Rome (Marked Men, #3)(88)

“Come on, Captain No-Fun, time to go home.”

His dark lashes fluttered along the high ridge of his cheeks and those breath-stealing blue eyes blinked open. It was strange to see him so vulnerable, so open, but he had never hidden from me and apparently he was done hiding from himself because it was all there in his gaze when he looked at me. Everything he was—hero, lover, stubborn pain in the neck, and a man with or without a plan—I could see it all and it just made me love him all the more.

He had to have both the other guys help him to his feet and it was slow going on the way to the truck. Even though it took some maneuvering and the use of every swearword in his vocabulary, he insisted on taking the Dodge instead of riding in the Cooper, which I thought would have been easier. He was going to have to get over his hatred of my car because sooner rather than later it was going to be too hard for me to hop up into the massive 4×4. He didn’t argue when I held out my hand for the keys and tossed his crutches in the back. I noticed that he had white lines of pain fanning out around the corners of his eyes despite the meds and the booze. It looked like he might have overdone it a little.

I reached out and patted his knee.

“So I have a question for you.”

He shifted his gaze to mine and just grunted. Okay, Captain No-Fun was in serious effect.

“Ayden told me that she and Jet are more than likely moving out. He wants to convert the studio. How would you feel about just moving in with me and staying at my place?”

He was quiet, which made me nervous. I looked over at him and was surprised to find he had his eyes closed and his head resting against the window. I thought maybe he was asleep and I wondered how I was going to get him inside and had a sense of déjà vu.

“Can we tone the pink in your bedroom down just a little bit so my balls don’t shrivel up and fall off?”

His snippy tone made me laugh as I pulled into the driveway.

“Sure thing, big guy.”

He sighed and shifted his big body so that he could maneuver himself out of the door.

“I love your place, Cora. It’s colorful and cute just like you. Plus it’s a rental, so we can stay there until we decide we want to buy something and stay there permanently. That totally works for me.”

Man, I wasn’t sure I was ever going to be able to contain how happy this big, gruff man made me.

“It works for me, too, and it would make me really happy.”

I went ahead of him to let him in the house. When I got to the door he followed me in and I guided him to the room so that he could sprawl on the bed.

“If it makes you happy, Half-Pint, you don’t have to ask. That’s all I want.” He threw the arm on his good side across his eyes and sighed. “I love you, Cora.”

Every time he said it, I kept it in a place deep down inside of me to cherish and hold on to forever. It was a special place full of special things, and even if our time together had been relatively short, that place had enough love in it to last a lifetime. I sat on the bed next to him and ran my fingers over his scruff.

“I love you, too, Rome.” It was so easy to tell him that now. To hand over everything I had been so foolishly afraid of giving to him. I realized now love didn’t do any good if you held on to it in a death grip. It only had purpose, had power, when you had the courage to hand it over to someone else for safekeeping.

“I know.”

It’s what he always said to me. “I know.” Like without the words he just knew how I felt. I asked him about it and he just smiled at me and told me he needed someone to point it out to him. When I asked what he was talking about, he just asked me what I thought about naming the baby Remy. I loved it.

“I also love your face and I’m sick of trying to find it in all of these whiskers. I know you can’t use your arm very well right now, so why don’t you let me help you shave?”

I ran a finger over the delicate curve of his ear and the eyebrow with the scar danced upward. I was hoping the pain meds and the beer were enough to make him more agreeable.

“You don’t like it?”

“I miss your face. It’s too pretty to be covered with all of this.”

“Is that why you won’t kiss me?”

I frowned at him and leaned down to drop a kiss on his sullen mouth. “No. I’m not kissing you because with you, kissing always leads to more and the doctor told you that was a no-no. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Not kissing hurts me and you don’t even want to know what no sex does to me.”

I had a pretty good idea—after all, I was on the other end of the ban—but his health and well-being were more important than an orgasm no matter how good he might be at giving them. I kissed him again and levered myself up off the bed. I stood over him and put my hands on my hips. I didn’t miss the way his eyes narrowed on my chest.

“I’ll run you a bath. You can relax and I’ll help you look less like a mini Brite. How does that sound?”

He grumbled that real men didn’t take baths, but he didn’t argue or try and stop me when I went into the bathroom and turned on the water. In fact by the time I made it back into the room, he had wrestled his shirt off and had his pants unbuttoned. I could just stare at him like that forever. Even with the angry scar that now decorated the side of his neck right above his collarbone and the ugly wound on his side, he was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen. I just gaped at him like a dimwit until he laughed at me and ordered me over to help him up. It took some maneuvering and some shuffling, and by the time he got his pants the rest of the way off, there was no doubting that nearly dying hadn’t had any effect on his libido.