Page 13 of The Agent’s Curvy Seduction

Willow tilts her head, considering me with a slow, deliberate thoroughness that makes my pulse pick up despite myself. "She'd think you were terrifying," she says. "And she'd be right. And she'd still want you to kiss her."

I stand, rounding the table, and pull her up out of her chair by the hand before she can say anything else clever.

We finish the dishes in comfortable silence, her hands in the warm water and mine drying what she passes me. When the last plate is done, I set the towel aside and lead her upstairs without a word. She follows.

In the bedroom, I undress her slowly this time. No rush. No counter. Just the big bed and the low light and the sound of her breathing as I peel my shirt off her body. I kiss every inch I uncover—her collarbone and the soft curve of her stomach, taking my time until every place I touch stops feeling like a question.

When she's bare, I guide her down onto the sheets and settle over her. I take her face in my hands and make her look at me.

"Keep your eyes on me," I tell her. "The whole time. I want to see everything."

She nods, already a little breathless. I push into her slow and deep, watching the way her mouth falls open and her eyes go dark. I don't let her hide. Every time she tries to look away, I tip her chin back until those brown eyes are locked on mine again. I move inside her like we have all the time in the world—long, deliberate strokes that make her nails dig into my shoulders and her thighs tighten around my hips.

"Hudson—"

"I've got you." I brush my thumb across her lower lip. "Feel how deep I am? You're mine. All of you is mine."

She comes first, quiet and shaking, eyes never leaving mine. I follow her over the edge a few thrusts later, buried as deep as I can get, forehead pressed to hers while I spill inside her. We stay like that after, breathing the same air, her fingers tracing idle patterns on my back.

Eventually I roll us so she's tucked against my chest. My hand settles at her hip again. I stare at the ceiling and start talking before I can stop myself.

"I've been thinking about the cabin," I say. "About making it ours. Putting your name on the deed next to mine. Building a real kitchen so you can bake whenever you want. Maybe adding a porch swing out front."

She’s quiet for a second. “That’s a lot of planning for a protection detail.”

“It’s not a protection detail anymore. You know that.” I tighten my arm around her. “I want a house that feels like ours. I want a ring on your finger so every man who looks at you knows you’re taken. I want mornings like this one for the rest of my life. I’m not asking you to decide anything tonight. I’m just telling you where my head’s at.”

She presses a kiss to my chest. “You’re serious.”

“Dead serious.”

We fall quiet after that. Her breathing eventually evens out into sleep. I stay awake longer, mapping the future in my head—her laughter in this house, her curves under my hands every night, the way she’d look with my last name. Wolfe. Willow Wolfe. It fits.

Sometime after midnight, my phone vibrates on the nightstand with a secure alert I can't ignore.

I ease out from under her carefully, pull on jeans, and take the phone downstairs. The message is short and ugly. A dark-web forum I've been monitoring for months just lit up. Someone is offering a contract on "Daniel Thompson's surviving daughter." The description matches Willow close enough to make my blood run cold. Location data puts the interested parties within a hundred miles of Silver Lake.

I go still.

Twenty-five years of this work and I've never felt fear like this. Not for myself. For her.

I spend the next hour on encrypted calls. I cancel every open case I have. I call in favors from men who owe me and men who fear me. I lock down the cabin's security system tighter than it's ever been—cameras, sensors, every entry point wired and monitored. I also request a second team, but I keep them well back, stationed on the far tree line half a mile out, watching the access road and the ridge trail for anyone approaching. They're eyes, not a wall. Pure surveillance, positioned far enough out that Willow will never see them or feel like she's living inside a checkpoint. It's the only way to get advance warning without turning the cabin into something that scares her worse than the threat itself.

It's not nothing. A team watching the approach means we'll likely see trouble coming before it's on top of us. But I know better than most men alive that distance buys warning, not certainty. If someone already knows the terrain—if they've got the property details, the blind spots, the one stretch of ridge where the tree cover breaks the sightline—a team a half mile out can call it in and still not close the gap in time. By the time the sky starts to lighten, I've made one thing brutally clear to everyone involved: nothing comes before her. Not the job. Not the agency. Not my own history.

If anyone comes for her, they will regret it in ways they can't imagine.

I make coffee and wait for her to wake up. When she comes downstairs in another one of my shirts, hair still messy from sleep, I pull out a chair at the table and nod for her to sit.

She sees the look on my face and goes quiet.

“There’s been movement,” I tell her. No sugarcoating. “Someone put a contract out on the dark web for Daniel Thompson's surviving daughter. They believe you may have the second copy of the evidence your father took from Michaelson. They’re closer than I want them to be.”

Her hands tighten around the coffee mug I set in front of her. “How close?”

“Close enough that I’m not taking chances.” I lean forward, elbows on the table, and hold her gaze. “I need you to hear me clearly, Willow. Anyone who comes for you will regret it. I don’t care who they are or who they work for. I will end the threat. Completely. You are not going back to looking over your shoulder. Not while I’m breathing.”

She searches my face for a long moment. Whatever she finds there settles something in her. She reaches across the table and covers my hand with hers.