Page 15

Grit

All Hallow’s Eve

The party was in full swing.

Four months after his world imploded, Grit stood in the middle of a celebration he wanted no real part of and stared down at the section of floorboards he’d last seen stained with the blood of the only woman he’d ever loved.

There was nothing there now, of course; Evander and Elias’s crews had worked their magic, removing every trace of blood, death, and bullet holes. The flooring had been ripped out and burned. The walls, inside and out, were pristine, as though a gun battle hadn’t been waged on the property.

Standing there, he tried to find a connection to the pieces of himself he’d lost. All he found was the same emptiness he’d lived with since summer, the same hollowness he’d carried with him around the country, and then Europe, in his attempt to escape the monotony of his existence.

I learned I have a heart. I love you, Rory.

Fuck, this was the worst idea. Letting Eli convince him to come back for the opening night of Serenity wasn’t his finest moment, but the Brit was scarily persuasive. Especially when Grit was at his lowest point.

The clubhouse was filled to the rafters with people, a beautiful mix of genders, race, lifestyles, and kink. Clothing ranged from elegant gowns and tuxedos to masquerade costumes—the formal invitations sent out stated no dress code, and it seemed the future membership had taken that to heart.

He watched as a trio of Littles ran past in a flurry of giggles, their modest gingham dresses fluttering around their knees as they dashed toward their Daddies. He’d already seen a handful of puppies and a pony exploring their play areas with their Masters, and for a moment, the joy on their faces had been infectious…

Until the poison in him killed it dead.

“Here, you look like you need this.”

Grit turned his head, locking eyes with Elias before his gaze dropped to the glass in the Dom’s hand. He accepted it reluctantly, still ashamed of the week he’d spent in his hotel room, pouring cheap scotch down his throat one bottle at a time as he tended Tabitha’s pillow like a sick child. “Thanks.”

“We’ll make something of this place,” Eli said casually, looking around with obvious pride. “I never really doubted it, but when you pump enough capital into creating something of this magnitude, insecurities creep in. But this… this is the foundation of a family, the very roots of what Van intended to build. Some are here just to be nosy, some will make an impression and move on after a time. Some will find a home here and become more than friends.”

“The community needs a place like this.”

“And what about you, my friend? What do you need?”

Grit raised the glass and sipped, wondering how to deflect the question without offending a man who’d become important to him. “More of this would be a start.”

A grunt of disapproval. “I damn near drowned you in the shower to sober you up once, Grit. I’d rather not go through that trauma a second time.” Blue eyes sympathetic, he sighed. “We kept the security chief position open for you. We still believe you’re the best man for the job; right now, you need to come home. Be part of something positive. Find your family again.”

His jaw clenched tight. The one person he wanted as his family, the woman he’d set in the center of his world, was in a pine box, six feet deep, in a place he didn’t know.

For the first week, he’d wallowed in scotch, ignoring everyone who reached out. By the second, he’d cut everyone out of his life—moved hotels, changed his phone number, locked himself in a box of mourning that was more of a trap than a safe place of healing.

Within a month, he’d sold everything of value he owned, packed a bag, and headed out to see if he could find any semblance of peace without his little tiger by his side.

She’d dogged his every step, haunted his dreams, dominated his thoughts.

In true Tabitha fashion, she continued to stalk him.

Tossing the rest of his drink down in a single, burning swallow, Grit handed him the glass back. “Thanks for the invite, Eli, and the drink. I think it’s time—”

“I’ll have you gagged and hogtied before you step foot outside this building.” The threat was sincere, it was clear in Eli’s tone. “You’ve been running for months, Rory. Cutting people out of your life to protect yourself without giving a damn what effect it’s had on those people. The people who love you.”

Throat squeezing, Grit shook his head.

“There’s a choice waiting for you tonight, and it’s not the one you might expect. There is a family here for you now, if you choose to be part of it.” Elias stepped in front of him, grasping his shoulders to circle him towards the door. “If not, you can go home to the ones who loved you first and love you still.”

Fuck.His eyes burned as he noticed the group standing in front of the double doors with their full attention on him. His already broken heart, still open and raw from Tabby’s loss, gained fresh bruises as he saw their expressions.

Avalon had come to Serenity.

“Or we can make a home together,” said a quiet voice from behind him.

Christ, that scotch was addling his mind faster than anticipated, he thought, if Tabitha’s ghost was visiting him so early in the evening. He often caught her scent when he least expected it, a subtle blow to his fragile grief when it teased him, and sometimes he thought he heard her laugh when the night was long and the shadows dark.

Still, the temptation was too great.

Slowly, waiting for the gut punch when he found emptiness, he turned around.

The blow missed his stomach and struck him in the heart. Breath ragged, he felt his knees buckle slightly, but he forced them to hold his weight as he reached out a hand to the incredibly lifelike hallucination before him.

Tabitha waited, a vision in a sleekly elegant dress only a shade darker than her eyes. Her hair was a few inches longer, still the same silky white blonde, but threads of blue filtered between the layers.

A hallucination had never been more beautiful.

When his fingertips touched soft, warm skin, a jolt ran up his arm. She was real, which was… impossible. Skimming her cheek, her jaw, her mouth, he still couldn’t believe it. Not even when his palm settled fully against her cheek as it used to do.

“You died.” There was a hint of accusation in his voice.

“I did. I was dead for… well, almost too long.” She closed her eyes, leaning into his touch. “Jasper didn’t want to tell you until they knew for sure that the whole breathing and beating heart thing was permanent. By the time I was stable, you were gone.”

Her voice was like music. For months he’d heard it in his head but as the days went past, it started to fade. The excessive alcohol hadn’t helped either, he supposed. Hearing it again, watching her lips form words and her voice just flow over him… it was surreal.

“How…”

She hooked a finger into the high neckline of the dress and dragged the stretchy material down to reveal a scar sitting just above her left breast. The skin was puckered, pink and shiny. “I don’t remember a lot. McKee said my heart was on its last few beats when he got to me. I’d lost a huge percentage of my blood volume; the bullets ripped me up pretty good. They plugged up the holes, pumped bag after bag of fluid into me, and I still flatlined on them twice.”

Grit looked down, imagining his boots planted in the pool of blood she’d left on the floor. The blood that poured from the wounds in her body, through the fabric he’d used to try and stop it, over his hands.

“They got me to a hospital in Denver. I spent a few days in the ICU, doped up on morphine and strapped down because I kept trying to garotte the nurses with my IV line.” She smiled ruefully. “How, I don’t know because garroting is an artform which requires two hands, and I only had one.”

Ah, that was definitely her wit. He dropped his gaze to her wrist when she lifted it, showing off another scar, just as pink. Frowning, he remembered her left arm being strapped up in a makeshift sling; it just hadn’t been high on his list of priorities when she’d been bleeding out on the floor.

Fuck, he was a mess. His entire being was desperate to wrap itself around her, drag her against him and never let fucking go. Trembling with the urge to do just that, he let his hand fall away.

She’d been alive the entire time he’d been grieving. Four excruciatingly long months of hell, of running away from his life to come to terms with losing her, and she’d been alive the whole fucking time.

“Excuse me,” he said, stepping back.

The bubble around them shattered, sending him stumbling into the chaos of the party still going on all around them. The music had changed into a more upbeat rhythm, and people were dancing, laughing, having the time of their lives while his crumbled into dust.

Before he realized what he was doing, his feet were heading for the door.

His friends knew all along she was alive.

His friends knew.

Avoiding eye contact, he bulled through the crowd, grateful those friends were no longer hanging around the doors. He shoved through, forcing his lungs to work as he stepped out into the crisp, clean air.

He’d run, he reminded himself. Shut himself off from everyone who cared about him, who’d wanted to help, and when the pain became too much, he hadn’t gone to them even though they would’ve supported him. Instead he’d taken himself off across the country, then Europe, in an effort to escape.

If he’d stayed, if he’d let them be a part of his mourning, he wouldn’t have needed to grieve at all.

What a clusterfuck.

*

Tabitha

As far as coming back from the dead went, she supposed it could’ve been worse.

Four months of separation hadn’t quelled her feelings for him—on the contrary, every day he hadn’t been with her, she’d suffered. Not just physically, although recovering from three nasty bullet wounds and a shattered wrist was no picnic; emotionally, she was drained.

Tabitha watched him stride away, almost unsteady on his feet. He was leaner, his solid frame whittled down by pain, and there were new lines scoring his face. She liked the fullness of his beard—she’d been right about that, after all.

Did she stay here and wait for him to come back?

Should she follow him?

She imagined he was feeling betrayed. In his position, she sure would.

Jasper and Anarchy weren’t to blame, nor was Atticus. They’d made the choice not to tell Grit about her survival for the first week because, well, in her usual style, she hadn’t made things easy.

She hadn’t lied when she told Grit she was ready to die. At that moment, with Donaghue dead and her own body on the precipice, it felt like the right time to go, and it had reflected on her recovery. She’d given the medical team a run for their money, continually drifting back toward the light.

Ten days after the shooting, with too many surgeries to count under her belt, her subconscious finally made an effort to come back to the world and stay.

By that point, Grit was unreachable. No one had been able to reach him—his phone was no longer in service, his emails went unread. Elias tried to access his hotel room without success, and the team Atticus sent to Denver to retrieve him hadn’t found hide nor hair of him.

They, as a group, had broken him with their silence.

Absently, she rubbed a fingertip over the raised scar on her midriff. That little sucker was the one that set her rehab back by weeks. The bullet that struck her there, and the one in her shoulder, hadn’t passed clean through, and the surgical team had dug into her flesh to find them.

The resulting infection in her midsection had been nasty.

Once she’d been discharged from the hospital in Denver, she’d been flown back to Phoenix to wait out her recovery. Per Jasper’s orders, she’d been tied down to the bed at Heisler headquarters for the safety of the nursing staff.

A smile twitched her lips.

They really should have tightened the straps.

Anyway, her recovery was in the past, along with all the horrible drugs and needles that went with it. She was scarred up but healthy, she’d regained some of her pre-shooting fitness, and she was here on a mission.

One she’d dreamed of for months.

Grateful the dress allowed her to stride rather than totter, Tabitha squared her shoulders and followed her lover. She was almost intercepted by the Avalon women, who all wore varying expressions of concern; she waved them off without a hitch in stride and pushed through the doors into the brisk October air.

No Grit.

Fuck.

“Now if I were a man whose dead girlfriend came back to life, where would I be?” she muttered to herself, frowning as she swept the area with narrowed eyes. The pathways were all lit with solar lights, and the play areas were open to view—not play. “The big bad wolf ran away, thinking the bunny wasn’t going to stay. But the bunny has something she wants to say, and she’s not going to wait another damn day.”

Grit wouldn’t head for any of the designated areas, she thought. Not now when he needed space to think. If she’d learned anything about him during their time together, it was that he was essentially a private kind of guy.

A shock this big?

He’d feel it down to the soul.

When something hurt you that badly, she mused, there was only one place to go.

Determination in her step, she let one particular set of lights guide her, well away from the buildings she’d help construct. It seemed like forever ago when she’d hidden in plain sight, hauling lumber and hammering in nails, using her cover to suss out Elias and judge his character.

Running rings around Grit, admiring him, falling into an obsession that led to the impossible.

Love.

Dominic would roll over in his grave if he knew his prize project was evolving beyond his psychological conditioning. Murder, mayhem, and money were his ultimate goals, no matter how he’d passed it off as scientific advancement and genetic whatever-the-fuck.

Tabitha gave the ground a swift middle finger, hoping her father saw it from the deepest level of hell. She was more, so much fucking more, than he ever intended. Free of his shackles, she was stronger, braver, whole.

Well, nearly.

All thanks to this man, she thought with a sigh, taking the path leading to the right and finding him standing in front of a cabin. Their cabin. The one they should be living in right now, taking the next step toward… well, whatever came next.

Grit looked defeated, and she hated it.

The low heels she wore crunched on the gravel as she approached. She hesitated for a minute, wondering whether to stand beside or in front of him; after a brief deliberation, she took her position before him, looking up into his haunted eyes.

They said nothing for a long time, each taking stock of the other. It crossed her mind whether he saw anything different in her, if her dance with death changed the way he felt about her.

“I missed you,” she murmured. “Every hour. Every day.”

He closed his eyes. “Trying to breathe without you is the worst pain I’ve ever known. I traveled a few thousand miles to wrap my head around losing you, and you were so entrenched in me, I… fuck, Tabitha. I heard your voice in my head. I smelled you on the streets of Paris, in Rome, when I was hiking in the fucking mountains. Saying I missed you doesn’t come close to the reality of it.”

“We tortured you,” she said quietly, more to herself than him. Guilt pelted her, wicked little stones flaying her open.

“I did this to myself, little tiger. How many times have I preached about the value of family, of trusting the people you love to get you through the hard times?” There was anger in his eyes when he opened them again, directed inward. “I isolated myself, drowned my sorrow in whatever bottles I could find, and severed all ties to my life. When that didn’t stop me from sinking into despair, I walked away. There’s no one to blame for this but me.”

“Jasper could’ve told you from the start—”

“I wouldn’t have believed him. You have a suspicious mind, Tabitha—if you saw someone die, if you knew that person was dead, and you were told an hour, a day, a week later that actually, no, they didn’t really die… what would you think?”

“My first instinct would tell me they were lying. My second, that there was a trap.”

“Exactly. Ignoring my family cost me dearly, but you paid the price too. I wouldn’t have… you shouldn’t have been alone.” A muscle worked in his cheek. “My job as your Dom is to take care of you, Tabby. My job as the man who loves you is to love you, support you, be there for you. I didn’t do any of that. You’ve been alone all this time when I should have been by your side.”

Trust him to take the blame, she thought, in a situation where blame was redundant. Cocking her head, she gave him an easy smile. “I wasn’t alone, Grit.”

“I’m sure Jasper was an attentive nurse,” he said sarcastically.

“Jasper was a paranoid asshole,” she confirmed. “I lived through it. I’ve been through worse, Grit, and look where it brought me. Straight to you. This was just a bump in the road, right?” She waited until his eyes found hers. “Why haven’t you touched me yet?”

The darkness around them couldn’t hide his sorrow. The only comfort he’d offered her was the cup of his hand on her cheek; she got the impression that was just to prove she was real.

“This isn’t the first time I’ve had a conversation with you in the last four months, Tabitha. The dialogue is completely different,” he admitted, “but I’ve seen you, talked to you, lost myself in you, and every time, you fluttered away and left me alone again. Part of me knows you’re real; your skin is warm and tangible, your voice is clearer. But I’m afraid that if I touch you, if I touch you the way I desperately want to, you’ll flutter away again and leave me broken.”

Broken could be fixed, she told herself as her heart cracked. Look how damaged she’d been when she thrust herself into his life, compelled by her obsession to be near him. He hadn’t stuck Band-Aids on her boo-boos and expected her to be a fully functioning, normal woman; he’d taken the time to clean and stitch each nick and gaping slice Dominic left in her soul, healing her from the inside out.

It was her turn to discover how deep her patience, her compassion, her love for him ran, and repair the damage she’d caused—however inadvertently—by her actions.

She held her arms out to the sides. “I’m right here, Rory. I’m all yours.”

His breath shuddered out. Warily, as though afraid they might pass through her like a ghost, he raised his hands and set them on her bare shoulders. A moan rippled on the air when skin met skin, growing fervent as they trailed down her arms.

He was trembling, she realized. Her big, strong, unshakeable Dom was trembling for her.

One moment, he was stroking her arms.

The next, she was yanked against his chest, his arms banded like steel cables around her back. Instinct made her freeze, her internal system switching to flight or fight mode before she made a conscious effort to recognize him as her lover, not a threat.

Grit hugged her tightly, his face pressed to her hair. The raggedness of his breath told her he was on the edge, so it wasn’t a surprise when she felt a sob heave through his lungs. “God.”

The wealth of emotion in that single word was powerful enough to make her knees weak. If she ever doubted how much he loved her, if his feelings for her were real, that one word dispelled every doubt past, present, and future.

“Grit. Grit, look at me.” She waited until he found the strength to lift his head, then cradled his bearded face in her hands. This was the man who’d once been the enemy, then a toy, then the obsession who became not only her world, but the sun and the stars and the universe they existed in. “Am I real now?”

“Yes. Fuck, yes.”

Tabitha blew out a quiet breath and pressed her lips to his. She struggled to balance her unease with the need to please; four months without Grit’s patient touching and desensitizing had given her phobias a tiny foothold to regain purchase.

Grit groaned low in his throat. When his control snapped, she didn’t blame him. If she’d been the one left behind, the one trapped in a seemingly endless nightmare of grief and pain, she’d bite off the hand that offered comfort in her haste to accept.

He kissed her as though she might disappear. Like he might die if he didn’t claim her all over again.

When he finally broke away, they were both breathing hard.

“Are you cold?” he asked, reverently stroking her shoulders. “I should’ve asked before. It’s—”

“I’m fine. Crazy ninja, remember? Impervious to pain, cold, allergies.”

He laughed and, while the sound didn’t reflect his normal self, it was a relief to see a glimmer of him shining through the shroud of darkness he wore. “I missed that sassy wit of yours, little tiger.”

Because she could clearly see the weight of regret and guilt anchoring him down, refusing to let him move on, she decided to cut the chain the only way she knew how. “I need to tell you something, but there’s a point to it, okay? Can you just listen until I’m done?”

His brow furrowed. “That’s one way to change the subject.”

“It is, and not in a good way. Hopefully when I finish, you’ll understand why I’m telling you. When I’m finished,” she added nervously, “maybe you’ll see me in a different light.”

“Any light is good for me.”

Tabitha exhaled slowly, precisely, as she took one of his hands in hers. “My father was a bastard. Training and selling children made him a sadistic bastard, among many other things. You know what he did to me, you’ve had to deal with the aftermath of those years. You’ve met the woman he made me into, the one he shaped me into with beatings, rapes, and drugs. The one he shared with his friends because he could.”

Grit’s stance shifted, but he said nothing.

“I’ve blocked a lot of memories from that time, memories I didn’t even realize I’d repressed. A foolish mistake on my brain’s part,” she said ruefully. “Donaghue had specific intentions for me, aside from murdering Elias. It turns out that when he first moved to the US, he wanted a contract killer of his very own to do his dirty work. Even back then, Dominic had a reputation as the peddler to beat when it came to obedient little soldiers.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“He put on a private modeling session for Donaghue, parading the stock in front of him so he could take his pick. Apparently, his pick was me.” She reined in the shudder, the disgust that still lingered, and continued without a hitch in stride. “Dominic wouldn’t sell me; the price offered was too low. Donaghue couldn’t afford more, so he bought one of my brothers instead. Which one, I don’t know, but my guess is he’s dead if Donaghue stooped to scouring the dark web for murder-for-hire services.”

“Tabitha,” Grit whispered, his eyes softening with sympathy.

She shook her head, a silent reminder for him to just listen. “Dominic let Donaghue watch him fuck me, then decided to be generous to his new customer. Donaghue raped and sodomized me because I was nothing more than a commodity owned by one man, given to another.” She paused, trying to balance what Grit needed to know against what would hurt him. “I was ten years old.”

“Motherfucker.”

The snarl, so primal and possessive, gave her crazy side the opportunity to thrive. There was bloodlust in the sound, the dangerous edge of vengeance, and she loved it.

“Dominic was responsible for everything that was done to me; he and Rita went straight to hell with the weight of their sins chained to their ankles. I will never forgive him for the atrocities he performed, but along the way I’ve learned to forgive myself for my actions, the sins I committed at his behest.”

Grit opened his mouth, anger flashing in his eyes.

She planted two fingers on his lips, giving him a warning glare. “Shush. Getting shot three times didn’t erase the crazy, trust me. You taught me about lessons, Grit. The good kind. The healing kind. The lessons that take broken pieces of a soul and file off the sharp edges.” She squeezed his hand, needing him to comprehend what she said next. “What happened here was unfortunate. It was a culmination of fate and consequences. I didn’t think twice about throwing myself at Donaghue; not just because I wanted him dead, but because he had the audacity to point his gun at you.”

When Grit’s expression went blank, she smiled. “What, did you think I didn’t know you were behind me? I smelled you, Grit, over the stink of his cigarette. The hairs on my neck told me you were there even though I didn’t see you. I made my move because it was time to do so, and I was happy to die if it meant you didn’t. I died because a lifetime of murdering people took its toll; I was emotionally, physically, psychologically strung out. That was my escape.”

“Your escape?”

“I said shush. I’m not saying it was right or wrong, I’m telling you how I felt in that moment. My point is, there’s a lesson for you to learn right now. We can’t move on without it, so pull on your big boy boxers and start learning.”

A glimpse of the Grit she knew and loved made an appearance; first with the arch of an eyebrow, then with the baleful, dominant stare he pinned on her. “Is that an order, little tiger?”

“Well, duh.”

“I see.” The hand in hers flexed. “And what are you teaching me today?”

Tabitha didn’t back down, refusing to show submission. He wasn’t her Dom, not when he was like this, and she’d come to understand his dominance was part of why she loved him. “I thought we’d start with a lesson in forgiveness.”

Jaw clenching, he glowered at her.

“Don’t give me that look,” she admonished, feeling her ass tense. “Grief affects everyone differently. Mistakes were made on everyone’s part; because I’m a practical bitch, I see the bigger picture.” Running her thumb over the ridge of his knuckles, she shrugged. “We’re the bigger picture, Grit. Nothing else matters.”

“That’s a hard lesson,” he told her, pacing his words carefully. “I can’t promise it’ll happen overnight, Tabby, but I’ll work on it because I want that bigger picture too.”

“Well, I guess you deserve your reward then.” Nerves jangling worse than the first time she offed a target, Tabitha released his hand and slid two fingers under her dress, between her breasts. “Are these part of your bigger picture, Grit?”

His grunt of shock pleased her.

She held out the two thin silver rings on her palm. They were symbolic only, placeholders for the real deal. Choosing jewelry for herself had never been her thing, but she’d wanted something tangible for the moment—this moment—when she laid herself wide open.

“I love you. Never expected to, but then, you blew all my expectations out of the water. No other man will ever have my heart. No other man will ever touch me.” She thought she was babbling. It was so unlike her, she didn’t know where her stop button was. “I don’t want anyone but you. You’re it, you’re everything. I—”

“Before I say yes, little tiger, you should know I read the file Rita kept on you.” Grit grabbed her arms when she swayed. “There are no secrets about her part in it all, about the torture Dominic put you through. Maybe it was an invasion of your privacy, but you need to know that my answer is yes, unequivocally, because I can’t imagine being with anyone with more strength, courage, and heart.”

Okay, that was a wrench she wasn’t anticipating. Stunned, she blinked twice.

Rita had spent hours documenting damn near everything about a session—pulse, heart, lungs, sweat. Anything that could be analyzed was, and the results scribbled down in one of her fucking notebooks.

Should Tabitha be angry Grit read the monologue of a depraved scientist? Perhaps. Probably. In one respect, that file held all of her worst experiences together in one place. A catalogue of her humiliations and suffering, her most private shame.

Yet she imagined the years to come, the nightmares and flashbacks which would undoubtably pop out of their dark holes in the middle of the night, and the thought of not having to explain the cause was strangely freeing.

If he knew everything, then her humiliation and shame, her suffering and fear, stayed on the pages of that file instead of being rehashed, brought to life by her voice.

“Jasper,” she hissed.

“I don’t reveal my sources.” Grit said immediately.

“He’s such a meddling asshole,” she grumbled, quite pleased Grit was sticking to his guns and not ratting out her brother. Those obsessive tendencies of hers had chosen well. “Maybe you should marry him instead.”

“I’d rather not.” Plucking the rings from her palm, he held up the more feminine band. “Does it bother you enough to retract your proposal, little tiger?”

She thrust her hand in his direction. “Make me yours, big boy.”

*

Grit

The thin silver circle slipped on her finger with ease.

He wanted to weld it on there, make it impossible for her to remove unless she cut it off. The loss of a digit was nothing compared to the loss of her, so he figured that kind of commitment was fair.

How the hell had tonight gone from one extreme to another?

Not that he was complaining. No one complained about a miracle falling in their lap, especially when she was pixie-sized and gorgeous.

Perfect for him, and him alone.

When she confidently adorned his finger with the second ring, it didn’t matter that they hadn’t exchanged vows. He felt married to her, as though the rings were magnets drawing them closer to each other and binding them through an invisible force.

One thing he was sure of, it wasn’t going to be a long engagement.

They’d wasted too much time already, been apart for four months needlessly.

Shaking that thought off, Grit focused on his promise to work on forgiving himself. His little tiger was full of wisdom nowadays; somehow she seemed more mature, more… grounded. He hoped the experience of being shot and the subsequent recovery hadn’t altered the core of her.

She was attitude and sharp wit, bravery and power. The weapons she wielded were more than just knives and guns; she was the weapon, and he never wanted that to change.

“I need to find a bed,” he murmured, bending to nuzzle her throat. “If I have to wait to have you under me again, there’s a strong chance neither of us will survive it.”

That beautiful, lithe body went stiff. Ten seconds passed, twenty, thirty. Finally, she collected herself and persuaded her muscles to relax. The smile she gave him was half-sheepish, half-anxious. “Sorry. Reflex.”

“Tabby, you don’t lie. Tell me if sex is going to be an issue.” He kissed the side of her neck, just because he damn well could. “As long as I can hold you, I can wait.”

“I’m good, Sir.” She recovered well enough to snap a sharp salute. “You do know Evander and Elias furnished the house for us, right?” Her thumb jerked at the door. “This house, right here. They’re pretty determined that you’re going to work for them, so they built us a home. It has a bed and everything,” she added in a conspiratorial whisper. “A big bed, with really soft sheets.”

“Is that so?” Laying his tongue on her pulse, he counted the fluttering beats of her heart. Bit by bit, his dominant side was reawakening, reacting to her anxiety and planning which steps he needed to take next to keep her with him. “I suppose it would be rude not to christen our new home.”

Tabitha’s head jerked up. “We’re staying?”

“We need stability for a while. They’re offering a great job, one I was going to take anyway. We have a house, a fresh start, and I’m not going to waste one more minute of the time I have with you.” Fishing into his pocket, he pulled out his truck keys and selected the keys he’d hooked onto the ring months ago as a reminder of what might have been. “Can you be happy here, little tiger?”

“As long as you’re with me, I’ll be happy anywhere.”

Murder and mayhem was written on the cards, Grit thought as he walked with her up the steps to the door. She was who she was, and he loved her for it; that was non-negotiable.

Sliding the key into the lock, he took a deep breath, envisioning the future, and swung open the door to what came next.

“Little tiger, I’m not going anywhere without you.”

The End