“Do you think I’m not in love with you?”
She hesitated. His entire body froze. He didn’t know the first thing about relationships. He didn’t. He only knew that he believed she was his. Every cell in his body knew she was right for him. There was no one else, and there never would be. He had to be right for her. He might be rough and too controlling, but he would move the world for her, if she needed it moved. He just needed her to give him a little direction.
It wasn’t going to be the sex that was going to destroy their relationship, it was this distance. The way she felt about not being first in his life. How the hell did he combat that? What about the other members of Torpedo Ink who had women? Blythe felt first with Czar, their president. Breezy did with Steele, their vice president. Ice, another member, with his wife, Soleil. Even Anya did with Reaper and Scarlet with Absinthe. There was Player with Zyah. What was the difference?
Savage buried his face in the hollow along her hip bone. It was him and not only what he did for the club but the way he sometimes needed to do it. He took apart men for information. She might live with that. He took apart pedophiles because they fucking deserved to feel what they’d done to him and every boy and girl they’d ever touched. He hunted them, and he brought them to justice. He made certain they knew exactly what they had done to the little children they’d taken. The lives they’d destroyed.
Yeah, that was part of what he did for the club and part of what he did for himself. He was the club assassin. When the club was paid to make a hit, he was the one to do it most of the time. Sometimes Maestro, another member, carried out the order, but most of the time, it was on him. That wasn’t something he was going to share with his woman.
“Seychelle? Do you think I’m not in love with you?” He repeated the question, turning up his gaze to her face.
Her tongue touched her lower lip. “I think you love me, Savage,” she said slowly.
“That isn’t the question.” He gripped her thigh. This was far worse than he thought. She really had mixed feelings about the club and their relationship, and he had no idea how to fix that shit. None. He could tell her a million times he loved her because it was the truth, but it was also the truth that when the president of his club called, he would go and he wouldn’t tell her why.
Her breath left her lungs in a little rush. “In love with me? What does that even mean to you? I don’t know anymore. I thought I knew. When we started down this road together, I thought I did, but things are different.”
“It means I love you with every fuckin’ breath I take. That’s what it means to me. How are things different, Seychelle? Tell me how you think they’re different.”
Her fingers continued to move on his scalp. That was the one thing that kept him from leaping up and pacing across the small room, his stomach churning. He was not going to lose her.
“There’s this distance between us, and no matter what we do, we can’t make that go away. It’s like this very large space. I know you feel it too, Savage. We’ve always been in sync, and suddenly we’re not. There’s this huge chasm.” Her voice was sad.
He couldn’t deny it. He did feel it. How could he not? Had he done that? Or had she? Was she right? Was it his club? The club had always been there. What had changed? What was different?
“When did it start?” He wasn’t going to deny it and pretend he didn’t know what she meant. If she was brave enough to admit it, they had a chance to fix it.
“When the Diamondbacks came to the bar for a meeting. You brought me there that night to sing with the band. You didn’t tell me until the last minute that there was some important meeting and you needed my voice to keep everyone calm.”
“I apologized for that. I know you have to process, and I should have warned you ahead of time that there could be trouble.” He rubbed his palm along her thigh and then down over her scars. She was too damn perceptive.
“You did apologize, Savage, and I accepted your apology. Had that been all that was happening, it would have been all right, but it wasn’t. There were all kinds of undercurrents that night. The thing was, the other wives weren’t there.”
“Some were there. Scarlet. Lissa. They were there.”
“Scarlet and Lissa can shoot the wings off a fly. They weren’t there as wives that night, and you know it. They were there in the same capacity as Alena and Lana and every other member of Torpedo Ink. If something went wrong, they were there to fight for the club. I’m not stupid, Savage. It wasn’t just an important meeting. Torpedo Ink was expecting trouble, the kind of trouble where all of you could have been killed.”