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Savannah’s hands tightened on my cheeks. “You made me believe in something I didn’t know existed, Ezra. You made me believe in possibility. You made me hope again. And I promise you, you’ve given all of that to your children.”
Devotion clotted my chest. “I won’t fail them.”
“You won’t. You couldn’t. Not with the way you love them.”
I reached up and fluttered my fingers along that defined jaw. “I won’t fail you, either.”
The woman hovered above me.
A fantasy.
A dream.
She searched every groove and cut and twist of my expression for the lie.
My palm covered the entire right side of her face. “Stay with me.”
She hesitated, then whispered with a smile tweaking the edge of her mouth. “Where would I go? Someone has to be here to keep you in check. You don’t seem to be all that great at following directions.”
My arm looped around her waist, and I tugged her close, and there was no keeping out the smack of lust that fisted my guts.
I fell into the tease.
The lightness that rained.
This understanding that suddenly billowed through the room.
Safety.
“Are you going to punish me if I disobey?” I teased.
“I might have to handcuff you to me and throw away the key.” Playfulness pranced across her lips.
I tugged her closer, ignoring the stinging pain that streaked up my side. “Are you tempting me to run? I’m kind of liking the sound of the penalty.”
Taking my hand, she weaved our fingers together and lifted them out to the side. Both of us stared at where we were linked. That energy shivered in the room, and vulnerability seeped into her question. “And when you get tired of me?”
“I think that’s the whole problem, Savannah. I’m pretty sure there will be no getting tired of you. The problem is, I might want to claim you forever.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
SAVANNAH
The barest flush of light flooded the room as my eyes blinked open to foreign surroundings, except I recognized instantly where I was. Recognized the massive man who still held me as tightly as he had when we’d finally drifted to sleep.
An arm as thick as a log was draped over my side, keeping me trapped against his heat, and I couldn’t see over the mountain of shoulders where he slept on his side. His breaths were even and long, and his muscled chest rose and fell with each respiration.
I took the opportunity and allowed my fingers to trace over his skin that glowed golden in the first rays of the morning. Over the solid, packed terrain of his beautiful body. My touch trembled over the tattoo written on his heart, terrified that he might completely hold the battered remains of mine.
My fingertips roamed, and my heart clutched in trepidation. In concern. In worry. How could someone have hurt him this way? What if someone really was after him? What if someone hated him enough that they’d want to hurt the ones he cared for?
My spirit clutched at the thought of his children. I wanted to wrap them up and protect them, too, the same way as I wanted to protect him.
I knew he thought I would look at him differently after he’d told me about what had happened between him and Brianna, that I’d think less of him, view him with repulsion and disgust.
How could I have? Not when he’d been hurt again and again. He’d felt the lashes of betrayal. His own trust carved out with a rusted blade. I didn’t blame him, even though I knew he blamed himself.
It wasn’t like I couldn’t feel his devotion. His devotion to Brianna even though he hadn’t been in love with her any longer. His devotion to his kids.
And he would fight for them, the same way as I would fight for Jessica.
I was having a hard time delineating what happened last night from her. What if Ezra was wrong and this didn’t have anything to do with him but was related to me?
I couldn’t stomach the idea that I’d done anything to put these amazing people at risk.
At my motions, Ezra’s eyes fluttered open. That warm-honey gaze drank me in through the motes that floated through the room. I’d never noticed how long his eyelashes were until then, the way they framed his eyes in a halo of black.
I reached up and gently brushed my fingertips along the sharp angle of his cheek.
“How are you?” I whispered, my voice still hoarse with sleep.
Pulling me closer, he burrowed his face under my chin and murmured against the sensitive skin of my neck, “Never felt better than waking up with you in my arms.”
I should reject those words, but instead, giddiness swept through.
“Don’t get used to it, Hot Cop.” The tease was out with the impact of it. Lightness filling every hollow and recess of my chest.
Pulling at my lips and tumbling through my spirit.
