Page 41 of Howl Lotta Love

“I still think about the bunker.”

“I know you do.” She laughed, and the sound of it visibly eased the tension sitting in his shoulders. “You’re allowed to. Don’t act on it, though.”

He kissed her—not slow, not careful, a hand fisting in her hair and the other banding hard around her waist, lifting her half onto her toes with a low sound rumbling in his chest, rougher than anything he’d ever let her hear from him before. She kissed him back with matching fierceness, fingers curling into his shirt, and for one long minute, neither the map nor Kane nor the three weeks on the clock existed at all.

“Stay here with me a while,” he said, against her mouth, when they finally broke apart, both of them breathing hard. “I’m not ready to stop touching you yet.”

“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”

They dropped onto the old couch shoved against the far wall, her back against his chest, his arms locked around her, and Emma let herself exist for a few stolen minutes in the simple fact of being held by a man who’d learned to fear losing her instead of fearing nothing at all.

“Tell me something that isn’t about Kane,” she said, tracing lazy patterns on the back of his hand where it rested against her stomach.

“Anything?”

“Anything. I’ve had enough of the map for one lifetime.”

He considered a moment, and when he spoke again the flat command edge had dropped away, gone soft in a way she hadn’t gotten used to yet, no matter how many times she heard it. “My mother’s going to ask about grandchildren the second she meets you properly. Fair warning. She’s been asking since I turned thirty, and she’s already got a baby name book she thinks I don’t know about.”

“That’s not fair warning, that’s a threat.”

“Consider it both.” He dropped a kiss on the crown of her head, easy, unthinking. “She’s going to love you. It’s going to be deeply embarrassing for both of us.”

“I look forward to it. My own mother would have adored this—the danger, the wolves, all of it. She used to say I inherited her nose for trouble and my father’s complete inability to leave it alone once I’d found it.” Emma said it lightly, but something quieter moved underneath it. “She died when I was twenty-three. I don’t usually lead with that. It still catches people off guard.”

“I’m glad you told me anyway.”

She reached up to trace his jaw, feeling it ease under her palm in a way it never quite managed for anyone else in the building. “I want the version of this where I meet your mother and pretend to be surprised by the baby name book. I think mine would have liked that joke.”

His expression cracked wide open—want, and terror, and a hope he clearly hadn’t planned on admitting to out loud tonight. He didn’t say anything. He kissed her again instead, slower this time, and Emma let the moment stretch as long as either of them needed it to.

Confirmed, the message read, delivered to a phone in an office Emma would never see, in a voice she would never hear. Wilder refuses to sell. Foundation stays fully occupied, staff doubled, security already moving in.

Understood, came the reply, entirely untroubled, the words of a man who hadn’t needed to raise his voice in twenty years to get exactly what he wanted. If we can’t buy the property—burn it.

TWELVE

EMMA

The call came in at two in the morning, and Emma was pulling on her boots before Jace finished relaying the address.

“Riverside campus. Smoke from the storage buildings, spreading fast.” He was already moving, jacket half on, the controlled calm in his voice meaning he’d locked every other feeling behind it for later. “Gerri’s on-site. Roman and Diesel are rolling.”

“I’m coming.”

“Emma—”

“I know which cabinet matters.” She grabbed her bag off the hook by the door before he’d finished building the argument he clearly thought would work. “Nobody else on your team can read that archive room the way I can. You need me there.”

He looked at her for exactly one second, weighing it, and the look on her face made the argument die before it started. “Stay behind me until I clear the building.”

“Deal.”

He caught her wrist on the way out the door and pressed a hard kiss to her mouth that had nothing gentle in it at all—the kind of kiss a man gave someone he fully intended to keep breathing by the end of the night, whether she liked the plan or not.

“That was for luck,” he said, moving again before she could answer.

“Since when do you believe in luck?”