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She defied his dark mood by saying, “She still loves you.”
He didn’t move, except for his jaw, which clenched tighter.
“Marianne. She still loves you.”
He punched his pillow and resituated it beneath his head, mumbling, “She’s where she belongs.”
“Yes, and she knows that. But—”
“But nothing. Hearth and home were what she wanted.”
“She has that with David. All the same, she still loves you. I could see it in her eyes.”
“Affection. Sentimental fondness. That’s what you saw. Like I feel for her. I want Marianne to be happy. She feels the same toward me. But don’t read more into it than that. Now go to sleep.” He reached up and snapped off the lamp on the nightstand between the beds.
Several moments passed, then Kerra said into the darkness, “Why do men avoid conversations like this?”
“Because they’re pointless.”
“What did you think of him?”
“Who?”
“You know who, Trapper. Marianne’s husband.”
“A prince among men.”
“Who is resentful of you. What if he tells someone about the mysterious package you mailed to yourself?”
“He won’t.”
“You’re that sure of him?”
“No, I’m that sure of Marianne. She knew that envelope had come from me. She knew if I’d gone to those lengths, it was no trivial matter. Despite her sweet demeanor, she was a federal agent, don’t forget. She’ll impress on her husband how important that package was and then tell him to erase it from memory. As far as he’s concerned, we were never there.”
“You’re probably right. He wouldn’t place her in jeopardy. He seemed very protective. He loves her.”
Trapper mumbled something.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“What?”
He exhaled with annoyance. “He does love her, that was plain. But I’ll tell you something. In his position, if my wife’s former lover showed up at my house, a man I knew had caused her to lose her job, lose her baby, and had left her with a broken heart, I’d have flattened him as soon as I saw him, warned him not to even think about putting his hands on her, and then I’d’ve ripped his goddamn head off.
“Which is why Marianne is where she belongs, with a nice man who controls his primal impulses, instead of with a nightmare like me who’s on a destructive path and a hazard to everybody around him, and that brings us right back to where we started, which is why I said that conversations like this are pointless.”
His alpha male outburst caused an excited hitch in her breathing. “Maybe if Marianne had known you felt that possessive of her—”
“I didn’t. Wasn’t her I was thinking about.”
She sensed the sudden motion, and then he was there, on his knees straddling her, pulling her into a sitting position. He took a fistful of hair at the back of her head and held it in place while he kissed her with unleashed hunger. His lips slanted across hers. He thrust his tongue into her mouth with insistence.
But then it gentled and moved slowly in and out between her lips with gliding strokes. When he finally broke away, she was left panting for breath and trying to balance. Her heart was pumping fast, but her bones seemed to have liquefied.
“I want to take you like that,” he whispered as he dragged his open mouth down her neck to her collarbone, then lowered his head and rubbed his face against her breasts.
