Page 112 of When He Hunts

His jaw ached because he’d clenched it so tightly.

She might not come.Her feelings could have changed. She wasn’t living in fear any longer. Maybe the adrenaline and terror had been driving her before.

Maybe she’d started having adventures with someone else.

Maybe…

There was a knock at his door. Hesitant.

His eyes squeezed shut. Relief made him dizzy. But…what if that wasn’t Luna? What if it was just Gray, telling Ronan that he was shit out of luck?

His eyes opened, and he whirled to lurch for the door. Surely, Gray would have just called with that bit of news, right?

He unlocked the door. Grabbed the knob. Hauled the door open.

A swarm of red balloons immediately slapped him in the face. He batted them away, desperate to see?—

“Hi.”

Luna.

She smiled shyly at him. “I heard that you need a pick-me-up.”

Warmth flashed from his chest through his whole body. He felt a wide, wild grin curving his lips, and he grabbed for her. Ronan picked her up and kissed her and held her as tightly as he could even as the balloons bobbed and weaved around him. He kicked the door shut. Some of the balloons stayed outside. Some remained in the condo. “You got me balloons,” he rasped against her delectable mouth. No one had ever given him a balloon. Hell, come to think of it, he didn’t think he’d been given any gifts at all since his mother had died.

No, not true. Luna is the best gift of all.

“You got me my life back,” she said. Her arms were around him. Holding him just as fiercely as he held her. “I missed you.”

He’d craved her. How the hell was he supposed to sleep at night if she wasn’t sprawled on top of him? The answer…he hadn’t slept. Every night, he’d been restless because he needed her.

Now he had her.

He would not be letting go. “You jumped in the water.”

“You were only supposed to fake die. But you wereactuallybleeding when you went overboard. I was worried. I panicked. Lost my sanity for a moment.” Another kiss. “Don’t dare fake die on me again.”

They were done with that. Both of them. “Didn’t know how it would go down.” He truly hadn’t. “Just knew that after I told Gray I wanted out…” He had to stop talking and kiss her again. “He’d take me out. Others would see it. My death would be witnessed.” Several of Marcus’s thugs had been blasting the story of Ronan’s death through the jail grapevine by the next day.

Ronan had warned Luna that his “death” would be coming. No way had he wanted her to think he’d be leaving her.

No more ever walking away without a goodbye again. Lesson learned.

“The rubber bullets came in a flash,” he added. He strongly suspected that Gray might have been the one to fire. “But when they hit, I knew I could go overboard.” He had. Kane had been in the water with a diver, and they’d swept his ass away from the boat.

He hadn’t seen Kane much in the last two months. Something that worried the hell out of him. But, then again, he had been declared a dead man so…

Ronan pulled back.

His eyes darted over Luna. Somehow, she’d grown even more beautiful. “You didn’t change your mind?” Gruff.

“About what?”

A deep breath. “About loving me.”

A negative shake of her head.

His shoulders rolled back as he lost the weight that had been dragging him under.

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