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“I would deal with you now or whenever I feel the need.” Khalid’s smile was cold, and Sebastian was certain he thought it was intimidating. “I said she’s been through enough. She does not need the pain you and Shane would no doubt bring her, because your hearts are not your own. I’ve checked into your pasts. Two men rumored to have lost their hearts as well as their souls, years before—”
“Don’t get between me and Alyssa, Mustafa.” Sebastian barely managed to keep the snarl in his voice from attracting undue attention. “You won’t like the consequences. I promise you that.”
Pushing past the far too nosy Khalid, he strode through the ballroom, foll
owing the woman his soul was still bound to.
He’d waited too damned long for this. The need for her was like a sickness in his gut, destroying him from the inside out.
It was bad enough Summer had made certain she forced the cousins to wait the full two years projected for Alyssa’s full recovery and tortured the hell out of them with texts and pictures. She’d been cruel. Pictures of Alyssa in her sexy little gowns, barely there bikinis … just the memory of them threatened his control.
They could wait until Alyssa’s first public appearance, she’d demanded when he and Shane had put their CIA ties behind them. Alyssa wasn’t well enough yet. And each time they’d tried to slip past the woman she’d turned into a damned bulldog blocking their way.
Until two months before.
Headed out, y’all. Good luck [Summer had texted them].
The text had come the day after she and Alyssa had left for an undisclosed location for vacation. At the same time Shane had been called away to Barcelona to give the details of Gregory Santiago’s death. Again. It seemed there had been some pages missing from his statement.
Sebastian had no doubt Summer was behind that as well.
Now Khalid thought he could stand in his way?
One more time, Sebastian thought, and the other man was going to have to back up those threats that kept spilling from his mocking lips.
Slipping past the French doors, Sebastian stared around the dimly lit gardens, searching for the slight, graceful figure of his dark siren. A satisfied smile curled at his lips when he saw the path Alyssa was taking. Narrower than the others, more dimly lit, and less used. The same path she’d taken eight years before that brought her to him and Shane.
It wasn’t winter, but neither was summer in full bloom. It was cool enough to be comfortable, a light breeze playing along the sheltering trees and ornamental shrubs, whispering of far too many years of hunger, too many years of pain, and the woman he was dying to hold once again.
13
Alyssa had attended parties at the Collier mansion several times a year after returning from Barcelona. For some reason, she was one of the few guests to receive invitations to every party Landra Collier threw, even before the widow had become Alyssa’s father’s lover.
The first invitation after her return had been for the second Winter Ball. Though she didn’t venture from the ballroom and she hadn’t stayed long, still,Alyssa had accepted the invitation.
Just being there had been hell that year.
It was hell now.
A part of her wanted, ached, to run and hide. She wanted to pull the blankets over her head and stay there until she could face the world without the pain that followed her every waking second. Until she could emerge whole. She hadn’t been whole for so long that she didn’t even remember what it felt like.
She definitely didn’t know what being whole felt like whenever she came to the Collier parties. She only drifted through the crowds, feeling Shane and Sebastian with such strength she’d not known if it was agony or comfort she’d felt. And she had no idea why she even cared. They’d torn her soul from her body. They’d taken everything, everything, from her and she’d had so little left to hold on to.
She’d felt them. As though they lingered just behind her, just out of sight, their warmth touching her, she had felt them each time she accepted Landra Collier’s invitations to her parties and balls.
It was because this was where she’d met them, she told herself. This was her first memory of them. Because of that, she would always feel them there. But it was the gardens she was drawn to, the gardens she’d always refused to make her way to.
She’d been a mess that first year. Not that she’d improved much with each visit to the Collier mansion. And despite Margot’s anger and disapproval, Alyssa had attended every social event Landra Collier sent her an invitation to.
Had she glimpsed either Shane or Sebastian, she would have had no choice but to leave. And no matter the temptation she had never returned to the darkened arbor. The memories were too painful and until tonight, until this particular ball, she’d sworn she could feel them pulling her to that darkened section of the shadowed gardens. Which made so very little sense. Why send her parents those pictures and their demands and still attempt to ambush her in the dark? It had been her silly imagination and hunger for them, she’d told herself. Nothing more.
That sense of being pulled there wasn’t present tonight, though. That second sense she’d been convinced she had of them in Barcelona had been no more than a fantasy. A girlish attempt to excuse her need for love, Margot had suggested regretfully. But still there were moments it tortured her.
Moving along the softly lit path she paused for a moment before looking behind her. She almost smiled at the sense of being followed. How paranoid she could be whenever she was here. Always imagining they were so close. Always certain she was being watched.
She was pathetic and weak, just as Harvey had once accused her of being. Too weak to get over whoever broke her heart, he’d sneered. Then somehow, he’d learned of her time in Barcelona and the fact that there had been two lovers rather than one who shared her bed. No one but her parents had known whom she’d shared those months with. She hadn’t even told Summer whom she had been with and the other woman was her dearest friend. One of only a few friends, actually.
Once Alyssa stepped cautiously along the path it didn’t take her too long to find the hidden, sheltered arbor where she’d first met Shane and Sebastian. How charming they had been. The Spanish goof and the South Texas cowboy. They’d stolen her heart that night, locked it up so tight that no one else could have penetrated it even if they had been willing to face Margot’s icy regard to attempt it. Not that any of the young men she’d known had been willing to face Margot. Her mother had been such a strong, forceful personality during her life that nearly everyone walked warily around her.
