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Love, that’s what it was. Not the happy moments, not the sweet, intimate nature of it. But the other part; the part in every freaking country song. Loss, heartbreak. An emptiness I would never have noticed had he not filled it to the brim.
“No, you don’t have to do this,” he said, shaking his head.
The feeling that wound around my chest squeezed hard, so hard it nearly stole my breath.
He reached for me with his free hand, sliding his fingers along my jaw and tipping my head up to meet his gaze.
“I wouldn’t respect you if you did this shit because you had no choice, no say in the matter, darling. I respect you for it because you have all the choice in the world—all the ability to walk away—but you’re choosing to do it anyway.”
Oh. Well, I hadn’t been expecting that. I took a deep breath. I could breathe again, no tight feeling constricting my lungs.
His fingers curled, taking hold of my chin, holding it firmly. “But if something goes wrong, you damn well do whatever you have to do to stay alive. Because I will find you, darling. I won’t stop until I do.”
It wasn’t a line, a false promise. It was real and raw. And it was the most exhilarating and most terrifying thing I’d ever seen.
Because it left me with no doubt about it; I’d just bought myself a permanent ride on this rollercoaster… along with all the bends, turns, and wild loops that went with it.
***
Brute’s fingers ran idly up and down my sweat-slick back as we lay in his bed two days later. Two days of barely coming up for air. Two days of pausing just long enough to eat and drink when our bodies’ cries for sustenance grew too loud to ignore. He was insatiable, and somehow, every time only got better—which was impossible. Repeat performances had never been worth their effort before. I’d been a firm believer in the ‘been there, done that’ principle. Until Brute.
“I know how you got into this rescue shit with Gabe,” Brute said, as he grazed his fingers lower and outward, drawing circles around my hip. “But Deo? How did that happen?”
I laughed. “Coincidence, actually.SignorLuciano was fleshing out a business arrangement withEl Víbora, and… well, the business arrangement came with a wife for Deo. I think he would have done just about anything to get out ofthatparticular arrangement.”
Brute smiled. I couldn’t see him; he was lying on his side behind me. But I could feel the curve of his lips against my shoulder. “I’m guessing the guy wasn’t looking to settle down?” he mused.
“Can you blame—” I slammed my lips shut. Old habits die hard, I supposed. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said as he skimmed his fingers down my thigh. “The truth is, settling down scares the shit out of me.”
I scoffed. “Yeah, right.”
He took hold of my hip and rolled me onto my back so that we were face-to-face. He looked away long enough to toy with my nipple—the man definitely had a thing for the jewelry—then met my gaze.
“You’re real young, darling. And a little crazy. You could decide to ditch this old man’s ass tomorrow, and no one would blame you for it. Settling down at twenty-two?” He shook his head. “It’s not normal these days, is it?”
He had a point, but I think he was missing a more important one. “Maybe it makes more sense than we think.”
He cocked an eyebrow, waiting for me to elaborate, while his fingers kept up their perusal, moving from nipple to nipple, then down the central line of my body to my belly ring.
“You’re right that this,” I said, motioning back and forth between us, “it isn’t normal. I mean, if everyone felt…this,then the world would be a hell of a lot happier and all the bad shit that happens in it wouldn’t take place. So, if I’m not exactly normal, and you are most certainly not normal, it makes sense that we deviated from the norm,” I said, warming to the subject. “I think it maybe makes more sense than most things, actually.”
He leaned down and kissed me, flicking his tongue between my lips just briefly.
“I’m never going to wear a property patch, though—just thought you should know that now.”
He laughed, but there was the briefest flicker of something in his eyes. Not sadness, exactly. Disappointment, maybe?
It left an uncomfortable sensation in my chest.
He shook his head, like he knew what I was feeling and didn’t want me to feel that way. Or maybe I’d lost my mind and was reading way too much into a simple gesture.
He grazed his hand lower until the tip of his finger just brushed my clit. “Then I guess I’ll just have to fuck you in front of the boys regularly to make sure they know who you belong to.”
“I do not belong to—”
“Yeah, you do, darling. And I belong to you. No way of getting around it.”
