Page 142 of Surrender to Me
Instead, he leans one shoulder against the doorjamb, arms folding loosely across his chest, and watches me with that lazy, predatory patience that makes my pulse stutter even now.
Water droplets cling to my collarbone. His gaze tracks them like he’s memorizing the path they take before they disappear between my breasts.
I take another slow sip, letting the spice bloom on my tongue, and something tight inside me unwinds further with every swallow. And then the image hits me, unbidden and so vivid I nearly drop the mug.
Stryker holding a baby.
Our baby.
Tiny fists curled against his massive chest. His huge hand cradling a head no bigger than his palm. The same fierce tenderness in his eyes that he gives me now, only softer. He’s sleep-deprived and unshaven and utterly, terrifyingly devoted. Whispering nonsense in that gravel voice while the infant looks up at him. Rocking in the dark when nightmares come, the way my mother once rocked me before the world turned sharp and dangerous.
The picture is so clearly focused that my lungs forget how to work.
A future. Not just tomorrow. Not just next week. Years. Decades. Gray in his hair. My hand in his when we’re old and creaky and still reaching for each other in the night.
For the first time in my life, I let myself want it. Not as fantasy. As something that could actually belong to me.
He tilts his head, reading me the way he always does. The corner of his mouth lifts, slow and knowing.
I set the mug carefully on the wide rim of the tub and meet his eyes.
He hasn’t moved, but the air has changed. Thickened. Charged.
His gaze drags down my body beneath the water, lingering on the way my nipples tighten under his stare, on the faint flush spreading across my chest. When he looks up again, his expression is wolfish.
My breath catches.
He’s hard.
Visibly, unmistakably hard, straining against the front of those tactical pants like the fabric personally offends him.
I blink, heat rushing to my cheeks even as slick warmth pools between my thighs again. “You’re ready again?”
The words come out soft. Wondering. A little awed.
He pushes off the doorframe in one fluid motion, closing the distance until he’s kneeling beside the tub, one hand braced on the edge, the other sliding into my wet hair. His thumb strokes my lower lip, rough and possessive.
“When it comes to you, Lyra,” he says, voice low enough to vibrate through the water and into my bones, “I’m always ready.”
His mouth crashes into mine, chai and cedar and raw want, and I know, without a doubt, that he’s about to pull me from this tub and ruin me all over again…
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Lyra
Later that morning
The sun hangs low and white in a sky the color of polished steel, turning every breath into a small cloud that vanishes almost before it forms.
Snow crunches under our boots in a steady, satisfying rhythm, the only sound for miles except the occasional sigh of wind through the pines.
Stryker walks half a step ahead, breaking trail without seeming to try, his shoulders cutting a path wide enough for me to follow without effort.
Behind us, far enough back that I have to search for the shape of him, one of Hawkeye’s shadows moves like a ghost through the trees.
I know he’s there. Stryker knows he’s there. Neither of us mentions it.
After three weeks in this fortress of the lodge, the constant quiet protection has become background noise, like the hum of the refrigerator or the crackle of the fireplace at night.
