Page 176 of Mountain Men Heroes

“Sorry, sweetheart. I’ve waited a long time for you and I guess I lost my head.”

“Waited a long time?” Her head tipped to the side and her voice was just above a whisper.

Of course she didn’t know how much I craved her. How could she?

I pressed a quick kiss on her lips. “Since the day your mom walked into my bar looking for a job when you were barely seventeen.”

Her eyes widened from my admission. “You left this town only a few weeks later.”

“Yep.”

“You had just bought the place.”

I nodded. “I’d signed on to do a job for a company. I had responsibilities I couldn’t walk away from. I left the bar in the hands of a family friend?—”

“Birdie.”

I nodded again. “And then you didn’t come back for three years.”

I swallowed wanting to tell her everything from fear of scaring her away, but at the same time knowing the darker days of my life needed to be kept as far away from her light as possible. “I can’t talk about those days, Trinity. You’ll have to understand that. But I will say on the hard days the thought of getting back home to you is what dragged my ass out of a lot of dangerous situations.”

Trinity reached out and skimmed a finger over the jagged scar along my collarbone. A reminder I was not made of steel against a man wielding a knife.

“I missed you. Which is funny because I barely knew you.”

Her words were barely above a whisper.

Sunlight glinted off the rings on her fingers and I reached up to skim the pad of my thumb along the infinity ring I gave her for her eighteenth birthday. The one time I managed to get home before leaving again the next day. For the better too, because I had every intention of claiming her very legal body that night.

“The soul knows even before we do.”

I ran my fingers through the ends of her ponytail.

I leaned her against the truck and made sure she felt the results of our makeout session.

“All that is over now. I’m not going anywhere unless you're by my side.”

As if my words about the past had conjured the image, a sudden memory of Trinity’s house popped into my head. I grinned, grabbed her hand and all but ran down the street and over one block, mindful not to make my strides too long. It was all I could do not to heave her over my shoulder, but as foreplay went, running down the street carrying her in a fireman’s hold probably wouldn’t earn me many points.

And she was a virgin. Just the thought sent bolts of pure need through me to make my dick hard as steel.

“Sawyer, where are we going?”

I just kept moving, all my attention focused on getting her to the nearest bed. Or really, any flat surface would do.

No, a bed. I sucked in a deep breath as I fought for control. My girl deserved a bed for her first time. I needed to take my time and make sure she was ready for me.

I pushed down the frustrated groan that wanted to escape. All I wanted to do was bury myself in her body. Now. Taking things slow might just be the death of me.

A glance over my shoulder at the woman following me so trustingly told me one thing—she was worth it.

I stopped short when I came to the place I’d been looking for. Trinity’s house.

I pulled Trinity into my arms. “Your mom isn’t home, is she?”

Trinity stood staring straight ahead, her gaze fixed on the little house with its overgrown yard. I had no clue what the expression on her face meant.

“Trinity?”

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