“Don’t,” I snap, making her jump. “I fucking know you’re working for that bastard. The one who has destroyed everything in my life,” I point my finger at my chest. Her ass perches on the table, and I use the opportunity to step between her legs. “He’s taken everything from me!”
“Preston, I—”
The rage increases tenfold, injecting into my bloodstream that rushes to pound against my skull. I snatch her throat in my fist, leaning over her as Kate’s back bends under me.
God, she is so fucking fragile.
If I bend her under my weight anymore, her spine would snap like a twig.
My fingers pulse into her flesh, trapping her gold collar beneath my hand. She gasps for breath, tears slipping over herbottom lashes and onto her cheeks. Her pulse—so beautifully alive—flutters against my palm.
It would be so easy to break this pretty neck.
I lower my face to hers, my breath fanning across those tempting lips. “It’s unfortunate that the prettiest things are always the most lethal.”
Kate nods in my grasp. She struggles to speak through the airway I’m crushing in my fist. Her mouth is an inch from mine. “The feeling is mutual, Captain.”
Then Kate does something I don’t expect. She lifts her hands to cup both sides of my face, drawing my focus from her puffy, tear-soaked lips back to her bloodshot eyes. I blink, the cool green of her irises fresh against the fire licking every inch of my skin. My grasp on her neck loosens just a little.
She sinks her teeth into her lower lip, shaking her head. “It’s not me, Pres. I’m not the one who did this. I don’t know whoheis.”
My resolve hardens. “You’re lying!”
“Kiss me.” It’s a whisper.
Now I’m the speechless one. What kind of witchcraft am I yielding to, where I’m considering shoving my tongue in more places than just her mouth with that plea?
My heart screeches to a stop. “What?”
Her soft hands against my face are a different kind of heat that penetrates the unbearable inferno covering my skin in a sheen of sweat, dirt, and other grime from the grenades that detonated the ground I stood on. It’s trying to burn me alive, but her warmth blooms out from where she’s touching me, pushing back, and extinguishing the flames that are a living, breathing thing against my flesh.
Her tender fingers dance across my cheeks, those eyes firm like she’s somehow going through the archives of my life.
Kate is somehow looking at me with fresh eyes. This isn’t what they looked like when I left her.
“I want you to kiss me,” she whispers again, another tear gliding down her face.
My heartbeat slows more than it was, pulsing wildly for an entirely different reason.
I slam my eyes shut.
Maybe I’m an idiot, or perhaps I’m saving myself when I speak the rejection across the small space between our lips. “I’m not going to do that.” Moving my hand from her throat, I lightly grip the back of her neck instead, blowing out a shaky breath.
When my eyes snap open, hers are bouncing between mine. The column of her throat moves as she nods. “Okay.”
Okay?
What the fuck is happening right now?
Then it dawns on me.
The rage is muted. A subdued buzz in my veins that allows clarity to seep through the hurt.
The anger.
The wrath that would’ve had me demolishing anything in my path.
Demolishing her.
