Page 58 of Gunner

She moves the pot off the burner and shuts the flame off. “Trust me to protect you.” She’s the one who finds a giant bowl from one of the lower cabinets. She rinses it in the kitchen sink and dries it with the tea towel. She opens up the steaming pot. The scent of that rich, salty, buttery popcorn hits me like an assault. “Trust me to care for you.” The kernels fall into the bowl like harnessed clouds. “Let me help put you back together.”

She puts the popcorn maker in the sink and gathers the bowl in both hands. She walks over, an angel in my oversized shirt. I want her in that shirt always. Wearing nothing else. Smelling like me, freshly fucked and glowing.

She picks up one perfect kernel and brings it to my lips. She’s not going to be happy until she feeds me, but just the thought of doing it makes my limbs feel like they’ve lost all their power.

I eat it from her hands, grazing her fingertips with my teeth, licking the salt and butter from her skin. Her lashes flutter closed, and she lets out a long, shaky exhale. I know that if I put my hand between her legs, she’d be wet.

“You’re a good man in this lifetime right now.” She slips a second piece past my lips, her eyelids heavy as I chew. “You were a good man in every other lifetime. The things you did and didn’t do don’t define you. I want all the buried parts of you. All your truths. I know you have your wounds. Even if no one else can see them because you hide them so well, they’re deep and they’re real. Let me help you find peace.”

I reach into the bowl and dig out a handful of popcorn. I feed her the pieces, one by one, returning the favor, dying to claim her mouth and feast on her lips, but holding myself back.

“You’ve had to look after yourself your whole life,” she whispers between bites. “There was never anyone who you could trust. Let that end now. Trust your club. Trust me.” Her fingers shoot to my lips, pressing there, with no popcorn. She swings the bowl over the counter. “You’re my ride or die.”

I cage her up against the countertop, pinning her in place with my massive frame. “I think that’s supposed to be my line, Dil.”

She crowds right back at me, reaching up and locking her fingers around my neck. She stands on her tiptoes. If my t-shirt wasn’t down to her knees, it would ride up dangerously, exposing her ass and sweet, sweet pussy.

“I think I can say it too, Ro. You don’t have the market cornered on being a badass.”

She’s got that right. She’s wild and kickass herself. So much energy, goodness, inspiration, the whole damn sun bottled up inside her small body.

Like she needs to prove a point, she edges away from me and slips out at the side. She whips my t-shirt off, races to the other sliding door at the kitchen, unlocks it, and wrenches it open.

“What are you doing? It’s pouring rain out there!” Not warm rain either. It’s spring and it probablyisfresh off the mountains. She was complaining about having to bathe in a stream earlier, before she knew about the shower. This isn’t a better option.

I charge after her, eating up the distance with my massive strides. There’s no way I’m letting her go out there in a lightning storm.

She doesn’t give a shit about what I’m going to allow or not allow.

She races out into the darkness, the light from the kitchen only spilling out a few feet past the door. I trail her dancing shadow, chasing her wild whoops and screams of joy out into the icy rain.

This is the second time I’m going to catch my death outside, but at least this time, I’m not shot to shit and sick already.

“You’re so slow, Ronan! Come on! If you’re not going to dance with me out here in the rain, then you better catch me, take me back inside, and punish the shit out of me for being so careless!”

Her tantalizing words stir the primal animal I have shackled under my skin. I know instinctively that she can handle the beast. She wants me to unleash myself on her. She’s seen every bit of me already and hasn’t shied away. She’s never looked at me with reproach, disgust, or fear.

You’re my ride or die.

Fuck if she hasn’t been mine for a lifetime already.

Chapter 17

Diletta

Ican hardly see past the blinding rain. It drives down, stinging my face, the cold shocking, biting into my exposed skin, which is… all of it. I’m out here running around on the grass in my birthday suit in a torrential spring downpour in the middle of the night. I know how crazy that is, but I love it.

I love the thrill of the chase. The adrenaline in my body keeps me warm enough, but I’m also running at full tilt. I wanted to think about this and not about all that shit that he can’t get out of his head. I hate that he keeps punishing himself for something that he didn’t do and something that he would never do in the future. He thinks he’s a danger, but he’s my savior.

He’s chasing after me, stalking me in the dark, a massive but gentle predator like he was in the past when I didn’t even know he was there.

Unseen, but not unfelt.

I’m too up in my head, or maybe it’s just that I could never outrun him. Maybe I’m not trying hard enough.

I hear him coming. I whip my head over my shoulder and watch him close the distance with his massive, smooth strides. I’m so in awe of the way his body moves, every muscle working in tandem to propel him forward at such an impossible speed, for certain every inch a predatory beast.

He scoops me up midstride and flips me up and over his shoulder. His hand comes down on my ass as the same time my stomach hits his chest full force. The air crashes out of my lungs, but I’m able to suck it back in without pain. I want hard as he changes directions, my body burning from the run and from what’s about to happen.

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