She’s back in Blackwood House. Back in our orbit. Back where I can see her, touch her, hear her muttering under her breath when she’s annoyed and watch the way her mouth twitches when she’s trying not to smile.
And she’s ours now.
I don’t mean that in the easy way. Not in the way of sex or heat or one filthy night below Noir that changed everything and left no room to pretend otherwise.
I mean she came back. That’s the part that matters.
She didn’t get Deacon. She didn’t get her revenge. Not yet. I know that. I know it’s still in her, simmering low and mean and patient. Reva is not the forgiving type. She is not the sort of woman who simply lays down an old wound because a man asks nicely.
I believe I’d think less of her if she were.
But she came back anyway, and for now that’s enough.
I hand her a glass of wine and watch her take it.
“So romantic,” she says, eyeing the spread between us.
“I contain multitudes.”
“You contain cheese cubes.”
I grin. “And what are cheese cubes if not edible poetry?”
She snorts softly into her glass, and the sound goes straight under my ribs.
Christ. I’m gone for her. Absolutely gone.
Which is embarrassing, honestly. Not because she isn’t worth it—she is. More because if anyone had told me six months ago that I’d be arranging a moonlight picnic in the bed of my truck for a woman with a vengeance complex and a tendency to stab first and ask questions never, I’d have had them committed.
Now look at me.
I pop a grape into my mouth and lean back on one hand, studying her over the rim of my own glass—me, who drinks beer over wine any day. “You know,” I say lightly, “I haven’t decided whether to be touched by your triumphant return or deeply insulted by the fact that you made me track you to a motel first.”
Her mouth flattens. “You didn’t have to track me.”
“At least I didn’t steal your panties.”
She nearly chokes on her wine.
I laugh as she glares at me, cheeks warming. “There she is.”
“Ever stole my panties?”
I’m not even surprised that she knew immediately it was Ever.
“Of course he did.”
“And he put cameras in my room.”
“He did a great many things in that room, love. Installing cameras was among the least intimate.”
She reaches for a cracker and throws it at me.
I catch it against my chest and look wounded. “Violence. On date night.”
“This is not a date.”
“It has wine, moonlight, and a beautiful woman who looks seconds away from climbing into my lap to murder me. If that’s not romance, what is?”
