When Romance Prevails (The Dark Horse Trilogy Book 3)

by Dane, Cynthia

  I fell for her. What an idiot. Hunter thumped his head against the steering wheel and sighed. That beautiful woman he saw standing by herself in an elegant ballroom… the same one he took into a garden and kissed as if the stars had aligned and said it would be so. The woman I made love to that same night. In the beginning Hunter was content to call it a good experience and move on with his life. Then like a damned idiot he called Kerri and asked her on a date. Everything went downhill from there.

  Downhill because Kerri turned out to be more than she seemed on the outset. Not only beautiful, but feisty, opinionated, and someone Hunter could see himself spending the rest of his life with. How dare she be so wonderful.

  “This is ridiculous.” He snatched up his phone, turned it on, and ignored the angry voicemail from his father. Instead he brought up Kerri’s number and attempted to call her for the hundredth time in three months.

  No answer. There never was an answer. Just endless ringing mocking him as he attempted to contact the only woman he ever cared for in this way.

  How could he get to her? How could he make sure she was safe? Happy? Secure? I wish I could see her. Not just her body, but the tips of her nails, the shine of her hair, and the way her face scrunched up when she laughed too hard. I want to hear her voice. The peals of humor, the snorts of chagrin, and the moans she uttered when they made love. But the thing that gnawed at Hunter the most was the possibility that she didn’t want to see him.

  Impossible. It had to be.

  Evening was coming by the time Hunter got a crazy notion into his head. He turned on his car and pulled out into the still empty road, but he did not head home. No. He headed in the opposite direction, out toward where Terrence Hall could only imagine living.

  Dark had fully descended when Hunter reached the street of the Governor’s Mansion. He did not go down it, however. That would be suicide. Surely guards would be patrolling it, and they would recognize him in an instant. Probably on some wanted poster. Hunter pulled his car off to the side of the road and made sure it was hidden by some bushes. Fine thing if the press caught wind of him being there.

  Getting onto the property was another ordeal entirely. The grounds were fenced off. Not with electricity, thank God, but too tall to climb and too narrow to slip through. Hunter had to trace it all the way to the edge of the property and find a dip low enough to hop over. Hope there are no cameras around here. Here went nothing.

  He vaguely remembered where Kerri’s room was. Far side. East side. Overlooking a patch of wild irises just beneath the balcony. Yes, it had to be that one with the ivy growing next to it. Not just ivy. But a terrace! Hunter stayed in the shadows as he assessed how high Kerri’s balcony was and if he was really still as fit as he thought he was. I don’t work out every other day for nothing. The lights were on in Kerri’s window. Hunter only had to find a way up there and hope nobody but her saw him.

  His fingers gripped the bottom of the vines crawling up the side of the mansion. This was probably the craziest thing Hunter had ever done.

  ***

  Time to get out the pumpkins. Kerri slumped into her seat in front of her vanity and lit the pumpkin-scented candle her mother had given her earlier. Instantly the aroma of pumpkin pies, breads, and lattes filled her bedroom. It made her feel good for a little bit, but then she was right back to being depressed.

  She dropped her comb on the vanity and shook her head, damp hair covering her fingers as she massaged the back of her neck. Kerri had just finished showering not twenty minutes ago. Used to be a good, hot shower would make her feel ten times better than before. Now it couldn’t even make her feel clean.

  She wondered when this horrible funk would end. Whenever she “broke up” with a guy before, it had been on her terms. Sure, there were some that left her upset for days. But for weeks? Months? No, it wasn’t that she had broken up with Hunter and felt like crap. It was that they wanted to see each other, be together for as long as they could stand each other. I want to see him. That’s what hurts. Kerri took a deep breath. When election season was over, she could try getting back to a somewhat normal life. Maybe she could even find Hunter again…

  Enough of that. Kerri got up, her long, silk robe scraping against the carpet. She walked to her bureau and debated what she should wear that evening. Her parents said something about entertaining someone for dinner, but Kerri claimed to have an autumn cold and was skipping out to read a book in bed.

  Something moved in the corner of her eye.

  “Huh?” Kerri whipped around, nearly tripping over the hem of her robe. The curtains to her balcony were open, but all she saw were streams of moonlight shining through an old tree dangling from overhead. One of the branches scraped against her window.

  Just the outdoors. Kerri walked to the doors leading out to the balcony. With a gentle push they were open, and the warm autumn night washed over her skin.

  It was the kind of night that would be wonderful for a romantic date. A walk through a park, along the beach, or dining on a balcony just like this. Hunter. Kerri held herself against the edge of the balcony overlooking the wild irises.

  Not fair. It wasn’t fair. Why should she be the daughter of her father, and he the son of his father? Of all the fathers in the world, they were born to the ones they were. And by some cruel joke of the cosmos they had fallen for one another in such a short amount of time.

  If someone had told Kerri five months ago that she would lust after and love a man like Hunter Hall, she would have scoffed. Not even laugh. No laugh was worth the mockery such an idea was. And yet. Kerri draped herself across the edge and looked up at the crossing stars. “Why the hell are you a damn Hall?” There were a few more curses Kerri could utter before the day was through.

  A hand slapped onto the railing beside her.

  “Oh my…!” Kerri jumped back, hand clutching her heart. She tried to scream. To call for help. Anything! But before she knew it, a head of dark hair appeared by her balcony. Those eyes could only belong to one man. “Hunter?” Carefully Kerri approached the edge to see this mysterious man – her mysterious man – heave himself up with the might of Hercules. “Hunter!” She caught another shout in her throat should it alert someone. “What are you doing? Hunter!”

  He almost had himself over by now. Almost. The man Kerri called hers struggled to get his weight shifted to the other side of the railing, his teeth gritting and his fingers turning red. “Help…” he muttered between exasperated grunts. “This isn’t as easy as it looks…”

  “Why the hell are you doing something like this?” Three months, and this was how they were reunited? Hunter breaking into her room? What a crazy moron! Kerri could have kissed him and smacked him on the head at the same time. “Are you mad?”

  The look on Hunter’s face belonged to someone who was on the verge of letting go. “Because I love you, Kerri!”

  Kerri gasped and took a step back, her Hunter still struggling to pull himself over the edge. “You love me?” It took a few more seconds for her to return to her senses and see that this man, who had just declared his love for her, needed help.

  With the power of their bodies they managed to get Hunter onto the balcony before anyone could see him. He landed with an unromantic thud, but Kerri fell to her knees and kissed his cheek anyway. There wasn’t much time to get him ushered inside after that.

  Kerri latched the balcony doors and drew the curtains closed. Behind her, Hunter sat on her bed, his clothing disheveled and sweat streaming down his forehead. He was a fit and healthy young man, but scaling a wall that was never meant to be scaled was not easy.

  “Are you all right?” Kerri knelt beside her bed and put her hand on his knee. It didn’t take him long to catch his breath with her beside him.

  “I’m fine. I was more worried about you. I called and called…”

  Kerri buried her face in the side of his leg. The moment he put his hand on her head, she nearly cried. “They took my phone
and gave me some terrible phone that only lets me call them. It’s like I’m a child again!” The humiliation she felt when she got that phone shortly after losing her old one was enough to make her comatose for two days. “I can’t believe that something like this has happened. Did you know that we were being followed that day?”

  “Obviously not.” Hunter squeezed the back of Kerri’s head, his hand grabbing gobs of her still damp hair. “We got careless. With parents like ours, we can’t afford that.”

  “No kidding.” Kerri sat up and wrapped her arms around Hunter’s torso. It didn’t take long for him to pull her into his lap and embrace her for the first time in twelve long weeks. “Did you really mean what you said? That you love me?”

  She lifted her head so she could look into Hunter’s face when he responded. “Kerri, I’ve spent these past three months going crazy because I couldn’t see you. I thought the pain would go away after a while, but it never did. Then when my father tried to set me up with another woman… I couldn’t take it anymore. You’re the only woman who has ever killed me like this. You know what they say about love that’s so good that it tears you up inside? Pretty sure my insides are a nuclear test site by now. I love you. That’s the only reason I would do something as stupid as this.”

  “As stupid as what?”

  He locked her in his arms. “Going against everything I know people would want me to do. I don’t care about what they want me to do. I only care about you.”

  Kerri held herself to him as closely as she could. How was it possible to be so near someone, and yet it didn’t seem enough? It’ll never be enough. That was the agony dwelling inside her as she inhaled the scent of this man, felt his strength beneath his skin, and listened to his heavy breaths full of his adoration for her. I’m really not that special. In the realm of the world, she wasn’t. Besides, people told her that she was special all the time. To the point where it didn’t seem like it meant anything anymore. But Hunter could make her feel like the greatest girl in the universe just from one breath into her ear.

  “I love you too,” she whimpered, all four walls inside of her crashing down as if Hunter Hall had brought a battering ram. “I love you so much it scares me. What are we going to do?”

  Hunter eased her down onto her bed, his lips barely a whisper away from her own. “Right now there’s only one thing I can think of doing with you. Forgive me, Kerri, it’s been so long.”

  Typical. But Kerri was thinking the same thing. From the moment Hunter took her into his embrace, she needed him – in her heart, and in her body.

  She sighed into his kiss, not because it relieved her, but because it unleashed the last parts of her sanity she had been holding onto for weeks now. I still can’t believe it. Hunter was here, in the bed they first shared on that fateful night earlier that summer. If the stars had been aligned that night, then they must be shooting across the sky now.

  “Kerri.” Her name sounded like a burst of wind in his voice. Powerful. Poignant. Almost nostalgic if she let herself fall into those moments when he first said it like that. “I need to make love to you.”

  Her legs wrapped around his waist and invited it to lower. I’m wearing nothing beneath this. “And I need to make love to you. Hurry, before someone comes.”

  Hunter kissed her, hard, the breath knocking right from her throat and hallowing out her lungs. The force of his strength as it overtook her, pushing her farther into her bed, lit her up like a flame sprung to life. “Yes,” she murmured, the front of her silk robe opening and Hunter’s mouth and hands descending upon her breasts. “Hunter…!” She had to reel in her excitement the moment he put the force of his mouth onto her tender nipple. No one must hear.

  Their rush to make love would normally mean it was less than what Kerri wanted. But her blood was on fire with both passion and lust. Passion for the way this man loved her, and lust for the ways in which he could love her. She was ready from the moment she ripped open the buttons on his shirt and touched his skin beneath. Her legs were open, and her slit bare. With Hunter looming over her on the brink of madness, Kerri knew she was ready now.

  Everything was an elated blur. Kerri couldn’t remember what happened in tandem and what happened independently. Either the heavy kiss to her mouth came first, or her hips were raised to meet his, or her name was uttered with such conviction that she died inside. Surely they did not happen all at once. To suggest such a thing would mean she was immortal, for only a goddess could survive that kind of onslaught. I’m just a mortal. Mortals that debased themselves with the pleasures of love and lust. Kerri fed on them both now. She felt the tip of Hunter’s hardness brush against her, and she gasped, her body unraveling from the way he could touch her.

  He was not gentle. A wild man. Famished for her, Hunter thrust into her with little ceremony, his lips hard against her throat as one hand squeezed the side of her left breast. Kerri let out a soundless cry as he came into her again… again… again… each time more easily as her legs widened and her center realized how much it wanted him. Hunter was the only man who could elicit such a reaction from her.

  “Don’t stop, please.” Kerri felt like the child her parents thought she still was. Begging. It seemed so beneath her, and yet she didn’t want Hunter to finish, for it meant this would all be over. “Don’t!”

  The bed creaked, just like that first night together. But this time it wasn’t from their naughtiness taking control. It came from Hunter’s earnestness as he let himself finally believe that Kerri was back in his arms. Or so he told her through his deep grunts and hotter breaths in her ear. For a man who had just scaled the wall to her balcony, he could thrust with more power than he had ever given her before.

  All of this, and more, brought Kerri to that place where nothing else mattered. It didn’t matter what had kept them apart for so long, or what made this passion so forbidden. All that mattered was that they were here, now, together and unafraid of what would come next.

  Probably because what came next nearly blinded her.

  Her sudden wail invited Hunter to groan against her throat, his thrusts slowing but not lacking in power. He had found her core, and now Kerri was a slave to the wave of pleasure washing over her and pinning her beneath this wonderful man.

  Hunter soon followed. Just as Kerri caught her breath again and felt the last wave recede, Hunter came into her a final time, stilling himself there as he groaned long and hard into the brunt of her shoulder. Kerri let one leg drape across his hip, and then she sighed again, as content as she could be given the circumstances.

  How this felt was so different from their first time together in this room. Back then it was risky, adventurous, and with no strings attached. Now they were drawn together by those strings, as woven by the stars mocking them in the sky. If Kerri closed her eyes she could feel those strings pressing upon them, suffocating them, letting her know that she was trapped in a love most blissfully foul. It wasn’t fair. At this point in her life she should have been free from the pressure of her parents. So of course this sort of thing happened to her.

  Why can’t I have both? That proverbial piece of cake sat in front of her, and she only wanted a taste a day for the rest of her life.

  “We have to do something,” Hunter mumbled into her ear. He was still inside her, and the thought of him pulling away to even hold her from behind was threatening. For when he pulled away, there was no guarantee he would ever be there again. “We can’t behave like this forever. I can’t keep sneaking into your room like some dumb teenager. We have to take matters into our own hands.”

  Kerri was surprised to hear him so clearheaded so soon after lovemaking. He must have been thinking about this long before he showed up. “What do you propose we do then? It will be at least another two months before we can even think about being seen together again. And that’s if my father wins and the status quo continues. If your father wins… I don’t even know.”

  Now Hunter detached himself f
rom her, rolling over to button himself up just like he had that first night. When he told me who he was. Kerri could still remember her indignation. How quickly that congealed into love of all things. “Our fathers can piss off. So can our mothers. I know my mother wasn’t any help making our case. Can’t imagine yours was much better.”

  Probably worse.

  “Our families are never going to see eye-to-eye. If anything, the election ending will only quiet things with the media when one of our fathers falls into obscurity. But let’s face it, Kerri, it’s our families’ reactions that will matter the most. And they will never allow it. Certainly not your parents. I could get my father to ignore it after a while, but he still wouldn’t condone it.”

  The more Hunter kept talking, the more hopeless it all became. “Then what do we do? Don’t just destroy me like that and then offer no solution.”

  He was quiet for a bit, his fingers lingering over his final button before he let out a sigh. “I have a solution. But you won’t like it.”

  “How do you know? I’ve surprised you before.”

  “Yes, but not like this.”

  Kerri put her hand on his arm. “Tell me. And hurry, before my senses come back to me.”

  This time the silence was matched with a grim face and a grimmer tone of voice when he finally did speak again. “We need to get out of here.”

  “What?”

  Hunter turned toward her, that flash behind his eyes more telling than any of his words. He’s gone crazy. Was this what had he been planning all along, or was this a sudden thought to occur to him? Either way, Kerri braced herself for what he said next.

  “I don’t mean tonight, but definitely sometime soon. I can make the arrangements.”

  “What are you talking about? Hunter…”