He kissed the tip of her nose. “Hey, you.”
“Mmm.” She wriggled against him then and sat up.
He caught her wrist, his thumb on her pulse point.
She squeezed gently. “I’m fine. Bathroom.”
She slid out of bed, her legs bare under an oversized T-shirt. She padded across the room, the floorboards creaking under her weight.
The bedroom door closed behind her.
He rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. His body ached, but a good ache that had nothing to do with injury and everything to do with what they’d done to each other in the dark.
He closed his eyes.
A sound.
His eyes snapped open, his blood humming. A pattern underneath a muffled sound—wrong for the house. Controlled and deliberate.
Human.
He reached out and clicked on the bedside light.
Nothing.
He was out of bed before the thought completed. Bare feet on cold wood. Shorts. Nothing else. The pistol was where he’d left it on the dresser. His hand closed around the grip.
Loaded. Ready.
His injured shoulder protested the lift, a bright rush from joint to collarbone.Later.
He moved to the door. Opened it. The hallway was dark. The pre-dawn light from his room cast a pale rectangle on the floorboards that illuminated nothing.
Silence.
The bathroom was at the far end.
Harper.
Twenty feet of dark corridor between them.
He stepped into the hall. Chill air drew goosebumps on his skin.
Shape. Movement. Close.
His body responded on instinct. Pav drove the butt of the handgun into the man’s face. Bone gave under the impact. A crunch of cartilage, and the man dropped, stumbling backward.
A second shape came through behind him.
The hallway was too narrow for distance work. This was elbows, knees, walls. Fighting where you could smell the other man’s breath. No extended grappling. No giving his damaged shoulder a second chance to fail.
The second man swung.
Pav grabbed, twisted the arm, too late to avoid it clean.
The blow grazed his shoulder. Pain detonated through the joint, too big to have edges. For half a second, his grip went numb.
He used the numbness, drove forward before the arm failed completely, and slammed the man into the wall. The man’s head snapped back into the wall with a dull crack. Pav hit him twice—kidney, temple—and he went down.
