Page 97 of Hunter or Hunted

“It freaks me out that you thought the only way to get me excited about this was the mention of murder.” Something that almost sounded like a laugh left her. Those big blue eyes softened as she stepped closer. “I loved you before I knew what you did with David. I loved you before you agreed to anything with Evan.”

That thick mound in my throat began to release. So did the tension that’d gathered in my shoulders since this conversation started. “You just don’t look excited.”

Her lips curved up at the edges, but grief rimmed her eyes. “For a future with you? Of course I’m excited.”

I thought I’d released all the anxiety from my body, but everything relaxed a little more at those words. “I sense a ‘but.’”

“But you hate this place,” she said. “You just gave Simone a lecture about this town. You talk all the time about the bad memories here. I see a future with you, Sebastian, but in that fantasy, we both have everything we want. Is this that? Is this place, this town, everything you want?”

“You’re everything I want.” The vulnerability of those words tasted sick and scary on my tongue. Until that grief around her eyes turned to joy. “You’re right. About my feelings for this town, I mean. Most of the time, I don’t feel like I belong here. But at the ranch, I do, and it’s a short drive down the road. That place is yours now too. Your family. And I can’t see you leaving it. Not forever. I don’t think I could either.”

Were those tears in her eyes? The smile across her lips was real. I couldn’t deny that. “But you told me before that you wanted to buy your own place after Lizzie goes to college.”

“I thought about that, yeah, but now I’m thinking about this,” I said. “My place, my parents’ place—it’s never felt like mine. But when I was a kid, me and Sarah used to play in the woods, and at some point we wound up here. Me and Edwards broke that window on the second floor playing football in the yard.” I nodded upstairs, and she laughed. I did too. “After we found it, any time my dad was really bad, me and Sarah would run down here. She’d play that piano in there”—I pointed to the formal dining room—“and I’d paint on the porch. This house was my Narnia. Another world where things were better. And so, no, I don’t want to stay in my parents’ house forever, but this one? This one I wouldn’t mind growing old in.”

It was more of a smirk than a smile this time. “That sounds like an invitation.”

Invitation. Proposal.

We’d already committed a murder together. Besides having a kid, it didn’t get more committed than that.

“I guess it is.” I swept a snow-dampened curl behind her ear. “But I know you don’t want to rush things. I don’t either. I just…”

“Want to build.” Rather than glassiness, something glittered in her eyes. “I want that too.”

The tension in my shoulders finally eased. A quiet laugh fell from my lips. Just when I started to say something else, the grandfather clock down the hall chimed.

She practically jumped forward, tossed her arms around my neck, and pressed her mouth to mine.

I tucked my arms around her waist, expecting a quick peck, but she pressed her body closer. Her lips opened, tongue teasing, as I opened my palms around her ribs, taking in the feel of her curves, the heat of her skin when I snaked my hands beneath her coat.

31

GWEN

The grandfather clock kept singing as I found the button on his jeans. His hands were careful as they found mine and slower still as they crept beneath the fabric.

I made no effort to maintain that cautious rhythm. When he found that glorious spot between my thighs, I wrapped my leg around the back of his for stability. Kissing his lips, down his neck, I leaned into his grasp on my lower back. He edged slowly beneath my layers of fabric, but I tore ahead.

I started with the buttons on his shirt, then the zipper of his jeans. The grandfather clock stopped singing just as I made it to his boxers.

Only then did his pace quicken. In seconds, our clothes piled onto the dusty hardwoods.

To hell with the spiders that’d wander onto them before we finished. To hell with the dust and debris.

Drywall powder fell like rain as he backed me into the wall, hoisting me up by the backs of my thighs. A giggle of excitement escaped before it morphed into a sigh of pleasure.

More rained with each pump of his hips, and we laughed, and we kissed, and we held on to one another so close, I could think of nothing else.

The taste of his tongue, the feel of his strong, calloused hands on my hips, then my chest. The ecstasy quaking where our bodies met, and that look in his warm, hazel eyes.

It wasn’t that kind of softness I’d seen in them the last time we’d shared one another’s bodies like this. It was heavier, deeper.

Longing. Desire. Excitement, and hope, all bound together.

Those other times, it’d felt only like connection. Two bodies coming together, merging as one. But this had the comfort of those touches before paired with the anticipation of more.

More life. More time. More future.