Retribution (The Protectors 3)

Tate chuckled and I looked up at him.

“That was it,” I murmured. “I knew she was going to change everything for me. And she did.”

“She was amazing,” Tate said with a smile. Not a question, not speculation…he said it like he knew it for a fact.

“She was,” I said with a nod of my head.

“Thank you,” Tate whispered and then he leaned down to brush his lips over mine. The kiss was achingly sweet and way too quick. He dropped his hand from my hair and began to step back, and I saw the tension in his gaze as if he’d just then realized what he’d done.

“For what?” I asked, grabbing him by the wrist before he could completely pull away from me.

“For sharing her with me,” he said, clearly startled that I’d stopped him from moving away.

Some unnamed emotion inside of me burst and I felt warmth spread out to all my limbs. But it wasn’t the same rush of heat I felt whenever I touched Tate or he touched me…it was different. It was deeper, stronger.

In that moment my need wasn’t about lust and I refused to release Tate when he took another step back. Instead, I drew him forward but I closed my legs so that he had no choice but to awkwardly straddle me. His eyes filled with confusion until I tugged him down until he was sitting astride me. And then his eyes cleared and he met my lips as soon as I lifted them. As I let my tongue steal into his mouth for a taste, I wrapped my arms around his waist and I was rewarded with his arms closing around my neck.

I loved kissing Tate. There was just no way around it. I didn’t care that I could feel just the slightest hint of stubble where his skin scraped over mine or that he was hard in all the places I’d only ever experienced softness as I let my hands roam along his back. I loved that his need ran just as deep as mine and he held nothing back from me as his tongue dueled with mine before slipping into my mouth. I loved that his grip on me was hungry and desperate and there was nothing tentative as he held my face in his hands so he could take over the kiss. And nothing about the erection I could feel pressing against my abdomen turned me off. If we’d been in any other place, I would have already been settling Tate’s body beneath mine on the bed.

I ended the kiss before the desire became too much to contain and my guess was that Tate understood because he didn’t resist the move. Instead, he let out a rush of breath and pressed his face against my neck as he drew our bodies closer together. I held him for several minutes as we waited for our racing hearts to settle and I forced my arms to release him when he finally crawled off of me. His face was flushed with color as he looked around the room and then back at me. I saw a hint of a smile as he said, “I think I love this room even more now.”

I laughed and stood up. Tate moved to his closet which was also in a disarray and I watched him pick up an older looking camera from off the floor. He examined it and then flipped something on the camera and it began making whirling noises. He opened the back and popped the film canister out of it a moment later and looked at it.

“What’s on the film?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” Tate said quietly. “I forgot about this one.”

“This one?”

Tate looked up at me. “Uh, yeah, I sold the few cameras I had before I left.”

“You were a photographer?”

Tate chuckled and shook his head. “I took pictures. Big difference.”

“But that was what you wanted to be.”

A wan smile drifted across Tate’s mouth. “A lifetime ago, yeah, I guess.” He tossed the camera on the floor.

“You don’t want to take it?”

“The lens is cracked,” Tate said. “It would cost more than it’s worth to get it fixed. I guess they didn’t think to check it for film,” he added as he pocketed the roll of unprocessed film.

“Did you take these?” I asked as I moved to his desk and looked through a few of the scattered photos.

“Yes.”

I switched my attention to the torn up picture Tate had been playing around with. It looked familiar and I realized why when I glanced over my shoulder at one of the torn posters which I now saw was a blown up copy of the photo. “This was one of your favorites,” I observed as I looked at the smaller photo again. It had been ripped into four pieces, but Tate had pushed the pieces into place enough so I could see what the picture had been of. It was a black and white photograph of two black birds, smaller than crows, in the process of taking flight, one slightly higher than the other. Heavy clouds hung in the clouds above them…a coming storm they were flying right into.