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Call me sick, demented, and a whole lot of other things along those lines, but I like that, finding it incredibly sexy and charming. I’m not usually a fan of chivalry, but Cal is the exception. “Is he still breathing?”
A sinister smirk plays on his lips, that flicker of darkness there that turns me on. “Yeah, but I’m sure he wishes he weren’t. What I did ain’t nothing he didn’t deserve.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
Our eyes lock, intensity flaring between us.
It takes some significant effort not to give into it and pounce on him. Thankfully, I’m a grown-ass woman, capable of controlling her dirty desires and baser instincts in favor of reason and what matters most right now.
“What does Lewis have to do with rising above the trauma and nightmares?”
“Dealing with him was a wakeup call. All that guilt trying to get its claws into me was because I was trying to be somebody else, live another life, one free of all the down and dirty and all the dark and brutality. But in those moments with that fucker I realized that ain’t me. I can’t be nobody else. I’m the guy who deals out punishment and justice to my enemies, to the threats coming for me and mine. It’s where I thrive. It’s who I am. Once I realized, the struggle warring in my head shut the hell up. This is who I’ll always be. I ain’t nobody’s hero. I’m the villain, the guy who don’t pull punches, who does what’s gotta be done, crosses every line needed to protect the people I love.” He thumps his fist against his chest. “This is who I need to be and I’ve accepted it.”
What he’s saying is reminiscent of some high-level, deep-seated compartmentalization. “It sounds like you’ve given into the dark, Cal.”
“It ain’t giving in when you rule it.”
Good point. Then again, I’m not really in a position to judge that in any sort of objective way. I became one with the dark a long time ago and I haven’t looked back since.
“Are you sure this isn’t you just shutting everything else down and implementing tunnel vision because of what we’re up against with Matthew Priest and the Gatekeepers?”
“When I realized all this, I didn’t know the extent of it until Spartan and Cavalno stopped me on the road that night.” He reaches out and strokes my cheek, beaming at me. “It’s seriously all good now. I swear to you.”
“Okay.”
“I’m still that merciless bastard you dropped your panties for all those years ago.”
That earns him a slap across the chest.
“Jesus!” he cries, pressing his hand over the red mark left in its wake. “Always with the fucking heart, woman!”
That brings back recent memories, one in particular that’s been wearing on me. “Did you mean what you said last time I did that, the night I accidentally invaded your home?” He arches his eyebrow in question and I remind him, “Calling me heartless?”
“Ah, shit,” he says, cupping my face and holding my gaze to his. “I exaggerated, big time. You were closed off and all that, never heartless.” He smiles. “But now you’re open to me. I can see it, feel it, kitten. And I’m gonna take good care of what you’re giving me. I won’t fuck it up this time. I’ve got you, got us.”
“It’s not all on you. It never was,” I tell him, grasping his hands on my face and brushing my lips over his. I don’t want to stop at a mere brush, but he pulls away before I can deepen the kiss.
“You’re well aware that it don’t take much for me to hit the point of no return with you.” In the next beat he’s off the bed and snatching his black sweatpants up off the floor and hastily pulling them on.
“I’m more than fine with that.”
“I see you’ve still got the sex drive of a twenty-something.”
I climb off the bed and round it toward him. “Well, we have a lot of time to make up for.” He takes a step back as I draw closer to him, making me frown in confusion. “You don’t agree?”
I adjust my black strappy tank and his eyes dart to my braless breasts that bounce at my movements. His gaze travels down to my red silk panties, sweeping down over my thighs, all the way to my bare feet. But it’s all too brief, before he averts his eyes and starts searching through our sea of clothes all over the floor that we stripped off in a frenzy of passion last night.
“We do have a lot of time to make up for, but not so much in the fucking department. We were way too heavy with that last time around and it had us glossing over all the rest, the things that should’ve mattered more, that need to matter more now to make it work between us this time around.”
“Okay.”
He cocks an eyebrow. “Really? Just like that? I know you got a hell of an appetite.”
“You’ve clearly thought a lot about this, so I’m deferring to you.”
“Jesus Christ,” he says with a chuckle. “Never thought I’d ever hear those words from you.”
“Well, make the most of it.”
