Rescue My Heart (35 page)

He responded without hesitation, deepening the connection, devouring her mouth with his.

Wanting even more, she again tried to pull him over her, but he shook his head.

“I won’t hurt you,” he said, voice thick.

She slid her hands into the back of his jeans and rocked him into her. “You won’t.”

He groaned once and then again when she sucked on his neck while attempting to work his shirt up and off. He lent his hands to the cause, tugging it over his head.

“Now mine,” she demanded.

“Holly.”

Oh, hell no. “You can’t say we’re a bad idea anymore. Because you’re here, Adam.”

“I am.” He came over the top of her, supporting his
weight on his forearms. His fingers slid into her hair and he lowered his head to brush his lips over the bandage covering her stitches. “I’m here.”

“Why?”

He shook his head. “You know why.”

“Humor me.”

Quiet now, he ran his thumb over her jaw, then he swallowed hard. “When I saw your Jeep trapped in the river, with the water filling up the interior…I thought I’d lost you. I thought I’d lost my chance to tell you how I feel and that I’d have to live with the regret for the rest of my life.”

She felt his words all the way to her heart. “You didn’t lose me. You saved me.”

“Luck.” He shook his head again. “I can get through almost anything, and have. But losing you isn’t something I’d be able to get through. I’m crazy about you, Holly. You’ve worked your way under my skin.” He closed his eyes. “Into my heart.”

She pulled him down and softly caressed his mouth with hers. “You love me,” she whispered, not quite successfully keeping the triumph out of her voice.

He choked out a laugh. “I do. I love you. I think I always have.”

“Show me.”

His gaze darkened. “Your injuries—”

“You won’t hurt me.”

He stripped her out of her pj bottoms with little effort. “Don’t even think about moving,” he commanded. “Not your ribs. Not a muscle.” He stared at her until she nodded with a secret thrill that his simple male strength could both arouse and protect her.

In the blink of an eye he had his jeans off and then spent long moments kissing every inch of her, and some inches twice. When she’d shuddered and cried out his name, he made himself at home between her wet thighs.
The sure and solid weight of his body was as comforting as it was arousing.

Holding her gaze, he entered her. She cried out again, unable to help herself. Still panting for breath, she watched as he dropped his head, taking in the sight of them joined, then lifted his head and met her gaze again. She tried to see herself as he must. Hair wild. No makeup. A black eye…

“You are so fucking beautiful,” he whispered hoarsely, one hand sliding up her back to cup her head, his touch gentle and sure, tempered by his care of her injuries. “And you’re mine now.”

“Always have been.” She struggled not to rock up into him like she wanted to do. “And you’re mine now?”

“Always have been.” Holding her gaze, he began to move. It was heaven. He’d had her every way she could have imagined, and every time felt like the first.

The thought took her over the edge, and she took him with her. After, still breathing hard, he lifted his head, his gaze searching hers. She put her fingers over his lips to still any questions of her comfort, because in truth she’d never felt better. Sated male satisfaction lit his eyes and they lay together, waiting for their heart rates to return to some semblance of normal. “I waited a long time for you,” she finally said.

“I know.” He wrapped his arms around her and buried his face between her breasts. “Turns out I’m a little slow on the uptake.” He breathed her in deeply—taking comfort from her, she realized, her heart swelling. He’d never allowed himself to take comfort from her before, but he did now.

“Sometimes I think about my life before I let you in,” he said. “I was afraid that loving anyone this much would make me weak.”

“So I take it since you’ve dropped the
l
-bomb, you’re longer worried about that?” she teased.

His arms tightened. He wasn’t playing. “I’m going to drop more than the
l
-bomb, Holly. I want you. The forever kind of want. No more messing around.”

Forever
. The air left her lungs, and something new replaced it. Hope. Affection. And a love that warmed her from the inside out. He had a way of erasing all her doubts, of reinstating her confidence. He could make everything right in her world with one word, a touch. She hadn’t been sure a man could do that for her, but he did, and she thought maybe he was offering to do it for the rest of her life, but she had to be sure. She’d been wrong before and couldn’t bear to be wrong now. “Maybe you should define forever.”

“Is there more than one meaning for the word?” he asked.

“So…you mean forever like a diamond ring and white picket fence, that kind of forever?”

“Yes. But not white picket,” he said with a head shake. “Rail-horse fencing.”

She just stared at him. “Let me get this straight,” she said. “You went from worrying about being weak to wanting a fence with me?”

“I don’t give a flying fuck about being weak. You’re the only thing I care about. You make me whole. You make me feel. You make me…” He searched for the word. “Everything.” He pulled her tighter to him. “It’s always been you, Holly. And it always will be. Say yes.”

“Yes,” she said instantly. “To everything.”

Dear Readers,

Hi there! I hope you all enjoyed
Rescue My Heart
. I wanted to thank each and every one of you who wrote me begging/pleading/demanding for Adam’s story over the past year. I had so much fun torturing—er, writing—his and Holly’s long, passionate, windy road to their happily-ever-after.

So what’s next? Well, I was thinking Griffin and Kate should get a story. I’m going to start their book at Adam and Holly’s wedding. I plan to bring Griffin home on leave for the festivities and torture him a little bit with the one girl he’s always secretly dreamed of but never dared to have. Their story will be coming your way in August 2013.

In the meantime, if you haven’t already read
Animal Magnetism
and
Animal Attraction
, Brady’s and Dell’s stories of finding happily-ever-after with a special woman, why not? To entice you, here’s an excerpt from
Animal Magnetism
, the first book in the series.

Happy Reading!
Jill Shalvis
www.jillshalvis.com
facebook.com/jillshalvis

B
rady Miller’s ideal Saturday was pretty simple—sleep in, be woken by a hot, naked woman for sex, followed by a breakfast that he didn’t have to cook.

On this particularly early June Saturday, he consoled himself with one out of the three, stopping at 7-Eleven for coffee, two egg and sausage breakfast wraps, and a Snickers bar.

Breakfast of champions.

Heading to the counter to check out, he nodded to the convenience store clerk.

She had her Bluetooth in her ear, presumably connected to the cell phone glowing in her pocket as she rang him up. “He can’t help it, Kim,” she was saying. “He’s a
guy
.” At this, she sent Brady a half-apologetic, half-commiserating smile. She was twentysomething, wearing spray-painted-on skinny jeans, a white wife-beater tank top revealing black lacy bra straps, and so much mascara that Brady had no idea how she kept her eyes open.

“You know what they say,” she went on as she scanned
his items. “A guy thinks about sex once every eight seconds. No, it’s true, I read it in
Cosmo
. Uh-huh, hang on.” She glanced at Brady, pursing her glossy lips. “Hey, cutie, you’re a guy.”

“Last I checked.”

She popped her gum and grinned at him. “Would you say you think about sex every eight seconds?”

“Nah.” Every ten, tops. He fished through his pocket for cash.

“My customer says no,” she said into her phone, sounding disappointed. “But
Cosmo
said a man might deny it out of self-preservation. And in any case, how can you trust a guy who has sex on the brain 24/7?”

Brady nodded to the truth of that statement and accepted his change. Gathering his breakfast, he stepped outside where he was hit by the morning fresh air of the rugged, majestic Idaho Bitterroot mountain range. Quite a change from the stifling airlessness of the Middle East or the bitter desolation and frigid temps of Afghanistan. But being back on friendly soil was new enough that his eyes still automatically swept his immediate surroundings.

Always a soldier,
his last girlfriend had complained.

And that was probably true. It was who he was, the discipline and carefulness deeply engrained, and he didn’t see that changing anytime soon. Noting nothing that required his immediate attention, he went back to mainlining his caffeine. Sighing in sheer pleasure, he took a big bite of the first breakfast wrap, then hissed out a sharp breath because damn.
Hot
. This didn’t slow him down much. He was so hungry his legs felt hollow. In spite of the threat of scalding his tongue to the roof of his mouth, he sucked down nearly the entire thing before he began to relax.

Traffic was nonexistent, but Sunshine, Idaho, wasn’t exactly hopping. It’d been a damn long time since he’d been here,
years
in fact. And longer still since he’d wanted to be here. He took another drag of fresh air. Hard to believe, but
he’d actually missed the good old US of A. He’d missed the sports. He’d missed the women. He’d missed the price of gas. He’d missed free will.

But mostly he’d missed the food. He tossed the wrapper from the first breakfast wrap into a trash bin and started in on his second, feeling almost…content. Yeah, damn it was good to be back, even if he was only here temporarily, as a favor. Hell, anything without third-world starvation, terrorists, or snipers and bombs would be a five-star vacation.

“Look out, incoming!”

At the warning, Brady deftly stepped out of the path of the bike barreling down at him.

“Sorry!” the kid yelled back.

Up until yesterday, a shout like that would have meant dropping to the ground, covering his head, and hoping for the best. Since there were no enemy insurgents, Brady merely raised the hand still gripping his coffee in a friendly salute. “No problem.”

But the kid was already long gone, and Brady shook his head. The quiet was amazing, and he took in the oak tree–lined sidewalks, the clean and neat little shops, galleries and cafés—all designed to bring in some tourist money to subsidize the mining and ranching community. For someone who’d spent so much time in places where grime and suffering trumped hope and joy, it felt a little bit like landing in the Twilight Zone.

“Easy now, Duchess.”

At the soft, feminine voice, Brady turned and looked into the eyes of a woman walking a…hell, he had no idea. The thing pranced around like it had a stick up its ass.

Okay, a dog. He was pretty sure.

The woman smiled at Brady. “Hello, how are you?”

“Fine, thanks,” he responded automatically, but she hadn’t slowed her pace.

Just being polite,
he thought, and tried to remember the concept. Culture shock, he decided. He was suffering from
a hell of a culture shock. Probably he should have given himself some time to adjust before doing this, before coming here of all places, but it was too late now.

Besides, he’d put it off long enough. He’d been asked to come, multiple times over the years. He’d employed every tactic at his disposal: avoiding, evading, ignoring, but nothing worked with the two people on the planet more stubborn than him.

His brothers.

Not blood brothers, but that didn’t appear to matter to Dell or Adam. The three of them had been in the same foster home for two years about a million years ago. Twenty-four months. A blink of an eye really. But to Dell and Adam, it’d been enough to bond the three of them for life.

Brady stuffed in another bite of his second breakfast wrap, added coffee, and squinted in the bright June sunshine. Jerking his chin down, the sunglasses on top of his head obligingly slipped to his nose.

Better.

He headed to his truck parked at the corner but stopped short just in time to watch a woman in an old Jeep rear-end it.

“Crap.
Crap
.” Lilah Young stared at the truck she’d just rear-ended and gave herself exactly two seconds to have a pity party. This is what her life had come to. She had to work in increments of seconds.

A wet, warm tongue laved her hand and she looked over at the three wriggling little bodies in the box on the passenger’s seat of her Jeep.

Two puppies and a potbellied pig.

As the co-owner of the sole kennel in town, she was babysitting Mrs. Swanson’s “babies” again today, which included pickup and drop-off services. This was in part because Mrs. Swanson was married to the doctor who’d delivered
Lilah twenty-eight years ago, but also because Mrs. Swanson was the mother of Lilah’s favorite ex-boyfriend.

Not that Lilah had a lot of exes. Only two.

Okay, three. But one of them didn’t count, the one who after four years she
still
hoped all of his good parts shriveled up and fell off. And he’d had good parts, too, damn him. She’d read somewhere that every woman got a freebie stupid mistake when it came to men. She liked that. She only wished it applied to everything in life.