“You don’t have that right.”
“Oh I do, baby. I do have a right. You’re mine. Not his.”
“I am not yours. I stopped being yours when you sent me that letter. No. No, the truth is, I stopped being yours the day you deployed. The letter is just when I finally got let in on our story. The one that ended, Savage. We ended and you have no—”
I never finish that statement. His hand comes down on the back of my head, his tongue stroking past my teeth, and it’s too much. Too much him. Too much temptation. Too much to fight. I can’t breathe without him. I’ve never been able to breathe without him. I moan with the wicked rasp of his tongue against mine, the taste of him—wild, wicked man—everything I want and miss, even need. I burn right here in my shoes, burn right here in his arms. I sink into the kiss, and for just a few moments, I pretend that he never left, that he won’t leave again. I let myself just go home and he is my home. He has always been my home and I have been forever lost since he left.
“You belong to me,” he murmurs against my lips.
Panic overtakes me. I can’t blow this with Gabriel. My father’s life might depend on it. I push against the man I want and hate and love. I push hard and he holds on the way he never did before. The way he won’t in the future. “That kiss meant nothing,” I hiss, anger and emotions blasting through me.
“Do you love him?”
“You don’t even have the right to ask me that question.”
“No is the answer,” he says. “No, you do not love him. You can barely stand for that man to touch you. I watched you with him. I saw how you are with that bastard. And I know you, Candy. I know that there’s something going on. What are you afraid of?”
“Don’t call me Candy. And what am I afraid of? You. I’m afraid of you.”
His hands slide under my hair to my neck. “I fucked up, baby. I fucked us up, but I’m here now.”
“Until you leave again?”
“Never again. Ever. And if you run, I will follow you to the other side of the world if I have to catch you to love you. Whatever is going on right now, you are not alone.”
“I don’t even know you anymore.”
“You know me. You know me like no one else knows me.”
He cups my face, tilting my gaze to his. “I haven’t been the hero you deserve, but I’m here now. I will be now, but you have to tell me what kind of trouble you’re in.”
I want to. I want to trust him. I want him to be the man I used to know and love. But he left and my father warned me that Rick Savage was trouble, a hired killer to avoid. “Because you declare everything is different now, I’m supposed to trust you?” I ask, and I realize too late that that question isn’t a denial of a problem. It’s me denying him my trust.
He proves that understanding by vowing, “I’m going to make you trust me.”
“The way you made me fall for you?”
Muffled voices sound in the near distance, rapidly growing closer, my spine stiffening. “I have to go back down.” I grab his lapel. “There are things in my life you can’t understand. One of them is why I have to go downstairs.”
“Because you’re in trouble?”
“Yes. Because trouble is standing right in front of me.”
“Trouble from everyone but you, baby.” His lips press into a tight line. “Go back down. I’ll come to you tonight.”
“You’ll come to me tonight? You can’t—”
“I am. I will.”
“I’ll be with him.”
“No,” he says with absoluteness. “You will not be with him. He’s going to be otherwise occupied.”
I blink. “What does that even mean?”
“Candace!”
At Gabriel’s voice, my eyes go wide, my heart lurching. I grab Rick’s arm. My father and Gabriel and—just—“I can’t be seen with you. I beg of you—”
He cups my head and kisses me. “I told you not to beg. Ever. Don’t kiss him or I swear to you, I’ll kill him.” He releases me and cuts to the right, disappearing into the shadows and around a corner. I force myself to move, to push off the wall and I’m just about to re-enter the hotel when Gabriel steps in front of me.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Candace
Gabriel’s eyes rake over my face and then drop to my cleavage. “You look good enough to eat,” he murmurs, and before I know his intent, he’s manhandled me into a back step. Suddenly, I’m against the same wall I was against minutes before with Rick, but this time it’s Gabriel who presses against me. My reaction this time isn’t heat and desire, mixed with a need to protect myself from a broken heart. I want him off of me.