Cupping her face, he gently traced her bottom lip with his thumb. “I wanted to get away for a little while and figure some things out,” he admitted, not sure what else to say.
“Am I one of those things that you needed to figure out?” she asked, keeping her gaze locked with his and refusing to look away until he finally answered her.
Instead, he asked, “Why would you think that this had anything to do with you?” before he remembered that he was a horrible fucking liar.
Shaking her head in disgust, she climbed out of the bed and said, “Fine. Don’t tell me,” she said with a heavy sigh that told him just how pissed she really was.
“Necie,” he said, groaning as he got up and quickly pulled his clothes on, terrified that she would do something foolish like swipe his keys and try to drive home without him. “Let’s talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she said, not sounding all that pissed, but he was no fool.
He knew that look in her eye all too well.
She was up to something and whatever it was, it wasn’t going to end well for his balls. Mumbling something, she grabbed the bag that he’d packed for her, pulled on her winter jacket and headed for the door, leaving him with absolutely no choice but to follow her or risk having to hike back home in this weather, which brought up an interesting question.
“You do realize that it’s snowing, right?” he asked as he followed her out the front door, nearly running into her when she suddenly stopped with a pathetic groan and a, “Damn it!”
“Yeah, so I guess we won’t be going anywhere,” he said, not even bothering to hide how pleased he was, because he wasn’t ready to…
Let her go. He wasn’t ready to let her go, didn’t want to let her go and in fact, he was pretty sure that he would do whatever it took at this moment to keep her.
She was the one.
She really was his.
“Oh, shit,” he muttered, stumbling back when he finally got his answer.
Son. Of. A. Bitch!
“What?” Necie asked, looking so damn adorably confused while he simply shook his head and muttered about driving through the fucking snow, how late it was and the fact that he was fucking starving.
*-*-*-*
“Come here, Necie,” the apparently psychotic man that she loved said as he advanced on her.
“Umm, yeah,” she said, taking in the determined look in his eye and the fact that he was holding another roll of painter’s tape in his hands, “I’m all set.”
“Do you really have to make this so fucking difficult?” he demanded, sounding putout when she should be the one pissed since the jerk was trying to kidnap her again.
Granted, it was a sad attempt and she could easily bite through the tape, but still it-
“Oh, fuck this,” he suddenly said, tossing the tape aside and before she could move, because yes, she had wasted precious seconds screaming, he had her over his shoulder and was carrying her out to the SUV.
“Where the hell are you taking me?” she demanded, trying not to kick him too hard since she was pretty sure that she was in love with the jerk, and again, there was also the sad fact that this was probably the saddest kidnapping in the history of kidnapping.
Yup, definitely the saddest, she decided when he actually placed her in the front passenger seat, buckled her in and actually took the time to hunt down a pair of gloves so that her hands wouldn’t freeze. All those drills that her grandfather put her through, all the warnings, the signs to look for and how to fight back were all for nothing, she realized with a sad shake of her head.
“Where are we going?” she asked, once he climbed into the truck and threw their stuff in back.
“New Hampshire,” he said with a firm nod that really didn’t tell her all that much except apparently that he’d lost his goddamn mind, because there was just no way that she was going to drive to New Hampshire tonight of all nights.
Not just because it was Christmas Eve, but it was also snowing pretty badly out, but apparently he was oblivious to the dangers of given into the voices in his head at this moment.
“There’s a blizzard going on right now,” she said, gesturing towards all that large fluffy snow falling down around them.
His eyes narrowed accusingly on the snow before turning on her, which she might add was a little creepy. “This truck has four wheel drive.”
“Yeah,” she said, unbuckling her seatbelt and threw her door open, “and I’m sure that will make the collision super fun, but I’m all set.”
“Where the hell are you going now?” he demanded, jumping out of the truck and followed her.
“To bed in a locked room while you search for your medicine that you so desperately need,” she snapped back as she made her way towards the door in what would have been a really great departing scene if it hadn’t been for one slight little problem.
Her inability to walk and talk at the same time, especially when ice was involved.
*-*-*-*
“No, seriously put me down!” the woman that he loved and adored demanded as he chivalrously carried her inside the small cottage.
“As soon as I get you to the bedroom where I can check on that knee,” he said when really, it should have been more than obvious what he was doing especially since his cute little jinx had taken a header in the snow, scraping up her knee in the process.
“Or,” she said, giving him a super sweet smile that didn’t bode well for his precious balls that loved her so much, “you can put me down right now so that I can hobble my way to the bedroom and safety.”
He shook his head. “Nope, sorry. No hobbling for you.”
“I want to hobble, damn it! So put me down!” she bit out dangerously.
“Sorry,” he said, pausing long enough to kiss the tip of her nose, “but there will be no hobbling for you, sweetheart.”
“I want to hobble!”
“Not happening!”
“Put me down, sir, so that I may hobble to safety!” she snapped, making him chuckle, because she really was so fucking cute.
Fuck cute, she was incredibly sexy, he corrected a moment later when she reached up a few seconds later, threaded her fingers through his hair, pulled him down for a kiss that had him stumbling to stop, looking for the closest surface and cursing when he suddenly found the tables turned on him.
Chapter 36
“Okay, fire boy, start talking,” Necie said, just barely holding back the urge to do a victory dance.
Not only had she escaped his, admittedly loose hold, but she’d also managed to distract him long enough so that she could tie him to the chair where he would be staying until she got all of her answers.
Duncan sighed heavily as she heard the unmistakable sound of a rip. “Fire boy?” he asked, cocking a brow as he shook his head in disgust.
“Well,” she said, defensively as she stood there trying not to put too much weight on her right leg since her knee still sort of stung, “it’s fitting.”
“Uh huh,” he said with another one of those long-suffering sighs that the men in his family seemed to love so much as he shook off the tape, stood up and scooped her up in his arms.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, wishing that she’d been able to find something better than that damn painter’s tape that he’d been using.
“We already talked about this,” he said, heading towards the bedroom.
“And I’ve already vocalized my wish to hobble there, sir.”
“Let the fucking hobbling go,” he said with exasperation as he carried her into the room they’d been using and dropped her ass in the middle of the bed.
Before she could get up and hobble away, he pointed at her and said firmly, “Stay.”
She would have jumped up and hobbled away on principle, but a couple of things stopped her, her knee really stung now and there was no where to hobble to thanks to the snowstorm. So, instead she laid there, pouting, glaring, she wasn’t really sure which one she was doin
g and she really didn’t give a damn, as she sat there with her arms crossed firmly over her chest and waited for him to finish tending to her wounds so that she could kick him out until he stopped playing these damn mind games with her anymore.
So, when he came back with that emergency kit that he seemed to love so much, she just lay there and pointedly looked away while he inspected her knee. After a moment he apparently decided that he couldn’t clean her wound with her pants on, so she stubbornly sat there while he pulled her pants, socks and shoes off.
“I really hope our children don’t get your sense of balance,” he said with a boyish smile and chuckle as he cleaned her wound, taking her by surprise.
“I’m sorry, what’s this now?” she asked, sure that she’d misheard him.
“Our kids,” he said with a shrug like it was no big deal. “I’m kind of hoping for two boys and two girls, but I’d pretty much be happy with ten kids if that’s what you wanted.”
“Umm…,” was the only rational response that she could come up with at that point.
“Danny and Jodi are moving out. They wanted a smaller, one level house to help keep the twins in line so I’m buying the house off Trevor and Uncle Jared. Once we get home you can decorate the house however you see fit, but I think we should put the nursery next to our room to make things easier,” he continued to explain while she sat there, staring at him, terrified that he’d lost his damn mind even as her lower lip started to tremble.
“I just needed some time to make sure, but now that there’s no doubt in my mind that you’re mine, I’m hoping that we can get the elopement over with without the customary kidnapping,” he admitted before adding with a thoughtful look on his face, “Not that I’m opposed to kidnapping you at this point. In fact, if you try to run away again, I’ve already decided to break out the restraints in my bag, tie your adorable little ass to a short board and drag you into the courthouse.”
“Wait, why do you have to kidnap me to get me to marry you?” she found herself asking even though to be honest there was a lot that he said that deemed questioning and probably some time spent in a psychiatric ward.
“Tradition,” was all he said with a shrug as he finished putting ointment on her scrape and carefully applied a gauze pad to the wound.
“It’s tradition to kidnap your bride?” she asked, really too stunned to move on from that subject.
“It is in our family,” he admitted with another shrug as he reached over and helped her remove her shirt and bra, leaving her completely naked as she lay there, too stunned to move.
“Seriously?” she really just had to ask.
“Mmhmm, you can even ask your grandfather about it. He told me to be damn sure before I kidnapped you,” he said as though that cleared everything up for her.