He made her forget the ring with a sideways look that made her laugh.“Okay.You’re beautiful.And you know it,” she added snippily.“Even slashed halfway to hell, with enough bruises to persuade me you belong to some new race of purple people, you’re easy on the eye.”
“Are you too tired?”
“For what?”she demanded, knowing full well what he was getting at.
Recovery after a mission had always meant celebrating life, and that half smile of his made her want to?—
Fuck?
Oh, yeah.
But she wasn’t ready for that.Maybe she never would be again.“I’m sorry,” she said, turning serious.“Really sorry for everything I put you through.”
“That again?”Catching her wrist, Elijah pressed his thumb to her pulse.“So, you’re alive.Who knew?You left.You died.You came back.What are you trying to do now?Pick a fucking lane, Sable.”
“I wasn’t aware I was doing anything.”
“Apart from teasing your bottom lip with the tip of your tongue as if I’m the next thing on your menu.”
“You flatter yourself.”
“Do I?”
She pulled away.He leaned in, crowding her until her spine met the door.“Can you even explain why you left?”
Blood drained from her face.“Black Meridian put a death mark on your file.”
“You think I didn’t know?”
“They sent images of the two of us, promising that if we didn’t stop hounding slavers, they’d take their time carving slices off you while I watched.”
“Hmm.Nice.”
“Is that all you have to say?”
He shrugged.
“Disappearing was all I could think of to keep you safe.Believe me, every day I remembered how we’d both been betrayed as children.The last thing I wanted was to do that to you again.”
“You’d do anything to avoid hurting me?”he suggested.
“I’d do anything to prevent you from being killed.”
There was silence until he said, “You think I wouldn’t burn Black Meridian organization to ash for you?You should have told me what you planned.”
“And have you stop me?They counted on me sticking around, making it easy to find you.I was determined not to give those goons that chance.”
He knew Black Meridian.They were trouble on a massive scale and could have taken both of them out.Sable had prevented that.And he was blaming her?
Something inside him fractured.The slavers’ evil and the grief for precious time lost fueled his hunger for Sable—not just for sex, but more, much more.
He touched the ring at his neck.“Do you know why I wear this?
She tensed.“No.”
Cupping her jaw, he tilted her face to meet his gaze.“I bought it seven years ago, just before you left.”
Silence.“For you.”
