Take (Deliver 5)

Complex, sentient, and deeply honest, he had the capacity to hurt and love in equal intensities. He gave and received all ranges of emotion, more so than any person she knew.

And to think, he spent twelve years in this empty, lifeless, dispassionate cell.

She hated it.

Even as she knew it was a means of self-punishment, it hurt to imagine him sleeping here alone for so damn long.

She rubbed her chest, and her gaze landed on the dumbbell, a symbol of his constant drive to be strong and invincible. It also represented his pain.

Lucia had every right to attack him with it, but from his perspective, it probably felt like a terrible betrayal. His closest confidant had turned on him, and from what Kate understood about his wife’s death, it wasn’t the first time he’d been betrayed.

“When we leave this room,” he said in a rough, heavily-accented voice, “I’m going to lock the door and never open it again.”

“Good idea.” She stepped toward him. “The past stays in the past, where it belongs.”

“I have a lot of regrets, Kate.” He rested the tips of his fingers in his front pockets. “Too many to fit inside this room.”

Agitated energy, his energy, swarmed around her in dizzying waves as he stared at something behind her.

She followed his gaze to the chair. Not just any chair. “That’s where you sat with Lucia on your lap every day?”

“Yes.”

Right there was where he gave Lucia the injections that counteracted the poison he put in her food.

Her insides constricted.

“You know my sins. I’ve disclosed them all in detail.” He pushed off the door and prowled toward her, quickening her breaths. “What I haven’t done is repent for them.”

She held still as he circled her, every cell in her body pinging at his nearness.

“I’m sorry for what I did to Lucia.” He paused before her and curled a finger under her chin, lifting her gaze. “I’m sorry I kicked you the night we met.”

Her lips trembled, and she locked her knees to prevent them from wobbling. It wasn’t his words that knocked her off-balance so much as the raw contrition shining in his eyes.

“I’m sorry for letting Iliana touch you.” His hand skimmed along her jawline, making her pulse sputter. “I’m sorry for raping you. I’m not proud of it.”

She sucked in a slow, shaky breath, bringing the dark scent of leather, cypress, and dangerous man into her lungs.

“I’m not asking for forgiveness.” His fingers wove through her hair and clenched. “I just needed you to hear it.”

She didn’t just hear it. She felt it stretch and pull inside her.

“Why now?” Swaying toward him, she burrowed into the warm den of his jacket. “What prompted this?”

“You.” He leaned back and cuffed a strong hand around her neck. “Your eyes. It’s impossible to feel heartless when you look at me like I’m not.”

“Tiago.” Her heart thumped heavily, catching in her throat.

“Also…” He brushed his nose against hers. “I’m in love with you.”

Every word was a razor, reopening the cuts on her body. Lancing pain shot beneath her skin, burning, aching, inflaming the wounds.

His confession of love had never hurt before. So why did it hurt so much now?

An inner voice begged her to ignore it, to hold onto her hatred and feed it with her need for freedom.

But he was in her face, infiltrating her breaths, and staring down at her with a foreboding glint in his eyes.

Dark and tempting, indecently gorgeous and sickeningly filthy in bed, he knew he could set her on fire with only the force of his will. He was always just one impulse away from nailing her against the wall and driving her to the sublime edge of pleasure and pain.

His physique alone was a chiseled altar upon which any woman with a pulse would sacrifice her soul.

But he would never touch another woman.

He belonged to her.

Mine.

Well, maybe not that.

But he was her protector. Her lover. There.

If you truly love someone, you don’t let them go without a fight.

Maybe she needed to be reminded of what she already had and trust that it was all she really needed.

She just didn’t know how to separate the horrible things he’d done from those glimpses of goodness she’d seen in him.

“You’re not heartless.” She sighed. “Just complicated.”

“And selfish.” He swooped in and stole a greedy kiss from her lips. “Because Kate…” Another kiss. And another. “I know you can’t love me, but I’m not sorry I took you. I won’t apologize for it.” His mouth sealed over hers, devouring her gasp before he pulled back. “If it came down to it, I would take you again.”

With that, he released her, leaving behind the hot imprint of his touch on her skin.

As he turned toward the door, a thought tapped at the back of her mind, something she’d been meaning to ask him.