Anna shouldn’t have to ask. Shouldn’t have to beg. He leaned down, kissing her cheek, sliding his fingers across her nape. His voice was low and thick with emotion. “I love you, Anna. I’ve never stopped loving you....”
ANNA’S HEART SQUEEZED with joy and pain as Kyle’s low, growling words caressed her temple and ear. He loved her! Hadn’t she always known that? So much anguish from the past flowed through her in that bittersweet moment. Lifting her head away from his shoulder, she drowned in Kyle’s turbulent, stormy gaze. Sensing his pain, his apology, she leaned up, capturing his mouth, rocking his lips open and giving him all those years of waiting for him in that one kiss. A groan reverberated through his chest and he hungrily met and melded against her questing mouth, as if to reassure her all over again that he loved her with a power he’d always carried in his heart for her.
In moments, he’d swept her up into his arms and she sighed, slipping her arms around his shoulders, content to be carried down the darkened hall to his bedroom. Kyle nudged the door open with the toe of his boot and carried her inside. There was a small hurricane lamp on the dresser that shed just enough light so he could take her over to the bed and deposit her on it.
Kyle sat down beside her, turning her toward him, his hands resting on her shoulders. “I don’t have any condoms on me,” he told her. His brows dipped as he held her upturned gaze. “I never thought this could happen, Anna.” He grazed her cheek, giving her a look of regret.
“It’s all right,” she said, resting her cheek in his calloused palm.
“Are you protected?” he demanded.
She lifted her cheek from his hand. “No.” Kyle’s face grew concerned. She picked up his hand, so large and spare against her own. “I don’t care, Kyle. Do you understand?” She clung to his widening gaze. “I don’t think I can get pregnant, anyway.”
“I’m sorry, so sorry, Anna,” he growled. “I know how much family means to you.”
She smoothed her fingers across the tightening flesh on his cheekbone. “Listen to me,” she whispered, leaning forward, kissing him softly. “You are my family now, Kyle. I was just too much in denial and fear to admit it.” She eased away, tasting him on her lips. “Don’t you see? You’ve always been a part of my life.”
He drew in a ragged breath, moving his fingers gently along her tapered ones. “Yeah,” he muttered, “you’re right.” He gazed over at her. “I drew that heart behind you for a reason, Anna.” Swallowing against a forming lump, Kyle uttered, “Just looking at our shared past in the decorations, the good times, the laughter we shared, the tough times when we would hug and cry in each other’s arms.”
“You were always there for me.”
He slanted a glance at her. “No...not like I should have been, Anna. Not even close after I turned eighteen.”
“You needed to go explore the world, Kyle.”
He raised her hand, kissing her opened palm, hearing her breath intake sharply, feeling her response, watching those slender, working fingers of hers close slightly in reaction to his mouth lingering against her flesh. “I was young. I was bored here at the ranch, Anna. I knew there were adventures out there waiting for me. I wanted to chase them.”
“And you have.” She tilted her head, holding his disturbed gray gaze. “Are you happy now, Kyle? I knew you were before. At twenty-two, you were high on the SEALs. You believed with all your heart in what you were doing.”
His mouth quirked. “Anna, my knees are staved up. I’ve been shot twice. I’m twenty-nine and the old man in my platoon. I can’t keep up with the younger men like I used to be able to do. I’ve broken my wrist twice, lost count how many times I’ve broken a finger, strained my ankles, torn muscles...” He held up his left hand, showing her scars from surgery on his wrist.
The silence cloaked them and Kyle cradled Anna’s hand between his. He could see the small calluses across her palm and some on her fingers. She had such a delicate hand and yet she was strong internally in ways he currently was not. Anna had the guts to call him on himself. She’d opened him up by simply being herself. And God, he was hurting inside for both of them. Finally, he choked out, “We’ve lost so much time with one another....”
She tangled her fingers among his. “It’s never too late, Kyle.” And then she added quietly, “And maybe that’s the idealist in me again. It’s been my idealism that has distorted my life in some ways...with Tom....”
“Don’t ever lose who you are,” he rasped, holding her gaze. “You don’t know this, Anna, but when I was shot the first time—” he pointed to his left thigh “—I was bleeding out on that damned Afghan desert between two boulders. We’d hit a large force of Taliban, and they had nearly a hundred fighters to our four men. I didn’t think we’d make it out of that firefight.” His mouth slashed and he held her hand more tightly. “My femoral artery had been nicked. I was trying to get a tourniquet around my upper thigh to stop it from bleeding, but my hands were bloody and slippery.” He dragged in a deep breath. “I could feel myself going, Anna. Everything in front of my eyes started turning gray.”
His fingers closed around hers and he wrestled with violent emotions. Forcing out the words, he said, “I knew I was going to die. And the one thing I regretted the most was not marrying you. I saw your face in front of me then. And you were calling me back home, Anna.” He risked a glance up at her, saw tears glimmering in her eyes. “You told me to hang on. That help was coming. That you would be there beside me.” He shook his head and pointed to his collarbone area. “I had your tattered angel in my Kevlar vest. I swear to God, to this day, there was a powerful heat that seemed to radiate out of it and flow down to my wounded leg. The heat was so damned intense, I was crying in pain. And I never cry.”
The words were so hard to say, so hard to force out, but Kyle knew Anna deserved the truth. “I remembered this scalding, burning heat in my leg. I was so damned weak at that point, my hands slipped off the tourniquet. Bullets were flying all around me. I thought if I didn’t bleed to death, that I’d catch a bullet in the head. It was that fierce a firefight....”
Just her quiet presence was stabilizing to Kyle. He went on in a low voice. “I passed out from loss of blood. I remember waking up on a litter in a Black Hawk medevac. There was a woman working over my leg. I remember thinking I’d died because I’d never seen a woman combat medic before.” His mouth quirked. “She told me her name—Holly. Said I was lucky. That my femoral artery had closed itself off and I stopped losing blood. She said the way the artery was cut, it closed and it saved my life.”
Giving Anna a look, Kyle said, “But I knew different. I knew you or that angel had somehow stopped the bleeding.” His voice lowered and he kissed the back of her hand. “It sounds crazy, but you’d healed me with the love you’d always held for me, Anna.”
Tears drifted down her cheeks. There was love in her eyes for him alone. How could he have been so blind? So damned stupid? The best thing in his life was sitting right next to him. “You really are my guardian angel,” he admitted, giving her a slight smile. “You saved my life, Anna, in more ways than one.”
She released a ragged sigh. “Thank you for telling me, Kyle.” She held his gaze. “I have a secret to share with you, too. When Tom came at me, I screamed out your name.” Her voice grew hushed. “I don’t know why I did it, Kyle, I just did. He’d backed me into a corner, pushed me against the stove, and I stumbled backward and slammed into the wall. I remember so clearly that as he came forward, his fist cocked, I knew I was going to die.”
Anna touched her brow in a nervous gesture, risking a look into Kyle’s face. A bone-chilling rage smoldered in his eyes and she understood his anger was aimed at Tom, not at her. “I tried to protect myself. I screamed and begged him to stop. And he wouldn’t. He came at me again and I raised my hands, screaming