Page 140 of Under an Endless Moon

This fiery temptress with all that soft vulnerability underneath.

And I kept marring it. Tainting it at every turn. Should have known when I brought her here that I was going to take that treacherous path. That everything was going to change, and there’d be no keeping myself from that trajectory.

But they say trauma either brings people together or forces them apart. It’d been true back then, in those days when I’d been skating that line and we’d smacked heart first into a grief so severe that we’d been fractured by it.

It’d been a glaring awakening. A reminder of who I was. A monster who didn’t deserve someone like Raven Tayte. So I’d put up every barrier that could be fabricated all while still being the glutton who’d kept her near.

Close but out of reach because there was no way I could fully cut her off.

And there I was, all these years later, scooping her off the floor and into my arms.

God, she felt good. All that bare flesh tucked up against mine. Her warmth saturating my skin and sinking way down deep into my soul.

I was flooded in a wash of satisfaction.

In a feeling of contentment while tumult loomed around us.

Of course, she went all sass when I started carrying her toward the steps.

“Otto Hudson, what do you think you’re doing?”

I arched a brow at her. “What does it look like? Carrying you.”

She knitted that pretty face into a scowl. “Um, yes, I realize you are carrying me, but the question is why on earth you think it’s a good idea to do it after you’ve just been shot!”

The last part she shrieked.

“You didn’t seem to mind so much when I was carrying you to the worktable to give you an orgasm.”

She gasped a choked sound before she tossed out, “Temporary insanity. I couldn’t be held responsible for my actions.”

God knew, I was going to be held responsible for mine. Letting myself go astray, touching her the way I had, though I was having a damned hard time worrying about the consequences right then.

“Now put me down, you burly bear, before you bust a stitch, and when you do, my brother is going to ask if you were following the doctor’s orders, and I’m going to have to tell him the circumstances. We wouldn’t want that now, would we?”

If she were standing, she would have been tapping a stilettoed toe.

A chuckle rolled out of me.

“You’re going to tell your brother, huh?” I asked as I started up the stairs, taunting her a little.

Honestly, I barely noticed the wound. My body was still riding that Raven Tayte high. No pain in sight. This woman was the ultimate balm.

“Okay, fine, no, I’m absolutely not going to tell him that becausethe whole point here is to keep you healthy and safe and not dead.” She bugged her eyes out at me.

“Would deserve it,” I told her, my voice going gruff and some of the lightness wilting on my tongue.

Raven stopped struggling in my hold as I climbed the stairs. Two of us naked and exposed. Delving into a place we weren’t supposed to go. Somehow going there felt inevitable, anyway.

“How can you say that, Otto? How can you say that after everything you’ve done for me? After all the times you’ve been there for me? After you were justshotbecause of me?”

Her words slanted in emphasis.

“Told you I’d stand in front of every bullet if it meant keeping you safe.”

Problem was, I would likely have a million others coming at me. The things I was doing risky. Hazardous and grave.

Both with the beasts I had sworn to destroy and the wedge I was driving between me and my club.

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