“In a way, we are.”
“Jesus. You’re a good man, Sasha. I’ve seen it. No matter what you’ve been taught to believe, you’re not a killer.” I finallyattempted to climb off his lap, but he was having none of it. With his arm firmly planted around me, he leaned us both over so he could place the glass on the coffee table.
Then he cupped my jaw with a tenacity that should put the fear of God into me. Instead, my pussy began to throb as if the dangerous moment was about to lead to passion.
His eyes were gloriously hooded, but the stark blue kept me pinned in the moment. When he pressed his lips to mine, I melted into his arms. It was too stereotypical, but that was the way I felt.
Every inch of my body was on fire, every breath stolen. Just the way he’d captured my lips was as dominating as the man. I wanted this moment to last. I wanted him to cradle me in his arms, taking me into the bedroom and making sweet love to me.
But that wasn’t possible. Not now. Maybe not ever. A veil had been broken, a different kind of ache replacing the one from before.
That’s why I gently pushed him away, but he refused to let me go.
He crushed his mouth over mine, doing little more than keeping our lips together. The hold was possessive, letting me know without words that he wanted me safe.
The moment was tender, even sweet, but I broke the kiss only a few seconds later and pressed my palm against his cheek. He had a way of grounding me even now.
“Do you know what I would have done had I lost you? Had I lost Nina?”
“No,” I whispered.
“I would have burnt down the city in your names. I would have ripped apart every store and every restaurant in my hunt to find the person responsible. And when I did, I would have spent days allowing them to experience the same kind of torture that I was feeling. Does that sound like a good man to you?”
I was breathless for a few seconds, incapable of capturing and blurting out the right words. Maybe the ones he needed, or I did. Then suddenly, they came to me like a flood ripping through a dam. “It sounds like a man holding grief and guilt in his heart so thick and heavy that he can’t think clearly or even breathe. It sounds like a man intent on destroying his life from the inside out, never allowing himself to feel joy or love because he doesn’t think he deserves it.”
There was no doubt I’d gone too far. I felt it in my bones. I waited for his anger, even tossing me out of the suite and his life. That’s not what I wanted. Just the opposite. I’d seen his underbelly, soft and vulnerable, an emotional and passionate man who’d awakened something so primal deep within that being around him was like taking the first breath of life.
Yet he was explosive and dangerous in a way I had no true understanding of, trying so desperately to convince me he wasn’t good enough that a fraction of my sullied mind wanted to believe him.
“As I said. You know nothing about me.” Instead of exploding, he was shutting down.
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Shut down. Is that what you do every time you don’t get your way or don’t want to deal with something?”
When he turned his head, it was as if he was dismissing me.
“No. You aren’t going to get away with shutting me out. Not after what happened today.”
“Don’t you see what I’m trying to do is to protect you?”
I narrowed my eyes, folding my arms and glaring at him as frustration was about to eat me alive. “I can protect myself from almost anything. Yes, I appreciate your concern when it was your family who was attacked, but that’s not what’s happening here.”
“Then what is?”
There was the mood swing I’d seen before, the one that he undoubtedly used to push people away. “It’s that you can’t trust me enough to talk to me about how much you’re suffering. You just admitted you’d burn down the world if something happened to me, yet you refuse to allow me inside that mind of yours. That’s not fair.”
“Whoever told you that life was fair was an idiot. You’re living in a fairytale, Lainey, where good people thrive and the vile, evil monsters eventually perish. That’s not always the case.”
Oh, my God. This was past being infuriating.
Maybe I’d been the sweet girl that everyone had expected, but no one had believed when I’d insisted that my image not be some vixen intent on ruining her voice by screaming into the microphone.
That’s why I insisted on retreating, punching him in the gut so I could back away from him.
I’d be damned if he didn’t seem amused. What a ridiculous situation. I’d been in a shoot-out with masked men, forced to perform a few line drives on some asshole who’d grinned at me as if I’d been a pushover. Then for kicks and giggles, I’d stood on the same lawn where I’d performed only an hour before to enjoy the sight of dead bodies.
