“I know, but he provides them, so I take them. It doesn’t cost me anything, and I haven’t been with anyone in—well, since before.”

“Thank God. I’m good. I’m always safe. Except, apparently, with you. What the hell is the matter with me?”

I stayed silent, still cloaked in a haze of nirvana as my body reeled in the aftermath of the orgasm.

And I never wanted to move again.

So I lay there, finally closing my eyes. When a breeze drifted over me and I felt a chill, I pulled the covers up from the foot of the bed over both our bodies.

I couldn’t sleep. Reid’s eyes were closed, but I doubted he was sleeping. What about his promise?

Of course I had to let him rest. Men were different than women. They needed recovery time. Fine with me.

We had all night.

46

Reid

Damn. I’d needed that more than I’d ever needed sex. Ever needed a woman.

Sure, this day had been majorly fucked up, but that wasn’t the only reason I’d desired this. Needed this. Yearned for this.

I was feeling something so completely foreign to me. Something I’d never wished for or wanted.

Was I in love?

My God, was it something in the Wolfe genes that made us fall in love so quickly? I’d watched both my brothers and my sister fall in love within weeks.

A fluke, I’d thought. It won’t happen to me. Never in a million years.

Except it had.

I loved this woman. A woman who, though she obviously wanted me and was attracted to me, could never love me. Never, because of what I represented.

The man who’d kidnapped her, tortured her.

Hunted her.

But I was also the brother of the man who’d saved her. Rescued her.

My release into her body had taken me to another planet. Nirvana and ecstasy tripled, like nothing before.

But now I lay next to her, covered, my eyes closed.

And these thoughts consumed me.

Did I have the right to drag her into my mess of a family after all she’d been through?

Did I have the right to ask her to be with me? The son who most resembled the man who’d hurt her so deeply?

She wanted me, yes. But could she ever love me?

I opened my eyes and looked at her, first peripherally but then I turned onto my side. She was resting, her eyes closed, her pretty cheeks flushed. Her blond hair was splayed over the pillow like a curtain of honey. Her full pink lips were parted just slightly.

Just the perfect amount for me to slide my tongue between them.

My cock woke at the thought. Semi hard and then hard again, just from the thought of a kiss. A beautiful kiss between the lips of the woman I loved.

Lips.