I step back, hugging myself. Because now I know I’ve been fooling myself. Last night meant something more to me than it did to him.
He turns to face me fully, and I’m struck again by his looks. All dark angles sharpened by a life I could never begin to understand. Eyes so light they look like ice crystals, but I also saw when they darkened to flint when he touched me. The scar over his left eyebrow, only noticeable in certain lights, and the scars on his body, hidden amongst tattoos that I would one day hope to understand.
I was stupid to think this could be anything more than amazing sex. Because in the cold light of day, it’s clear we are from two different worlds. Two different galaxies.
But then he transferred my grandma to this place, this amazing facility with doctors who care enough to look into her diagnosis, test for different solutions. Unless it’s just his way to pay for my silence.
“So what am I to you?” I ask. “Really? Am I a loose end you’re trying to contain? Am I a body you got to use along the way? Is this just your way to pay for my silence? And why the fuck was that nurse looking at you like she knew what your cock felt like?”
His brows lower, his expression turning lethal.
“Because I thought…” I choke on it. “I thought you wanted something more. I thought being claimed by you actually meant something. But that must have been pillow talk because now all I hear is threat and control. You might not trust me, but you want to own me while she,---” I thrust my pointed finger towards thereception desk, “looks at me like I pissed in her cereal and you whisper to her on the way out.”
He moves so fast I gasp. One of his hands fists in my hair while the other holds my jaw, and he brings his face inches from mine. His voice is quiet enough to shake me.
“Do you think I would have moved your grandmother into the best care facility in the city if this was only about sex? Do you think I kept you alive just because I wanted to get my cock wet? Do you think some past fling, I can’t even remember the name of, measures up to you?”
My eyes sting. “Then what is this? Because I gave you everything I am and I’m still falling short.”
He breathes like the answer burns.
“It’s something I don’t know how to handle,” he says. “And I’m going to make mistakes trying to keep it alive. But I won’t lie to you. I fucked the nurse a year or so ago when I was in here recovering from surgery for a gunshot wound. So yes, she does know what my cock feels like but it doesn’t mean anything, not to me. Not like you do. And those whispers? I was telling her to make sure your grandma gets pudding every single day because we don’t know how long she has left and I want every one of her days to be as great as they can be so it eases your burden just-a-fucking-fraction.”
His thumb sweeps my cheek, tender and terrifying.
“And I can see that you’re hurt because I don’t trust you,” he says low. “But I don’t trust myself around you either.”
That stops me.
He continues, the confession dragged out of him:
“I look at you and every bit of sense inside me evaporates, and I just want to touch you. But I know if I touch you, I’ll lose my fucking mind. You could be my downfall and I wouldn’t seeit coming. And not only would you destroy me, but you could potentially destroy everything my family has built. You have that kind of power over me.” He drags in a breath that sounds so ragged, it sounds like it’s tearing his lungs apart. “You walked into my world and saw death in front of you, and you didn’t beg to be saved. You begged me to look out for your grandmother instead of sparing you.” He swallows. “You think that didn’t ruin me? That someone as bright and beautiful and fucking radiant as you are, would give up the rest of your life for your grandma to have a quality of life for her last few days.”
My breath stutters. His lips are so close to mine now, my jaw held so firmly in his grip, that I know my skin is bruising. But all I feel is the swell of something so much larger than what my life was before, begin to slot into the space that used to be filled with worry and exhaustion.
“I know I’m insane. I know I lost my ever-loving mind the minute you walked into that room. So perhaps moving your grandma without your knowledge was an idiot move and something we should have discussed, but I’ve never had to operate that way before and I didn’t think. I just wanted to do something so you could find the space you needed for you to want to survive that room. To want to survive me.”
Tears are welling in my eyes again, but now it isn’t gratitude or rage, it’s being seen so completely and profoundly by someone for the first time in my life.
“Callie, I was supposed to kill you because of what you saw. But I couldn’t. And in my world, there’s only one way to keep you alive now.”
The landscaped garden feels too small for the weight of what’s hanging between us.
Realization dawns on me slowly. As if each part of the complete thought wants to enter with such singular clarity that I can’t mistake it for anything else.
“You need to marry me,” I say on a breath. We’re close enough that I see his pupils dilate, see when my words register in his brain by the way his brows move with such a tiny movement it would have been completely imperceptible by anyone else. “You need to make me yours by law. But please don’t cage me,” I whisper.
He drops his hands from me and steps back, thrusting his hands through his dark hair.
“Fuck, Callie,” he says in that way that I’ve only heard from him when he is in that desperate place between wanting me and taking me. Then he steps towards me and brings his mouth to mine.
Dariy
I kiss her long and hard and slow and pour everything I am into it. This beautiful stranger would marry me to prove her trust. Dedicate her life to being my wife when she doesn’t even know what that means.
But how do I know it’s for the right reasons? Hell, I don’t even know what the right reasons would be. Dragging a poor, unsuspecting woman into my life would be an act of cruelty. And I’ve never been cruel. I always get the job done swiftly. Cleanly. Mercifully in most cases.
When she said you need to marry me, it took every ounce of self-control not to drag her behind the nearest tree and fuck her against it until the bark is imprinted on her skin.
