I packed a bag of my things, and Wolfe loaded it into the car. He told me to wait in the passenger seat while he cleaned up. He dragged the dead bodies outside and made a pile of the carcasses far away from the building and the fields. He stacked them on top of each other before he doused them in gasoline and set them on fire.
I looked at the flames in the rearview mirror. Watched him walk up, the white bandage visible on his forearm, until he disappeared from view. He got into the driver’s seat and drove away from the house.
I watched it fade in the rearview mirror…like I would never see it again.
He steered the wheel with one hand while the other moved to my thigh. His fingers cupped the inside of my leg through my jeans, his touch immediately warm and soothing.
My fingers automatically rested on his wrist for comfort.
I knew the road we were about to take together would be bumpy and difficult, but I would rather take the most dangerous road with him than the smoothest with anyone else. The home that I loved had been destroyed by an invasion, and I was devastated by the loss…but I also knew home was the man beside me.
He drove a few miles away to the house he’d purchased what felt like a long time ago. He pulled behind his gates and parked the Range Rover in the garage. The property was surrounded by a tall, thick stone wall, and the gate was made of iron, so it would be a hard place to infiltrate.
It made me realize how unsafe my villa had been. Anyone could just drive down a dirt road to get to me.
We entered the house that I’d only visited the day he purchased it, and it felt like a brand-new place I’d never been. Fully furnished and luxurious, it was infinitely bigger than my villa. The windows that faced his gardens were at least twelve feet high.
He carried everything upstairs to the third floor, and we entered the primary suite, which felt like its own private apartment. He set my bags on the couch in his living room and set his stuff on the dresser. “I’m going to shower.”
“Okay.”
He turned to look at me, like he recognized so much distress in a single word.
I crossed my arms over my chest and suddenly felt bumps that weren’t provoked by cold.
He strode across the room to come close to me, his hands sliding up into my hair as he cradled my face. “Take a shower with me. You’ll feel better.”
“I—I feel like I just lost everything.”
“I’ll fix our home. Put it back exactly as it was.”
“I know, but…”
“And I’ll resolve this with your father.”
“I saw his face. I can’t remember the last time he was that angry.”
“I’m not afraid of him. I won’t let anything come between us.”
He had an answer for everything. “And…who came to kill me?”
“Warren.”
“I didn’t see him.”
“No, but it was him. And I’ll take care of that too.” His hands slid from my face. “We’re safe here. Take a shower with me, and let’s get some sleep.”
I nodded.
His arm hooked across the small of my back, and he placed a quick kiss to my hairline before he turned for the bathroom. The water came on a moment later. We both undressed and got under the warm water, his walk-in shower large and big enough for the two of us to stand together and both be under the water.
He shouldn’t get his sutures wet so soon, but I knew he would disregard that if I tried to tell him. He would have just let himselfbleed until he started to get dizzy, and thenmaaaybbbeehe would have done something about it.
Watching him shower would normally be a feast for the eyes, but I was so shaken up by everything that had happened that all I could do was stand there. I didn’t even wash my hair. Just let the warm water run down my body and disappear into the drain.
He grabbed the bar of soap and rubbed it across my skin, cleaned my hands of the gunpowder from the weapons and the drops of blood that freckled my skin from when my bullets had pierced the assholes who had come to kill me. He even rubbed shampoo into my hair, giving me a scalp massage as he cleaned me and washed away the violence that had seeped into my bones.
“What do you think Warren was going to do with me?”
