A shuddering sniff escaped me, and Hunter’s anger quelled.
He spoke softly, “What’s going on?”
Shakily, I pressed my letters into his hands. Deep down I’d known I would pass them to Hunter tonight. “Read that. Everything.”
I quarantined myself in his bedroom while he read my letters. I curled into a ball in the middle of his bed, breathing in the scent of Hunter on his pillows.
Twenty minutes later, the door groaned open and wheels rolled over the smooth floors.
Hunter muscled himself from his chair into the bed, where he positioned himself on his side and patted the mattress for me to mirror him. His face was serious, and I was going to throw up. This was it. The last conversation.
My pulse pounded in anticipation and I slid onto my side.
It took everything to bear his intense stare, and I wanted to beg him to rip the Band-Aid off quick.
Hunter pressed his palm against the side of my face and spoke softly. “You really do have shit for brains if you think this changes anything.”
I pulled back from him frowning. “Did you read all the letters? Liam’s? Uncle Ben’s? Jason’s? Yours?”
“I read them all. And Jack’s letter to you.”
I bowed my head. “And?”
“That Jill was a real shithead.”
An embarrassed sob hammered at my throat and I squeezed it down, my voice tiny, “Yes.”
“But the Marc before me?” His fingertips trailed over the curve of my shaven jaw to my Adam’s apple. “Not so much.”
I clung to impossibly rising hope. “How can you know that for sure?” I gestured in the direction of the kitchen. “I still lie.”
“You shield yourself. You struggle to let go, to be completely vulnerable.” Hunter thought quietly. “But you’re trying. With me, you’re trying and that means something. It . . .”
“It . . .?”
“It makes me want to tear down the last of my shields too.”
“You have any left?”
Hunter chuckled. “Why do you think I spend so much time on Demon-Slayage as DaMage—invisible ‘d’?”
Hearing Hunter speak his online name came as a punch. He didn’t pronounce it Daaaa Mage like I had in my head. He pronounced it “damaged.” The horrifying implications of it tore at my twisted stomach. I sat up, shaking.
“Damaged?” I pushed him onto his back and climbed onto him. I stared down at his deep blue eyes and spoke, sad, angry. “That’s how you think of yourself?” I thought of his mage character. Tall and agile, he could work magic and heal the sick. It all became clear. “You play when you want to escape your reality?”
He shifted under me. “Yes. At least, that’s how it started.” He grabbed a handful of my shirt and pulled me down, face to face. “Until I met you, Fawkes.”
He pronounced it “fucks,” exactly as I had imagined it from day one. Chosen after my favorite, most overused word, to symbolize that whatever I touched, I fucked up. Hunter knew it. Because he was smart. Because he was intuitive.
Because he had been doing the same.
My breath was ragged with emotion against his lips as Hunter surged up and kissed me, his mouth hard and needy.
I pushed into it, tongue pushing deep, sliding slickly against his. The kiss was frustrated and passionate, and Hunter moaned into it, the vibrations pulsing all the way to my toes.
Hunter shoved me off him and dragged himself over me. My knees helped angle his legs between mine. His heavy warm weight sank against me, and fucking tears leaked down my cheeks, because this wasn’t goodbye. Wasn’t the last time we would do this.
This was the first time. No lies, no shield between us.
Our sex was raw and frantic, slow and intimate, and I wanted to shout how much he meant to me. I shivered after I came, and Hunter’s soft mouth met mine, kissing me through this crazy, unbearable lightness.
I sucked his throat and whispered how much I loved sex with him in his ear. He sneezed, and I laughed, so carefree and ridiculously hopeful.
I absorbed every detail of Hunter’s face, how straight his lashes were, the sexy blush from our passion pinking his cheek, his throat, his mussed hair. “You know that thing you want from me, Hunter?”
“Being my boyfriend?”
I kissed his chin. “Ask me again on Monday?”
He faced me. “Why Monday?”
I whispered, “I have a mission.” I want to feel worthy of you.
Shrewd eyes crinkled at the edges. “You want to save the Gazebo.”
“I need to.”
Hunter brushed the hair off my face. “As long as I—your wise, ass-saving mage—can be by your side.”
I snorted, smacking the back of his head, and pushed him into another kiss.
Chapter Fifteen
I was nervous over breakfast. It’d take time to understand these new feelings and accept they were allowed. It was strangely surreal, and sometimes I froze, a past memory barreling into me that I hadn’t admitted in the letters. Was there something else I’d forgotten that would change Hunter’s mind?