Page 68 of Rune’s Solace

“I’d be concerned if you weren’t.”

That finally brought her eyes back to mine. “And last night doesn’t erase anything.”

“No.”

I lifted our joined hands and settled them against the middle of my chest, right over the place she’d been using to find her way back to herself for months.

“It doesn’t have to erase a damn thing, Amy.”

Something shifted in her face, and I watched her try to hide it before I went on.

“I don’t need you to forgive me this morning. Don’t need you to decide what we are, don’t need some promise about tonight or tomorrow or next week. You wanted me last night and I wanted you, and morning doesn’t make either one of us owe the other something for it.”

Her eyes got suspiciously bright, and I wasn’t having that. Not this morning.

I rubbed my thumb across her fingers. “Though I’d appreciate it if you quit calling me creepy while you’re half naked in my bed. Sends mixed signals.”

Her mouth dropped open.

Then she hit me with the pillow.

I took the first one because I had it coming, caught the second swing, and somewhere in the wrestling over the damn thing she ended up half across me with her hair in both our faces, laughing again while I got an arm around her waist. My hand slid up against the warm skin of her lower back, and I felt the laugh catch in her throat when my fingers pressed in.

Too late for dignity. The laughter faded slowly when she realized where she’d ended up, but the smile stayed, softer now, and for a second neither of us moved. She was close enough that I could feel her breath against my mouth, close enough that I could see the sleep still sitting heavy in her eyes, and there wasn’t any fear in them this time. Just her, and the way her hips settled against mine like they’d been made to fit there.

I reached up, slow enough that she saw my hand coming, and pushed her hair back behind her ear. My thumb traced the line of her jaw after, down to the pulse beating steady at the base of her throat. “Morning,” I said.

Stupid thing to say. We’d been awake ten minutes.

Amy looked at me like it wasn’t stupid at all. “Morning.”

Then she kissed me again, and I let the pillow drop. Her mouth was soft and sure, and when she leaned into me I could feel every place we were touching, her knee against my thigh, her stomach against mine, the way her breasts pressed into my chest as she deepened the kiss.

For once, I didn’t think about tomorrow. Didn’t think about Devil, or the man with the ink on his throat, or the club waking up beyond my windows. I just pulled her closer when she came to me, my hand sliding up her spine until she shivered against me. Felt her smile against my mouth when I did, and let myself have one morning where loving her wasn’t a problem I had to solve. It was just Amy in my bed, kissing me because she wanted to, her body warm and willing under my hands.

And for that little piece of morning, that was enough.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHURCH CAME TWO mornings after the best night of my life, and I sat down at that table already knowing it was going to take something back.

That’s how my luck runs. I get one good thing in both hands and somewhere a bill starts coming due, and I’d felt this one riding me since breakfast, low and mean in my gut, so by the time Bolt shut the chapel door and Devil dropped the gavel, I was already locked for the hit.

Mystic had a folder in front of him. That was wrong for a start. Mystic doesn’t carry paper, Mystic carries it all in his head. If there’s paper on the table it means he wanted it in front of the rest of us, wanted us reading it with our own eyes, and that’s never once been good.

“Mystic ran Amy’s history,” Devil said. “Everybody listen. This is the one that matters.” He sat back. “Go on.”

He just put one finger on the folder and left it there. “Took a while,” he said. “She come to us with nothin’. Name, age, not much else. Dawson don’t narrow shit down, so I had to go all the way back. Found the birth certificate.”

“And?” Chain, leaning in.

“Mother’s dead. Years now. Drank herself there.” He paused, not for effect, because Mystic didn’t do anything for effect. Words just came out of him slow. “Father’s alive.”

Something cold moved through me.

“Name’s Cal Rickard.”

Plain name. Could’ve belonged to a plumber, a schoolteacher, some man who waved at you over the fence on Saturday morning while he washed his truck.