And now, again, he did both a lot with me.

“I like to see you smile,” I told him softly, sliding one hand up his chest, his neck, fingers in his lush hair but I moved my thumb out to stroke his jaw.

“I know, honey, since you find ways to make me do it and you find them often.”

I was thrilled he noticed.

So thrilled, I swept my thumb down his jaw then bent to touch my lips there.

When I lifted up again, his arms wrapped tighter around me and he asked, “Plans for the day?”

“Shipments piling up. I have to spend the day in town sorting that out and hauling them to the Post Office. This doesn’t make me happy because I like making afghans, not packing and shipping them, but life happens, you deal. You?”

“Meet in Denver,” he answered.

I pressed my lips together, his eyes dropped to my mouth and one of his hands slid up and into my hair.

“Hanna—” he started, but I interrupted him.

“I didn’t get a chance to ask. Did everything go okay while you were away? I mean, an indication of the success of your endeavors is that you returned unscathed but did you, uh… get your man or whatever?”

His eyes were warm and amused at my question, but they grew serious which made me mentally brace.

“Business went good,” he answered. “And it sucks we’re on this topic, but the time was gonna come and this is that time, so you gotta know, with my business, I’m gonna be away like that a lot.”

I had a feeling. My guess was that fugitives did not hang around Willow (or I hoped not) just so he would be able to be home for dinner every night.

Although I had that feeling, I didn’t like that feeling. I also didn’t explore it and was not going to ask about it.

Now I had it confirmed.

Unfortunately.

“Right,” I mumbled.

“The look on your face states plain you like that about as much as me, babe, but that’s the way it is and I hate to pile shit on top of shit for you, but it’s rare I can take care of business in a couple of days. It usually takes longer and sometimes it takes weeks.”

Fabulous, I thought.

I said nothing.

He rolled me to my back, got up on a forearm in the mattress but bent close to me.

“Hanna, my crew, I send them on assignments and I take a cut. It’s a low percentage that covers admin only. They do the work, they get the fee. That’s not gonna change. I don’t live good off their backs and I’m never gonna do that. That means to work toward my retirement plan I gotta take jobs.”

“Okay,” I agreed, but did it unhappily.

Seeing as Raiden didn’t miss much, he didn’t miss this.

Therefore his eyes got soft and he threw me a bone. “While I’m gone, I’ll touch base frequently.”

That mollified me, but only slightly.

“Okay,” I repeated.

He dipped closer and informed me, “My retirement plan is a good one, baby. Done at forty.”

That was better, but it was also eight years away.

Eight years of criminal activity.

Clearly, my face said what I was thinking because Raiden kept talking.

“Hanna, stop listening to me and start hearing me. I’m tellin’ you, my retirement plan means I’m done at forty.”

“I heard you.”

“Okay, now think about why I’d be tellin’ you that.”

My brows went up and I guessed, “It’s an interesting tidbit to share?”

“No, it’s because I expect you to be in my bed when I’m forty.”

I blinked as my heart swelled so big, it was a wonder I didn’t start choking.

Therefore my voice was wheezy when I forced out, “We’ve been seeing each other just over a week.”

“You crawled across a floor just because you thought it would get me off. I’m pointing that out, not because watchin’ you do that was so hot it made me so f**kin’ hard I thought I’d come before you got halfway across the room, which, incidentally, is true, but because that’s just one indication of the immensity of what you give me. And you drop to your hands and knees to give it to me, trustin’ me with that when we’ve been together just over a week. You think I’m a man who’s got a thing that good, he’ll let it go?”

“No,” I whispered.

“That would be f**k no,” he corrected.

Holy Moses.

“Raiden—”

“Touchin’ base frequently, takin’ jobs that’ll get me where I wanna be, comin’ home and lookin’ forward to it for the first time in years, to an actual home, and it’s a home I look forward to getting back to because my woman is there. I know it’s gonna suck, and it will for years, but that’s what I gotta give. Will that work for you?”

A home I look forward to getting back to because my woman is there.

Totally. That would totally work for me.

I left out the “totally” as well as all the rest and just breathed, “Yes.”

I watched his eyes flash then heat.

“Fuck me, I knew it would,” he growled before he repeated, “Fuck me.”

We were there. We were new but we were what we were and we both understood it, new or not.

So it was time for more than just this. I knew it by just how much all that meant to him and that he would let that show. Therefore, I pushed up and in and managed to roll him with me on top.

Then I straddled him, planted my hands in his chest and leaned toward him.

“I’m not going to ask if I can tell you something, but I am going to tell you that I have something to tell you,” I announced.

Raiden stared at me a second before the intensity left his eyes. His mouth twitched, his hands came to my hips, dipped down under his shirt that I was still wearing, then back up, spanning them, skin against skin.

“Have at it, honey,” he invited.

“I’ve seen the picture,” I shared and his head tilted slightly against the mattress.

“Come again?”

“Of you and your buddies in desert fatigues.”

Just as I suspected, the pads of his fingers dug in. His lips stopped twitching, his face went blank and his lips started to say, “Han—”

I pressed lightly into his chest and got closer. “You talk straight, I’m going to try that and hope it works, but if it doesn’t, we’ll go back and try something different. But, Raiden, it isn’t unusual when soldiers see stuff, do stuff and come home feeling disenfranchised and –”