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give you this information, you can take it, pass it off to your buddy Roman, and head right back to your bigwig CIA job.”
“I quit.” He’d sent his letter of resignation about fifteen minutes after they’d gotten home.
“What?” She blinked.
“I can’t be a good husband to you if I’m always on a different continent. I quit the Agency and I’ll either build my own business or fix up security at the White House. I have enough money saved up to support us. You don’t have to worry about that. I’ll take care of you.”
“I’m not going to marry you,” she said stubbornly and then ruined it by sniffling.
She was fighting, yes. Kiki and Tom had both betrayed her in different ways. Connor knew he’d deceived her terribly himself. All in one day, she’d learned that the people closest to her weren’t who she thought at all. Lara needed time. He needed patience. If he stayed calm and remembered the senator’s advice, he could get through to her. Vulnerable. He hated the word, but nothing was more important than her.
“Whether you marry me or not, I intend to protect you. I can’t do that if I’m an operative. Lara, I don’t want to be apart from you. I like the man I am when I’m with you.”
She sat back, her eyes not meeting his. “I hate you.”
That “I hate you” sounded stubborn and sullen and a little weepy. Still, it cut him to the quick. Normally, his reaction would be to lash out, to throw down some nasty shit that would slice her soul open. Except this was Lara and he refused to hurt her again.
For almost two decades, he’d thought he was nothing but a gun with a hair trigger waiting to mow down anyone who could hurt him. Not Lara. She was both his weakness and his strength. And, just maybe, she was his salvation.
“I can understand why you feel that way right now. But I promise I’ll make it up to you because I love you. I’ve never loved a woman before so I’m trying. But I need you to try, too.”
“Why? I was stupid to hope for loyalty or love from a man I didn’t know last week. Hell, the friends I’d known for years didn’t show me any.” Tears rolled down her cheeks.
Connor wanted to hold her in his arms so badly but keeping her talking was more important. “I’m not them, Lara. You can always expect loyalty and love from me. I want everything that’s good for you. Don’t shut me out, princess. Please. This cold act isn’t you.”
“Maybe it should be.”
“No. I said before that the world needs people like me, but it needs people like you, too. It needs people who believe in the good. It needs fairy princesses who see the bad yet still believe in the good.” He sighed. “You know what? Screw the world. I need you. I need you to be Lara, to find it in your heart to forgive a man who lied to you, who betrayed you, and who will spend the rest of his life loving you completely.”
A little sob left her mouth. He moved to her, gathering her in his arms and dragging her into his lap. He felt better than he had all day, and he knew he was a stinking bastard because he was glad she was really crying. In that moment, he realized he was happier and more alive when he was comforting her than his best day without her. “I was an asshole. Tom and Kiki were assholes, too.”
Yeah, he wasn’t good at the comforting thing. He stroked her head and petted her hair, happy when she leaned on him.
Finally, she wrapped her arms around him and clung. “I don’t want to cry. I want to be strong.”
He shook his head. “You are, princess. You have no idea how strong. Strength isn’t measured in how many people you kill or how hard it is to make you cry. It’s in how resolutely you cling to your goodness. I need you, Lara. I need you so fucking bad.”
“How? Why? I don’t understand because you’re the one with all the power.”
“That’s not true. I have the power to protect, but you can change things. Can’t you see how important that is? I called you naive at the beginning, but maybe I’m too cynical after spending so much time with traitors and killers. I need you to keep seeing the world as a good place. I can’t cry anymore.” He caressed her face. “I watched one of my closest friends go through hell yesterday and then I saw something worse, the woman I love get her heart broken—twice. The only power I want now is to help put you back together. The only way you’ll heal is if you cry. So cry. Cry for both of us. Cry for you and me and for Kiki and Tom, and god, please cry for Zack and his wife, for Roman and Elizabeth because everything is fucked up and it deserves healing tears. You’re the only one who can give them to us.”
Her arms tightened around him and she sobbed against his chest. He held her, his eyes watering, but it was in pure relief. She was finally crying in his arms.
“Let me take some of the burden, princess.” He wasn’t going to shy away from using the nickname he’d given her just because her best friend turned out to be a crazy bitch. She was his princess and he was working hard to go from troll to knight. His armor would likely always be tarnished, but he would change for her. “We don’t have to talk about us now. Tell me what happened with Kiki. Don’t keep it all in. It will be a poison in your veins.”
“She hated me. She hated me so much,” she whispered through her tears.
“She had issues and she hid them well. Deep down she didn’t hate you. She hated herself.”
“Her whole office was full of pictures of Tom.”
This might be a touchy subject. Lara had loved Tom at one point. He didn’t want to be the bearer of bad tidings but she should know what had been happening. “She’d had an affair with him. From the information I gathered, she started sleeping with him right after you broke off your engagement.”
She nodded and he breathed a sigh of relief. “He told me. He’d been using her for a long time. I think he’d decided it was time to use me again. He wanted to change jobs and thought my dad could help him.”
Connor gritted his teeth. “He’s not a strong man. You were right to break it off with him. As it happens, I found out he had nearly twenty outstanding parking tickets. He might have been arrested this morning.”
That sounded nice and factual. What he really wanted to say was Tom was a fuckwit who deserved to have his balls shoved down his throat.
Lara froze. “You didn’t.”
He shrugged. “Hey, I didn’t kill him.”
A hopeless little grin tugged at her lips before she fell quiet again. “I never knew them at all. I think that might be my fault.”
He cupped her chin and forced her to look up at him. “They used you. It’s not your fault. You saw the good in them and they weren’t smart enough to know what a gift that is.”
She laid her head against his shoulder. “I don’t know who to trust anymore.”
He had no right to ask for her trust. “Give me time. Let me prove I can be what you need me to be.”
“I don’t think I can be near you and not sleep with you.”
His gut clenched. Was she asking to stay with Gabe, who also had great security and could surround her with guards? Gabe wasn’t a constant reminder that she’d been lied to. Connor didn’t know how to talk her out of leaving. “I won’t push you. I promise. I’ll give you all the time you need.”
She cuddled closer and cupped his cheek. “Time won’t work. Time doesn’t make me want you less. While we finish this case, I want to have sex with you. I might need it.”
It, not him. “You want to use me.”
She kept her gaze steady on him. “Maybe. I need to be out of my head for a while. I need something good, Connor. Are you going to demand payment for it?”
So Lara did need him. She could call it whatever she wanted, but she needed to be made love to and he was the only man in the world who would do it.
He lowered his mouth to hers, their lips brushing. He would never deny her this. “No. I’ll take whatever you give me.”
She sniffled again then slid off his lap. “All right. Then we’ll have that to look forward to.”
He watched as she moved back to her chair and foc
used on the screen again. He sat back and studied her as she started typing. Her face was red but her shoulders weren’t as tight as they’d been before.
Connor had always been good at reading people but he was too tangled up in this woman to see beyond his own yearning and fear of losing her. Because despite the fact that she’d asked him for sex, he wasn’t sure if she intended to use it to bring them back together or work him out of her system for good.
Maybe she really just wanted to fuck. He’d taught her what her body could do. He’d shown her that she was sensual and sexy. Lara wanted more of that from him, but she wasn’t the kind of woman who could be satisfied with temporary forever. Eventually she would want more than a lover. She would want a husband, a family.
Could she use him simply for sexual pleasure but not see him as a potential mate?
“You should go to the store, though,” she murmured. “I won’t sleep with you without a condom.”
“I have some,” he managed to say, his head reeling.
