Page 67 of Absolution
“It’s over. I’m ready to go home.”
He’s watching me with that keen green gaze, and the flames are reflected in my dark god’s eyes. Night has fallen, but the raging fire throws his heartbreaking features into fierce relief.
“I love you, Abigail.”
My breath catches, and my heart squeezes to the point of pain.
“You don’t have to say that,” I protest, even as longing tugs at my chest.
His hands frame my face, so that I’m trapped in his reverent hold. “I love you.”
“Dane…”
His fiery eyes flash. “I mean it. I’ve never meant anything more in my life. I didn’t think I was capable of feeling this way, but I do love you. I was a coward not to say it before. Maybe it’s obsession to the point of madness, but I choose to call this love.”
My heart swells, my love every bit as obsessive as his. “If this is madness, then I don’t want sanity,” I declare in a feverish whisper. “I love you too, Dane.”
He crushes his lips to mine in a hungry, savage kiss, as though he wants to devour my declaration of devotion.
As my painful past burns to ash behind us, I’m swept up in the man who is my future. My family. My everything.
23
DANE
The warm water grows cloudy as I carefully wash the soot from Abigail’s hair and face. She does the same for me, her slender fingers gentle on my scalp. My head aches slightly from the blows her uncle managed to inflict, but the pain is nothing when she’s blessing me with her tender touch.
We linger in the shower until the water starts to go cold, simply holding one another. The feel of her safely in my arms calms me like nothing else, and panic has ridden me hard for hours.
When I finished burying Billy earlier this afternoon, I’d checked her location and realized that she was at Elysium. I’d known that she wouldn’t go there of her own accord, and every second it’d taken me to get to her had been an agonizing eternity.
Her uncle tried to inflict yet another psychological wound when he locked her in the darkness of that cell. He tried to scare her into cooperating with his demands to retract her statement about his crimes against her.
Now, he’s paid the ultimate price.
No one touches my wife.
I turn off the cool water in our shower and wrap her in a fluffy white towel. She leans into me, allowing me to take care of her.
Her trust in me is a miracle, and I’ll never take it for granted.
“You were so brave back there,” I praise as I run a brush through her damp hair.
She turns to face me, and her glowing eyes pierce my soul. “I did it for you. He was going to kill you.” Before I can reply, she admits more quietly. “And I did it for myself.”
I cradle her delicate jaw in my hand. “Never feel guilty for killing that bastard. The world is a safer place without him in it. What you did was justice. He deserved far worse.”
She blinks up at me. “I don’t feel guilty. I’d do it again if I had to.”
“Good,” I say with savage approval. I don’t want her to lose so much as a moment of sleep over that motherfucker’s death.
“All I want is to be with you,” she declares with the weight of an oath. “I want a future with you, just like we promised on our wedding day. Nothing will stop us from having that.”
I grin. “I promised you the world, Abigail. You will have everything you desire.”
“I desireyou.” Her voice takes on the breathy quality that goes straight to my cock.
I hum in consideration. “I think you deserve more than that. I never did give you a proper honeymoon. How does Whitby sound?”
