She rests her hand over my heart that beats faster as I study this look in her eyes. “As I was saying, in the shower, one of my favorite songs came to mind. It’s a slow cover of,Holding Out For a Hero, by Ella Mae Bowen.”
My mother loved that song. I know it intimately. She’d sing along to it while forcing Dad to dance. My eyes get emotional. Camille presses that hand at my heart harder into my chest.
“That’s you. My hero,” she whispers.
She sways us slowly in front of my bar door as she quotes the first line of the song. Her head rests against my chest as our bodies slow dance.
We’re lost like this for a while until she stretches up and delivers the softest kiss. It aches in the best way. “Every wordmakes me think of you. Always has, actually. You have been the benchmark for every man that’s come into my life, West Hunter.”
This moment feels parallel to a different timeline where my parents are alive, happy, and in love. The emotion I’ve desperately been working at keeping in escapes. A tear runs down my cheek, and her thumb catches it.
Feels like a betrayal to hide this connection I instantly hold sacred already.
I brush a light kiss against those soft, full lips. She yields, leaning deeper into the kiss that quickly turns into more. Camille wraps her arms around my neck, and I bend, tucking her ass under my arm before lifting and pressing her back against the wall. Her legs wind around my hips as I lick the seam of her mouth. She lets me in, releasing an intoxicating moan I memorize.
This feels like a gift. Universe, God, my parents; I don’t know. I haven’t figured all that out yet. May never figure it out. But this is rare. This connection, so deep and instant, doesn’t happen every day. The last woman I’d expected to feel like my everything is her, and she’s here, in my arms. It’s a wild trick of fate, waiting until we were both ready and the timing was just right.
I have love for this woman. It’s evolved with time, but this one’s different. It’s like my soul is preparing me for a feeling so big, I’d protect it with my dying breath. It’s just the beginning. And to anyone who isn’t us, it wouldn’t make a lick of sense.
It doesn’t have to.
Ending the kiss, I press my forehead to hers. We just stay there, breathing. Accepting. Embracing whatever this is, as surprising as it is.
“Hero,” she whispers, and hearing her call me that, officially, knowing everything it means to her and me, I swallow down more emotion.
“We have all the time in the world. There’s no rush,” I reassure her. “I’m not going anywhere, Nyx.”
She finger-combs my hair at my temple, sending shivers down my spine. “Neither am I.”
The image of all her cuts and bruises, of her clothes being ripped, her jeans missing from her body—I haven’t allowed myself to think too hard on that one or I’d get in my car and allow that dark side I suppress loose. No remorse.
She shot two of them. She declared war on these vile creatures’ egos. Danger is breathing down our necks, and I say, our, because she matters to me. She didn’t start off asking for a hero, but she’s now nicknamed me hers.
No one will lay a hand against her again.
Planting one last kiss, she drops her legs, and I set her down. “Let’s go. My hands are itching to get some carving in tonight.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAMILLE
“You’re back?” a familiar voice cries out from behind.
I turn, and Daniella, the festival coordinator, partnered with Nora, runs over, holding her tablet with a huge smile on her face. We went to high school together. She is a year older.
Her body collides with mine in a bear hug. “Camille Lane, what are you doing here?”
Laughing, we separate. “Hey, Daniella. Good seeing you too.”
“When did you get back?” she asks. “And what happened to your head?”
I need my makeup bag. I meant to cover that before we came. I pull hair over it. “Clumsy moment packing boxes.”
“You moved back?” she asks, glancing at my hulking bodyguard next to me.
“Back home.”
“Great,” she claps. “You know this right here is an expert pumpkin carver,” she tells West.
