Page 80 of Defended By Love

After several long seconds of falling, I feel my descent slowed and skewed until I’m drifting horizontally towards his speeding, open arms. Arms that envelop me without question.

Arms that I knew would be there.

“Looks like you’ve done it now,” Grant says as he presses a kiss against the top of my hair.

I look up towards Reinhold. His face is purpling with rage that I can see even from this far away.

“Yeah. I really got to him, didn’t I?”

Grant doesn’t answer. After a moment, I look up at him, only to see him smiling down at me. Unlike Reinhold who’s probably having a heart attack on his balcony, Grant’s smile reaches his eyes. Happiness casts out from him until I feel it in every part of me.

“Not that,” he says with a slight shake of his head. “You’ve finally fallen head over heels for me.”

He doesn’t give me any time to answer.

As an alarm blares out across the island, sending red beams of light in chaotic slices through the sky, Grant kisses me. He kisses me like a fanatic. Like a dying man. Like a desperate man. Like our kiss holds the balm to soothe the world’s hurt.

He kisses me like a man in love.

Which, I guess he is.

No, I know he is.

So, I kiss him right back.

Chapter 35

From a super villain’s lair to Grant’s spaceship sheets, the change of place couldn’t be more different. The man, the feelings, the sense of coming home, that all stays the same. I knew as I jumped off the rockface of the skull that Grant would be there for me just as surely as I know it now when he lays me down onto his bed.

It doesn’t matter what I do, how robotic I am, how obsessed with winning I am, how utterly off-putting I am, he’ll still love me. To Grant, all of that is charming window dressing. He and he alone can see past all that to the real me inside.

Turns out I needed an optimist all along.

Except, he’s not looking optimistic right now.

No, right now he’s looking like a brooding, scowling dagger, sharpened to a deadly point. His chocolate eyes have lost all warmth as he narrows them, taking in every inch of my sprawled-out form across his bed.

He’s always sexy as hell, but when he smolders like that, it goes to another level.

I shoot him my best come hither eyes, which only makes him scowl more deeply.

“You’re in trouble,” Grant warns in a voice like thunder.

“Probably,” I admit. “At least until the reset.”

I’m no expert, but I think it’ll take at least a day for Reinhold to summon a hitman or the like. At least I hope so. I know I’ll still reset, but dying really sucks.

Grant climbs onto the bed, his arms bracketing me on either side of my head. He leans forward and stares so intently that my skin breaks out in goosebumps.

“I meant from me.”

His words run through me, making me shiver.

“From you?” I ask, breathless.

“You nearly gave me a heart attack. Jumping off the cliff like that. You could’ve died.”

He continues to glare at me, his eyes intense and piercing. His messy hair falls in front of his eyes, and I want nothing more than to reach up and push the hair away from his face.

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