Page 67 of Vengeful Secret

He doesn’t respond, and I wonder if he’s in shock. I wonder if we both are. But Gray deals with these kinds of situations a lot more than I do.

I pull out the antiseptic and put some on a pad of gauze, patting the wounds on his knuckles gently.

Gray doesn’t so much as hiss, just looking at me with something like adoration on his face.

I pat the antiseptic on a cut above his eyebrow and this time, he does hiss, even if quietly. The guy must have gotten him a couple of times in the face.

My heart swells with love for him, knowing that he’d gone through all this just to protect me. To save me. He’s different than he was five years ago. He’s calmer, for one thing, but he’s also just… more burdened.

I want to help him with that. I want him to let me take some of it.

I grab bandages from the kit, wrapping them slowly around his knuckles. One hand, then the other. I rub my thumb across the top of his hand in circles as I work.

“How about your ribs? Did he break any of them?” I ask, unbuttoning his shirt and pushing it off his broad shoulders.

Gray shakes his head briefly, his eyes still locked on mine.

There are no bruises on his chest or stomach, so I put away the bandages back in the bathroom, and when I return, Gray is staring into space.

My mind has gone blissfully blank, and when Gray grabs me around the waist to bring me closer, I don’t even think about pulling away. I don’t think about anything but how safe I feel in his arms.

“Are you okay?”

He shakes his head. “I thought I might lose you,” he murmurs, his words rumbling in his chest as he looks up at me, searching my face. “I thought I was going to lose you. Again.”

“I don’t ever want you to lose me again,” I admit, the words coming out with no alarm in the back of my head for once.

I straddle his lap, pressing my forehead to his, and Gray makes a pleased noise in the back of his throat, his arms going around me, his hands rubbing up my back.

“It almost killed me to lose you the first time,” he admits, rubbing his nose against mine.

“It killed me to leave you.”

I’m saying too much. I’m doing too much.

Gray and I can’t be together, not now, not with everything going on. But I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

I press my lips against his, sliding my tongue between his parted lips as he groans into my mouth, his hands going to my hips.

The kiss turns hungry right away, but not like it was at the tavern the other night. This is passionate rather than feral, loving instead of lustful.

Gray bunches my dress around my hips, rocking his erection against my core, and I gasp into his mouth.

I roll my hips against him, and he grunts, flipping me over.

He hooks his thumbs into the side of my panties, pulling them off me and discarding them on the floor.

He touches me everywhere, his fingers sliding up my thighs, cupping my breasts, his eyes roving over my body only to land on my face.

He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to. I can see it in his eyes.

I hope he can see it mirrored in mine.

Gray unbuttons his slacks, taking them off along with his underwear and stepping out of them.

It’s been five years since I’ve seen him fully nude, and I gasp, leaning up and tracing a long, jagged scar on his hip. “What’s this?”

“Knife fight,” he mumbles, clearly not interested in talking about his new scars.

---