Seconds later, they were piling into her house, shouting for everyone to freeze.
Rynna dropped the vase. It finally gave up its fight with the impact, shattering into a thousand pieces when it hit the floor. Just as Rynna was doing the same. Dropping to her knees and hitting the floor.
Sobs wracked her body when she realized it was over.
That she was safe.
Right then? It was the absolute only thing that mattered.
21
Rynna
“Thanks again, man,” Rex said to Seth, the last officer at my house. He was a guy Rex had apparently known since high school, someone Rex considered a friend.
“Just, stay safe,” Seth said, glancing between the two of us before he ambled down my porch steps and slipped into the driver’s seat of his Ford sedan and pulled away.
Timothy Roth had been fired this afternoon. Apparently, my complaint of sexual harassment hadn’t been the first he’d received. Apparently, when his wife found out the reason for his termination, she’d kicked him out.
His wife.
I trembled at the thought of it, at the arrogance and stupidity of the man and how much worse it could have been.
The taillights of Seth’s patrol car splashed another dose of red into the blaze of reds and oranges and purpled blues that twisted into the sunset as he accelerated down the narrow neighborhood road.
Then it was as if the dial had been turned up on the silence.
So loud it was profound.
As loud as Rex Gunner’s presence that eclipsed all.
A thunder.
A thriving, living being.
His gruff voice cut into the tension. “Don’t like that you refused treatment. You sure you don’t want me to give Kale a call?”
I chanced looking over at him where he stood behind me on the far side of the deck.
My savage savior.
Streaks of blood were dried on his face, and a small gash oozed from the corner of his eye. His clothes were tattered, soiled with sweat and blood, his hair a mess, body still bristling with remnants of pent-up rage.
My lungs inflated at the mesmerizing sight of him. Every part of me expanded. Reaching toward him.
“You’re worried about me?” I managed. “You’re the one who came to my rescue. The one who put himself on the line. Again. I can’t . . . what if . . .”
His head angled and his shoulders rolled back, and the man took a powerful step forward.
The energy spiked.
“You think I’m not worried about you?” It almost sounded like an accusation. He took another step forward, the man a raging tower of protection. “You think I wouldn’t do it all over again? You think I would have let him hurt you?”
He was suddenly in front of me. My breath gone when he stood over me.
An imposing, conquering shadow.
Eclipsing the fear that had taken me hostage. If it weren’t for Rex, today would have ended in an entirely different way.
He lifted his fingers and brushed back a chunk of hair stuck to my cheek. His words rumbled like a threat. “I wanted to kill him, Rynna. He was going to hurt you, and I wanted to kill him. I would have. Second I saw you were in trouble, my heart was screaming out to protect you. To protect what belonged to me. To shelter what was mine.”
Mine.
The word trembled around us.
“Thank you,” I whispered. A tear slipped free, and my body began to shake with the aftermath. With the reality of it all.
A gasp ripped from my chest when I was suddenly swept off my feet and into the strength and security of Rex’s arms. He had one arm under my back and the other beneath my knees, my body held possessively against the strength of his chest.
“Won’t let anyone hurt you,” he murmured against my forehead. Carrying me, he angled through the door. “I’m gonna take care of you.”
“Rex.” It was a whimper.
“Shh. I know, baby. I know.”
I clung to his neck as he carried me upstairs. At the landing, he took a left and headed into my bedroom, pushing right past my unmade bed and through the cutout arch that led to the bathroom.
As if this man already knew the way.
He set me on unsteady feet and turned me to face the counter. My eyes met his in the mirror. A low growl climbed his throat, and he leaned around me to turn on the faucet.
The air constricted.
Charged.
I swore, our slowed, measured movements attracted every molecule within five miles. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, taking my hands in his and placing them beneath the fall of warm water. He gently rubbed our hands together, the basin filling with pink-tinged water as he scrubbed the blood free from our dirtied hands.
“Two weeks, Rynna. Two weeks I’ve been dying, hating the way I left things between us. Hating that I hurt you.”
His words brushed my cheek, and his presence filled my senses.
Overwhelming.
He squirted soap onto our hands, continuing to wash away this afternoon, as if he wanted to erase the possibility of what could have happened.
Carefully.
Meticulously.
His voice was a soft scrape at the shell of my ear, sending shivers down my neck, turning my heart into a thundering orb at the center of my chest. “All that time, I was wishing with every part of me I could change my circumstances. That I could be right for you. Then this, Rynna. Then this happened and I don’t fucking care, anymore. Don’t fucking care that this is wrong.”
His eyes captured mine through the mirror. They flashed with a warning. An omen. A prediction.
“I’m not afraid,” I whispered, my promise striking the throbbing air. He gathered my hair in his hand, shifting it all to one side, exposing my neck. He pressed his lips there in the barest kiss. “That’s funny, because I’m fucking terrified of you.” His nose ran up to the back of my ear. “Terrified of this.”
A shiver rolled down my spine, and Rex eased back a fraction, taking the hem of my shirt and drawing it slowly up my body.
That shiver shifted. An avalanche of chills. He peeled it over my head before he did the same to his own, scrubbing at his face before he tossed his shirt to his feet.
My gaze traced him through the mirror, and I swallowed around the emotion that grew thick at the base of my throat.
This complicated, amazing man drove me crazy with desire. Crazy with need. Crazy with this want that had become its own entity inside of me.
He reached up and let his fingertips flutter across my exposed shoulder and down my arm. Tingles spread in a slow slide. All the fear I’d felt earlier transformed into this emotion I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.
Something so real it staggered my senses.
He reached back and unfastened my bra, drawing the straps down my arms.
My nipples pebbled as my breasts were exposed, and his chest heaved with a grunt. “So beautiful. So goddamned beautiful,” he murmured.
His fingers pressed under the waistband of my shorts.
“You want this, Rynna? You want me?” There was a tremor in his words. That same warning that flamed in his eyes. “Because I’m done running from you.”
“I want you so badly it hurts.”
He heaved a breath before he dipped down and kissed a path down my spine as he dragged my shorts and underwear down my legs.
“Oh God,” I whimpered, hit by an onslaught of sensations.
Need and want and desire.
But it was that emotion that pulsed in the depths of me that nearly sent me to my knees. Wave after wave. Seeping and saturating. Trembling in my throat and tightening in my stomach.
“Rynna.” It was a groan as he kissed down the cleft of my bottom and unwound my clothing from my feet, the sound so guttural it rumbled against the walls.
Then I was back in his arms and he was carrying me to my bed, lying me in the middle.
He stood with his chest heaving. So much stunning strength. The man so gorgeous and darkly appealing my mouth went dry.
Every thought and reservation fled from my mind. Every pep talk I’d given myself over the last two weeks about forgetting him and moving on scattered in the wind.
Because when it was just him and me?
There was nothing but the beat of our hearts.
Nothing but the call of our spirits. It was something louder than all the questions. Something bigger than his past. Something higher than our obstacles.