Page 17 of Keeper of Talon Mountain
She's right. The tranquilizer darts, the attempt to negotiate, the focus on containment rather than elimination. "Which means whatever I was involved in, someone thinks I'm valuable enough to recover."
"Or threatening enough to silence." She finishes with the bandages and sits back, her eyes serious. "Either way, you're not facing it alone. Not anymore."
The certainty in her voice breaks something open in my chest. Before I can think better of it, I reach for her, my hand cupping the side of her face. "Why?"
"Why what?"
"Why do you care so much about what happens to me? You don't know me. Don't know what I might have done before I lost my memory."
Her hand covers mine, warm and solid. "I know you now. I know you tried to send me away to keep me safe. I know you put yourself between me and danger without hesitation. I know you're gentle when you think no one's watching, and fierce when someone you care about is threatened." She leans into my touch. "That's enough."
"Mara..." I don't have words for what I'm feeling.
"Tell me to stop," she whispers, and I realize she's moved closer, close enough that I can see the flecks of gold in her green eyes. "Tell me this is a bad idea, and I'll go back to my room and we can pretend this moment never happened."
I should. I should tell her to stop, to put distance between us, to protect herself from whatever disaster I'm inevitably going to bring down on both our heads. But I've never been good at doing what I should.
"Don't stop," I say, and then I'm kissing her.
She tastes like chamomile tea and something sweeter. Her hands slide up my chest—careful of my injuries—and tangle in my hair, pulling me closer. The kiss starts gentle, tentative, like we're both afraid of breaking this. But then she makes a small sound in the back of her throat and gentle becomes urgent.
I stand, pulling her with me, and she comes willingly. My hands find her waist, slide under the hem of her sweater to touch bare skin. She's warm and real and here.
"Gabe," she breathes against my mouth. "Are you sure?"
I pull back enough to look at her, to see the want and worry in her expression. "Yes. Are you?"
"Yes." No hesitation, no doubt.
We make it to her bedroom somehow, shedding clothes between kisses and careful touches. She's beautiful in the firelight—all curves and soft skin and strength. When I hesitate at the door, suddenly aware of how little I know about being intimate when it matters this much, she takes my hand and pulls me inside.
"We don't have to rush," she says, reading my uncertainty. "We have time."
"I don't know if I've done this before," I admit. "Not like this. Not when it matters."
Her smile is soft, understanding. "Then we'll figure it out together." She pauses, her hand on my chest. "Dr. Sage ran a full panel when she examined you. Everything came back clean. She said the same about me earlier this year and I haven’t been with anyone since. I'm on birth control…”
“I trust you."
"I trust you too." She pulls me closer. "So we're good?"
"We're good."
She leads me to the bed, and we sink onto it together. Her hands map my chest, tracing around the bandages with gentle fingers. When she reaches a particularly bad bruise, I wince, and she immediately pulls back.
"Does this hurt?" she asks.
"A little. But don't stop." I capture her hand and bring it back to my skin. "I want to feel this. Feel you."
She leans in and gently plants a kiss on the purple bruise near my ribs, then another, methodically moving across my torso with such delicacy that it tightens my throat. When she returns to my mouth, I roll us over so I can reciprocate.
I take my time exploring her body, charting every rise and hollow with a hunger tempered by reverence. My fingertips drift slowly, lingering on the swell of her breast, the dip of her waist, the smooth inside of her thigh, until she squirms beneath the attention.
The hollow at the base of her throat shudders under my touch, a pulse fluttering wildly as though trying to escape into my palm. Behind her ear I find a place that makes her breath stutter and cling, her lips parting on a whimper that tears through me.
When I lower my mouth to the scatter of freckles on her left shoulder, I taste the faint salt of her skin and she arches, spine taut and bow-strung, offering herself higher. The sounds she gives me are intoxicating: the sharp intake when my teeth tease her earlobe, the husky plea when my tongue trails across her collarbone, the broken moan that vibrates when my hands cup and knead the soft weight of her breasts.
Her skin is fever-warm, silk stretched over velvet curves, alive beneath my tongue and tasting wholly, intoxicatingly of her. I lower my mouth to her breasts, circling and suckling each nipple until it hardens against my tongue, drawing from her gasps that leave her trembling. I trail lower, kisses sliding down her stomach until I reach the soft heat between her thighs. Spreading her gently, I suck her clit with slow, relentless pressure, my fingers sliding inside her at the same time, filling her as she arches and cries out.
