Not Helen’s car.
The doorbell rang once, then again, sharp, insistent. She thought about pretending she wasn’t home, but the knocking got louder.
Annoyed that they wouldn’t go away, she marched to the door and stood there, fumbling with the lock with her good hand.
The door swung open and her breath caught. Bear.
She hadn’t known it was possible to forget how to breathe, not until the sight of him shattered her carefully built walls and left her lungs clawing for air. Bear stood there like the storm she'd spent weeks trying to pretend hadn't happened, dark, broad-shouldered, soaked in wind and salt and silence. The dark, silky strands of his hair were tousled, her fingers itching to touch them, feel the warrior power of him, and his eyes, Ancestors save her, those eyes, locked on her with such intensity she felt stripped bare.
For a second, she forgot the pain, the state she was in, the humiliating brace biting into her wrist. All she could feel was her pulse rioting in her throat, her body recognizing him before her mind caught up. He was the one her bones had reached for in sleep. The one whose name she whispered like a fevered prayer when the night pressed too close. Every dream she’d fought off came roaring back, raw and unfiltered.
He didn’t smile. Didn’t speak right away. Just looked at her like he was drinking her in.
“Damn, Bailee,” he murmured, his voice low and reverent, like he was afraid if he spoke too loudly, she might vanish. His gaze swept over her in a single, encompassing sweep, cataloging, absorbing, claiming, and the heat in it was a balm and a wound all at once.
Ancestors help her, she remembered.
The way she’d sent him away after their fierce, aching kisses, her heart thundering with want and terror. The way her hand had grazed his chest and met the scar, that jagged reminder of how close she’d come to losing him. It had thrown her back to Rio, his body limp in her arms, blood everywhere, the shock of his weight like an anchor dragging her under. She’d panicked. She’d recoiled not from him, but from the flash of loss so vivid it felt like death was reaching for him again.
That scar had made it real. Too real.
Her reaction, pulling away, pushing him out, had been pure self-preservation. A desperate scramble to outrun grief, fear, the unbearable thought of what it would mean to love him and lose him for good.
She had hurt him.
He so deserved an explanation.
She’d been the one to initiate that intimacy. She had reached for him, pulled him in with both hands and kissed him like she meant it, only to break away like he’d scorched her.
He’d burned her down to ash. This man who had bled for her, who had saved her life twice, who had saved so many in that hotel in Rio. His heat, his sacrifice, his damn presence. It had branded her. Searing her raw with a hunger so deep, so bottomless, she feared no one else would ever touch it. Not the way he had.
It was why she hadn’t been able to stay away from him after his surgery. Why she’d shown up at the hospital when she swore she wouldn’t. Why, even now, even like this, wrecked and helpless and too full of shame, she wanted him gone.
Not because she didn’t need him.
She did.
The sight of him here, in her home, seeing her like this? It cracked something loose inside her chest.
She didn’t want him to see her like this.
Bruised and battered, she didn’t want him to witness the loss of control.
But Ancestors help her…she wanted him still.
He stood there, calm and unmoving, watching her like she still mattered. Like none of it, her panic, her retreat, her silence, had changed what they were.
As if he had no regrets.
As if her words, those words she wished she could take back, were already forgiven.
As if he still wanted her to be his.
Hunger hit her like adrenaline shoved straight into her veins.
Ancestors help her, yes.
She wanted to be his. Over and over and over again. In every way that mattered. Skin to skin. No space between them. She wanted his hands. His mouth. His body. His cock. The weight of him braced above her, inside her, grounding her with that big, beautiful body, heart, and soul. To have such a man want her was humbling.
