ll call Angel’s phone when she’s close.”
Unfortunately that didn’t make Cade feel a damn bit better. A lot could happen in two hours. “Tell your friend to drive faster,” he said then hung up the phone.
Scottie wrapped her arms around her middle. “She’s in trouble, isn’t she?”
Cade nodded, then strode for the square.
“Where are you going?”
“Someone else must have seen Angel.” If two people had, there had to be more. “I’ll talk to every damn person in the square until I find them.”
* * *
Angel woke to the sound of voices that echoed like they were underwater. Or she was. She forced a gritty eye open, the light immediately piercing her brain, and she sucked in a breath.
Where—
“Of course I’m her boyfriend. I already told you. You’ve seen the pictures. ” A deep voice pushed through the fog, and Angel tried to concentrate on it, feeling her way through the haze bogging down her thoughts.
“She spent most of the weekend with Cade,” a woman said, but Angel couldn’t place that voice either.
What was wrong with her? Why couldn’t she get up? She’d been with Cade. And then he wasn’t there. Where had he gone and where was she?
“We decided to take a little break, and she just wanted to make me jealous. We planned to meet up here tomorrow.”
Footsteps tapped on the floor. “I shouldn’t have agreed to this. It was a mistake.” The woman walked away.
“We’re leaving town. She won’t come between you and Cade any longer.” Someone hit something hard. The wall or a door maybe. “She’s everything to me. And sometimes you have to go to great lengths to protect the people you love, even if they don’t realize you’re looking out for them.”
Angel curled her fingers around the blanket under her, the voices becoming clearer. Lewis. Lewis had done this. And…and Shelby.
The cider. There must have been something in the cider. Something she still had in her system.
“I won’t say anything,” Shelby finally said, not sounding happy about it.
She really wasn’t going to sound happy about anything when Angel got her shit together and managed to keep her eyes open for more than a few seconds at a time.
A door closed, and Angel tried to force herself up. Her arms trembled from the effort, and she collapsed back on the mattress. She could move her head without too much dizziness, though, and managed to take in the interior of a small motel room. Another double bed was a few feet away. The television was on but muted, and the curtains were drawn, making it impossible to guess what time of day it was.
God, how long had she been out?
“You’re awake.”
Panic iced her blood as Lewis sat on the bed across from her. While he wasn’t classically handsome, he’d always possessed a boyish charm she’d found sweet. She couldn’t find any evidence of it now, though. Dark stubble covered his jaw and dark circles shadowed his eyes. He couldn’t have slept much in the last few days.
How had she not seen that he could be capable of something like this? Was this as far as he’d take things? Or would he do something worse if she didn’t cooperate with whatever he had in mind?
“I’m sorry about your car.”
“What?” It came out closer to a croak.
“Shit, sorry.” He rose and quickly returned with a glass of water.
He set it on the table between the beds and moved to help her up. She recoiled from his touch on instinct, then regretted it when his face darkened.
“You know I wouldn’t hurt you.”
No, just kidnap her, but pointing that out wouldn’t be wise. “Where are we?”
“A few miles outside Sapphire Falls. You should have told me where you were going. Anyway,” he said, dismissing the subject as he sat back down opposite her.
At least he wasn’t touching her. She managed to get herself up to lean against the headboard. Her hand still shook as she picked up the water, and then remembering how she’d ended up here, she hesitated.
Lewis didn’t seem to notice.
“I had too much to drink.”
For a minute she thought she’d lost consciousness and missed part of the conversation. “What?”
“When I wrote bitch on your car. I had too much to drink and was stupid. I lost my head.” Lewis grinned like trashing her car was equivalent to dropping a carton of eggs on the floor.
Angel didn’t say anything. She just had to wait a little longer until her head cleared. If she used magic with something like this in her system, it would backfire and she didn’t want to imagine how Lewis would respond to witnessing something like that.
She was pretty sure Cade wasn’t the least bit typical in that department, but he’d had years to think about what he saw in the woods that night. Given Lewis’s recent unpredictable nature and the lengths he’d gone to get her alone, she wasn’t sure he’d handle it as well. And he was the last person she wanted to know about her and her family.
Talking her way out of this situation was her best bet for the time being.
“Can I have my phone?”
Lewis frowned. “The only person you need to talk to right now is me, Angel.”
“I just don’t want my grandmother to worry. She’s probably wondering why I left the festival without saying anything.”
“She can wait a little longer.” He leaned forward, elbows on his knees, hands clasped together. “I know I upset you before, but I’ve been trying to apologize.”
None of the texts or voicemails he’d left in recent weeks had involved any kind of apology. Not that it would have mattered since the damage to her car had nothing to do with their break up.
“I accept your apology, Lewis.”
His face lit up, and she wondered if that had been the right thing to say at all.
“Now that we have that sorted out, I think we should head out now and not wait for the morning.”
“Lewis I can’t leave without checking in with my grandmother.”
He rose to start throwing his few belongings in a duffel bag on the chair. “You can call her from the road.”
“All my stuff is still there.”
“I already picked it up for you,” he said, looking pleased with himself for having the foresight to do that.
Her skin crawled. “Lewis, were you at my grandmother’s before tonight?”
He reached into his duffel bag and withdrew the scarf that had gone missing. “I stopped by to see you and you weren’t there. You never told me where exactly your grandmother lived, so I had to ask around.” He bunched the material in his hand, his knuckles whitening. “I know you weren’t serious about him.”
She finally managed to sit up on the edge of the bed without her body making it a struggle. “Lewis, I need you to sit down for a minute. Please.”
He hesitated, searching her face, then finally reclaimed his previous spot.
“Do you remember why we stopped seeing each other?”
“We’re just on a break. And I know everything was my fault.” He captured her hands, her reflexes still too slow to avoid it. “I’m going to make it up to you, Angel.”
Her eyes drifted shut. How could she not have seen the signs he’d become obsessed? Lewis had always been clingy and never spent any time with his own friends once they’d started seeing each other, but she hadn’t realized there was anything broken inside him.
Or maybe she had on some level and that’s why they’d only dated for a short time.
“I can’t go with you, Lewis.”
His brows snapped together.
“I need to go back to my grandmother’s. My family will be looking for m—”
Lewis shot to his feet. “I already have our tickets.”
Testing her weight, Angel held onto the mattress and pushed to her feet. Her knees wobbled, but held. Her head, on the other hand, didn’t want to cooperate, dizziness hitting her hard.
She sank back down. “We can talk about the tickets after I call my grandmother, okay?” There wouldn’t be any reasoning with him, and in case she didn’t recover fast enough to deal with him before he tried forcing her into a car, she needed someone to know where she was.
Lewis grabbed the phone between the beds, snatching it up so hard the cord ripped out of the wall. “You can call her later.” He tossed it on the small sofa and went back to gathering up his stuff.
Okay then. Backup plan it is.
Angel scanned the room, hunting for a weapon. She spotted the clothes iron sitting on the top shelf in the partially open closet. She concentrated on the object. “Telum manus.”
The iron dropped to the closet floor instead of appearing in her hand.
Shit.
* * *
“Shelby.” Cade jogged toward the woman he’d been doing his best to avoid since he’d hidden from her at the Come Again.
Looking back, it had been a juvenile stunt but one he couldn’t entirely forget since it changed the course of his life in more ways than one.
“Have you seen Angel?”
Her eyes widened, and she turned away as though she hadn’t heard him, hurrying toward the cider booth.
Apprehension snaked up his spine, and he tried shaking it off. “Shelby!”
She slid an apron on, busying herself with work when he was pretty sure she’d spent most of her life avoiding all types of it.
“I asked if you’d seen Angel.”
Her shoulders tensed, and she turned away from him. “It’s bad taste to throw her in my face, Cade.”
What the hell was she talking about? “I’m asking because it’s important and has nothing to do with anything that happened between us. Dot saw the two of you talking earlier. I need to find her.”
Shelby flipped her hair over her shoulder. “You could at least be helpful while you’re standing here and hand out some cider.”
Cade grabbed her hand and hauled her away from the booth. “I’m not screwing around here, Shelby. I’ve been looking for you for nearly an hour. Where did you see Angel last?”
“I saw her with her boyfriend, okay? They left together,” she said it just snotty enough to get his back up.
“No way.” Scottie joined them just in time to overhear their conversation. “She wouldn’t have gone anywhere with him. Not without saying something to one of us.”
Shelby shrugged. “Maybe she had other things on her mind. They seemed pretty cozy to me.”
Something in her voice set off warning bells in his head. “What were you and Angel talking about earlier?”
“Girl stuff.”
“Bullshit.” Shelby wouldn’t have gone out of her way to say anything nice to Angel when she would have viewed her as competition.
Angel’s phone rang in his pocket, and he pulled it out. He handed the phone to Scottie, keeping all his attention on Shelby. “What aren’t you telling me?”
Her gaze dodged to the left. “Nothing.”
“Where is she?” he yelled, not caring that everyone in the immediate area turned to look at them.
“They’re together, why do you care?”
“He’s fucking stalking her, that’s why.”
Shelby blanched. “No. He cares about her. He said—”
It felt like someone kicked him in the gut. “You talked to him? Where is he?” He’d never once in his life thought about hitting a woman, but he might strangle Shelby if she didn’t start talking. “Where the hell did he take Angel?”
“Tate’s here. She’s parked down the street,” Scottie interrupted, her eyes ripping Shelby to pieces.
“They’re at a motel—”
Cade grabbed Shelby’s arm and started walking, motioning for Scottie to lead the way to Tate. “If anything happens to her,” he warned, not trusting himself to say anything more than that.
“She was fine. Only sleeping, I swear it. I never wanted her to get hurt, I just wanted her to leave. You know how I feel about you.” Shelby sniffed, and he couldn’t be bothered to care if her tears were real or meant to garner her sympathy.
A woman with long, dark hair paced on the sidewalk. “I’m only getting a faint vibe. I need more to go on.”
Barely keeping it together, he nudged Shelby forward. “Tell her where they are.”
She wiped at her cheeks, looking miserable, but not half as miserable as she’d be when he found Angel and turned Shelby over to Ed to deal with. Let her cry all over the town cop and see how far that got her.
“They’re at a motel a few miles down the highway. The place with the tiny cottages out front.”
Cade opened the car door and ordered Shelby into the back seat. The brunette gave him a questioning look, but didn’t object. She slid back behind the wheel, pulling away from the curb when the last door shut.
She glanced at Shelby in the rear view mirror. “Quiesco.”
Shelby yawned and rubbed at her eyes.
“Quiesco,” Tate repeated, her voice lowering.
Shelby relaxed against the seat, eyes closed, chest gently rising and falling.
Well shit. Apparently he didn’t need to ask if Tate was a witch too.
“You’re Scottie, right? Angel’s mentioned you. Said you’d be a blast to have on one of our girls-only margarita weekends.” Tate’s gaze flicked to his in the mirror. “You, I don’t know.”
“He’s the boy from the woods,” Scottie said as though that explained everything.
Tate cocked her head like she was trying to remember the significance. “That doesn’t mean a lot to me when I can’t tap into Angel.”
Moving objects, making people fall asleep, and now tapping into people—whatever the hell that meant—what couldn’t these people do? “What do you mean by that?”
“I’m part of the Tribunal,” she began to explain, then shook her head. “Bottom line, I help keep witches out of trouble, sometimes by protecting them from themselves, and sometimes from other people who might harm them.” There was no mistaking the warning in her voice when her eyes met Cade’s in the mirror. She hadn’t decided yet if he fell under the latter.
“There!” Scottie pointed to the motel, and Tate turned into the lot. She drove slowly past the units, her gaze lingering on the last cottage. She touched a necklace similar to Angel’s. “They’re in that one.”
“How long will Shelby be asleep?”
“Not long. It only works on weak-willed people usually and we need to be done before she wakes up. Did she say what Lewis did to Angel?”
“How do you know he did anything to her?” Cade imagined Lewis had somehow coerced her to go along with him, but he’d been trying his hardest to not to think about how far he might have gone if she’d put up a fight.
“For one, she would have used her magic and gotten out of there on her own and you wouldn’t need me. Two, if she was conscious and completely fine, I’d be able to teleport directly to her instead of driving up to the front door. Injury or sickness makes it hard to connect.”
“Teleport?” Scottie said, sliding out from the car. “You can do that?”
Cade didn’t care what the woman could do. He sprinted across the lot, needing to make sure Angel was okay. If that bastard hurt her…
Tate appeared out of thin air directly in front of him on the steps leading up to the cottage, and not expecting it, his heart cartwheeled into his ribs.
Jesus.
She winked at him, her hand going to the doorknob just as something thumped against the wall inside.
“Angel!”
Tate vanished—damn that was creepy—and then the door opened in front of him, and there she was on the other side. His brain was having trouble keeping up, continually trying to grasp a logical explanation for what she could do and coming up empty.
“She’s okay.”
The words jarred him into motion, and he pushed past her, not giving a shit about logical explanations for the time being. Angel stood in the middle of the room, visibly swaying on her feet. A man was sprawled on the carpet next to her, an iron lying on its side next to his head. Blood trickled from a cut above his eye.
Cade ignored the temptation to deliver a matching blow to the asshole’s other eye and scrambled toward her. Her legs started to give out, and he caught her around her waist, pulling her against him.
If he had his way she’d spend the rest of the night right there, head to his heart, her arms squeezing him tight.
She was okay. Thank god she was okay.
He smoothed her hair back from her face, looking her over and knowing Lewis would be getting a whole lot more than a matching scar if he found a mark on Angel anywhere.
Her eyes were a little glassy, but she managed a smile. “Can I get a ride home, cowboy?”
He buried his face in her hair, aware he was trembling now that the adrenaline was leaving his system. “As long as you’re coming home with me.”
“Are you sure?”
He ducked a little, bringing them to eye level. “Forget what I said about not looking for forever. It’s all I want. All I’ve ever wanted.”
“But when you walked away,” she began.
He silenced her with a kiss, well aware he’d screwed up, that they both had, and this was where they cleaned the slate and started over. Not as the kids they’d been in the woods, but as two adults who had so much to make up for.
“I need to sit down. I’m still a bit woozy from whatever was in the cider.”
He scowled, ready to throttle Shelby all over again.
“I should call the police,” Scottie said, slipping outside to make the call after he nodded.
Angel batted a duffel bag aside and sat down in the room’s only chair. “You don’t need to decide anything about us, right now. I know this freaked you out—”
“Me?” Was she kidding? He dropped to his knees in front of her, still so relieved she wasn’t hurt, he was having a hard time not dragging her back into his arms. “I’m not the one he abducted.”
“Dealing with crazy people is a rite of passage for our families,” Tate offered, standing over the guy on the floor. She shrugged. “You learn to take it in stride.”
Angel smiled. “Thanks for coming, Tate. You can tell everyone I’m okay. I’m guessing you must have driven part of the way here since I was a little out of it.” When the brunette nodded, Angel added, “We’ll get the rental car back if you want to take off.”
“You sure? I can stick around.”
“I’m in good hands.” She met Cade’s gaze, and his heart double-tapped the walls of his chest. “And try to make sure Bryce doesn’t tell my father. I’m not up for that conversation right now.”
“No problem.” Tate waved and then was gone like she’d never even been there. No smoke, no glow of fairy dust or flashes of light. Just gone.
“How freaky is that?” Angel teased.
“I might be okay if you tell me tomorrow that I dreamed that part.” He was pretty sure his brain operated better that way. At least it would for a few more days while he tried to process everything else.
Sirens echoed in the distance, and Scottie reappeared in the doorway. “I’m glad you’re okay, Angel.” She crossed the room, enveloping her friend in a fierce hug. “I told you all you needed was a country boy.”
Cade was sure he was missing something, but Angel burst out laughing.
* * *
Three weeks later
“I swear I wouldn’t have turned you into a frog,” Angel vowed, lifting the sheet to run her hands through Cade’s hair.
Moments ago he’d disappeared beneath the blankets to carry out his own form of special interrogation, and she wasn’t at all sure she was going to survive it.
He grinned up at her, proving how much trouble she was in. “But you could have.”
“More likely it would have been a spider.”
He bit the inside of her thigh. “You are a cruel, cruel woman.”
Angel laughed, pushing against the shoulder wedged between her legs. “You should have realized that when you moved in.”
She’d gotten the keys to her—their—studio apartment two weeks ago and they’d barely left the place. If they weren’t tangled up in the sheets, they were in the shower together or finding creative ways to fit the two of them on her too-small couch.
And when they weren’t taking each other’s clothes off, they were eating, quizzing each other on movies, making plans for the first place they’d like to visit together or he was grilling her about being a witch.
For the first time in her life she was able to share that side of herself with someone besides Scottie or her family, and she was enjoying it almost as much as he was.
And yeah, her father might lose his shit if he knew that she’d lowered herself to using magic to pop a bag of popcorn, but she sure as hell wasn’t mentioning it to him.
He’d taken the news of Lewis’s arrest remarkably well, and had surprised everyone by extending an invitation to Cade for dinner—
Shit.
She tried to get up, but the gorgeous man pinning her to the bed wasn’t having it. She tried to reach her phone, but her fingers were a few inches short. “I need to check the time.”
“It’s only three—”
“Three o’clock?” she twisted her hips, and Cade took that as an invitation to press three amazingly hot open-mouthed kisses to the curve of her hip. “We need to get ready.”
Cade smoothed a hand across her abs, setting off a thousand cellular-level fireworks. “We have time.”
“We’ll be late,” she protested in vain, sinking her hands into his hair and holding him to her, knowing it wouldn’t be the last time she fell victim to that sinful mouth of his.
“Then you better let me do my job. Gotta pay my way somehow since I’m currently unemployed.” He lowered his mouth to her sex, taking his time parting her with his tongue.
She gripped the sheets, hips rising to meet the brutally thorough exploration. His mouth, his tongue, god she couldn’t get enough. He whispered something she didn’t catch, the mindless rhythm of her heart echoing in her head as she gave herself over to him.
“Cade,” she hissed, pure heat jack-knifing through her body and streaming straight to her core.
It took a few moments to catch her breath, and then another to coax him from under the blankets before he convinced her to stay in bed forever.
Cade crawled up her body, capturing her mouth in a kiss as drugging as the way he went down on her. She had no idea how she’d be able to leave him in the morning for a preliminary consultation on her next job.
He planned to take the time she’d be gone to really dig into what he wanted to do for the next few months. They’d be headed back to Sapphire Falls in the spring to help with the farm, give everyone a chance to feel out how things were going before any permanent decisions were made.
Ethan was happy with running everything for now, and as far as Angel knew, he and Scottie were still on the outs with each other. Only time would tell how things ultimately played out for them. Angel just didn’t want to see her friend’s heart broken.
At least Shelby wouldn’t be there when they returned in the spring. After things calmed down, Cade had told her that Shelby was his last long term relationship, the one who never measured up to the girl of his dreams. She’d gotten off with probation since she’d ultimately told Cade where to find Angel, and had since moved out of town. Lewis hadn’t been that fortunate, and no one but his fellow inmates would be seeing him for a few years.
Angel pushed Cade back, ignoring the half a dozen parts of her body screaming for him to get closer. “We need to get dressed. Or we’ll be late.”
“So let’s be late.” He rolled over to his back, bringing her with him.
“My grandmother is going to be there.” Delilah Cornerstone planned to make sure Angel’s dad behaved himself at his first dinner with Cade, and lord help Thomas Lancaster if he didn’t.
“She won’t mind.” Cade pressed his lips to her throat, playing dirty, and he knew it.
She closed her eyes and went with it, the delicious sensation overpowering her weakening defenses. Who was she kidding? Her defenses packed up and left town the moment Cade put his hands on her.
“Maybe just a few more minutes,” she relented.
Cade mouth froze against her skin. “He’s doing it again.”
She bit her lip to keep from laughing.
“And it’s creepy.”
She pushed up on her hands, hovering above the incredible man who’d enthusiastically embraced being with her, witch and all. “All one-eyed cats who stare at people are creepy.”
“I’ll have to take your word on that.” He growled at the cat, and Cyclops merely swished his orange and white tail, unconcerned with either of them. Cade reluctantly gave up worrying about the animal. “Weren’t you saying something about getting ready for dinner?”
“Was I?” She sat up, straddling his body and letting the sheet fall away.
Properly distracted from his furry nemesis, Cade pillowed his hands behind his head, gaze tracking down her body. “Yeah, we wouldn’t want to be late. Might leave a bad impression.”
“You’re right.” She hopped off him, making it as far as the edge of the bed before he wrapped an arm around her and dragged her beneath him.
“Nice try.”
She arched into the addictive weight of Cade’s hard body pushing her into the mattress. “You win some and you lose some.”
He rubbed his cheek along hers. “Then I’m looking forward to spending decades watching you lose.”
Pleasure spiked her bloodstream like a narcotic as she twined her arms around his neck, dragging him down to meet her lips. “And there’s that cocky country boy I know and love.”
His mouth sank into hers, promising a lifetime of one-in-a-million kisses. “Not as much as he loves his wild thing.”
THE END