“Wait.”
I closed my eyes for a second before looking at her over my shoulder. “What is it?”
Angel stood, holding her towel together at her breasts. “You told me downstairs that you would do anything for me.”
My brow furrowed as I faced her again, folding my arms over my chest. “Yes.”
“Did you mean it?” she asked softly.
“Of course I did,” I said firmly.
“Why?”
My head ticked to the side. “Why what, Angel?”
“Why would you do anything for me? I’m just some woman you rescued during one of your jobs,” she pushed out, her voice starting to crack again. Her smile was nothing but a memory. “You must save countless women—people—in your line of work. So why am I different?”
“We can’t do this right now,” I murmured, shaking my head. “Not while my team and the police are downstairs. Not after the morning you had, baby.”
She took a step toward me. “You call me ‘baby.’”
A tightness bloomed in my chest, burning and damning me all at once. “Yes.”
“Do you call anyone else that?” she whispered, right in front of me now. She lifted her hand to touch me, but I caught her wrist. She sucked in a sharp gasp, her pupils pulsing.
“Told you we can’t do this right now,” I warned her.
Her voice changed, now breathless and heated. “Why?”
I searched her eyes, wishing I could read her mind. “What do you want?”
She pressed her lips together, looking at mine. “I’m feeling so many things right now. I don’t know what to do, and my mind is racing, Ash. It’s too much. I can’t bear it,” she confessed.
“Yes, I know,” I told her gently, taking her chin in my free hand. “But what you’re searching for right now is something I can’t give you. That’s a conversation for another day, a brighter and happier day.”
“I just…” She cut herself off, letting a stray tear fall. “I just want to feel something other than the dread I’ve been feeling for the last week.”
Dread?
My hand shifted, closing around the front of her throat, my thumb hooking under her jaw. “Did something else happen while I was away?”
The most beautiful shade of red flooded her cheeks and chest, her lips parting as she began to pant. “I-I’ve just been having a hard week, is all.”
I bit down again, grinding my teeth for a moment. “Tell me what you want.”
She tried to hide her face by dropping her head, but my thumb and index finger pressed underneath her jaw, forcing her to look back up. “Don’t fucking hide from me,” I warned, my voice gruff. “Look me in the eye, tell me what you want, what you need, and I’ll give it to you.”
“Anything?” she breathed.
“Fuck, Starlight, anything. Just tell me how I can ease your pain.”
A beat of silence followed, and then she softly asked, “Could you fuck me, then?”
I released her, staggering back to the doorway. My chest heaved, my heart pounding in the cage of my chest as my cock twitched in my jeans.No.No, we couldn’t do this. Not here. Notnow. I wasn’t that kind of man. She’d been through too much. “Angel—”
“Please,” she rasped, letting the towel fall.
My eyes averted before I could see anything. “Jesus, beautiful. Please put that back on,” I pushed out, trying to get a lock on my control.
