Page 62 of Never Trust the Living (Battle Crows MC 7)

We’d been in the rental house on the bay for exactly a week. That was seven days of time that I’d spent with my husband.

Today would be the eighth day, and today, both of us were going off to our respective jobs.

Our brand-new jobs, in our brand-new town, in our brand-new rented house, with our brand-new lives ahead of us.

To be honest, it was everything that I ever wanted, and it was inevitable that something was going to go wrong.

“Don’t go anywhere without carrying,” he ordered, his eyes intense and severe. “After talking to that incompetent sheriff, there’s no way in hell that you should be doing anything or going anywhere by yourself without something to protect you if you need it.”

Bram had learned yesterday, after the sheriff had done nothing but brush him off for the week that we’d been here, that they hadn’t done a single thing to try and find the man that had attacked me.

That’s why, for the last day and a half, Bram’s made it his life mission to make sure I was safe.

I felt warm, and protected, and for the first time in an eon, happy. Well and truly, completely and wholly, happy.

It was an odd feeling.

I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop. For something to go wrong.

Except, it hadn’t.

I was happy.

And I was going off to my big girl job, and I’d do just about anything to assure Bram that I would be okay.

Because he wasn’t playing. He was scared for me. I could read it in the intensity in his eyes.

By the way he looked like he was about to let me go out in the wilds of the world without him at my side.

“I’ll be okay,” I said, moving into him without thought.

That’d been happening a lot, too. Me moving toward him and touching him in some way.

I’d never done that before. Never allowed myself to do it before. Because that was the fastest way to find myself disappointed before—before this newest truce with Bram, which I called the BNB (Before New Bram) Era in my head—to try to touch Bram. Or get any sort of intimacy out of him. It was the fastest way to shut him down. So, at some point in the years that I’d spent being his wife, I’d learned not to touch him.

But now, my touch was almost like some sort of signal to him. A signal like a red flag to a bull. The moment I touched him, he took that as the sign he needed to bring me into his chest. To press his lips against my forehead. To touch me in the ways I’d only ever dreamed about him touching me.

It was, literally, my dream.

And I was living it.

“I promise you,” I said to my husband who was looking at me with his heart. “I’ll be smart. You’ve taught me well over the years.”

And he had.

He’d gone out of his way to make sure that I was always safe. He encouraged me to take protection classes—weapon and physical classes that would cover me in every situation—and I had. Now that I was expecting something to happen, I would be more prepared. I wouldn’t be caught unaware again.

Which I decided Bram knew. That had to be the only reason he allowed me to leave him.

“Just keep aware. Always know what’s going on with your surroundings. I’ll bring you lunch so you won’t have to leave to do that. And please, if you do need to leave, call me. I want to know when you leave, when you get home, and make sure you set the alarm if you get home before me, okay?”

The pleading in his eyes were my undoing.

I couldn’t stop myself from pressing my lips to his jaw, which happened to be the only thing I could reach.

I hated being short. Being short meant that you couldn’t kiss what you wanted on tall people like my husband—such as his lips.

But, realizing that I couldn’t quite reach where I wanted, he bent down and brought his lips to mine.

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