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Mark began to kiss away my tears, which only made me cry more.
“My house…” I whispered against his lips, everything I’d been trying to avoid thinking about rushing to fill my mind. “My house is gone.”
“I know,” he whispered back. “I’m so sorry.”
“What…what happened? Was it the gas line? Did it start in my workshop?”
He stilled, then he gently cupped my face. “Layla, there is no easy way to say this. Someone deliberately set your house on fire.”
I jerked back, rubbing away the last of my tears. “Someone set fire to my house? But…but that doesn’t make any sense. Why would someone do that?”
He looked away then ran a hand through his messy, dark brown hair. “We don’t know, but we’ll find out. I promise.”
“Is-is someone trying to hurt me?” My heart sped up, and I began to tremble as my fear grew stronger.
“We think that’s a possibility.”
Flashbacks of my mother’s stories about people trying to kill me flashed through my mind. For a moment, I was almost pulled into the past, but I fought it off.
Reaching out, I wrapped my arms around Mark’s broad chest—well, as much as I could while sitting on his lap—and hung on tight, using him to ground myself.
I swear, he was magic. As I breathed in his scent and listened to his heart, my body calmed, helping my mind to stop its downward descent. My muscles relaxed, and I felt like I melted into Mark. I knew, on some deep level, that he was a powerful man, and he would die to protect me. Being held in his arms, the peace that I found there, was such a novel sensation that I didn’t do or say anything for a while, instead silently absorbing his endless strength.
No matter what was, or wasn’t going on between us, I knew he’d never let anything hurt me. When we gamed together, he was my perfect partner because he always made sure I was protected. And he took care of me the best he could from a distance, sending me presents that made me happy, arranging care for my mother at the best hospital when she had her cancer scare. If what he said was true, if he was only staying away from me to try to shield me from the violence in his life, could I really blame him?
Adrenaline raced through me as I wiped at my eyes. “Oh shit! I need to call my parents! They have to be freaking out by now.”
“I already took care of it. They know you’re here, with me, and they’ll be stopping by later today to see you.”
“They know I’m here?”
“Yeah.” The lines around his eyes deepened as he gave me a small smile. “Jan seemed pretty excited that you spent the night.”
My mom was one of Mark’s biggest fans, and he knew it. “Yeah, well I need to call her and let her know that we’re nothing but friends.”
“Layla,” he groaned.
“No.” A well of unexpected strength swelled inside of me as I held up my hand, stopping him from speaking. “You hurt me, Mark. I laid myself out on the line for you, and you told me we’d never be anything more than friends. You had six weeks to apologize, yet you didn’t.”
“You blocked me on everything!”
Normally a man as big as Mark shouting at me would have made me back down, but with him, I felt safe enough to stand up for myself. “You know where I live. If you wanted to talk that badly, you would’ve shown up.”
He grew silent, his eyelids lowering as he let out a rough sigh. “You’re right.”
I tried to wiggle free. “You need to let me go, Mark.”
“I’m sorry, but I can’t do that.”
There was an almost scary note to his voice that had me freezing. “What?”
Holding my chin gently, he looked me right in the eyes as he said, “When I tell you that you’re mine now, I mean it. I tried, so fucking hard—to do the right thing, to give you a safe and normal life, the kind of life you deserve. But you had to go and throw yourself into the lion’s den, covered in blood.”
“What?”
“If you had just stayed home, none of this would have happened.”
Suddenly, I was so mad, I swear steam must have been curling out of my ears.
I pulled a few of his chest hairs, right by his nipple, and it had the intended affect. He yelped in surprise and loosened his arms enough for me to wiggle out. I rolled off the bed, then tugged at the hem of my t-shirt which had ridden up, revealing my white silky panties with pink hearts. Mark sat up right away, his perfect torso flexing and threatening to steal my wits. The thick hair on his chest grew lighter and narrowed as it descended down into his sleep shorts.
