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"—you developed a conscience?" She asks.
“Before you were attacked by a stalker. Before I walked in and saw you crumpled on the floor.”Before it felt like my heart was going to shatter. Before all these feelings I can’t quite define played havoc in my gut.
Her gaze narrows. "You’re not the kind of man to have compunctions."
"The way you didn’t have compunctions when you betrayed me?"
Her features crumple. Her chin wobbles. I glimpse the brightness in her eyes, and my heart threatens to burst out of my ribcage. "Fucking hell, I didn’t mean that."
"You did." She swallows. "You’ll never be able to forgive me for what I did to you."
"Believe me, I’m trying. I think you’ve paid enough for what happened. I think I’ve done more than enough to make you repent for what you did. I think you are truly sorry for what you did and yet," —I rub the back of my neck— "a part of me isn’t able to let go of what happened."
"It’s because you haven’t seen me suffer the way you did…"
"You’re wrong. I don’t want to see you suffer. When I saw the door to your apartment was open, my heart dropped to my stomach. And then I burst into the bathroom and saw you crumpled on the floor crying, and I knew I was going to have to make the person who did that to you pay."
Her gaze widens. "Promise me you won’t do anything that’ll get you into trouble."
I incline my head. "After everything I did to you, you’re worried about me?"
Her smile widens. "I’m always worried about you, King, haven’t you realized that?"
Fucking hell, I’ve never paid much attention to the fact that the media calls me King but hearing it from her mouth makes me feel like King of the fucking world! A-n-d goddamn, I’m in so much trouble.She’s standing naked…and dripping, in front of me, and other than that first glance when I consumed the sight of her nude body, I’ve managed to keep my gaze firmly on her face and my hands to myself… It’s a measure of the restraint I’ve imposed on myself. A measure of how much I’ve begun to care about her.
'Course there’s nothing I can do about my dick, which is insistent it wants to be happily ensconced within her, but I’m not my dick, for once. A-n-d if that doesn’t prove I have feelings for her, I don’t know what does. It’s strange, huh? When I thought I hated her, I couldn’t wait to use her body to punish her. Now that I know she means more to me than what I’d originally thought, I can’t bring myself to touch her. It’s as if, by caressing her now, I run the risk of my emotions making the entire experience so much more profound. I run the risk of the entire experience meaning so much more to me. I face the possibility that I’ll want to tie her to me in a way that goes against every principle by which I’ve lived my life. That’s not something I’m ready for. Not yet. I take a step back. “I worry about you, too.”
She blinks. “You...you do?”
I nod. “And I worry about how your brother is going to react when he finds out about how I’ve treated you so far.”
“Oh, he doesn’t need to know. I won’t tell him.”
“Knight made me responsible for your protection. Your safety was compromised. I must let him know.”
“You’re not my guardian,” she argues.
“Oh, trust me, I see myself as anything but that. It doesn’t change the fact that I can’t break the promise I made to him.”
Her face crumples. “Is it...is it because I’m not slim enough that it’s so easy for you to ignore me. Is it because—”
“Fucking stop, Sparrow.” I bend my knees and peer into her eyes. “You’re the most gorgeous, most beautiful, most ravishing woman I’ve ever met, and it’s taking everything in me not to throw you down and worship your body but—”
“But?”
“I’m going to walk away from you.”
35
Abby
“Fucking hell, so he walked away from you?” Solene’s laughing features greet me from my phone screen.
I scowl. “It’s no laughing matter.”
“You have to admit, it’s funny, in a horrifying, I-can’t-believe-it kind of way. There you are, all naked and ready to be ravished by him, and he doesn’t even look at you?”
“Imagine that. And this, after he—" I firm my lips.I am not going to overshare everything he’s done to me. I’m not.
