Cut and Run (12 page)

But he was also a child living in a private hell.

Each book on Ethan’s shelf, every last one, was a story about magical lands and faraway adventures. Each crumbling spine and bleached out title spoke of escape.

She glanced at the models he had clearly built with his own hands. High-speed jets. Spaceships. Fast cars.

His yearning to get away from his upbringing couldn’t have been more obvious to anyone inclined to take a closer look.

Tori’s mouth went dry with heartbreak as she absorbed the reality of Ethan’s past. She pulled one of the old paperbacks off the headboard bookcase and carefully opened it, the knot in her throat burning even more as her eyes lit on the scrawled handwriting penciled onto the title page.

Property of Ethan Michael Davis.

She touched the juvenile letters, feeling a connection to him now that could never be broken. He had trusted her with this part of himself, of his past.

He had, at last, shown her his whole truth.

And she had never loved him more.

Tori glanced up at the sudden, soft creak of the attic bedroom door.

Ethan’s hazel eyes found her on the bed and he smiled as he stepped in and closed the door behind him. “I should warn you, those books are rare literary treasures. There’s a steep fine if you’re late returning any of them.”

She grinned despite the weight of her emotions. “Well, that could pose a problem, since I don’t have a lot of cash on me right now. Maybe we can take it out in trade?”

Barefoot, dressed only in the jeans he had in his backpack, he strode over to sit beside her on the bed.

“What are you reading?” He took the paperback out of her hands and chuckled lightly. “I must’ve read this one a dozen times. All of them, more than likely.”

As he reached around her to put the book back on the shelf, Tori let her gaze soak him, from his handsome, now clean-shaven face, to his broad shoulders and the stitched, healing stab wound from yesterday. Her heart was so full of love when she looked at him, it felt on the verge of bursting inside her breast.

She pulled him into her arms and kissed him, slowly, deeply. He encircled her in his embrace too, returning her kiss with the same tender fervor.

“What’s this for?” he murmured against her mouth.

“For trusting me,” she whispered. “With this. With your life. With who you really are.”

He said nothing, just looked into her eyes with an intensity that stole her breath. When his mouth met hers again, it was achingly sweet.

Raw and honest.

And much too brief for her liking.

“Where’s your dad now?” she asked, still holding Ethan close.

“He was just going to bed downstairs when I came up.” Ethan exhaled a sigh. “Is it wrong that seeing him now, I feel more pity for the son of a bitch than hate?”

She stroked his smooth cheek, the hard plane and firm jaw. “No. You lived it, Ethan. You feel what you feel.”

“I pity him for all the things his addiction and his rage cost him. My mom loved him once. I did too. He destroyed all of that.”

Ethan brought his hand up to her face now, his strong fingers ghosting over her skin, making her tremble. His gaze searched hers, as tender as his touch. “For so long, I worried that I had destroyed anything you might’ve felt for me. I thought you’d hate me too.”

“No,” she said. “It wasn’t hate. It was hurt. And that’s a much different thing.”

He cursed quietly. “I didn’t want to leave you, Tori. It about killed me to walk away that day.”

“You had to do what you did, how you did it. I understand that now.”

He shook his head. “It’s not over yet. I could be on the run for a long time. Maybe the rest of my life. I don’t want to wreck your life because of the way I have to live mine now.”

“I’m right where I want to be—with you. I waited three years for you, Ethan. I would’ve waited longer.” She brushed her fingers into his damp hair. “Besides, I’ve always wanted to see other parts of the country. Or the world, if that’s where we end up.”

He laughed ruefully. “Preferably not with a target on your back.”

“What kind of life would you expect me to have somewhere else without you, knowing that you had a target on your back? I need to be with you, Ethan. I don’t care where that is, or under what circumstances it will have to be—”

“You didn’t choose this kind of life,” he argued, frowning. “It’s not fair for me to ask you to sacrifice your job, your home, your friends—your entire way of living—just to risk your neck with me.”

“You haven’t asked,” she pointed out.

“And I won’t.” He drew back now, withdrawing from the conversation and from her. “I don’t want you to regret it, Tori. I don’t want you to regret me.”

Anger spiked through the softer feelings she’d been having in Ethan’s arms. “Regret you? Regret what we have right now?” She shook her head. “The biggest regret I could ever have is not being with you. If you don’t realize by now that I am in love with you, then maybe you’re not as brilliant as I thought.”

He stared for a long moment, his expression unreadable. “In love with me?”

“Head over heels, Professor Jones.” He was still staring, but now a tendon had begun to tick rapidly in his cheek. “I think I’ve been totally, irrevocably in love with you since St. Patrick’s Day four years ago.”

Ethan said nothing, but then he grabbed her on a fierce growl and drew her into a fevered, heart-stopping kiss. Yet for all his fire and passion, his hands were tender, reverent on her face and in her short hair.

When he finally released her, Tori laughed breathlessly. “This is traditionally the part where you say you love me too.”

He shook his head. “No. That’s not a strong enough word for what I feel about you. When you said I’d been alone all my life, you were right. I made sure I never had to rely on anyone. I never let myself trust anyone. Letting myself love someone?” He exhaled a sharp gust of breath. “I didn’t even know what that meant. Not until you, and the year we had together.”

“Ethan…” she whispered, hardly able to form words for the joy that had taken up residence in her breast.

“You mean everything to me, Tori. You are the only love I’ve ever known. The only one I’ve ever needed.” His long fingers were still caressing her cheek, his thumb stroking her jawline and throat. “I used to lie awake in this room, wishing, waiting for my first chance to get away. This house has always been nothing but bad memories. Not now. Tomorrow, I’m going to leave here with another memory. This memory—right here and now.”

Tori bent toward him on a soft cry and kissed him.

“Damn, woman,” he uttered against her lips. “This is torture, having you here on my bed, kissing me like that, telling me you love me…looking so beautiful and sexy, I can hardly keep from tearing your clothes off.”

“Who’s stopping you?”

He drew back and held her in a hooded, dark gaze. Tori didn’t wait for him to object or have any sudden attacks of honor.

With deft movements, she took off her tank top and shimmied out of her shorts. She sat before him on her knees in just her bra and panties.

Ethan swore, but it sounded like a prayer. “Tori Connors, you are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I can’t control myself around you for a fucking second.”

He reached out to her, caressed her breasts over the satin of her bra. She sighed at his touch, wanted more of it. Wanted to feel it all over her.

Ethan rasped a low curse. “My thirteen-year-old self would explode on the spot to see you now, like this, in a bedroom that has never known any action, other than the nights it was just me and my hand and a head full of horny teenage fantasies.”

Tori grinned. “Then brace yourself, because this bedroom’s cherry is about to get popped.”

19

She stripped him naked in mere seconds. His jeans and boxers hit the floor, then Tori went straight for his jutting cock.

“I don’t have protection,” he murmured, the words thick, difficult to spit out.

She sent a heated glance up at him. “I don’t care. Not tonight.”

“Thank God.” Ethan let his head fall back on his shoulders, sucking in a sharp breath as she licked him slowly from root to tip.

Her lips were soft and wet, her tongue scorching as she closed her mouth around the crown of his cock and slid down his length. Her enthusiastic moans as she swallowed him up vibrated through him straight to his balls, turning his already aching need into something fierce and primal.

She was his woman.

The only person he needed, and the only one he would ever want.

He loved her.

Holy fuck, he loved her with all of his being.

And damn, did he love what she could do to his body.

She took him deep, twisted her devilish little tongue along the sensitive underside of his shaft and up around the plum at its top.

He was on fire from her attention. He fought the roaring build of his climax, wanting to feel this pleasure for a while longer. Forever, if Tori was willing.

He would never have enough of her, and if he ever doubted it in any moment they’d been together, tonight, after everything they’d come through and had yet to face, Ethan knew he would never let her out of his life.

All his noble talk about moving on without her, keeping her safe by keeping her away from him, had been obliterated when she’d confessed her love for him so openly tonight.

He would protect her with his life.

With his death, if it came down to that.

The only thing that mattered was this woman—
his woman.

She owned him, a fact that was all the more clear to him as she suckled him and kissed him, picking up a tempo that was too pleasurable for him to endure much longer.

On a growl, he pulled her off him before he lost all control. “Now it’s my turn.”

He tossed her beneath him on the bed and rolled onto her, kissing her with tongue and teeth, his need firing even wilder.

With clumsy, impatient fingers, he unfastened the dainty clasp on her bra and freed her breasts. Her nipples were hard and flushed as deep a shade as her lips. He suckled the tight little buds, spurred on by Tori’s breathless, throaty cries.

He didn’t want to leave the delicious feast of her breasts and mouth, but there was a sweeter temptation that awaited. Ethan moved down the length of her body, kissing a trail over her sternum and delicate rib cage, then on to the creamy plane of her abdomen.

As he descended lower, he hooked his fingers in the hem of her panties and drew them down her slender legs. His palms were too warm, skidding up the velvety skin of her thighs.

He spread her open to his gaze, his senses full of the pretty wetness of her sex, the sugared cream scent of her arousal. She watched him admire her nakedness, her eyelids heavy over the dark blue pools of her eyes.

Eyes that looked at him with such trust and affection, such carnal need, he nearly spilled himself just sitting there.

“So beautiful,” he murmured hoarsely.

Then he bent his head and indulged in a deep, unhurried taste of her.

He brought her to a swift, thrashing orgasm, showing her no mercy until she had to bury her screams in the thin pillow on the bed.

He needed release too. She’d worked him into a state of pleasured anguish with her mouth, and now her climax had him beyond all sanity.

He needed her now.

All of her.

Forever.

“I have to be inside you.” Ethan rose between her parted thighs, crawled back up on the narrow bed.

Tonight, all their filters were stripped away, gone. Including this last one.

He rocked against her slick folds, nothing but skin on skin. Her juices coated him in warm honey as he thrust inside.

“Oh, God,” she gasped, reaching for him, pulling him down atop her as their bodies joined and began to move in perfect tempo.

He wanted to take it slow, but he was too far gone before they’d even started. With Tori writhing beneath him with the start of another climax, Ethan drove harder, deeper, faster. She broke around him, her tiny muscles rippling against his shaft as he chased his own release.

Finally, he could take no more.

His orgasm rolled up on him. On a low roar he withdrew, nestling his cock between their bodies as he spilled in a stream of slick heat.

“Ah, Christ,” he gasped, burying his forehead above her shoulder on the mattress. “This bedroom’s cherry is more than popped. It’s been fucking obliterated.”

Tori laughed softly and wrapped her arms around him as they caught their breath for the next round.

20

They made love several times during the night, then again as they woke that early morning before sunrise.

While Ethan had gone down to find them some coffee and toast, Tori had showered in a state of blissful exhaustion, her body aching deliciously in all the right places after enjoying his apparently endless stamina.

His desire for her had seemed equally infinite, his love even deeper, and she could only imagine how intense and passionate their future together would be.

She couldn’t wait for that future to begin.

He was alone in the kitchen when she went in, dressed and ready to hit the road. Standing bare-chested at the sink in his low-slung jeans, his sandy brown hair sleep-rumpled, Ethan palmed a mug of steaming coffee as he stared out the window at the gathering light outside.

Tori recalled another morning like this one, when she’d found Ethan standing in her kitchen back on that late-February morning in Maine.

She had loved him then too, but now she saw a different man before her.

And although it hardly seemed possible to her, she loved this newer, truer man even more.

He glanced over as she walked into the room, and his warm smile melted her. Tori went to him, wrapping her arms around his waist from behind. She rested her cheek on his muscled back. “Where’s your father?”

“Just waking up, I think. Heard him in his shower about the same time you were getting out of the other one.” Ethan caressed her clasped arms with his free hand. “You want coffee? I can make you some toast to go with it.”