Page 95 of The Rescuer

“Jesus, Neve,” he grunted. “Never felt anything like you.” He looked down and watched as he slid in and out of her body. Her hips rose to meet every thrust. The sight broke open something inside him, and he pumped harder, faster, deeper, his hips flexing and his glutes straining.

Neve let out a rolling, high-pitched moan. “Reece! I’m …” Her body tightened around him like a vise as her orgasm rolled through her.

Fire pooled and sizzled like lightning along his spine, and when his release shot from him an instant later, he shouted her name so loud Pearl began barking. He collapsed, sprawled half on top of Neve, a sweaty, trembling bag of noodley muscles barely holding together his bones. He gasped for air as his climax spread through him like a warm current.

Neve’s heavy breaths matched his own, rising and falling in rhythm. Moments later, she gave his shoulder a nudge. “Better let me up so Pearl knows you’re not murdering me.”

Reece glanced over his shoulder. The dog was having a fit a few feet away from his bare ankles. He’d been so lost in their lovemaking and his own climax that Pearl’s sharp barks had faded completely away. Now that his synapses began firing in sync once more, the dog’s pitch hurt his ears.

He slid off and helped Neve to a sitting position. Leaning against one elbow, he watched her bend down and coax the dog to settle. Soon Pearl was lying on the floor, front paws stretched out, her head resting on them. Totally relaxed. Neve had that way about her; she certainly had that effect on him.

As he watched the silk of her golden strands slide over her bare shoulders and along her pale back, he realized she brought out a crazy in him he hadn’t known existed. She stirred up foreign, heady emotions inside him. He loved it. Was overwhelmed by it. Didn’t know what to do with it.

He was hopelessly captivated, ready to surrender and slip under her whisperer’s spell.

Snatching the robe puddled on the floor beside her, Neve rose and slipped it on, cinching the tie around her waist. He straightened, playing with the ends of the tie while she flipped her hair out and down her back. Then she rose up on tiptoe and wrapped her arms around his neck, her big blues sparkling in the candlelight. She was so damn beautiful. He’d always thought so, but he was seeing her with crystal clarity now.

“Hey, I’ll do the dishes,” she said right before placing a sweet kiss on his mouth. That simple, intimate act stirred a different well inside him, quiet though equally strong.

As she headed for the sink, he skinned on his shorts and plopped onto a seat. Propping up one elbow, he rested his chin in his palm and watched her graceful movements as she worked. Questions tumbled around in his head.

In the past, he’d viewed intimacy one way: Sex was sex. A means to release pent-up energy. A crashing together of two needy bodies doing what nature had imprinted in them. At times the joining was sedate and at other times jolting. Mostly, it was unremarkable and ended quickly, but hopefully both parties got the satisfying ending they’d been after. Inevitably, the encounter and the woman were archived in his memory banks, rarely to be dragged to the surface again.

He’d never given much thought to the other person in the equation, beyond doing his damnedest to get her off before he got off. Down to its basest definition, intercourse was an exchange of mutual biological needs, where no heartstrings ever became entangled. And while he was ashamed to admit it, gettingheroff was motivated out of pure selfishness.Get her to the finish line soIcan finish.

Neve was an entirely different story. Besides the past they shared, a fascinating new dynamic had come into play, one where he was spurred by an astonishing selflessness. With her, he was driven to serve—odd as that sounded—to call up his power to satisfyherneeds, to makeherhappy. Especially to make her happy. To see her satisfied and smiling. His ownneeds not only took a back seat, but they were the farthest seat at the back of a train.

Okay, so maybe notthefarthest. But still, making her climb that high until she reached the stars was his goal. To watch her get there was incomparable to anything he’d ever known. An erotic rush, and more of a high than any rescue he’d ever pulled off.

The difference between Neve and everybody else was glaringly obvious: He hadn’t been in love with any of his past encounters.

His head began to hurt with all the discoveries thudding through it, but a lone voice echoed inside it.I can’t let her go.

He could no longer escape it. Hooks had embedded themselves in him, and threads wove between them in a tight web. Every single one of his heartstrings was ensnared … for better or for worse.

Chapter 25

Warrior Pose

Neve sat straight-backed infront of her yoga students, a dozen women and two men. Those two men were grinning at her from the farthest row back, and the way one of them was looking at her made her tummy dance. Make thatleeringat her, though he would call itadmiring her fine attributes.

Why did Reece and Shane insist on being here?

Until a week ago, they hadn’t attended a single yoga class in their entire lives. Would have doubled over in hysterics at the possibility. Ever since Reece—along with his brothers—had crashed one of her earlier classes, he’d become a regular fixture, and she couldn’t get rid of him. Instead of Charlie or Noah this time, he’d brought Shane, who—judging by the way he was ogling the ladies in their yoga togs—planned on becoming a regular too. Not that any of the women minded. No, they’d swallowed theabsurd excuse that the boys needed flexibility and stamina for search and rescue … conveniently overlooking the fact that Reece was no longerinsearch and rescue.

After that first class, when they’d been alone and Reece was helping her stow blocks in the storage closet, he had pinned her against the door and confessed that his real motivation for increasing his endurance had everything to do with their active escapades in the bedroom—oh, and seeing her in tights.

Well, all those warm, fuzzy feelings were about to go up in smoke because today was the day they had a Zoom call scheduled with the lawyer. They were getting ready to undo their mistake. Was it a mistake, though? They had fallen into an easy, comfortable rhythm at home, fitting like two halves of a tea ball, its grooves seamlessly snapping together. And when it came to sex, the blazes they lit together were enough to set the entire town on fire, whether the combustion was happening in the bedroom … the bathroom … the kitchen … hell, any and every surface in her house. Nothing was sacred, everything was fair game. She needed to fan herself every time her mind strayed there, which was way too many minutes out of each hour.

They were a perfect match in every way. What if … No, that was crazy talk going on in her head. There were no what-ifs—only one inevitable conclusion streaking at them faster than a comet. Ending their Vegas blunder loomed. So did Reece’s move to Vermont.

Ten days until Christmas, and they were expected at Reece’s parents tonight. His folks had gone to Arizona to visit friends but were back and ready for the boys to join them in the annual Hunnicutt tradition of trekking into the forest on the family’s centuries-old mining claim, cutting down a pine, and hauling it back to their log mansion for decorating. There would be a spread of finger foods laid out and plenty of hot buttered rum and mulled wine to warm the belly. Neve and her sister, Brigit, had been invited to participate when they’d been younger, and those times had always held a special corner in Neve’s virtual treasure box of cherished memories.

Now if Reece and Neve could escape one more evening without his folks being the wiser …

Neve scanned the class, her gaze landing on every face. It stuttered when it reached Reece, though he wasn’t smiling suggestively or giving herlascivious looks. He wore his placid, unreadable resting face, looking so handsome her breath caught in her throat. Was it possible he was evenmoregorgeous than he’d been yesterday? Or was it simply that she had fallen so deeply under his spell that her rose-colored glasses were thicker and pinker than before?

Someone cleared their throat, so she wiped the dreamy look from her face, shook off the thought of waking up in Reece’s arms this morning, and got on with teaching the class.

---