Savage Love (Savage Trilogy #3) - Lisa Renee Jones Page 0,52
his arms. “Can we just shut the doors, please? Before Alejandro gets here and kills us.”
“You do know you’re in love with a damn good killer, right?”
“I thought we were in denial of that fact?”
“Not right now, baby. We’re embracing it and loving it. Doors shut in two minutes.” He kisses me hard on the mouth and rotates me to face my seat.
I turn back around. “Gun?”
He pulls it from his waistband and flips it around to offer me control. The minute it’s back in my hand, the control feels good. Now, I rotate and head to our seats. I set the gun on the shiny table that sits like a coffee table to the duet of seats, I sit back and pull that table close. If I need to shoot, I am going to shoot. I count the seconds like minutes, until Rick is back inside the plane, pulling the plane door shut. He then walks toward the pilot, speaks to him or her, not more than twenty seconds before he joins me, claiming the seat next to me. The engine on the plane roars to life.
“What happened to Adrian and Smith?” I ask.
“They’re going after Alejandro. We’re going to New York.”
“Because he’s coming after me.”
He catches my hand and kisses my now naked finger. “Because we’re going home, baby. And home is good.”
“But is he going to follow us, Rick?”
“Baby—”
“Is he going to follow us?”
“Not if we kill him first.”
“In other words, Gabriel, Pocher, and now an assassin are coming for us.”
“No. I’m coming for them and we’re going home.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
Candace
The plane begins to move and a realization hits me. We’re leaving and I don’t think Rick knows what is going on with his father. “Your father. Rick, your father—”
“Smith had some of our guys pick him up. And Smith is taking him to rehab tomorrow. If he won’t stay, I’m done with him. If he does, I’m probably still done with him. And he probably won’t.”
“If you took him, he might.”
His lips press together. “It would not be good for me to see him right now.”
“He was on the floor in the hotel exit stairwell. He said his house was burning down. He said he burned it down.”
“Smith told me what he said. And yes, it burned down, but he’s a drunk, baby. The only thing you can trust about my father is his need for rehab.”
“I know, but—”
“Not now. I’m not in a place right now to talk about my father.”
“Okay. Okay, I—Oh God. What about my father?”
“No word yet, but we don’t expect our team to break radio silence for at least another hour. Asher is going to call the pilot when we have news.”
“Oh. Okay.”
He brushes my hair behind my ear, a tender touch, which has my stomach doing this butterfly flutter. “It’s going to be okay,” he promises. “Buckle up, baby. The captain said we’re going to hit some turbulence.” He inches over me, his big body draped intimately across my body, and he latches the buckle into place. He doesn’t immediately move.
We linger there, staring at each other, and my fingers trace his goatee. “Rick,” I whisper because everything else I want and need to say just seems like too much.
He catches my fingers and kisses them but his hand is immediately on my face. The plane lifts off and his lips press to my ear. “I cannot lose you again.” His voice is a whisper of desperation and need that I feel clear in my soul. He’s in my soul, a part of me, the other part of me that was missing for far too long.
My hand is on his face now, my fingers curling at his temple and his mouth comes down on my mouth. At that moment, my entire existence fades into him and us, and yet somehow, I don’t lose me but rather find me for the first time in forever. In that kiss, there is the bitterness of loss and fear, the shared relief of finally finding each other again. The plane shudders and shakes around us, the way the world shudders and shakes, but right this minute, it doesn’t matter. A massive sinkhole in the sky could open up and suck us in, we wouldn’t care. Right now, there is just me and him, and him and me, and this kiss.
When our lips part, he whispers, “I love the hell out of you, woman.”