Savage Burn (Savage Trilogy 2)

“Do what, Rick?” I challenge. “What am I doing? What do you think I’m doing?”

“Walking away. Pulling away from me. That’s you dividing us. Don’t you do what I’ve done so well. Too well.”

“You think that because that’s your reaction. That’s what you did, but I wasn’t walking away. I wasn’t pulling away. I was most likely about to punch some logic into you because nothing else is working. I asked a question, and you turned it into a reason to leave me. I can’t love you this much again and have you leave.”

He catches strands of my hair in his fingers, his free hand pressing to my lower back, molding me close. “Young and fucked in the head did not serve us well, but I love you too damn much to ever leave you again.”

My hand presses to his chest and I can feel his heart thundering, pounding a beat as wild as mine. He’s angry. Or hurt. I don’t know what he is anymore. I’m about to tell him that I don’t believe him, but that’s okay. I’m going to hold onto him so damn tightly that he can’t run, but I never get the chance. I open my mouth but he’s already taking me some place else. “Do you know what I thought before I walked into Tag’s hideout and confronted him?” he asks.

Shock radiates through me. “Oh, God. You walked into Tag’s place and confronted him?”

“Do you know what I thought?” he repeats, his voice all but guttural.

“That I was going to kick your ass when I found out? Stop acting like you’re okay with dying any day now. Because you don’t get to walk away again. You damn sure don’t get to die.”

“I thought,” he continues, “that you might be better off without me, but I’m not better off without you. Every moral line I didn’t cross these eight years was because of you, Candace. Every moment I wasn’t with you, you were with me. I love you. I love you so damn much it hurts to breathe when I’m not with you. I was burning alive without you every fucking day and night.”

My heart swells with the rough, emotion-laden confession and my fingers curl around his shirt. “Then know this, Rick Savage. I’m afraid. I am. That’s real. That’s honest, but I’m also a military brat. I’m my mother’s and father’s daughter. Fear makes me want to fight. For you. I want to fight for you and us. I want to fight every war you face with you. And you are better with me. But I am also so much better with you. Because we’re better together.”

And just that quick, he’s kissing me. He’s kissing me in that way that only Rick Savage kisses me, like he’s burning alive for me. And now I’m burning alive for him. It’s as if a match ignites and explodes between us. We’re all over each other and in a haze of lust and love, of want and need, and somehow, he’s no longer wearing his shirt and neither am I. I’m not wearing anything. I’m on the counter that had been behind me, and now he’s not wearing anything. What he is doing is pressing inside me, thick and hard, and oh so perfect. We’re in a wild frenzy and I’m lost in how delicious his big body is pressed to mine. How intense his handsome face is as he looks at me, as he loses himself in me and us. I’m lost in his hands on my body, his touch as savage as his name—all over me, on my breasts, my nipples. But in our intensity, the rush of our need is fast and hard, over too soon, the trembles and quakes of our bodies explosive and then exhaustive in the most bittersweet of ways.

I collapse into him, a butterfly on the wind, and he’s the wind, no part of me fighting where he carries me or what I feel for this man. No part of me protecting myself from him. Who am I kidding? I have no chance. Why do I want to try? “I wasn’t better without you,” I whisper into his neck, the sharp spice of man and cologne just another part of him that feels a part of me.

He pulls back and looks at me, those blue, blue eyes pouring emotion from his soul right into my soul. “Let’s talk about being better together. Let’s talk about what comes next.” He kisses my nose then, a tender act that defies the harsh reality of the killer he declares himself, before he scoops me up and starts walking. In that moment, he’s my white knight, my hero, the only man I have ever wanted or needed. I cling to him, and it’s then that I realize that I feel no dread about our future. Just as no part of me resists this man, no part of me believes that what comes next is him leaving again. I choose not to believe something that in its very premise alone, will destroy us. I can’t keep living that fear. I can’t let him keep living with that fear, either. I know that now.