Page 18 of Shaman

“And how were you going to do that? Send me home? Split up? Ian, have you really been trying to drive me away all this time so you canprotectme?”

“Yes!”

“You’re stupid.”

“I beg your pardon.”

“You’ve been trying to sabotage us, and that’s fucking stupid,” he said, with great sadness – and great affection.

“It’s safer,” Ian countered.

“How? The people who want to hurt you already know that we’re together. So what if we break up? Would you stop loving me? Would I stop being leverage?”

“I…” Oh. In his descent into overprotective madness, he hadn’t considered that.

Alec lifted his brows. “I mean. Really.”

“Shit.”

“Does this mean I actually thought of something before you did?” Alec teased.

Ian shoved him, and he laughed. “My God,” Ian sighed, looping an arm around his shoulders and drawing him to his side; he loved the little ripples that laughter sent through Alec’s body, into his own. “I don’t deserve you.”

Alec fidgeted, burrowing closer. “Do you really think that?”

“I do.”

Alec heaved a put-upon sigh. “Okay, listen, because I only want to have to say this once. The things that were done to you – the horrible, awful, illegal, amoral shit you were put through as a kid – doesn’t make you a bad person.”

“What about the drugs?”

Alec reached up and caught his jaw in one tender hand, turned his face so they were looking at one another. Alec wore an expression the likes of which Ian had never had directed at him before. “I love you,” he said, and Ian could feel that he meant it, the truth a vibration that traveled backward and forward between them, in the places they touched. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Yes.” And it was.

Ian drew him in and kissed him, the way he’d wanted to for so long. “I do love you, you know,” he said against his mouth.

Alec hummed, a happy sound. “I know.”

Five

Ian woke up in his own bed back in the apartment in Knoxville with a mission on his mind. It was early, still dark – the alarm hadn’t even sounded yet. And Alec lay warm and breathing deeply at his side, an arm across his waist, breath tickling his chest.

He was ecstatic to be here together. And content in a way he’d never been before.

And he was terrified, because if Alec was too stubborn to walk away – hell, too stubborn to be driven away – then Ian would have to pull out all the stops to ensure his safety.

He’d been thinking about it on the plane ride back from New York, and this morning, he’d decided that the answer wasn’t as simple as hiring more security personnel – which he would do anyway. No, he needed to be able to protect Alec himself. Personally. Needed Alec to know how to behave in emergency situations.

Alec shifted closer, sighing in his sleep, arm tightening.

Ian rolled his head to the side so he could read the clock. 5:45. A man with a baby would have to be up at this time, wouldn’t he?

He grabbed his phone off the nightstand and made the call.

~*~

Ghost Teague stared into his coffee mug like it held all the answers to the world’s problems. He had the kind of bags under his eyes that spoke of weeks’ worth of sleeplessness.

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