I thought about Cassidy and the look on her face last night, and it fucking gutted me to know I’d hurt her.
I was tired of fighting my feelings. I wanted to kiss her and more. I wanted to sink every inch of my rock hard cock into her sweet pussy. I wanted to make her cry out my name. I wanted to feel her writhe and whimper beneath me. I wanted to make her come all over my cock and get drunk on the sound of her moans, knowing it was me making her crazy with pleasure.
But how could I touch her after what I had done and everything she had been through?
Caleb studied me, his eyebrows drawn. “Are you worried that you’re some kind of psycho because of what you did overseas?”
Bingo, Baby Brother.
When I didn’t reply, he huffed out a deep breath. “Jesus, Chance! You did what you had to do.”
“But if I was capable of killing the woman I was falling for …”
“It was war.”
I told him about the girl in the shower. He ran a hand up his bare neck, his eyebrows pulled in as he listened.
“Have you been with anyone since?”
“No, and I’m not going to until I unpack all this shit in my head.”
“What about Cassidy?”
“She’s been through hell, Brother. I’m not about to drag her through mine.”
“But you like her?”
“Yeah,” I growled. “More than I fucking should.”
CHANCE
When I arrived back at the cabin, the prospects were smoking and playing cards out on the porch. After a few minutes of small talk with them, I sent them on their way.
Cassidy was waiting for me inside the cabin, her bag packed.
I looked at it sitting by the front door then back to her and an uncharacteristic panic shot into me.
She was leaving.
“Don’t,” I said, my pulse suddenly thumping against my throat.
Tension hung in the air around us.
“Give me one reason why I shouldn’t.” Her voice was calm and low, but full of hurt.
“Because you’re safer here.” I struggled to swallow. “With me.”
She shook her head. “I need something more than that. Tell me something. Anything. Make me stay. And if you can’t, then you need to let me walk out that door.”
I didn’t want her to go.
Not for her sake.
For mine.
But she was going to leave if I didn’t give her another reason to stay.
It was time to step off the ledge and fall toward her.
I stared across at her, knowing she was everything I had ever wanted.
“You make me want things I gave up wanting a long time ago,” I said finally.
My words crackled in the air around us. I had just taken my heart out of my chest and handed it to her.
Across the room, her face softened, and she closed the distance between us.
“Then why have you pulled away from me?” she asked. “I know you feel something for me. Why won’t you let it happen?”
I took her beautiful face in my hands, aching to kiss her.
“It scares me how much I want you because you deserve so much more than this.”
“Then why did you walk out? Why were you gone all day?”
I thought about the club hit and Bull’s refusal. I thought about the things Cassidy told me about Barrett.
Fuck, just thinking about it made me want to kill him.
“Barrett deserves to pay for what he’s done to you. I want to destroy him. Do you understand me? I want to hunt him down and fuck him up for what he did to you. I want him to beg and cry for mercy. I want him to feel the same pain you did and more. And when I am breaking him, I want him to know why he is being broken.” I took a step back from her, as if protecting her from the darkness pouring out of me. “But I can’t. Because the club has a code that prevents me from doing all the shit I want to do to him. So I asked Bull to put a club hit on him, and he refused.”
Her eyes widened. “A club hit?”
I briefly explained the rules to her before adding, “So my hands are fucking tied. I have to wait for him to make the first move.”
Thinking about it made me white hot with rage and I knew it was written all over my face.
But Cassidy didn’t look afraid. She looked confused. Pain filled her big blue eyes, and I was consumed by a sudden need to remove every drop of it as a fierce protectiveness swept through me.
All of my walls were down now.
I curled my fingers around her jaw. “You’re a fucking angel. You deserve a man who knows how to love you right. I’ve never truly loved anyone. Maybe as a kid I thought I did, but I didn’t. Not really. And it’s been so long since I’ve made love to someone I’ve forgotten what it’s like. I’ve had plenty of sex, but sex is nothing. And you… Christ, Cassidy, you deserve to be touched with respect and tenderness, and love. And until I work out how to—”