The regret in his tone was clear and hurt mixed with the need that was pulsing through her at his nearness. “Well, you’re the one who…” She hesitated, the rest of her sentence screaming in her mind.Who woke me up by filling me with that sweet, thick cock of yours. Who held me down and made the world shatter into a thousand pieces, then came deep inside me without a condom, creating a life I never asked for. She couldn’t bring herself to say the words, or anything remotely like them.
The intense intimacy of that night was a million miles away from where they stood. The closeness they’d shared should be all but impossible to remember. Instead, it felt to her like it had just taken place, their bond stretching tightly from the night she’d conceived to this very moment like a taut metal cable.
The black centers of those mesmerizing green eyes dilated, and she knew he was remembering the exact same things she was. Heat rose up her chest to her neck, weakness overtaking her knees.
“I remember what I did,” he said.
She’d never forget their last night together. The way he’d touched her—half asleep, half inside some nightmare—but still so desperately connected to her. She’d said yes to that feral side of him, pulled him closer, hoping her body could reach whatever haunted place his mind had gone.
But then he’d woken up, eyes wild, and she’d felt him slip away even as he moved inside her. He’d kissed her like a man drowning, then he was gone, leaving her confused and devastated in his wake.
Her pulse throbbed between her legs, her need for this man mingling with the certainty that he still had feelings forher. Was it possible? Had she been right all along about the special connection between them? She leaned ever-so-slightly toward him, desperate for his touch.
The corners of his mouth pulled down almost imperceptibly. “And I can’t tell you how much I regret it.” He walked down the remaining steps, never casting so much as a backwards glance in her direction.
8
Gavin made a fist and slammed the side of his hand into the granite counter, sending a painful vibration through his wrist and up his arm. He wanted to keep punching the rock, let the stone turn the bones of his hand and wrist into gravel, pummel his limb against the surface until all feeling and responsibility had left his body.
He thought he’d hated himself before today, thought nothing could intensify the remorse he felt for his actions. But seeing that beautiful woman upstairs so completely gutted by what he’d done was the last straw, this new crest to his self-loathing threatening to crash over his life and drown everything in its wake.
The desire to end his life had been his bedfellow for what seemed an eternity, but now it was hulking over him, overpowering him. He’d shared a single weekend with Eva and decimated her entire future. He’d all but forced himself on her, impregnating her with his bastard child while he ran in the opposite direction, and still she’d said she loved him.
She didn’t even know him. She’d been young andinnocent, so much of both that she was completely out of his league. Yet he’d crossed that line and bedded her time and time again, burying himself in her body for hours on end, as if by bringing her pleasure and wringing himself dry, he could become even remotely worthy of the love she so freely offered.
Even holding her in the darkness, he knew it was wrong to be with her that way, knew she was falling hard for a fantasy that didn’t match the ugliness inside him. But being with her had felt so damn good, he’d almost allowed himself to believe it, too. His mistake wasn’t in leaving her—it was in allowing himself to get that close to her in the first place.
And what about now? He’d just thrown her in his truck and dragged her out of the city, bringing her to his private sanctuary where he’d never brought anyone except his mother. Did he really believe that this time Eva would escape from his clutches unscathed? That the asshole in the mirror truly had her best interests at heart, and he wouldn’t manage to ruin her life any more than he already had?
All she’d had to do was run her hands along the countertop and he’d wanted her. She was grazing the stone, but she may as well have been tracing the swirls of hair on his chest and down lower, for how erotic that simple movement had been.
His cock was engorged from wanting her, still. Seeing her in his bedroom had twisted up his insides, her achingly familiar scent drawing him closer like the pheromones of a ripe, purebred bitch to a desperate junkyard dog. Rational thought and decision-making had been cut off from his brain as surely as if they’d been amputated.
Damn his memory and the secrets stitched tightly within. The feel of her beneath him, how her back hadarched in pain when he greedily took her virginity with one sure thrust and something approaching sexual glee.
Every sensation he’d felt in her arms had been soul-shattering, from that first delirious undressing of her softly scented body to the rhythmic jerking of his shaft as her fisted muscles milked him tightly inside her. Ecstasy had coursed through his every artery and vein, his field of vision blooming in riotous color before his body went blissfully numb, his primal need to claim her having been satisfied.
It had been wrong, so very wrong of him to do it.
He knew that no matter what he’d tried to tell himself to the contrary. And the baby… Abby was living proof of his misdeeds, a weight Eva would carry all the days of her life because he had been too self-absorbed and devastated by his own pain to give much thought to her end of the bargain.
It was as if by making love to her he could excise the demons that haunted his waking moments and tormented his nights. Only when he was with her did a light shine into the abyss, only when he bedded her did that light reach the utmost corners of the cave within him. All these things and more, he remembered.
He remembered, and he wanted her beneath him again.
All the more reason to find out who was after her. He needed to make sure she was safe, then put as much physical and emotional distance between Eva and himself as possible. And if the thought of losing her and his daughter made him sick with a desperate ache, then he deserved that pain and more.
Pulling out his phone, he dialed Moto and explained about the murder Eva had captured on film. “I need you to go to the printer and get the pictures, then find out everything you can about the detective who was killed. What hewas working on, who might have wanted him dead.” Even as he said it, Gavin knew every police detective who’d been on the job for any length of time was responsible for collaring a long list of perps. They’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.
“I saw the story on the news,” said Moto. “Somebody took him out in broad daylight in the middle of Central Park. You’ve got to want this guy dead pretty bad to take a chance like that.”
Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Or think you’re untouchable.” His mind was racing. “See what cases the dead detective was scheduled to testify at in the near future. Find out what he was working on that would make someone risk a public execution.” Not to mention ransacking Eva’s apartment in search of the evidence and taking out two of New York’s finest at the safehouse.
He told Moto everything he knew, then added, “There’s got to be a mole in the PD. Either the shooter’s a dirty cop, or someone in the department is trying to cover this up. Either way, you’ve got to watch your back on this one, brother.”
“Sloan has a cousin pretty high up in the department. I’ll see what I can find out.”
The baby’s cries shattered the silence that had forever cloaked his cabin, the sound so foreign in his private space that for an instant he didn’t realize what he was hearing. “Abby,” he said aloud, noting how the name sounded on his lips, knowing that particular combination of sounds would forever be dear.
