“You don’t need to do that, Gabe. You’ve already done so much.”
He arched a brow. “If you don’t know book one of a series from book three, can you really be trusted?”
She laughed. A real laugh. “All right then. I accept.”
Honor’s gaze bounced between them. “I’m heading to bed. Night, Felicity.”
“Night, Honor.”
She swept from the room, leaving her alone with Gabe once more.
Their stares met.
“You’ll be all right?” His low rumble did things to her knees that made her need to sit down.
She drifted to the sofa and sank to the cushion. “I’ll be fine.” As soon as she sat, exhaustion struck and the last of the adrenaline that had been fueling her for hours drained away.
She stretched out on the sofa with her head on the plump eiderdown pillow.
He took a step forward. As if he didn’t know what to do with himself, he clutched the edge of the blanket and drew it up over her.
Her breath caught in her throat, and her head swirled with his nearness.
He leaned closer, closer. When hard lips brushed over her forehead, her eyes slipped shut.
A forehead kiss. No man had ever given her a forehead kiss before.
Men got handsy on the dance floor or made demands after taking her out to dinner. But Gabe seemed to possess the old-fashioned manners she admired.
She issued a shivery sigh.
He pulled back, his eyes boring into her. “Sorry. Too much.”
“No.” Her response was a mere breath. “Just enough.”
In a world full of men who pushed too hard and too fast, a man who watched out for a woman—who protected her without taking from her—was the kind who could make her heart skip a beat.
Chapter Six
Gabe woke before dawn, same as always, from habit, or maybe the leftover tension in his muscles that no amount of sleep could touch. Either way, when the day’s first gray light crept in around the edges of the blinds in the bunkhouse, he was already yanking on workout shorts and a T-shirt and had his boots laced.
The gym in the Black Heart lodge was empty when he stepped inside. It smelled like rubber mats and metal, which was better than coffee to him right now. He wrapped his hands with tape and went to the heavy bag first.
He first took up boxing in the military and soon realized it was one of his favorite ways to release stress. During those early days after he entered the therapy program, he and this bag outran a lot of ghosts.
He moved through some combos, calling the beats in his head.Jab, jab, cross, right hook, uppercut.
The leather thumped under his knuckles.Jab, cross, hook. Again. Breathe in, breathe out.
The thuds dulled some of the noise in his head. When his shoulders burned and his lungs rasped, he moved to the weights. He pushed harder than he needed to because his platoon sergeant always told them to push to failure. Only when his arms and thighs felt like jelly could he say he did his best.
The burn he knew. Pain, he understood.
What he didn’t know was how to accommodate for the shift he felt in himself ever since he bumped into a certain blue-eyed woman with a sweet voice that got under his skin.
After he could go no more, he hit the shower, standing under the hot water—almost too much luxury for a rough Marine like him—then returned to the bunkhouse to change into jeans and a clean flannel.
A glance at the window told him he still had some time before he picked up the slack in the security office, and he wasn’t ready for breakfast either. He grabbed his coat and headed to the shooting range.
