Helping her into the all-terrain vehicle, Hawke closed the door before loping to the driver’s side and sliding behind the wheel.
She noticed he wasn’t wearing a coat. Thin leather gloves covered his hands, but other than that he wore only jeans, boots and a dark blue flannel shirt with a T-shirt beneath it.
Breeds didn’t get as cold as easily as their human cousins either, she thought with a twinge of envy.
“Where are we going?” she asked as he shifted the vehicle into reverse to turn around and head out of the driveway onto the main thoroughfare that led through the Wolf Breed Compound.
“I’ll show you.” He flashed her a wicked grin before moving one hand from the steering wheel to grip her hand where it lay on her thigh.
Jessica stared at his leather-gloved fingers as they covered hers and wondered at the warmth that she could feel through the gloves.
It shouldn’t be like this, she thought. After a year without him, a year confined to a cool, boring little cell where she hadn’t seen him, hadn’t heard from him, it shouldn’t be like this. She shouldn’t feel these emotions shifting through her, racing in her bloodstream and heating her pu**y like an internal fire she couldn’t put out.
“You could just tell me.” Her heart was beating hard in her chest and she had no doubt he could scent the arousal burning inside her.
“If I told you, then it wouldn’t be a surprise.” There was that smile again. A crooked upturn of his lips, his golden eyes filled with promise.
She was reminded of those days before the attack on Haven over a year ago, when he would tease her with surprise lunches in the small park behind the communications shed, or with sweets to tease her taste buds.
She hadn’t realized at the time that he had been courting her, and now she wondered how she could have missed it.
“Close your eyes for me.”
She turned to stare at him in surprise as he made the sudden request.
“Close my eyes?” She was actually starting to have fun. “Why?”
“So I can have my way with you?” He waggled his brows suggestively before chuckling, the sound a dark, erotic stroke against her senses. “Just close your eyes, Jess. I promise, you’ll like this.” She closed her eyes. She resisted the urge to peek, because she loved surprises. She always had.
“What are you up to, Hawke?” she asked again as she felt the Range Rover make several turns. While she had once been pretty certain that she knew where they were, now she wasn’t so sure.
“Just a few more minutes,” he urged her.
With her eyes closed it seemed she could hear a more subtle nuance in his voice. Almost a sense of nervousness. She had to be hearing wrong, she decided. Hawke was never nervous. He was always confident and in charge, never anything less.
“I’ve been working on something over the past year.” He finally cleared his throat as the Rover began to slow down. “While you were confined, when I had spare time, there was something I wanted, something I needed, to do.”
The Rover came to a stop.
“Hawke?” She whispered his name breathlessly.
“Not yet.” His fingers touched her eyes with the utmost gentleness. “I knew you were my mate, Jess. I know it’s hard to forgive me for staying away. I know you’ve been angry, and I don’t blame you.” She parted her lips to speak, but his fingertips landed on them.
“Just a minute, baby,” he urged her. “It was the only way to prove you were no traitor. I knew you weren’t. I believed in you, Jess, but I knew you’d never be accepted by the packs that are a part of Haven if you weren’t proven innocent.”
That made sense. A part of her had even known that, struggled with the idea of it over the months that she had been in the cell.
“I made certain you were comfortable.”
She had been. She’d had warm blankets, home-cooked meals, warm clothes.
“I made certain you weren’t too bored.”
Magazines, books and a television had been brought to her. But even more, sketch pads, pencils and watercolors. Jess loved to sketch and draw, and the tools for that hobby had been brought to her.
“I made certain everyone understood that I’d stand between you and any punishment of death.” She hadn’t known that.
“I wanted to give you more though.” His voice softened further. “You can open your eyes now, Jess.” She opened her eyes. Her lips parted in shock. There, by the edge of a mountain lake that she had always loved to sketch beside, sat the vision of a house she had sketched so many times.
The house wasn’t large. It wasn’t ostentatious like the one her parents had once possessed. The cabin-style home blended well with the other cabins in the compound, but with a few noticeable differences.
There was a red tin roof rather than plain aluminum. It was a little larger, three bedrooms rather than one. For the children she had dreamed of having with Hawke. She’d dreamed of two. A boy and a girl.
It was exactly as she had described it to him, as she had drawn it so many times.
There was a porch swing on the front porch and areas for flowers along the edge of the porch, and it had been built between the gorgeous oak and pine trees that bordered the lake.
It was breathtaking. Just as she had always envisioned it.
“Hawke.” She turned to him, her lips trembling with emotion.
“I didn’t just know you were my mate, Jessica.” His leather covered hand framed her face. “I knew I loved you. Just as I still love you.”
And he had. Everything he had done, every sacrifice he had made, proved he loved her.
“I never stopped loving you,” she whispered as a tear fell from her eye.
She leaned forward, an irrevocable decision made, one she knew she couldn’t regret, would never regret. This was Hawke. She belonged to him. He belonged to her.
Her lips touched his as his hands gripped her arms in surprise. Her tongue touched his lips as a flare of fear tore through her. What if this wasn’t what he wanted? What he meant?
But it had to be. She couldn’t accept losing him now. She couldn’t accept never having taken this chance.
She licked over his lips with her tongue. As they parted she turned her head, controlling the kiss with experimental passion, her tongue stroking tentatively against his, the spicy-sweet taste of wild lust and desperate hunger exploding against her tongue.