It takes everything I have not to grab the keys from her hand and throw them off the damn ledge. “I’ll change the fucking combination.”Or get a better safe.
“You could do that.”
I get the impression that she’s enjoying this little power exchange too much. Hells, all I want to do is take her over my lap and spank her bare ass bright red. Maybe teach her a few different ways to use those holes of hers.
“I could, huh?” A new fantasy takes hold before I can shake it. One I fully intend to play with later.
Elena is still in the water but her body vibrates with coiled tension. She’s seconds from bolting, and I’m seconds from crushing her back to me and revoking everything I just told her.
“You said once that if I ran, you’d chase me. That the punishment wouldn’t be worth me leaving.”
My cock stiffens painfully beneath us. “I said that, yeah.” Every breath is ragged. I can't tell if they’re mine or hers.
Elena leans forward and places her sweet lips against mine. The kiss is light and chaste and all the things neither of us need.
“This is me running,” she whispers against my mouth.
Then she’s out of the water and across the floor. The first key is in the lock before my brain has caught up with the action. She startles a laugh out of me as her feet patter into the stairwell.
This. Woman.
I give her a decent count before I haul my ass out of the tub, letting the water out. Hell, I even have time to dry and dress before she starts tackling the locks downstairs. My boots are on by then. Best yet? The snow I’ve been waiting on drifts across the forest, dusting the tops of the trees.
It’ll be a hard, fast chase. She can have a head start.
So when the door opens at the bottom of my house, the harness is in my hand.
I step off the edge of the platform, her name on my lips. Seeing my woman flee into the forest, knowing she has minutes at best before I catch her, is the sexiest damn thing I’ve ever seen.
And if I have doubts?
My sweetness left the keys in the lock and headed away from the town, deeper into the mountains where there are no paths. Where she knows I’ll find her anyway.
Fuck, I love her.
I loved her the moment she turned up on my doorstep begging for help, and nothing has changed since then. I wait a little longer before I head into the forest.
There’s nothing better than hearing those little sounds she makes when I surprise her. And I have every intention of earning as many of those sounds as I possibly can today.
Merry fucking Christmas to me.
EPILOGUE
GABE
The table at Perfect Brews is free of Christmas decorations as I sit across from the man who served with me before all hell broke loose in a place I’ll never return to in person but that haunts dreams I never talk about. Not even to Elena.
For Drake, he has his own battles to fight.
“Why did you send her to me?” I turn the wedding ring over in my hands. It’s too big for her, but it's the right fit for me. Today is a quiet ceremony. Drake will be there, and a friend of hers. She doesn’t want anything big and I hate crowds.
A year after Elena turned up on my mountain, she’s still with me. We decided to make it official, and her name is about to become Elena Decker. She never did get around to that paperwork, though there was some other to do after her ex passed due to a terrible incident with a mafia run in. At least, that was how the local papers reported his death.
Deboning seemed about right for the circumstances all around. Bloody, messy and personal.
Like I said, it fit.
Drake holds my gaze and shrugs. “She needed help, You seemed like the right man for the job.” He nods to the wedding band in my hand. “Looks like it worked out.”
