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His wife heard the strain in his emotionless voice. She was busy going through his suitcase, searching for a fresh change of clothes for him, but as soon as she realized that she’d done something to put him on edge, she dropped the shirt was holding.
Tessa obviously thought her comment had been innocent enough. And maybe it would have been if it wasn’t for how—in the five years they’d been a partnership—he’d made it clear that he knew what kind of man he was… and while he prided himself on being the best husband for her, he would never be the father a child deserved.
She dropped the shirt, wringing her hands. “No. You’re right. I’m so sorry, Luc. It’s just…”
He thought he understood what she was trying to say without saying it.
But didn’t Tessa understand that she was all he wanted? All he needed? A child would only complicate things. What if his wife decided she loved it more than she did him?
Lucas hadn’t wanted to risk it.
They’d had a similar conversation twice before. Early in their relationship when it was still a one-sided affair, and then when they eloped after Lucas abandoned Hamlet to marry Tess and make her his—andonlyhis. During both previous talks, Tessa had agreed with him. He put her on birth control, then he went and got a vasectomy so that there wouldn’t be any… accidents.
It was reversible, of course. Plus, Tessa could always go off her birth control if she really wanted children. Lucas was of the mind that he’d give her anything she desired. All she had to do was ask and he’d make it happen, no matter what.
But sharing her love? Her affection? Herattention?
And, yet, what if Lucas denied her this one thing and her attention wavered anyway? She loved him, was willing to sacrifice everything for him, but he had no illusion that his wife understood just how deep his obsession for her ran.
Maria was still gone. It would break him if anything untoward happened to his sister, but if he somehow lost Tessa, too?
He would fuckingshatter.
Lucas moved toward Tessa. If spending time with Grace and the baby had his wife reconsidering having a child of her own, then he would do his best to give her one and hope that Tessa’s innate innocence outweighed the heavy darkness inside of him.
Before he met a golden-eyed, light-haired co-ed during a chance guest lecturing position at her college, twenty-six-year-old Lucas coasted by on a sense of superiority, an apathy toward anyone who wasn’t his beloved baby sister, and a resentment for a wife he felt pressured into settling for.
That was nine years ago.
Four years ago, he was divorced. Sure that they could never truly be together, Tessa had married her high school sweetheart. That didn’t stop Lucas from his continued pursuit of her, and a year after they rekindled their torrid affair, he began to plot Jack Sullivan’s murder.
Three years ago, he stood over a drugged Sullivan, a rope stretched between his fingers, ready to do whatever it took to keep Tessa forever.
Lucas still thought of himself as the perfect predator. Catching this woman or hunting down the bastard who stole his sister… he would.
Once upon a time, nineteen-year-old Tessa was the prey he lured with an enticing look in his icy blue eyes and a curve to his smile that said he knew they were both in committed relationships already—but he didn’t give a shit.
When their affair began, he thought he was in control. It wasn’t long before he realized that everything he was, everything he wanted to be… he’d given it to his heart—hiscuore—the moment she walked in late to that Introduction to Anatomy and Physiology class and drew fucking hearts as the bullet points for her notes. He was snared and, despite being seven years older, a married man and a trained doctor fresh out of his residency, he was snared by a seemingly innocent ingenue who kept him on her hook even as she got married herself to another man.
As though she could get over him.
As though either of them could move on without the other.
Never.
CHAPTERTEN
He promised her anything. He promised her everything. After he divorced Cait and implored Tessa to do the same with Sullivan, Lucas vowed there wasn’t a single damn thing he would deny her so long as she washis.
So if she wanted a child…
Running his fingers through his coal-black hair before patting the longer pieces in front, making sure they were back in place, Lucas sighed. “I’ll try my best, baby. You know how I feel about this, but if it’s what you want—”
From the moment their eyes first locked across that stuffy classroom, Lucas thought Tessa Ryan—who was born to be Tessa De Angelis and finallywas—the most beautiful creature he’d ever seen. From her gorgeous fae to the sensitive soul he’d kill to protect, he was still attracted to her now as he’d been then. More, if that was possible, since she proved to him that there wasn’t anything she wouldn’t do to be with him.
Hiscuorehad a spine made of a steel, was a woman who knew what she had to do to get what she wanted. And while she might feel sorrow over her actions… feel theguilt… that didn’t mean she would shy away from the darker side of life.
Adultery.
