House of V (Unraveled Series) by Raen Smith Read Free Book Online Page B

17, 11:30 p.m .
Norway
     
    I shed my clothes, sliding the skirt
down until it was a ball on the floor in the middle of Ryan’s living room while
he stood in the glow of the kitchen light watching me. I didn’t need to look at
him to know he was watching me, it was pretty obvious, but I didn’t let it
bother me. I’d had enough disappointed people in my life to know that he didn’t
know what to do with me.
    I wiggled my shoulders, slipping the leather jacket off them and onto the heap with
the skirt. I then lifted my shirt over my head, now standing in just my bra and
underwear with my holster still around my thigh when I heard footsteps.
    Ryan came up behind me and reached
toward my thigh, pushing the holster down past by knee and finally to the
floor. He placed his hands on my shoulders and kissed the right one lightly
until he moved toward the fireplace to pick up two logs from the stack next to
the fireplace. Kneeling down, he lit a match and nursed the flames, tucking a
handful of paper beneath the logs. Still crouched, he turned toward me with his
hands opened.
    Ryan was still here with open arms.
I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve him.
    Gathering the pile of clothes, I
pushed them into his waiting hands and watched him scatter them among the
flames. The pungent smell of burning hair wafted through the air as the flames
licked my leather jacket.
    I stood, watching the flames as
Ryan walked around the house again, double-checking every door and bolting them
shut. I didn’t bother to remind him that I would know if someone was within
fifteen feet of the house thanks to the video surveillance and alarm system I
set up the first week we came back. I would let him soak in the feeling that he
was protecting me, protecting us . He
stopped at the front door, peering out the side window before returning to me
in front of the fire.
    “Now what?” he asked as he circled
his arms around me. My body responded to his touch, craving him more than ever.
Leaving would be easier if he would simply push me away. All of this would have
been easier on my own.
    “We stay here,” I said, knowing
tonight would be my last night with him. I wanted just one more night, one more
time. I wanted to remember the feeling of the two of us together.
    “Stay?” Ryan asked with a raise of
his brows as he spun me to face him. “Did I hear that right?”
    “Stay,” I whispered before I pushed
my lips into his. He pulled me in and bent down to consume me. I wrapped my
legs around his waist as he lifted me up with one arm and unhooked my bra. It
clattered to the ground as we collapsed onto the couch, me on top of him, just
like we had every night for the last three hundred sixty-five days. I would
miss this.
    Damn, I would miss this.
    ***
    I waited for the sound of Ryan sleeping,
the slow and methodic inhale and exhale that I heard every night. He was a
deep-sleeper, prone to falling asleep the second his head hit the pillow. Not
me, I was late to bed and early to rise. Ryan joked one day that he was
sleeping with a vampire since he’d never actually seen me sleeping. I’d trained
my body to function on only three to four hours of sleep each night a long time
ago, sometime in my teens. It was after Elizabeth had died, AD. I sometimes
thought about my life in terms of Elizabeth’s death. Before
death, BD, and after death, AD. Although my entire life had been pretty
dismal - hell, I think it was safe to say it had been a train wreck - AD was
filled with some of my darkest days.
    I considered three to four hours a
win, especially now that I didn’t sleep with one eye open. I’d slept more
soundly in the last year than I had my whole life. Ryan didn’t know what that
felt like. I was beginning to think that I needed a new gauge to think about my
life. Before Holston, BH, and after Holston, AH. Sleeping soundly was definitely an AH benefit.
    I huddled into Ryan’s nakedness, my
body curled beside him with his heavy arm draped over the