Like an Archer.
“The Calloway brothers have some ideas.”
“Which ones are the Calloways?” she murmurs.
I gesture to the three hulking men surrounding my mom like blue-eyed, tanned storm-clouds. “Them.”
Her eyes widen, and she stares for a long moment, throat bobbing, damn near drooling.
I gape, pinching her side and she gasps, spinning to face me. “Sorry. Did you say something?”
“Christ,” I mutter, shooting the assholes a glare for existing in her proximity. “I know they’re attractive fuckers, but can you please pretend I’m still the hottest guy the room? My pride can’t take it, baby. I literallyjustpublicly claimed you.”
Georgia giggles, reaching up to kiss me. I glare at her through it, but eventually soften when she tugs on my hair.
“Sorry,” she whispers, biting her lip when she falls back. “I’ll make it up to you later.”
Groaning, I shake my head and release her to make to-go boxes. “Now that’s inappropriate, freckles. Can’t be hard this close to my family. It’s wrong.”
She rolls her eyes, stepping up to my side to watch me plate food. After a minute she finally murmurs, “So how did it happen?”
“Arson,” I whisper, careful not to let the twins hear.
Georgia’s breath catches. “Who the hell would do something like that? And why?”
I shake my head, jaw tight. “I don’t know. But I’ll sure as fuck be finding out.”
A little while later, after Aurora’s been changed and tucked into bed, I strip Georgia naked and drag her into the shower with me, the monitor sitting on the vanity across from us.
Dead on my feet or not, I’m still desperate for her. Still want her in every damn way—more now than ever before.
Her skin is chilled from the night air, her fingers trembling where they curl around my arm, but her eyes? They’re soft, raw, and full of everything I’m too much of a coward to say.
The second the hot water hits her, she flinches with a gasp, then melts, muscles going loose against me.
“I was so scared,” she whispers, lips brushing the scar that cuts across my chest. “I thought you weren’t going to come back to me.”
My hands tighten around her waist as I guide her fully beneath the spray, letting it pour over both of us in a curtain of steam and heat. My forehead drops to hers, and I breathe her in.
“Not a damn thing in this world that would keep me from you, freckles.”
She tucks her face into the hollow of my throat, her breath warm against my skin. Her fingers slide up my back, curling against the muscle like she’s trying to fuse us together.
And for a long stretch of time, I just hold her. Let the water do the talking. Let it rinse away the ash and pain and fear that clung to both of us like that smoke.
But then I remember it’s also washing away my cum, and the honey, and the perfect night we had before it all went to shit.
I tug her face up to mine and cradle her jaw, eyes asking her a silent question.
One she pushes onto her tiptoes to answer.
The kiss is soft, deep and a conversation without words. A promise sealed with every drag of her lips against mine, every sweep of my tongue along hers. She tastes like safety and sugar and salvation, and I don’t even realize I’ve pressed her back against the shower wall until she’s whimpering against my mouth.
I lift her like she weighs nothing, because to me, she’s everything, and she wraps her legs around my waist like she belongs there.
Because she does.
We make love in the steam and water, my hips moving slow and deep, her hands in my hair, her eyes locked on mine. No frantic rhythm like earlier. No wild thrusts. Just us, breathing each other in, chasing something more than pleasure.
