Page 95 of Protector Unmatched

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With Claus’s help, they swiftly left the exhibition hall. A few hours later, the dagger was safely stashed away in the council compound. The same evening, everybody was back home. Pearce and his brethren were back in Baltimore. Once again, they’d thwarted the demons’ plan. However, Zoltan had escaped. They would get him next time. For now, Pearce was happy to have escaped with his life and the knowledge that even if a vision showed one thing, it could mean the exact opposite. Daphne stabbing him had been his salvation. She wasn’t his killer—she was his savior. And he would thank her for it for the rest of his life.

A towel wrapped around his waist, Pearce leaned against the doorframe and watched Daphne, wearing his bathrobe, rub her short hair dry with a towel. Instead of then combing it, she ran her fingers through the short strands and styled it into place. Her eyes met his in the mirror.

“What?” she said, and turned around.

“I love how uncomplicated you are.”

She smiled in that wickedly sensual way that he’d grown to love. “Is that all you love about me?”

“It’s not, and you know it. Vixen,” he added.

A soft chuckle was her response, while she walked toward him.

“I also love the fact that you saved my life.” He could still feel the dagger in his torso, the knowledge that he would die, and then the revelation of what the vision had tried to tell him all along.

“I really didn’t have a choice, you know.” She put her hand on his naked chest. “You can be quite bossy for a shy computer geek. You were quite insistent when you told me to stab you with the source dagger.”

“Is that so?”

“See, I’m a very compliant, obedient woman who does what she’s told.” Her eyes sparkled with mischief.

“Compliant? Obedient? Since when? You didn’t stay back when Enya and I entered the apartment where we found Tim. You didn’t stay in the car, like I asked you to, when we saved him from Vasili. Shall I go on?”

“Just as well!” she said, running her hands over his chest. “Or I probably still wouldn’t know that you’re an immortal warrior.” She caressed his damp skin with a tenderness he’d come to crave from her.

“I would have told you.”

“When?”

He put his hand under her chin and drew her face closer. “When I was ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to share my immortality with you.” He brushed his lips softly over hers. “If you want it. If you want me.” He moved back a few inches, giving her a chance to respond.

Her eyes were wide. “Are you asking me…?” She put her hand over her mouth, and suddenly her eyes began to water. She panted and waved her hand in front of her face as if she could stop the tears like that. “Are you saying…?”

Pearce cupped her cheek and smiled. “Of course, I am. In some civilizations, if you save a person’s life, that life belongs to you. I can’t give you my life, but what I can give you, what I want to give you, is my heart.”

“Pearce,” she murmured, her lips trembling.

She didn’t need to say anything further, because he could read her answer in the way she beamed with joy, and her eyes shone with love and affection, the love she’d confessed to him the night before he’d almost died. The love she’d proven to him when she saved him.

“Then there’s something else I need to explain. About immortality.”

She smiled through the wet sheen on her eyes. “You don’t need to explain. I already know about it.”

“About what happens when we mate?”

She nodded. “The night you and the others went back to the house to break into the safe, I got to talk to Tessa and Leila while we were waiting up for you to return. I asked them how they could stand being with a man who didn’t age, who wouldn’t die, when they knew that they would age and eventually die. So they told me.”

He was glad that she knew, that he didn’t have to launch into a long explanation about what sharing his virta with her would mean. “And you’re okay with that?”

“Okay?” Daphne shook her head and laughed. “About not aging anymore? About not dying?” She pulled his face closer to hers. “It would mean nothing if I couldn’t spend those extra years with you. But because we’ll be together, it’ll mean everything. And to share the kind of bond Tessa and Leila talked about with the man I love, I can’t imagine anything that would be more okay.”

Pearce’s heart expanded. He’d never felt such joy in his life, the joy of knowing the woman he loved with every fiber of his immortal being loved him just as deeply.