Through the Fire (Daughter of Fire, #1)(67)

I stilled my hands on his chest and leaned down to rest my chin on them.

“What’s the worst thing you’ve ever had to face?”

Screwing his mouth up thoughtfully, he seemed to consider my question. “A wendigo. In Canada.”

“What happened?”

“About a year after I left y—” he paused and looked at me in such a way that his unfinished sentence was clear—after he’d left me and returned to his family, “—I had an assignment outside of Ontario. My mind wasn’t really on the job, for obvious reasons, and it almost cost us our lives. It was only that we’d all had so much training in how to deal with different threats that we were able to survive and get the upper hand.”

“You’ve been doing this for a long time, haven’t you?” I was just beginning to understand how deeply ingrained his hatred for all things other had been. It was a wonder that he’d been able to see through it to save my life—and even more of a miracle that he’d fallen in love with me.

He stroked the side of my face. “As long as I can remember.”

“How many . . .” I trailed off, not entirely sure I wanted to ask the question or know the answer, but ever since his casual disregard for the fifteen lives lost on the night we’d reunited, I’d found myself wondering how high his death tally actually was.

He frowned. “Too many. More than I can begin to count.”

The look of consternation on his face indicated his thoughts had turned to his family again. I often wondered whether he missed them, but he always steered the conversation in another direction when I’d indirectly brought them up.

“Where do you think they are now?” I asked gently.

Blowing out a breath heavily, he said, “I don’t know. I’ve tried tracking the GPS on their phones, but they must have changed them.”

It didn’t surprise me that he had a way of tracking them—or that they’d easily been able to work around it. From the little I’d learned from Clay about the Rain, they were experts in tracking and evasion, in addition to murder.

“Do they have a way of tracking you too?” I asked.

“I got rid of my phone before I left the hotel, which means they can only use the normal methods. So long as we stay off the radar, avoid security camera feeds, and that sort of thing, we should be able to evade them.”

Clay’s words reminded me that he’d chosen a life on the run with me over the security of his family. As much as I hated them for what they’d done to my father and what they’d tried to do to me, I hated that Clay had to turn his back on everything he knew for a meager existence in hiding. All for me.

“I don’t regret my choice,” he assured me, stroking my hair again. “I know you think I’ve struggled with it, but I haven’t. It’s all new. The week we had back in Charlotte didn’t really prepare me the way I thought it had, but I couldn’t bear to be away from you.”

“I know.” I kissed the spot over his heart.

“They’d have hurt you if we’d stayed.”

“I know.” I rested my head on his bare chest.

“I love you, Evie.”

Climbing over his body, I allowed the chain that now hung around my neck to fall against his chest as I leaned in to kiss him. “I know.”

He wrapped his arms around my back and flipped us so that he was pinning me to the bed. Kissing my throat and chest, he tickled my sides until I squealed.

“You love me too,” he said.

“I know,” I giggled.

His lips met mine and my laughter fell away. I was quickly becoming insatiable when it came to our time together. No matter how often we made love or how regularly he caressed me, it never seemed like enough, and we’d rarely left our hideaway.

He kissed me hard until I was panting and desperate beneath him. Rolling over and dragging me with him, he stopped when he was on his back and I was perched on top of him.

“So beautiful,” he murmured as his hands roamed over my exposed body. “This has to be my favorite sight in the whole world.”

“I know,” I said as I watched the adoration in his eyes.




AN HOUR later, he’d showered and were getting ready to go out to search for an under the table job. With the city’s municipal resources stretched, there seemed to be an abundance of jobs as cleaners and maintenance workers, jobs that required minimal background checks and which suited Clay perfectly. Few locations had CCTV, which made the area more favorable.

The money he’d taken from his father’s emergency stash was already starting to run low. He’d shown me a few different techniques of obtaining credit cards—rather than just stealing them as I had been—but he didn’t want to use plastic when we were staying in one place. He wanted to stay off the grid, and I couldn’t blame him. Neither of us was ready to give up what we had.

“I don’t want you to go,” I pouted. It was going to be the first time we’d be apart since our reunion and neither of us was looking forward to it. I stood at the door waiting for him to leave, but wanting him to stay.

“I don’t want to go either,” he said, tucking a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “But we need to figure out a way of getting some more funds if we’re going to stay here.”