After breakfast we went back to the apartment. By then it was nearly ten, but we still had plenty of time; apparently the potluck didn’t start until two. And I could tell exactly what Connor had in mind when he pulled off his sweater and T-shirt, then asked, “Ready for a shower?”
Without waiting for a reply, he undid the buttons on my cardigan and eased it off my shoulders, then drew my camisole over my head. Already heat was beginning to swirl through me in anticipation of him touching me once again. Goddess knows I wanted to touch him as well, draw my fingers over that smooth skin of his so I could feel the muscles beneath, then take him in my hands and feel his rock-hard arousal.
“Almost as ready as you,” I replied, and brushed my fingertips against the bulge in his boxer-briefs, then laughed as he gasped. He reached for me, but I slipped out of his grasp and ran up the stairs, with him only a pace or two behind.
We burst into the bathroom, and he caught me and pulled me against him, kissing my mouth, my neck, moving down to my breast. Impatiently, he grappled with the hooks on the back of my bra, then flung it away in the general direction of the clothes hamper. His hands moved over my naked breasts, squeezing the nipples ever so slightly.
I gasped. “I thought we were taking a shower,” I told him, words too breathless to constitute a true rebuke.
“I’m getting to it.” He released my nipples and tucked his thumbs in the waistband of my panties, yanking them down and tossing them to land on top of my discarded bra.
Not to be outdone, I did the same with his boxer-briefs, although a little more gently, easing them over the erection straining the fabric.
“Now we shower,” he said, and turned away from me so he could get the water going.
I already knew it heated up fast here, much faster than back in Aunt Rachel’s apartment or the house I now owned, so when he picked me up a few seconds later and carried me into the shower stall, at least I didn’t have to worry about getting hit by a blast of freezing water. No, it was already hot, steam beginning to curl up toward the ceiling.
He grabbed the bottle of shampoo and poured some into the palm of his hand, then began working it into my hair. Although I’d had other people wash my hair before — most notably Sydney, who tended to use me as her guinea pig when it came to practicing cosmetology techniques — never before had it felt so completely sensuous. His powerful hands kneaded into my scalp, and I closed my eyes, almost moaning at the contact.
“Your turn,” I said, once he lifted his hands away and I had rinsed the shampoo out of my hair. I put some in the palms of my hands and reached up to massage it through his heavy locks. His eyes closed, and I watched as the water caught in his long lashes and glittered there like diamonds. It was a reach for me, since he was a good deal taller than I, but I didn’t mind too much — I stood close enough that my breasts brushed against his chest, and he let out a groan.
“Okay, enough of that,” he growled, and tipped his head back so he could wash away the shampoo.
Then he was reaching for me, mouth finding mine. With one hand I took hold of him, felt how hard he was, how ready. I stroked up, and down, and he moaned. After what he had done for me the night before, it seemed the most natural thing in the world to go down to my knees on the tiled floor, to touch my tongue to his tip as the water sluiced over me. He gasped, and I pulled him into my mouth, sucking on him, taking in as much as I could manage, then slowly slid back down to his tip before moving upward again.
“I was right,” he gasped. “You McAllisters are trying to kill me.”
In response, I moved my tongue down the length of his shaft and tried not to giggle.
“Evil, evil witch.” And he pulled me off him, lifting me up so that suddenly my back was against the tiled wall of the shower stall and he was pushing up against me, almost sliding in. Then he stopped. “Shit.”
“What?” I gasped.
“Should’ve brought a condom in here with me.”
Logically, I knew that was the best way to handle this. But I didn’t want to stop, didn’t want anything to ruin this moment. “It’s all right,” I told him. “I have a spell that’ll handle it. The pregnancy thing, I mean. As for the rest of it — ” I paused. “I know I’m not your first. But you’ve always been safe, right?”
“Always,” he said at once. “Even when they didn’t want to. I figured my life was complicated enough.”
“Then we’re fine.” I shut my eyes, murmuring inwardly, Blessed Goddess, now is not the time. Bestow your blessings elsewhere. As Aunt Rachel had said, simple. But it was effective…at least, that was what she had told me. Tiny Jerome would have been completely overrun with McAllisters if we hadn’t been mindful of such things. And sometimes, the reason for using the contraceptive spell was even more serious than that. For all her other strengths, Great-Aunt Ruby did not fare well in childbirth, and made sure to only have her two sons.
“We’re more than fine,” Connor said, and kissed me on the mouth, tongue touching mine, even as I felt him push against me, thrust inside, filling me once more. I wrapped my legs around his narrow hips and moved with him, the sensation of him being within me even more delicious now that we had nothing separating us. It was only flesh to flesh, Connor and Angela, the heat and the need building, building until we cried out as one, our bodies crashing through the climax at the same time. I felt him stagger, but then his grip on me tightened, still holding me in place, until the last ripples of the orgasm faded away.
We were both silent for a minute, breathing heavily. Then he smiled and pulled away from me before lowering me ever so gently to the shower floor. His chest moved up and down, glinting as the hot water still fell upon it, but he seemed to recover himself and shot me a wicked grin.
“Conditioner?” he asked, reaching for the bottle.
A few hours later we were back in the FJ, heading out of the downtown section of Flagstaff and up toward the hills, going in the same direction we had that morning, although we passed the turn-off that had led up into the woods and continued to follow the road as it wound through the rolling landscape on its way out of town. By then there were more people on the highway — possibly heading to their own holiday parties. However, I sort of doubted most of them were going to the kind of get-together that lay at the end of our route.
I don’t know if I was fidgeting or what, but Connor lifted one hand briefly from the steering wheel to give my fingers a reassuring squeeze before redirecting his attention to the icy road. “It’ll be fine,” he said. A quick glance over at me, and he added, “You’re beautiful.”
Despite my nerves, which felt as if they had all been twisted into a knot and then dumped somewhere in my stomach, I had to smile. After we’d emerged from the shower, laughing and tingling, I’d gotten serious as soon as I contemplated having to face a horde of Wilcoxes. Guessing my mood, Connor had left me to primp, a process that took much longer than it normally would. I didn’t have much to work with, my wardrobe here consisting of five camisoles, three pairs of jeans, and three sweaters. I had to recycle one of the sweaters I’d worn over the weekend, but I had to hope it would be enough. Then of course I berated myself for caring what the Wilcox clan might think of me. It seemed I couldn’t win either way.
“I’m still trying to wrap my head around this potluck thing,” I told him, trying to keep my tone light even as I stared out the window at the snowy woods passing by and wondered how far out of Flagstaff proper Damon lived. The houses were set far apart here, and getting bigger. It looked as if the Wilcox primus lived in what Sydney liked to refer to as “Richie-Rich Land.”
“It got started back during World War Two, from what I’ve heard,” Connor said. “The Wilcoxes actually marry civilians a good bit, and I guess one of the wives got this idea that everyone should do more together as a family. There was some rationing during the war, so they decided to pool their resources and make it easier on everyone that way. And the tradition just sort of kept up after that.”
That all sounded perfectly pleasant and innocuous…or would if you didn’t know anything about the Wilcoxes and their history. However, what Connor had just related to me did jibe with what Margot Emory had revealed during our talk, that the Wilcox clan, having a smaller pool of family members to work with in the beginning, often married civilians to keep themselves from getting too inbred. I wondered how they selected these people. Did they truly care for them, or simply choose those who were attractive, intelligent, resourceful…whatever qualities might do best to improve their “breed”?
It was a question I decided I really didn’t want to ask Connor. Not when I was about to meet a bunch of people who were the result of such matches, anyway.
We turned off the “highway” and onto a smaller lane that curved around past some eye-popping mansions, then pulled into a wooded drive already choked with cars. Apparently even here the clan was following protocol, though, since there was still room to maneuver, and a choice spot left open right in front of the multi-bayed garage. The house itself was massive and sprawling, its peaked roofs heavy with snow.
I stared at it, wide-eyed. “Okay, and no one thinks it’s odd that a college professor lives in a place like this? I mean, I know they make a little more than minimum wage, but this looks like something from one of those shows on HGTV where they give you tours of celebrity houses. My friend Sydney loves those.”
A shrug as he turned off the engine. “We just say it was our father’s investments. He owned property all over town, so no one thinks it’s that strange.”
“It still seems like a lot of house for just one person,” I replied, then unfastened my seatbelt.
He shot me an unreadable look. “Well, he hadn’t really planned to be living here alone.”
No, I suppose he hadn’t. I realized then that this was where Damon Wilcox would have brought me, if he’d succeeded in his mad plan and actually forced a consort bond upon me.
For a long moment, I said nothing, only stared at the house. Connor reached out and took my hand in his. “You don’t — don’t regret anything, do you?”
At first I couldn’t quite understand what he was saying. Then I realized he was uncertain, was wondering if some part of me wouldn’t have rather been here in this mansion than in his apartment, which, while very nice, was an order of magnitude removed from this place. “Goddess, no!” I replied with such vehemence that he startled a bit. “I would rather be stuck in a drafty single-wide with you than be here with your brother.”
“Well,” he said, sending me a relieved grin, “I wouldn’t exactly call my apartment a single-wide.”
“No, of course not. I love your apartment. It’s cozy and warm, and just right. Besides,” I added, recalling the open countryside we’d just driven through, “I have a feeling you’d have to go a lot farther to get some decent tapas in this place.”
He actually laughed at that. “You’re right. I can’t guarantee you tapas today, but we usually put on a pretty good spread. So let’s go. I’m hungry…we used up all that breakfast.”
That we did. I’d actually begun to feel a bit peckish right before we left the apartment, although now my appetite seemed to have taken a back seat to nerves. “Okay,” I said reluctantly. I’d agreed to this, so sitting in the car and not moving at this point was a little silly. The time for protests was long past.
I wrapped my fingers around the door handle, opened it, and got out. The biting air was all around me, although a little more bearable now, since the sun had been up for hours, and the temperature had warmed a bit. Most of the snow had already melted off the tree branches, although it was still thick on the ground.
Connor paused at the hatch to the Cruiser’s cargo compartment and got out the two bottles of wine we were contributing to the potluck. His cousin Marie, whoever she was, had supposedly already brought up the tamales I’d made, but at least this way we weren’t walking in empty-handed. Then he came up to me and took my hand with his free one.
“Ready?”
I nodded. No, I wasn’t ready — talk about walking into the lion’s den — but I certainly couldn’t back out now.
He squeezed my fingers. “It’ll be fine. Like I said, we don’t bite…much.”
Even in the freezing air, I could feel my cheeks flush. I’d done my best to arrange my hair so it covered some of the more obvious bite marks on my neck, but they were still there. The little supply of makeup I’d been given hadn’t included foundation or cover-up; I didn’t know if that was a vote of confidence for the quality of my complexion, or that whoever had been buying the stuff didn’t trust themselves to get me a correct match. Either way, I’d been pretty limited in what I could do to make it look as if Connor and I hadn’t spent the last eighteen hours jumping one another’s bones.
I’d asked him if he could do anything about it, just a little camouflage spell or something, but he’d shaken his head. “No, I can only alter my own appearance. I can’t do anything about those.” And he’d reached out to brush his fingers against the smudged-looking bruises on the side of my neck.
Just that light touch was enough to ignite the fire within me once more, but somehow I’d managed to push it away. I certainly didn’t have time for another shower at that point, and I was already nervous enough about facing the Wilcox clan without walking into Damon Wilcox’s house reeking of sex.
Now I saw that someone had swept the snow off the walk leading to that house, so the footing wasn’t as treacherous as I’d feared. I still clung to Connor’s hand, just to be safe. Or maybe that was just me trying to get whatever reassurance I could.
The oversized door had an equally oversized pine wreath, complete with red bow, hanging from it. I wondered if Damon himself had put it there, or whether one of his relatives had hung it to give the place a more festive look. Somehow I just couldn’t imagine Damon Wilcox being the cheery holiday-decorating type. Then again, I never could have imagined him hosting a potluck, either.
Connor opened the door and led me in. I suppose he didn’t see the need to knock, as it was his brother’s house. Or maybe it was locked against anyone who wasn’t a Wilcox. All I knew was that I didn’t intend to touch the door handle to find out. Those magical shocks were strong enough that I’d still be able to feel them even through my gloves.
When we entered the place, my first impression was of sound and light — people talking and laughing, pale winter sunlight shining through the pine trees that surrounded the house and slanting through the enormous floor-to-ceiling windows in the room opposite the entry, windows that surrounded an equally enormous stone fireplace. Logs crackled and snapped within. I pulled in a breath and wished I knew a good invisibility spell. Or one for teleportation. That would do just fine, too.
Neither of those spells was at my disposal, however, so I followed Connor’s lead and took off my coat, then hung it on one of the overcrowded racks clustered by the front door.
“Connor!” an unfamiliar voice called out, and I saw a tall dark-haired man smile and wave. He had the Wilcox look about him, with his sooty hair and eyes and high cheekbones, but his expression as he approached us was far friendlier than I imagined Damon’s could ever be.
“Lucas,” Connor said, “I want you to meet Angela.”
The man came to a stop even as his eyes widened. I could see the astonishment in them, that I would be here at all. But then he seemed to gather himself, and he smiled at me. “Angela. It’s so very good to see you here. I’m Lucas Wilcox, Connor’s cousin.”
“Fourth, right?”
“Something like that. Who’s counting?”
I couldn’t help smiling a little, recalling how I’d always thought of Adam that way. Third…fourth…five times removed…when the connection got that tenuous, it started to not matter very much exactly what degree it was. Thinking of Adam probably wasn’t wise, though, because then all I could do was wonder who else among these dark, handsome people had been wearing a hooded cloak that night, and had been there when the Wilcoxes invaded my home and stole me away.
Although my smile had faded, I still managed to say, “It’s very nice to meet you, Lucas.”
His dark eyes twinkled a little, as if he guessed I was only uttering the words custom expected me to say. But his only comment was, “Don’t even try to remember all our names, because it’s impossible. Just smile and nod…and make sure Connor keeps your glass filled. Assuming you drink, of course.”
Oh, I drink. Right now I want to drink…a lot.
I gave a foolish sort of nod, not knowing exactly how I should reply. Connor rushed to my aid, saying, “Looks like I’m already falling down on the job in that department. Angela, let’s get these bottles over to the table in the family room — that’s where we set up the food — and then I’ll get us a couple glasses of wine.”
“Sure.” I allowed him to lead me away from Lucas, who seemed to watch me as I went, a speculative look on his face.
I couldn’t figure out what that meant, though, because once we were moving through the living room we were approached from all sides, people saying hello and introducing themselves, a blur of smiling faces and names that, as Lucas had said, I couldn’t possibly begin to remember. Looking at them, I wondered what their talents were. We had a good deal of variation in Jerome, as there weren’t as many of us, and somehow the different skills seemed to get distributed evenly amongst a witch population, but there were so many Wilcoxes it seemed there had to be some doubling up. Not that I could ask; it was one thing to discuss such things privately, but going up to a witch or warlock and asking them to identify their talent was about on par with walking up to a stranger and inquiring about their weight.
We’d just set down the wine bottles when a woman approached and said, “So you were able to make it.”
As I focused on her features, it was all I could do to hold in a gasp. This was the woman from that nightmarish scene when I’d first been brought here to Flagstaff, when I’d been held down on a makeshift altar by one of Damon Wilcox’s unnamable spells. The Native American blood in her features was far more pronounced than it was in many of the other Wilcox clan members, and I wondered at it.
“Hi, Marie,” Connor said. “This is Angela.”
Her cool dark gaze slid over toward me, and she smiled, although it didn’t quite reach her long-lashed black eyes. “So glad you came. And you really made those tamales Connor brought over the other day? You are quite an amazing cook.”
So this was Connor’s cousin Marie. He’d mentioned her several times, and she appeared to hold a position of some importance in the clan. If nothing else, she seemed to be one of the few people with the strength to stand up to Damon Wilcox.
Belatedly I recalled that she was also the one who’d done most of the shopping for me, so I said quickly, “Thank you, Marie. And thank you for choosing all those wonderful clothes. They all fit perfectly, and the colors are great.”
Another one of those cool smiles. She herself was dressed very well, if simply, in a long black skirt, slim-fitting black sweater, black boots, and some eye-popping turquoise jewelry. My Aunt Rachel would’ve positively salivated over that squash blossom necklace. “You’re very welcome. It’s good to see that you’ve…adapted…so well to things here.”
“She really has,” Connor put in. “Although I’m hoping after today the two of us can get out to do some hiking or something. If she keeps feeding me the way she has, I’m going to need some way to work it off.”
“Better buy me some snowshoes first,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. Something about Marie seemed to set me on edge. Maybe it was just that I did clearly remember her from that hideous night when Damon had tried to make me his consort, and couldn’t forgive her for the role she’d played. Or maybe it was the faint hint of disapproval that seemed to emanate from her, although I couldn’t figure out why. After all, she hadn’t seemed all that upset at the time when it turned out I was Connor’s match and not Damon’s.
Well, this probably wasn’t the place to attempt to figure it out. I’d try to pick Connor’s brain on the subject later, when we were safely home and away from here.
Home. Funny how I already thought of the apartment as my home, when I’d only spent a few days there. But somehow I knew that wherever Connor was, that was home.
“The snow melts pretty quickly on the lower elevations,” he said. “And it’s supposed to warm up through New Year’s. So I don’t think you need to worry about snowshoes.”
“Hiking boots, then.”
“Not a problem. We’ve got two hiking stores in walking distance.”
I couldn’t really argue with that. What I found more interesting was the way Marie seemed to watch our interchange, as if she were carefully studying our interactions. What, was she surprised by the way Connor and I got along? Didn’t she know that was how it worked with a prima and her consort, that our bond made us more than mere mates, made us lovers who were intertwined on every level, body, mind, and soul?
Maybe she didn’t. After all, things were done very differently here in Wilcox territory….
But of course she made no comment, offering another of her Mona Lisa smiles before saying, “There are quite a few diversions here in and around Flagstaff, Angela. I hope you and Connor have fun exploring them.” Her gaze drifted away from us. “But it looks as if Taryn is waving me over. You two enjoy yourselves.” She moved off into the crowd.
So many questions filled my mind, I didn’t know where to start. But I had one thing uppermost in my brain. “I’ll take that glass of wine now, Connor.”
After a few gulps of some local wine — a red blend from Arizona Stronghold — I was feeling a little more in control of myself. So far no one had tried to hex me straight back to Jerome, or turned me into a frog. Then again, why would they? In their eyes, I was one of them now. I’d bonded with Connor, brother of the primus. Now we were all just one big happy family.
Well, more or less.
More introductions, more smiling at attractive dark-haired people whose faces I wasn’t sure I’d be able to recall the next day. Okay, maybe their faces — I was always fairly good at that sort of thing. But names? As Lucas had advised me, I didn’t even try.
We ate and drank, and then drank some more. I felt as if I were in a sort of dream, as if all the introductions were happening to someone else, someplace else. I couldn’t be in Damon Wilcox’s house, chatting with his relations, talking about the weather and the food in downtown Flagstaff (not that I was an expert, except for the tapas Connor and I had shared my first night here), and talking about my aunt’s cooking and providing tips on making tamales as if doing so was the most natural thing in the world.
Through all this, I wondered where the man himself actually was. I hadn’t seen anything of him since we’d entered the house. Was he avoiding Connor and me, not wanting to see the two of us together, not wanting to look at the prize he’d had taken from him?
No, that was ridiculous; I shouldn’t flatter myself. The place was huge, after all; laughter and chatter echoed from the open area on the second floor, which looked like a game room of sorts, and there were many other rooms down on the ground floor that I hadn’t even seen yet. Connor seemed to understand that I was more comfortable staying here in the family room, close to the food and the wine. Everyone flowed in and out of the space anyway, since they needed to refill their own glasses and plates.
We’d been there for a little more than an hour when Connor leaned down and murmured in my ear, “I need to go to the bathroom. Will you be okay here for a minute or two?”
My first reaction was to say no, I wouldn’t, but that would be childish. Setting aside the off-putting undercurrent in Marie’s reaction to me, everyone else had been very friendly. Maybe too friendly, because of course it didn’t take much for me to start wondering just why they were being so nice. I’d worry about that later, though. I was certainly in no imminent danger, except maybe from indigestion after eating my way through everything from chili cornbread to Swedish meatballs.
“I’ll be fine,” I said, and hoisted my plastic cup in his direction. “You just gave me a refill, remember?”
“Right.” The corners of his eyes crinkled as he smiled down at me, and he bent and kissed me quickly, a soft touch of his lips at the edge of my mouth. “Don’t eat too much, though. I don’t want you so full that we can’t have a repeat engagement when we get back to the apartment.”
“Not a problem,” I said. “I’ll have, what, a whole twenty minutes to digest even if we left right now?”
He shook his head and moved away, heading toward a hall I’d noticed earlier, although I didn’t know which rooms branched off from it. The bathroom at least, obviously. Or one of them, as a place this big had to have at least three or four.
I took a few steps toward the fireplace. This room had its own hearth, not as grand as the one in the living room, but still imposing, made of more stone and reaching up to the wood-paneled ceiling. The crowd had ebbed away, most people seeming content to let the food they’d eaten settle a bit before they came back for seconds or thirds.
“Enjoying yourself?”
Damon Wilcox’s voice. Something in those silky tones sent an icy shiver down my spine. My fingers tightened on the clear plastic cup I held, and I had to tell myself to relax before I crushed it and spilled wine everywhere.
I took a breath, then forced myself to turn around. He stood a few paces away, watching me, black eyes hooded. He wore a gray houndstooth jacket over a white button-down shirt and jeans, an outfit that seemed calculated to present the perfect image of a college professor relaxing at home.
“Very much,” I said coolly. “You have a beautiful home.”
“You like it?” he inquired. “It could have been your home as well.”
My heart thumped uneasily, and I told myself it was fine. He couldn’t do anything to me here in front of all these people.
What, the same people who stood by and watched while he tried to force the primus bond on you? my brain mocked me. All right, maybe the presence of the Wilcox clan members wasn’t as big a safeguard as I’d thought.
But Connor had just gone down the hall and would be back at any second….
“I’m fine with Connor’s apartment, actually.”
“Are you?”
I paused, then forced myself to meet those piercing black eyes. He can’t do anything to you now, I reassured myself. You’re bonded to his brother. You’re useless to him. He’s just messing with you because he can, and because he’s still pissed that he didn’t get what he wanted.
“More than fine. I mean, I have everything I could possibly want. My consort has turned out to be the man I’ve been dreaming of for years. What girl wouldn’t be thrilled by that?”
His lips thinned. “Sometimes dreams can be nightmares.”
“I know that,” I retorted. “Because you sure did your damn best to screw up mine, didn’t you?”
At least he didn’t try to deny that he’d been meddling with my dreams. “It was an interesting experiment, that’s true. Dreams have…a fascinating energy.”
At that moment I saw Connor approaching from behind his brother. Judging by the look on his face, Connor was not exactly thrilled about the primus swooping down on me the second I was left alone. “Damon,” he said, his voice tight.
Damon allowed his gaze to linger on me for another second before he turned to greet his brother. “Oh, hello, Connor. Angela and I were just having a nice chat.”
Jaw tight, Connor moved past Damon to stand next to me. “Were you?”
No way was I going to challenge Damon here on his home ground. Besides, I’d always been taught that causing a scene at a family get-together was in extremely poor taste. “Oh, yeah,” I said airily. “I was just complimenting Damon on his lovely house. Wasn’t I, Damon?”
Instead of looking annoyed, he merely smiled and said, “Yes, you were. Connor, it seems your little prima here appreciates the finer things in life. You might want to reconsider that cramped apartment of yours.”
Hearing this, Connor looked irritated enough for the both of them. “Actually, I think we’re fine where we are.”
“Oh, definitely,” I chimed in, and wrapped my arm around his waist, snuggling up against him. “I wouldn’t want a place so big that I didn’t have this guy within arm’s length at all times.”
That shot seemed to have found its target. “Oh, so now you’re in love, are you?” Damon sneered. “Well, enjoy it while you can.”
He left us to stew over that as he stalked off toward the living room. As I watched, I saw a young woman around Connor’s age approach him and smile. She stood out amongst the Wilcoxes, her hair a warm honey blonde, unusual in this crowd of brunettes. Damon glanced down at her, seemed to hesitate, then offered her a smile before reaching out and winding his arm around her waist.
I didn’t really want to know what that was all about. Then again, having someone else around for the primus to focus his attention on could only be a good thing.
Connor noticed, too — I could tell by the slight narrowing of his eyes as he watched his brother. However, puzzling over the young woman’s identity wasn’t enough to distract me from what Damon’s words — “enjoy it while you can” — had meant. It was a horrible truth I’d kept buried at the back of my mind, since I hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it, acknowledge that I might one day share the same fate as all the other wives of Jeremiah Wilcox’s line.
Connor’s green eyes seemed to glow with anger. He stood there, body hard and unmoving under the arm I still had wrapped around his waist. Very slowly he pulled away from me, then said, “You want to get out of here?”
Relief flooded through me. “I thought you’d never ask.”