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I knew what was coming. “Your room. Mine is down the hall.”
“Oh, no. You’re staying with me. I need you tonight, Talon.”
“Baby, you know I can’t do that. Remember what happened the last time I slept with you?” I’d never forg
et, waking up and finding my hands around Jade’s neck. I couldn’t risk that happening again. Even though I’d worked through it with my therapist, I still wasn’t ready to sleep with her.
I couldn’t take the chance of hurting her.
She shook her head vehemently. “No. Please. No.”
“I’ll be right down the hall. I promise. If you need me, just call me.”
“Talon, please. This is my mom. I didn’t think she meant as much to me as she does. This is surprising me how much I’m freaking out. But all of a sudden, I want my mother so much. My dad is on his way. He’ll be in sometime tomorrow.” She looked down at her watch. “Okay, sometime today, but it won’t be until later. He’s driving in from Denver. Please.”
“I can’t, blue eyes. I can’t take the chance.”
She yanked on my arm, pulling me inside. The hotel door closed, and she grabbed my cheeks and pulled me down into a kiss.
The kiss was violent. We’d had kisses like this before, yes, but this one was different. Jade was so…needy.
Usually, I was the needy one.
I wasn’t used to anyone needing me. Sure, my brothers and Marj said they needed me, but they didn’t. Not really. No one had ever needed me the way Jade did now.
She clung to me as though her life depended on it, and then she broke the kiss with a gasp. “Please, Talon, don’t leave me. I’ll never ask you for another thing. I promise.”
Something in her eyes made me stay. She was scared, genuinely afraid of losing her mother, whom I’d never heard her say a kind word about. But sometimes emotion ran so deep a person didn’t even know it was there. I, of all people, understood that.
I nodded slightly. I’d stay, at least until she fell asleep. The room had two beds. I could sleep in the other, or I could go to my own room. Yes, I’d have to go to my own room. But later.
“Please”—she started sobbing—“I can’t be alone tonight. I just can’t.”
“Shh,” I said against her hair. “I won’t leave you, baby. I’m here for you. Whatever you need.”
Truer words had never crossed my lips. I was here for her, and I would do whatever she needed me to do. All she had to do was ask, and I would be there. I knew this in the depths of my soul.
She pulled back a bit, her steely blue gaze meeting mine. “I need you to make love to me, Talon. Love me. Show me what’s really important in life.”
We hadn’t been together since I’d taken her anal virginity and freaked myself out in the process. But now was not the time to think of myself. I needed to think of Jade, put her needs above mine.
I wanted to put her needs above mine.
This was a new feeling for me. I’d spent so much of my life balled up in a spiral of self-pity that I never considered what others around me might need. Sure, I put in my work at the ranch, I did my duty overseas. I’d always done what was expected of me, but I never worried about benefiting anyone other than myself.
Jade had pierced my veil of self-pity, had crawled right under my wall.
But had she really crawled under? Had she cracked it open?
Or had I let her in?
No one had been able to tackle the wall until Jade—not my brothers, not my sister, not anyone. But Jade had gotten in.
I wanted her in. Would she still love me when she knew everything? She’d said as much. And she’d shown me, the last time we were together, just how much she trusted me. No one had ever offered me that level of trust before, not even my men overseas. They’d had to trust me. Their lives had depended on it. But they didn’t know me from Adam. They were forced to trust me because I had been their commanding officer.
But Jade… No one was forcing her to trust me. She had given me her trust of her own free will.
What a gift that was.
