He must have been at his razor edge too. What seems like only a few seconds later, he presses his mouth into the sheets next to my head. And hot moisture floods into me as he releases with a muffled shout into the covers.
“Fuck, you drive me crazy, angel. Didn’t even make it out of my boots this time,” he says as he rolls us onto our sides so that we can come down together without putting extra pressure on my stomach.
Our love….the forever love we agreed to…hangs like a fluffy cloud over our intense reunion.
Until he growls, “But you came without permission, and don’t think I forgot about that third swat.
Thank goodness it’s Saturday, and I don’t open the clinic on Sundays. Not only does Waylon give me my third swat. But he adds on lessons when my poor, overstimulated body still trembling with aftershocks comes again without permission.
He ends up punishing me all night. So he doesn’t get around to telling me the whole story of why he was able to come home so early until we’ve collapsed into a combined tangle of body parts in our bed.
“Going to have to admit you were right about me needing to go do that gig,” he says as the sun rises over Angel Pond. “Guess who I ran into? Doc.”
“Are you serious?” As wrung out as I am from all my punishments, I sit up on one arm to look down at him. Neither of us has heard from Doc after what happened with her and Vengeance.
“Serious as a heart attack,” he answers. “I drove up to the house with my crew, and there she was, standing right next to Red of all people.”
I gasp and clap a hand over my mouth like I just watched a huge plot twist in a murder mystery TV show. “Red? Like the Red that Griffin’s been looking for all these years?”
“Yep,” Waylon answers with a wry shake of his head. “Turns out Doc and Red have been in Kentucky this whole time, working at a clinic for Olivia Glendaver.”
I scrunch my forehead. “Wait a minute, didn’t that one cousin of Kyra’s who didn’t show up for Thanksgiving also work for Olivia Glendaver?”
“Yes, she did,” Waylon answers with both eyebrows lifted. “Turns out the cousin-in-law I never met and Red are one and the same.”
I stare at him for what has to be a full minute. Then crow, “Guess Bernice wasn’t so boring after all!”
We both laugh at that, but I quickly sober to ask, “What happened when Griffin finally found her after looking for her all this time? Was it, like, a happy love song?”
Waylon sobers too. “Might’ve been if she didn’t have a little girl who sings like a songbird—one who’s about four years and nine months older than the last time Griffin saw Red.”
This time I sit all the way up in bed to ask an extended, “Whaaaaaatttttt?!?!”
Waylon chuckles and shakes his head again. “Yeah, I guess the Fairgoods ain’t the only ones who excel at drama. He's pissed. And I'm not saying he's going to go full Hades on her. But guaranteed, it’ll be bad. He let me take the plane to fly me and my bike home because he said he’s not planning on leaving the state until they—his words: ‘come to an understanding about how shit’s going to be from now on.’”
“Oh, wow…” As happy and fulfilled as I am with a Ruthless Reaper, a worried cloud forms over my heart for Kyra Fairgood’s not-so-boring cousin.
Griffin acts the uncaring fool, but the Ruthless Reapers don’t initiate fools into their ranks. If he’s one of them, he’s dangerous, bordering on lethal.
And, if it's true that this Red he's been searching for this whole time not only hid from him but also didn't tell him he had a daughter, then she’s about to find out how Ruthless Reaper he is at his core. The extremely hard way.
Heaven help her.