“No, don’t do that.” I shook my head, holding on to him. “Don’t shut me out.”
“I don’t know how to ask this.”
“Ask me anything. Please.”
“Angel, have you ever been raped?”
I felt the blood drain from my face, everything snapping into place at once. “No.”
His eyes closed, a pained, devastating sound coming from his chest. “Fuck,” he croaked. “Thank God. I thought—fuck, I thought you’d been…” he trailed off again, lifting his head and giving me his profile. Agony was etched into every inch of his face.
“Ash, listen to me,” I said over the pelting rain. “Alan Benson sought me out when I was at a conference in Las Vegas. Sometime during the evening, he spiked my drink. He kidnapped me. When I came to, I woke up in the room you found me in. Alan Benson did not touch me sexually; he wasn’t allowed to. He was trying to sell me.” Ash flinched, his hold on me tightening. I loved it. I’d never felt so safe. “According to Agent Masters, I was being held in Texas because Alan’s transport had been ambushed by her team and the FBI. The feds were closing in on him, and he knew it. Vegas had been his last-ditch effort to three more women, but I was the only one.”
Thunder clapped behind him, but he didn’t seem to care. Or notice.
“We missed it,” he said, his upper lip curling.
My brows came together. “Missed what?”
“Benson hired Red Snake to track down a former employee who’d stolen from him.”
More of the puzzle pieces snapped together. “He was trying to flee the country,” I said. “Agent Masters said by the time she found me, all of his accounts had been frozen.”
“I thought you were his wife. You told me you were his wife.”
Pain sparked in my chest. “He told me to say that to every man who came in. That way they wouldn’t try anything. Agent Masters said that other men in this ring weren’t allowed to touch wives. It’s a cult.”
He dropped his head to mine. “I’m so sorry,” he rasped.
“You didn’t do anything wrong,” I said over another clap of thunder. “You saved me!”
“You would’ve been saved either way,” he shot back.
I brought my hand to his chest, feeling his heart. “Fate intervened.”
Chapter Twenty
Angel
He kissed me then.
No urgency.
No demand.
No heat.
This kiss was featherlight against my lips. He did it once. Then twice. And then a final time as he croaked, “All this time. Fuck. All this time, I thought I’d lost you in the darkness.”
“Ash, what are you—”
The rain began again, as did our kiss. He grunted into my mouth, muttering thank-yous over and over again. His hand fisted my hair as his other dropped down, hooking around my thigh.
“Up, gorgeous,” he commanded, lifting me.
My legs wrapped around him, our mouths melding together, and he carried me back inside. As the screen door slammed, he pressed me against the wall. “My beautiful woman. My Starlight,” he rasped, kissing my jaw, then my temple, my forehead, the bridge of my nose. He kissed my face all over as I held his in my hands. He dropped his head to my chest, our harsh breaths and racing hearts filling the silence of my home. His body was warm, my nipples puckered, the fabric of my dress clinging to me.
“Take me, Ash,” I whispered, running my hand through his hair.
