Page 90 of Hunter

“What’s wrong?”

“I tried to kill you,” he said brokenly.

“It wasn’t your fault! Anderson pumped you full of drugs and instructions.”

“I should have—.”

“You did everything you could. You tried to tell me what he did to you. Then you threw yourself out of the car. You grabbed Jonah Raider’s gun.”

“I had to.” There was still uncertainty in his eyes. She couldn’t stand his self-reproach. Leaning toward him, she brushed her lips softly to his. She meant it to be a light kiss because she knew he should rest after the ordeal he’d been through. But he demanded more, reaching up to pull her into his arms.

“Kathryn.” Her name was a shaky sound as he settled her onto the bed with him. She forgot about restraint as he slid his hands up and down her back, over her hips, pressing her to him with the uncensored abandon that she had come to expect from him. When his hand worked its way under her loose knit shirt and found her breast, she exhaled in a low, pleading sigh that matched his deep exclamation.

“I want to feel your skin. All of your skin next to mine,” he gasped.

“Yes.” She helped him pull the shirt over her head. Standing, she kicked away her sweatpants and panties, then remembered with a strangled laugh that she’d better lock the door. When she turned back to Hunter, she saw he’d torn off the hospital gown.

She returned to the bed, kissing him, touching him, showing him what he meant to her, even as he did the same.

“I love you,” she told him. “So much.”

“Yes. So much.”

Caught in a spiral of passion, they drove each other to a high plane where the air was almost too thin to breathe.

“Do it the way you did the first time,” he gasped. “So I can see you. See your beautiful body above me when I’m inside you.”

The request seemed to vibrate through her. She shifted her position so that she was straddling him, her legs clasping his hips as she came down on him. She liked it this way, too, because she could see the pleasure on his face as their bodies joined, as she began to move above him.

She wanted to make the sheer euphoria of it last. But the joy of being with him like this again was too intense. Urgency overtook her, and she drove for her satisfaction, her breath coming in gasps. He shuddered beneath her, cried out, and she followed him over the edge into a place of rapture.

For long moments, she lay limply on top of him. His hands stroked through her hair, then stilled.

Rolling to the side, she reached down to pull the covers over them, then nestled beside him. But his silence and his stillness worried her, and when she raised her head so she could look into his eyes, she saw that his expression was sad.

“Didn’t you like that as much as I did?” she asked softly.

“It was wonderful. But I am very selfish. I wanted to be close to you like that one more time,” he answered, his fingers playing with the edge of the sheet.

“Hunter, you’re the most unselfish man I ever met!” The tears that had been threatening her earlier gathered in her eyes and began to leak down her cheeks. “Every time you’ve had a choice between my welfare and yours, you’ve done what was best for me,” she said with a hitching little breath. “You tried everything you could to protect me. You tried to kill yourself!”

As she said the last part, the sobs came in earnest. His arm came up to cradle her as she wept, her face against the warm skin of his shoulder. She had been under such terrible tension. Finally, her control had broken, and it was several minutes before she felt any sort of composure returning.

He stroked her as she cried, murmured soft words. When the storm spent itself, he reached for a wad of tissues from the box beside the bed and pressed them into her hand.

She thanked him, then blew her nose.

“I am not good for you, Kathryn,” he said in a raspy voice. “You must leave me.”

She couldn’t believe she had heard him correctly. “I wasn’t planning to leave you.”

“You have your life to live.”

“So do you! I thought we would do that together.”

“I—”

“You said you loved me,” she reminded him, hearing the quaver in her voice. “Did you stop?”

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