I walk towards Sofia. Even in the dim half-light cast by the lamps on Boston Common, I can see the redness on her cheek, and the blood underneath her fingernails. I’m so glad that she is alive, and mostly unharmed. But I feel like crap for putting her in danger in the first place. There’s no hiding from this. Every last bit of pain and terror Sofia was forced to endure … it was all my fault.

My boots crunch in the snow. As far as I’m concerned, everything else that is going on around us is just a circus. Matteo’s men are swarming: securing bodies; making sure no passers-by see what’s going on. We don’t need witnesses, not tonight.

Sofia doesn’t take her eyes off me as I approach her. The sadness on her face, the snow on the ground and my love for her; it all makes this feel like a screwed up nativity scene. The weight of her stare makes the journey feel a dozen times longer. It’s impossible to read her face.

Sofia takes a step towards me. I can’t tell whether she plans to kiss me, or tell me she never wants to see me again. She chooses option three; she slaps me in the face. The force knocks me aside. I bring my hand up to meet my cheek. Matteo’s men give us a wide berth. I don’t blame them. Nor do I blame Sofia. I understand why she did it.

“That,” Sofia growls in a yelled whisper, “is for embarrassing the hell out of me.”

I’m rocked backwards: more by the intensity of Sofia’s anger than the pain of her slap. “Embarrassing?” I mutter, surprised by her choice of words.

“But this,” Sofia smiles, stepping towards me and clasping my cheeks between her palms, “is for making it all up to me.” She presses her lips against mine and gives me the longest, deepest, most earth–shattering passionate kiss I can ever remember. It steals the breath from my lungs, soothes the pain from the wounds on my face, and makes me forget the cold. Right now, all that matters is Sofia’s touch.

My hands close around Sofia’s hips. She pushes her body against mine, as if craving my touch, my warmth. I pull back from the kiss, but she clings on, nibbling at my lip. I’d be happy to stay like this forever. But I can’t. There’s something I need to say: a guilt weighing down on me.

“Stop,” I pant.

Sofia peers at me through the darkness. Her face wrinkles with confusion and need. “You don’t know what you’re doing,” I mutter, saying words that hurt me to speak. “You’re in shock. You shouldn’t – we shouldn’t be doing this. Not right now.”

Sofia takes a step back. When the cold night air kisses my skin, I feel like I’ve lost more than just Sofia’s warmth. “Oh?” She purrs, raising her eyebrows dangerously. I should know better by now than to question her, but I can’t help it. I let her down: let her down when I was supposed to be protecting her.

I hang my head in shame. It’s the only response that makes any sense to me. If there’s one thing me Ma and Pa drilled into me over the years, it’s that there’s nothing more important than taking care of family. And if the woman you love, and the mother of your child isn’t family, then I don’t know what is.

But there’s the whole damn thing, wrapped up in a neat Christmas parcel. I didn’t take care of Sofia. I didn’t protect her; not when it came to it. So what the hell does that make me; because I sure as hell don’t feel like a man?

“I’ll understand it,” I say, barely able to raise my gaze to look at Sofia, “if you don’t want to see me again. I deserve it.” The words physically hurt me as I speak them.

“You think that that,” Sofia growls, parting her hips with a display of Beyoncé-like attitude, “was a kiss goodbye?”

I look up. Sofia Morello reminds me of a tiger: elegant, even with the wounds of her kidnapping. She’s poised, powerful and in control. There’s a smile dancing across her lips, lighting up her bruised and battered face.

I want to let myself believe that she’s not messing with me, but I can’t. It would be like climbing to the top of Mount Everest only to slip and fall, my battered body tumbling the whole way down. I can bear a lot of pain: my face is testament to that. But I don’t think I could live with Sofia playing tricks on me, not right now.

“You’re serious?”

“You’re kidding, right?” Sofia giggles. “I mean,” she gestures at my bruised, swollen face, “you’re not exactly the Prince Charming that all the stories told me was going to come to my rescue. But you’ll do, I suppose…”

I rush towards Sofia; towards my girl, because that is what she is once again. I clutch her to my body, ignoring all the aches and screams of pain as I do. Hell, they fade away into insignificance, now. None of that matters, not as long as Sofia is by my side.

I press my lips against hers, kissing her with the same passion as she kissed me: maybe more. Sofia pushes me away, gasping for breath. “Kieran,” she groans. “Take me home.”

* * *

I’m on edge the whole way back to my place. Until Sofia is safe behind my locked door, my eyes won’t stop dancing left and right, looking for danger. Anyone that tries to mess with Sofia tonight – hell, ever again – won’t last a second. We pass through the lobby of my apartment building, and the concierge diplomatically forgets to point out that I’m leaving a trail of tiny violet droplets of blood on the floor.

I finally breathe a heavy sigh of relief as the door locks behind me.

“Feeling better?” Sofia asks with light dancing in her eyes. I don’t know how she’s so calm about everything that happened to her today. The second I knew that she was taken, my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. I’ve been drowning in a torrent of adrenaline for hours. Now it’s left my system, I feel like a junkie, pining for more.

I grab her hand and pull her into me. We kiss once again. I could happily spend the rest of my life doing this. Through it all, one last unanswered question dances in my mind: is this just a last hurrah, or does Sofia want to spend the rest of her life with me? I know what my answer would be to that question. I want to raise my – our – child with her, not every other weekend. No matter what I said.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sofia whispers, her voice breathy as she breaks the kiss. The emptiness on my lips startles me back to the here and now. “Because this is all kinds of romantic…” Her eyebrow jumps with irony. “But you taste like blood, and I feel terrible…”

I clear my throat. “Sure,” I mutter. That kiss seems to have knocked all the sense out of me. My mind is racing, but it’s not getting anywhere – either fast, or slow. “I’ll grab yer towel.”

I turn, but Sofia tugs me back. She doesn’t let go of my hand. Her grip is surprisingly strong.

“And where,” she whispers with a twinkle in her eyes, “do you think you’re going?”

“To –”

Sofia shakes her head, cutting me off before I have a chance to stammer a reply. “I can answer that one for you. You’re coming with me…”

Sofia runs water in the tub. The bathroom fills with a thick blanket of steam that mists the mirrors until it feels like we’re in our own private winter wonderland. She doesn’t even let go of my hand when she undresses, she just switches hands. We do an awkward dance as she pulls off first her clothes, then mine, never breaking skin contact. Sofia’s skin is marked with bruises from her first tangle with her brother, and dozens more from her ruthless kidnapping.

“Don’t look at me like that,” she orders, eyes flashing with fire. I shake my head, impressed. This girl will make a Byrne, alright. Hell, she pulls it off better than I do… “I don’t want your pity,” Sofia murmurs. “I want you to look at me like I’m sexy, not damaged.”

I recognize that for what it is: my cue to say something. For a man who has made a habit of putting my foot in my mouth over the years, I think I pull this one off pretty well. “Trust me, Sofia. Ye are the sexiest woman I’ve ever laid eyes upon. I could never see ye naked again fer the rest of me life and I’d die a happy man, ‘cos I’d seen ye once…”

Sofia blushes. “Oh, stop,” she whispers, but with a charmed glint in her eyes that tell me she wants me to carry on.

I stroke her cheek. “Yer the strongest, bravest, most gorgeous gal I’ve ever met. I could meet ten thousand more, and none would ever come close to ye; how’s that?”

Sofia doesn’t reply, not with her mouth. Her eyes tell a different story. They’re wide and rich, and brown, and a hundred feet deep. She takes my hand and pulls me towards her. I pass her, completely naked, and step into the tub. I hiss with pain.

“Jaysus, gal,” I groan. “If yer brother couldn’t kill me, ye just might.” I freeze. That whole thing with me putting my foot in things; I think I just might have done it again. I glance at Sofia, eyes wide with apology. She shakes her head, a sad smile on her lips.

“Mickey made his bed,” she says. “I can choose to remember the good parts of him. But I’ll never forget the man he became.”

I nod. Sofia just put it better than I ever could. She’s one special lady, that’s for sure; and tough as nails. I pull her into the bathtub. Her eyes gleam in the low light, and I can’t tell whether it’s because of the stinging pain of the hot water, or her brother’s memory. I don’t comment on it.

We sink down into the heated water. It stings every cut and bruise like acid, forcing its way into places I didn’t know could hurt. Sofia is in front of me, between my legs, leaning back. My eyes rove her body like it’s a race track, but my own body doesn’t react like it normally does.

“Crap, that hurts,” I mutter, trying to take my mind off of it.

Sofia’s tinkling laugh fills the steamy bathroom. “Call it my revenge…”

Right now, this is what I need. Just a few moments of calm, with Sofia’s skin touching mine. It’s a moment I worried that I would never be able to have again. I wash Sofia’s hair gently, cupping water in my hands and slowly pouring it across her rich russet brown locks. They grow darker and darker the wetter they get, until their red glow is barely noticeable. But I don’t need to see it to know it’s there. I know every inch of Sofia’s body by now – sometimes better than I know my own.

The bathroom fills with quiet calm, punctuated only by the sound of droplets of water splashing into the tub as I rinse Sofia’s hair. After a while longer, even that sound disappears. Our bodies melt into each other, slipping into a harmony of exhausted muscles and soft, steady breathing.

Sofia sits up. The sound of the water cascading off her shoulders might as well be an explosion in the quiet. She turns to face me. “Time to swap,” she grins. “I’m going to do something about that face.”

I reach up to my battered, split skin. Even touching it hurts. “No way,” I grunt. “I’m fine just the way it is.”

Sofia raises her eyebrow, treating me like an errant schoolboy. “Yes way, Mr. Byrne. Because I want two more things tonight: a nice long sleep, and to feel you inside me – preferably not in that order. But neither of those are going to happen with you looking like a monster from my worst nightmare…”

My cock twitches. In the heat of the water, I’d almost forgotten it was there. But the sight of Sofia’s twisted torso, and the faintest glimpse of one of her perky tits, is enough to reawaken my arousal.

“Well,” I groan, still not completely sold on the idea, “I guess when ye put it like that…”

“I do,” Sofia grins.

We trade places, and now I lie back between Sofia’s legs. My back rests on her stomach, and I sink low into the water. Sofia reaches up and grabs a white hand towel from the heated rack. She wets it, and pulls her face into a grimace as she looks at me.

“This is going to hurt.”

I just grunt. I figured that much out on my own.

I hiss with pain as Sofia cleans the wounds on my face. She starts with my split lip, teasing out the fragments of dirt and grit that lodged in the cut. Any arousal that had begun to build when I saw Sofia’s naked body disappears in a sea of pain.

“Careful!”

“I’m being careful,” Sofia mutters, chewing her lip with one eye closed as she concentrates. “Don’t be such a baby.”

I shut my eyes and try to block out the pain. Sofia wets the towel and wrings it out half a dozen times. Each time the room fills with the pattering of water.

“There we go,” she whispers, setting the towel aside and leaning down to kiss my forehead. “All better.”

I can’t explain the feeling that has been building inside me, but I could stay like this – in Sofia’s arms – forever. I never thought that I was the kind of guy who would just settle for one woman. I’m still not. The truth is, I’m not settling for Sofia; I’m lucky to have her. I’m the luckiest man alive.

I’m trying to figure out a way to tell her that without sounding sappy as hell, when something changes.

I feel Sofia move, leaning forward, pressing her tits against my back. Her wet hair tickles my face. Water droplets collide with the surface of the water in a symphony. And Sofia’s fingers close around my cock.

My eyes spring open. I nod – maybe even a couple of times too many. “All better,” I say, repeating Sofia’s words.

My arousal grows in Sofia’s hands. In seconds, I’m at my full-length, and I can’t resist waiting any longer. I’ve got hours of pent-up worry and stress flowing through my veins, and they – I – need release.

I spin in the water, and Sofia leans back, a satisfied smile on her face. “I thought you might like that,” she crows.

I don’t reply. I can’t reply. My mouth can’t form the words, and besides, I’m not going to waste the energy trying. I need to feel Sofia on my cock now. I can’t wait to carry her to the bed. She parts her legs as wide she can in the bathtub, as if she read my mind.

“I guess we don’t need a condom,” she says straight-faced. Then she winks, and both of us crack a grin. I guess we can laugh about it now.

But I’ll laugh later.

I press my cock into Sofia’s pussy. I watch with delight as the girl I thought I had lost bites her lip with pleasure. Her hands circle my shoulders, fingernails biting into my skin. I savor the pain.

“Don’t go slow,” Sofia whimpers through her pleasure as I begin to thrust in and out of her. Her eyelids spring open, and those deep brown eyes search for mine. “I’m not damaged.” She growls.

I shake my head, chuckling. I only just manage to fight off the inescapable, swelling need between my legs long enough to lean in towards Sofia’s neck. I tickle it with my lips, nibbling at her skin. I stop thrusting for just a second; just long enough to whisper into my girl’s ear.

“I love ye, Sofia Morello.”

I thrust into her the second I say the word love. Our hips meet, kiss each other, and Sofia’s eyes widen. For once, she’s at a loss for words. Before she has a chance to say a single one, I cover her mouth with mine.

I have no idea whether Sofia would say the same thing back to me. Right now, I don’t care to find out. If she does, she’ll tell me. Either way, I’ve never been happier. But I don’t have to wait long to find out.

“I love you, too.”