Page 89 of The Bronze Garza

Lips twitching, he sweeps his thumb from my cheek downward, then slowly along my jawline. “You’re always beautiful, Lyra.”

Heartbeat all over the place, skin singing from his touch, I grin.

Shaking his head at me, he steps back and closes the door.

“Oh, wait, my phone,” I say after he’s gotten into the jeep and fired up the engine.

He shifts into reverse anyway. “You’re getting a new one.”

“Why?”

“‘Cause that’s how they found you,” he replies. “You were being tracked.”

ChapterTwenty-Three

“So I know I’m not just taking.”

Lyra

Torin takes me back to hisplace.

As he keys open the door, I exhale a peaceful sigh, because being on his porch feels like coming home from a long, arduous expedition.

Thisis where I’m supposed to be.

My sigh must have been more expressive than I thought, because he glances over his shoulder at me as he enters the house and asks. “You good?”

I nod, following him in.

“I’ll have your things picked up from Monica’s later,” he tells me. “You can grab something from my room for now. Gonna be in my office for a bit. Need to get on top of this.”

“I thought you were on vacation.”

He gives me a look. “Haven’t been on ‘vacation’ since you got here.”

With a sweet and innocent smile, I ask, “I’m a pain in your ass?”

A semblance of a smile settles on his lips. “You know what you are.”

After a long, heart-fluttering stare, he turns in one direction and I in the other.

On dirty feet, I pad upstairs to his room. Giddy to have permission to it at last. I stop outside the door and press my palm to the wood. How many times have I stood outside this door, ear pressed to the wood, holding my breath so I could hear his.

I turn the knob.

It’s open.

It never is. Except for that one time...

Something delicious unfurls in my belly as I remember... Him sitting at the side of the bed, his hard cock gripped in his fist...

With quiet, tentative steps, I enter the room. And it’s as though he’s left a part of his soul in here, because I canfeelhim. As strongly as if he wereright here, beside me, in front of me, behind me, breathing hotly down my neck.

His bed is unmade. A half-empty tumbler sits on a coaster on his nightstand. Black bed-slippers askew on the floor at his bedside.

With feather-light steps, I wander around his room, letting the tips of my fingers trail over every furniture, every surface, every random item.

Mine, my heart whispers.