Page 77 of His to Protect

Chapter 17

Declan

After I let Boomer out, my house felt deafening in its silence.

I should have been able to hear Trina banging around upstairs in her bedroom and bathroom. I should have been able to hear footsteps headed down the hallway toward my room.

On a normal night, I would have heard all of this.

Instead, all I heard was a thundering in my ears.

It was the middle of the fucking night, after three o’clock, and I was bone weary from closing the restaurant.

But nothing would stop me from getting Trina in my bed and showing her how much I wanted her. The last few days, since we’d been back from Chicago, had been fucking killing me.

I meant what I’d told her. I was taking this at her speed. The fact that she wanted me to speed things up was A-fucking-OK with me.

My lips stretched into a grin as I watched Boomer do his business and sniff around the backyard for a few minutes. I gave him his time outside, knowing he’d been cooped up, probably sleeping all over my couch for the whole day.

I also needed a few minutes to calm down.

Get in control.

I wanted to thrust inside Trina so powerfully she’d never forget what I felt like.

Earlier, she’d been a wreck in my arms, and I wanted to make it good for her. Take it slow. Pleasure her.

Especially considering what she just told me.

Sometimes I wondered if I should have pushed us forward. She was still technically a married woman.

Under any other circumstances, I would never go for another man’s woman. But Morgenson wasn’t a man—he was a snake and a coward. I had no doubt we’d find him before he found her, as long as Tyson kept calling in favors, as I knew he was doing.

Until then, I’d trust Trina.

A difficult concept after Mara broke whatever trust I had in women.

But so far, Trina had been honest. She’d told me what she needed and what she wanted, and hadn’t given any indication she wasn’t the woman she’d shown herself to be.

At the very least, she was learning to ask for what she wanted, and learning it was okay to be whoever she wanted to be.

And I couldn’t stop the masculine surge of testosterone in me that came from knowing that, in part, that new confidence of hers was because of me.

“Boom,” I called out quietly after I slid the back door open. “Get in here.”

The dumb animal looked up at me and, swear to God, his lips formed a pout, and then he trotted inside, head down, bummed out of his mind.

“Go to bed,” I told him.

As if he understood, he lumbered up the stairs ahead of me. Without stopping, he headed directly to Trina’s bedroom and I heard him jump from the wood floor up onto her bed.

Since she didn’t say anything when her dog jumped up on her bed, I knew she wasn’t there.

She’d listened to me.

Another surge tightened my chest and I closed the door to her room, shutting Boomer inside.

The last thing I wanted in the next hour or two was to be interrupted by the dog.