Robbie braids his fingers in my hair and angles my head to kiss me deeper. He tastes me with a fevered need that curls my toes in my shoes.
Reciprocating, I cling to him even as my lungs burn from a lack of air.
Robbieismy oxygen and all I need in this fucked-up world.
“I’m a fugitive,” he whispers between kisses, scooping me up in his arms.
My heels leave the snowy ground, but here, wrapped in his strong arms, the cold can’t touch me. Not as his lips burn a searing path down my neck and back up to capture my lips. “You’ll always look over your shoulder.”
“Have you forgotten?” I nip his lip, smiling into the kiss. “I’m the Queen of Hearts Killer. They’re hunting me too.”
“You’re still in a shitload of trouble for that, Savannah,” he growls, capturing my neck in his big hand. “Every time I think of you with someone else, I want to commit murder.”
I silence him with another kiss, pressed up against him with my arms around his neck and my fingers in his dark hair.
We kiss and kiss, lost in each other, lost in this moment.
We kiss like we’ll never get caught.
Like no one and nothing can tear us apart.
We kiss like we don’t have a tomorrow.
As though this kiss, this perfect, endless kiss, is our last.
Robbie drivesus back to a motel room just outside of town, where we spend the night catching up on all the months lost to us, making love on a creaky bed with a springy mattress until the morning sun creeps along the floorboards toward the bed.
Sweaty and satiated, we fall asleep in each other’s arms.
It’s everything I’ve ever dreamed it would be.
The next morning, we take to the roads in his old, rusty Mustang, existing below the radar as we follow the sun’s journey across the sky until the inside of the car is bathed in warm orange hues.
I’m the happiest I’ve ever been, traveling to nowhere with my fingers interlaced with Robbie’s.
Seeing his big, veiny hand engulf mine on the center console touches something inside me.
Here is a monster of a man with such beautiful, masculine hands—hands that have committed atrocious acts, yet he holds my much smaller one with such careful devotion. I feel him in that warm touch, feel what I mean to him and what he has come to mean to me.
The future we both dream of but don’t dare believe in.
Not yet, anyway.
Not while we’re running away from our past.
From the world that wants to chain us up.
I soak up his handsome profile, the sharp line of his stubbly jaw and his straight nose.
Blue eyes flick in my direction now and then, even as a soft smile touches his lips.
“I love you,” I whisper, meaning every word in its purest form. I love this man with every ounce of my being. Love him like I will never love another.
In response, he brings my hand to his lips and places a kiss on my knuckles. His stubble pricks my skin, and my heart swells when he says. “I love you more.”
I’m happy.
For the first time in my life, bathed in the sun’s glow through the windshield, I stare at my future and feel at peace.