“Hmm,” I think about it, swinging my feet into the warm water. I dig around in my mind for anger and don’t feel anything. “No, I’m not angry. There was a time when I used to be. I dreamed of waking up in the middle of the night and cutting his throat. I dreamed of it, but somehow, he always had one eye on me. Eventually, anger fled, and I accepted my fate. He was an odd man. He touched me, but never…” I clear my throat and am thankful it is dark out so he can’t see my face heat from embarrassment. “Anyway, he wasn’t always all bad. I realize it was when he needed something fr

om me. For a long time, I knew he was a sick man with sick needs, but when he introduced me to his friends, I knew I had to leave somehow. I honestly don’t know how I managed to escape their clutches. Luck. It had to be, but living that life for so long, I grew accustomed to the way I was treated. I figured it was my fate. I—I stopped trying to escape him for a long time. I got tired.” I hate admitting I gave up on myself, but no one could understand how draining life was being with a man like Kendrick. I’m not going to give Sebastian details, but being locked away in another room with a bracelet around my ankle was peaches compared to the night room.

That room was cold without windows. Kendrick would chain me against the wall, naked, and whip me repeatedly until I passed out. Everything was dark. I could only hear my sob and the crack of the weapon he used to abuse me with. When I passed out from pain, he’d throw ice cold water on me to wake me up and whip me all over again.

Then he’d leave me there for days, in darkness, wondering if I was dreaming or if I had died and my soul was dragged to Hell.

After the fifth or sixth time of that, part of me broke. I gave up on my life and knew I’d die at the hands of Kendrick.

“You didn’t give up, or you wouldn’t be here,” Sebastian says, tightening his grip around my hand.

I scoff and shake my head, sliding my gaze to him from the water. He’s staring at me, perplexed. His big black brows are pinched in the middle and he searches my face for reassurance in what he said, but I don’t have any to give him.

I did give up.

“Sebastian, I did give up. I jumped in the ocean knowing I’d probably die. It was you who saved me. You are the one who didn’t give up on me. You were the one who didn’t let me go.”

If he could breathe fire, it would have burst from his nose like a dragon. “I’ll never let you go. I don’t have it in me to let you go, Gabriella. You can’t talk like that. How could you think for one minute that I’d live…” He pinches his lips shut, and he doesn’t have to finish what he was going to say.

I can fill in the blank.

My breath catches in my throat from the seriousness of his words, the depth of his emotion goes further than the trenches in the sea. I swing my leg over his lap and straddle him, soaking his jeans from the water dripping from my feet. I circle my arm around his neck and lay my forehead against his, and then I slightly roll myself against him with a shake of my head. “Please, don’t ever talk like that. You can’t mean that.” I let a tear slip free because the seriousness of what he is saying nearly has me falling into the pool and sinking to the bottom. I never want him to feel like that.

It’s dangerous.

His hands knead my hips, and his palms take me by surprise when they touch my bare skin. I forgot I was wearing a crop top. No one should feel this good.

No.

No one should have the power to make someone feel this good.

That is dangerous too.

“It’s true, Gabriella. I’m not proud to admit it, but I waited every day to see your name in the obituaries. I’m not this indestructible man you take me for. I’m weak in a lot of places. I had everything planned. My will, my finances—everything was sorted. I was ready. I had a gun—”

“Stop it!” I sob, not wanting to hear any more. I don’t want to hear how he wanted to die if I wasn’t alive. “Just stop. No. Just … no,” I claw my fingers against his back until I’m flush against him, as close as I can possibly be. He has no idea how strong he is. He survived so many things; prison being the toughest, cruelest part of his life. If he can survive that, he can survive me.

I am nobody.

I grip the side of his head and look directly into his blue eyes.

Anguish.

He is telling the truth.

I hate him for it.

I love him more for it.

How fucked up is that?

“We’ve been through too much,” I say, sniffling so my runny nose doesn’t ruin the moment. “I don’t think we know how to be together.” The truth hurts, like most truths, but this one feels different. I only ever wanted to be with Sebastian, and now I wonder if our experiences will even allow us.

He wraps his arms around me in a hug just as the breeze blows the salt in the air around us. It sticks to my skin, grainy and slightly itchy, but I don’t want to move. I am happy here. Right here. And I never want to leave.

“I learned, somehow, to live without you. Now that I have you, I know for damn sure I can learn to be with you.” His palm nearly takes up the width of my back his hand is so broad. With drowsy glides of his fingers, he makes his way up my spine and to my neck, wrapping them around my nape.

My neck has always been a spot that I can’t stand to be touched, but Sebastian isn’t gripping my throat. He is gentle. There is no pressure, no controlling gesture; he just wants to touch me, and that makes any fear of him touching my neck vanish.

Tags: Kelli Callahan Underground Kings Erotic
Source: readsnovelonline.net