Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
CLOVER
The morning sun streams through the lace curtains of the Sugar on Snow Inn, turning our tiny room into something out of a fairy tale, which is ironic, considering I spent most of my childhood dreaming of Prince Valor and happily ever afters.
Now I’m waking up in the arms of the prince himself.
Well, a prince who snores. Softly. Like a gentle chainsaw.
Valen’s arm is wrapped around my waist, his chest pressed against my back, and his morning wood is—well, that’s awake even if the rest of him hasn’t gotten the memo yet.
I’m on my left side, and my hip aches from the angle of my leg draped over the bed—one foot still reaching toward the floor—but I can’t bring myself to move yet.
Peachvale awaits with answers and probably more questions.
My phone buzzes on the nightstand, and Valen tightens his arm around me as I reach for it, his body already coiling with protective instincts before he’s even opened his eyes.
Relief floods my mind when I see it’s just Savvy sharing a photo of her hospital breakfast with a gagging emoji.
For one horrible second, I was back on my porch in Happiness, staring at a ribbon-wrapped box. Obsession is forever. The words crawl across my skin like spiders.
I tug the blankets up to my chin and force myself to be brave. Facing my fears is not my normal modus operandi, but here I am.
“I can feel you thinking,” Valen rumbles against my neck, his voice thick with sleep.
“I’m not thinking.” Even my fake outrage sounds scared.
“You’re thinking so loudly, I’m surprised Chief hasn’t come to check on us. That man is weirdly in tune with you.”
“He’s like the grandfather I never had,” I say.
He burrows his face into my neck. “You’re braver than you realize.” He traces lazy patterns on my hip, and I feel the moment something changes. “I used to say that to you.”
His voice is strange. Distant. “When you were scared. I’d tell you that you were braver than you knew.
There was a…closet. Small. Dark. You hated it, but sometimes it was the only safe place, and I’d sit outside the door and talk to you until—” He breaks off and moves back, putting more space between us. “Fuck. I hate this.”
“We should probably get up,” I say to avoid talking about that dark room. “We have a post office to investigate.”
“Five more minutes,” he grumbles.
It would be so easy to stay here forever. “Valen?”
“Hmm?” His hand slides down my sternum to rest against my stomach while this thumb draws lazy circles that make my brain short-circuit.
“Your—um. You’re—” My face is on fire. “You’re very…awake this morning.”
His low chuckle sends tingles down my spine.
He rolls me onto my back, settling between my thighs with the kind of precision that makes me think he’s mapped my body in his sleep.
His blue eyes are dark with heat, but it’s his hair, mussed from my fingers, and the shadowed stubble at his jaw that undoes me.
He’s never looked more perfect. He’s never looked more like mine.
His hand glides down my thigh, to my knee, then he hitches my leg up. “Your foot was on the floor again last night.”
“H-habit,” I say when he grinds his cock against my clit.
“I put it back on the bed three times,” he growls. “It’s time to stop running, Clover.”
How do I explain that a habit built from necessity is not one so easily disregarded?
“We have to—” A slow roll of his hips steals the words from my mouth.
“What were you saying, sweetheart?” His blue eyes dance with mirth and heat as he rocks against me, the friction delicious, but not nearly enough.
“Investigate. The, ah, post office. I…I think. Remember?”
“I remember.” He drops a kiss to my nose, then my cheek, then the corner of my mouth. “But I also remember that I have you naked in my bed, and I’ve got at least fourteen years of lost orgasms to make up for.”
“We already—last night we—” I’m skipping like a broken record.
“Once.” His fingers trace patterns on my inner thighs that make me squirm. “That was once. I’m thinking we should aim for at least…seven hundred should do it.”
“Hundred?”
“At least once a week for fourteen years.” He hums against my skin. “You do the math. That’s the prudish conservative estimate, by the way.”
“Are you trying to kill me?”
“Death by orgasm.” He grins, lowering his mouth to the sensitive dip on my neck. “If we have to die, that’s the way I’d choose.”
His lips trail down my throat, across my collarbone, and I’m about three seconds away from saying to hell with the investigation when a loud knock raps on the door.
I jackknife up in bed, my trauma responses deeply ingrained, and I headbutt Valen in the face.
“Fuck, Honeybee. I like you responsive, but that’s going to leave a mark.” He rubs the red spot already blooming on his forehead.
I’m not even surprised, since my own vision is slightly blurry. But I can’t tell if it’s because I just headbutted my lover or because his fingers keep up a lazy trail across my damp flesh as I flop back onto the bed.
“You should have put a sock on the doorknob,” Chief calls through the door, sounding entirely too pleased with himself. “Then maybe you wouldn’t be the talk of the inn. Breakfast is ready, by the way, and I’ve got an investigation to lead, so get movin’.”
Valen drops his forehead to my chest with a groan. “I’m going to kill that old man. He realizes he’s retired, correct? He’s not leading anything.”
“He has terrible timing, but he means well,” I whisper, still trying to get my overheated skin to calm the heck down.
“The worst timing.” Valen lifts his head, and despite his frustration, there’s warmth in his eyes. Affection too. “To be continued?”
“Yes.” I blurt.
Another knock, more insistent this time. “Also, I set up your first meeting. She’s from the Peachvale post office and won’t talk to anyone but you.”
That’s all it takes to have us both scrambling for clothes.
My hair is a disaster, and I briefly wonder how insulated the walls are here. Does the entire inn know what we were up to last night?
The thought of passing Randi in the hall has me too nervous to blush.
Luckily, Chief’s announcement of a meeting keeps my thoughts focused. For the most part.
He said someone was looking for us—us specifically, and my old friend, dread, swirls to life in my gut.
Valen’s buttoning his shirt, and I watch his deft fingers work with hypnotic efficiency. No outward signs of nerves on his part.
“How are you so calm?”
“Stop staring at my hands,” he says without looking up.
“I’m not.”
“You are, and since we both know where they were moments ago, I suggest you look away. I have very little restraint around you, so I really need you to be the adult here.”
The idea that he can’t control himself around me has me standing a little straighter.
But he does have a fair point, so I busy myself with finding my clothes. My shirt is under the bed, and somehow, my jeans ended up in the bathroom, which is fine because I need to shower.
When I emerge ten minutes later, Valen’s waiting by the door. “Ready?”
“Ah, I guess?” I smooth down my hair with both hands, but it’s useless. Even after a shower, I still look…different. “Do I look like I just had sex? I can’t get my hair to lie flat.”
His gaze rakes over me, hot and possessive. “You look fucking perfect.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“It’s the only one you’re getting,” he says with mischief cloaking his expression, then opens the door. “Hey.”
“Hmm?”
“We’re in this together, yeah?”
I nod, my throat suddenly tight. “Yeah.”
His hand finds mine as we head downstairs to the RV with our small bags. As we pull out of the inn’s parking lot, Valen’s jaw clenches tightly, and his knuckles are white on the steering wheel.
“What is it?” I ask.
“Nothing.” But his eyes flicker to the rearview again. “I just thought I saw…never mind. It’s nothing. We’re just all a little jumpy.” He flashes a wobbly smile.
He’s a terrible liar.
It’s not nothing, and we both know it, even if neither of us is brave enough to say it out loud.
Something is chasing us, and we’re about to face it head-on.
We’re halfway to Peachvale when the cell signal dies. One second, I have three bars, the next, nothing, like a bad omen warning us away.
“That’s normal out here,” Chief says from the back, but his voice is the kind of forced casual that makes everything sound worse.
Then Wrecks starts howling. Not barking. Not whining. A full-throated, mournful howl that raises every hair on my body. My hands grip the oh-shit handle while I scan the windows with my heart slamming against my ribs.
But I get it. I understand it deep in my bones. Peachvale is the perfect place for a serial killer to hide out. And the ominous feeling that triggers my fight-or-flight response hangs resonant in the air around us.
“He smells something,” I say, as a story unfolds in my head. “Or senses something. Animals always know when something’s wrong.”
“Jesus, Clover. You’re even freaking me out,” Valen says.
I shrug because the sensation of…wrongness gets stronger the deeper we travel on this old dirt road.
“You never know what goes on behind closed doors. But look around. There’s no one out here for miles.
That cabin up there?” I open my window and point to a long dirt driveway that probably leads to an abandoned home, if the overgrowth of weeds is any indication.
“That’s where a stalker would hold his victim. ”
“What makes you think it’s a him?” Valen asks as the RV slowly rolls forward. “Maybe it’s a her? Or a vampire even.”
I whip my head around to find him biting his bottom lip.
“I’ll have you know, eighty-seven percent of stalkers are men. Even when it’s men who are being stalked, forty-eight percent of them are stalked by another man.” My blood pressure rises, and his lip slips from his teeth to form a fully amused grin.
Wrecks’s howl simmers to a whine while he presses his massive head against Chief’s belly.