Nate

Chapter Thirteen

Nate

She fell asleep on my chest, her light breaths tickling along my pec. The late afternoon sun tinged her hair in gold, and her skin practically glowed in the light.

Fucked. I was so fucked. The angel in my arms had rocked the world off its axis, and I was barely hanging on. One minute, I’d decided to stay the hell away from her. The next, she was underneath me where she belonged. I would have groaned if it didn’t run the risk of waking her. My cock was already hard and ready, the feel of her soft breasts pressing against me giving me no reprieve.

Lack of impulse control? Check. Addictive personality? Check. A bombshell that no man could turn down? Check. Mix all that up and what do you have? Me. In desperate need of a cigarette, but even more in need of another taste of Sabrina.

I couldn’t let her go. No matter how hard I’d tried to turn my back on her, I couldn’t. Now, after this? She wasn’t going anywhere. One hit and I had a habit. Somehow, I knew it would be like this with her. Maybe that’s why I tried to so hard to avoid it.

While I was busy being an introspective pussy, she stirred in my arms.

She blinked up at me, her blue eyes almost electric in the light streaming through my windows. “You all right?”

“Yeah.” I ran my fingers through her silky hair. “Just thinking.”

“About what?”

“You.”

“So you’re staring at me while I sleep and thinking about me?” A little smile played on her pink lips.

“That’s not creepy or anything.”

“Not at all.” She pressed her cheek to my chest.

Silence crept into the space between us. But it wasn’t the sort that chafed.

“Do you remember that night?” Her voice was so quiet, I barely heard it.

Trailing my fingertips up her back, I drank in the feel of her soft skin. I knew what she was asking—did I remember the night I found her. “Yes. Though I wish to god you didn’t.”

“I can’t forget it.” She snuggled closer. “Never will. I’d been terrorized, promised horrible things by my captors. I couldn’t breathe, couldn’t even have a thought that wasn’t tinged with the ugliest sort of fear. Every word, every touch, every shadow—all of it hurt because I didn’t know what was going to happen.”

I wanted to take all the ugliness away. To lock it up inside me where it couldn’t harm her anymore. But it was too late for that. All I could do was hold her and listen.

“My nightmares had come to life. And I thought I’d be torn apart by them. Until I saw you.” She looked up at me, tears swimming in her eyes. “You took me in your arms, and for the first time since I could remember, I felt safe. Even though we were surrounded by bodies, by blood—I knew that if I was in your arms, nothing could touch me.”

Fuck if I didn’t have a sudden attack of heartburn. “You were glued to me.”

“I couldn’t let you go. Even when I showered off the blood, I had to have you in the bathroom with me. You sat facing the wall, but just knowing you were there made it bearable. And then I begged you to stay with me for the night. You wanted to go, to help your friends clean up the mess. But you didn’t. You stayed with me. Held me until I fell asleep.”

“Every night for two weeks.” I remembered. Her terrified eyes, the way she watched me, as if she thought I might up and disappear on her. She didn’t know that it was impossible for me to leave her. I wanted so badly to help her, to heal the broken parts that cruel men had left behind. But I was just a bumbling asshole from the shit side of Philly. Thing was, even though I’d felt helpless, and worse, useless, she hadn’t looked at me that way at all. She looked at me as if I was something—like I was someone who was worth more than a bullet and a shallow grave.

“You’re a good man.” She put her finger to my lips. “I know you want to protest. Don’t. You have a great heart, Nate Franco. I don’t care about the things you have to do in your business or how tough you act. I know the real you, the one who held a scared, crying girl night after night. The one who gave me a room full of Hello Kitty. That’s the real you.”

And what about the guy who’d just taken that same girl’s innocence? I couldn’t reconcile the two. Guilt pricked at my mind, but I had a hard time feeling bad about being with Sabrina. She had a good head on her shoulders, one that I wanted to know more about. A tiny voice in my mind warned me that once she truly got to know me, she’d run. She’d find someone who suited her better. Thing was, I’d kill any man who thought he could take my place. From the second she’d come back into my life, I’d been on a crash course with this exact moment—her in my arms as we talked about our bloody, intertwined past. We spoke to each other on a level no one else could understand. Our souls had met five years ago and whispered about each other ever since.