The Beast (Black Dagger Brotherhood #14) - J. R. Ward Page 0,111

I don’t expect your whole life to revolve around me. I respect your profession, and I love you for everything you do at Safe Place. You felt, in that moment, that you had unfinished business you needed to handle. That is something I can totally respect.” He frowned. “Well, as long as you intended to actually meet me over there if I didn’t come back—”

“Oh, God, yes!” She reached out and pulled him to her mouth. “I swear on my soul. Even if it had meant leaving Bitty alone … I would have come to find you. I have no doubt about that.”

Rhage smiled and cradled her face in his palms again. “Then we’re all good. You gotta know, my Mary, your commitment to your job is as much a part of what I love about you as the rest of … you know, everything. Don’t waste another thought on the whys of what you did. Focus on how incredibly amazing it is that we’re right here, together, and it all worked out exactly as it should have.”

She teared up a little. “Really?”

“Yup.”

They kissed, slow and sweet this time. And then he eased back and took a long moment just to enjoy her tousled hair, and her sleepy eyes, and her ruby-red lips that were like that because he had been making out with her for hours.

“You feel better?” he said.

She nodded. “Oh, yes. Totally.”

“You wanna finish the movie?”

“Yes, I really do.”

Rhage smiled once again. “I love it when you lie to me like that.”

“It’s true!”

As he resettled her in his arms, he shook his head and patted around to find the remote. “Good thing we talked that over. I mean, look at Kevin. He’s freaked out that we’ve been ignoring him. Kid’s gonna need some serious therapy if we keep freezing him up like this.”

Mary’s laughter transmitted from her torso into his own, and God, he loved the feel of it. Then she sighed and got even more comfortable … and a few moments later, she was fast asleep, breathing in the deep, even rhythm of someone who had a clean conscience and was at peace with the one they loved.

By the time the burglars were getting tarred and feathered, Rhage was feeling drowsy himself, but he stayed up for the rest of the day. Not because of the movies, though.

Sometimes all the rest you needed came in the form of holding the right person against your body, and feeling her warmth, and knowing that she was not going away.

Not without you, at any rate.

True love, he decided, was all the recharge he required, thank you very much.

THIRTY-SEVEN

Ultimately, Mary chose to go with jeans.

Normally, she was not a 7 for All Mankind girl, but for Bitty’s ice-cream trip, she didn’t want to wear her blouse-and-slacks professional uniform. The goal was for this to be a relaxed, fun outing, and somehow showing up in a bunch of stuff that needed dry cleaning didn’t exactly say Baskin-Robbins, thirty-one flavors with sprinkles on top.

“How do I look?” Rhage said from behind her.

Turning away from their bureau, she did a double take.

“Well?” he said, pivoting in a circle. “Is this okay?”

“That Hawaiian shirt”—she laughed—“was supposed to be a joke.”

He pulled out the hem of the tarp-sized eyesore. “It’s the only thing I’ve got that isn’t black.”

Well, that was true—and talk about mission accomplished. The shirt was about as far away from dour as you could get: which was why she’d bought it. The thing had a hundred variations on teal, green, and sunset peach in an absolutely retina-shattering palm tree–frond pattern.

“I just don’t want to be all soldier, you know?”

“That’s why I’m doing jeans.” She grimaced as she looked down at herself. “Even though I’m not really a fan of them anymore.”

“But they love you,” he murmured, coming over and wrapping his arms around her. As he slid his hands down to her butt and squeezed, he murmured, “This past day was amazing, by the way.”

She put her hands to his chest and played with one of the shirt’s pink buttons. “Even though I fell asleep on you?”

“Especially because of that.”

They kissed for a while, and then Mary stepped back and gave him the once-over. “Honestly, I think you have to go with what you feel comfortable in.”

“This is not it. Someone my size in this much color? I’m like a living, breathing migraine aura.”

As he headed back to the closet, she stared down at the jeans—and decided to take her own advice.

Ten