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The anger rode him too deep to allow for touch. It was too much a part of him tonight, rising from his soul until it threatened to push through the very pores of his flesh.
“What’s going on, Zeke?”
He shook his head and held his hand out to her. “Come inside; this isn’t the place to talk. ”
Staying away from her would have been the best decision. If he’d had the strength. God knew, he didn’t have that strength. He’d had to fight every second for the past five years to remain aloof, to keep from taking her, until the battle had been lost.
She had come to him innocent, sweet, and pure. Her illusion of sexual experience and wild disposition was just that, an illusion. It had taken him a while to see through it, to realize certain things about his tempestuous Rogue.
She was sugar sweet on the inside; that hard outer core was so fragile that it defied understanding. She was too gentle, she was too much of everything that he didn’t deserve, should never have. And his soul had claimed her despite his best intentions.
The dark, ragged core of his being had reached out to her and been comforted by her when Zeke knew he didn’t deserve that comfort.
She licked her lips and his body clenched in longing. She took a deep breath, lifting her breasts against her T- shirt, and his hands ached to cup the firm mounds.
She was young, precious. Could she understand the man he was, the man that had been years in the making?
But she took his hand. Her fingers accepted his as they twined them through hers. Tiny, fragile, so fucking tender. Her hands were like silk and his dwarfed them.
“A lot of people have been looking for you today,” she told him softly as he drew her into the house. “I assume John found you?”
“John found me. ” He nodded as he led her inside, then closed and locked the door behind them.
He set the security alarm, just to be safe. He had no fear of his son walking in on them tonight; he’d made certain Shane was safe in Louisville and that Lucinda kept him there. It wasn’t the fear of his son seeing something he shouldn’t that rode Zeke now. It was the fear of being caught off guard before he could finish what he started.
“Gene’s looking for you,” she told him then. “He was at the bar. ”
“I know. ” And he didn’t want to talk about Gene, not yet. They’d been through hell together as boys, and Zeke thought the bond that had developed then would see them through their adult years. He had been more wrong than he could have ever imagined.
“So you’re avoiding him?” she asked as he led her through the darkened house.
He didn’t turn on the lights as he led her through the kitchen to the basement door. It was opened, the light below was still on, lighting the stairs as he led her down them.
“I’m avoiding him,” he agreed.
“Zeke. ” She paused halfway down the steps, tugging at his hand.
Zeke turned back to her. There was no fear in her eyes, but there was a hint of worry.
“The answers I have are down here,” he told her, his jaw clenching at the truth of his life, a truth he may not be able to hide for much longer.
His father had begun this legacy, and now Zeke was going to have to finish it. Finishing it would mean revealing the truth of the past, the truth of what he had nearly become and the boundaries crossed by men he had once respected.
Dayle Mackay had started this decades ago. With his brother and a few military friends they had destroyed more lives than Zeke wanted to contemplate.
Zeke had worked ten years to uncover the proof of what Dayle was, and in a few short months the Mackay cousins had managed to do what he had fought to do for a decade.
But that was okay. He’d let them do it; he had known what they were doing, and he had stood back and watched it unfold as he had been ordered to do. Homeland Security had ripped through Somerset like a plague. Men he hadn’t known were involved had been uncovered as homeland terrorists working for a future destruction of the government as the nation knew it.
He’d helped gather the evidence last year, and he’d kept his own secrets.
Until now.
“I was born in Somerset,” he told her as he led her into the basement.
Boxes upon boxes of a life he hadn’t wanted to remember were opened now, their contents spilling along the floor and the tables he had used to stack them on.
“I knew that. ” Her fingers were stiff in his hold as she stared around the basement.
