Savage Road (Torpedo Ink 7)

“You were going to leave me last night.”

“Because you wouldn’t listen to me, not because I didn’t love you. You chose the club. You refused to be committed to us. I’m loyal, Savage. One hundred percent. You promised me the same. You’re giving me that now and giving me the emotional support I need. I’m giving that back to you. That’s called a relationship.” She pressed her hand tighter against her stomach. “Will you please roll down the window? I need some air.”

He immediately hit the button to roll her window down, letting the cold night air into the truck. She was still shivering. He zipped his jeans up slowly. Carefully. Now he just wanted to hold her. Take care of her. He didn’t like her color. It was way off.

“I made you a promise that we wouldn’t do anything like that with the others around, and I fucking broke that promise to you.”

“Your intention was to give me one of my little porn flicks, and we were away from everyone.”

“Yeah, and I got out of control. I didn’t even know I was out of control. And you didn’t fucking stop me.” He tried not to put accusation in his voice, but he knew it was there.

“Savage, you don’t even realize what you did, do you? I was the one in control the entire time, not you. When I indicated through body language, deliberately, I might add, that the tree was hurting my nipples, you immediately cushioned them with your palms. The backs of your hands are all scraped up from keeping me from hitting the bark when you were fucking me. When I said yellow, you didn’t slow down, you stopped. I said yellow because I knew you were at the edge of your control and that when we were home and you were going to have to really let your demons go, I needed to know I could stop what was happening. I needed to know I could control the situation.”

Shit, she had known all along that he was losing his mind when he was swinging that switch and decorating her sweet body. His woman. Not too much got by her. She had her fingers covering her mouth now. Brows together in a frown.

“You fucking tested me.”

“Do I look stupid to you? Of course I did. That was the closest you were ever going to get to being the real thing without being there. I had to know I could take it and that you would respond if I said stop. What I didn’t realize was that even when you’re close to being out of control, you still protect me. You do look out for me.”

Savage found himself speechless. Seychelle. His angel. She was driving his demons away. “Do you really believe you can love me just the way I am?”

He wished his voice didn’t sound so fucking choked up, like some pussy about to cry. He wasn’t a man who gave in to emotions like this. He took care of her after shit went down between them. She deserved the care after what he’d dished out to her, not the other way around.

Seychelle didn’t answer him for a long time. He reached for her hand and pressed her fingers into his thigh, needing the connection.

“I love you more with every breath I take, Savage. Just like you are. I’ve never asked you to change. Just grow. I want you to see me the same way I see you. I thought tonight, for the first time, you did. You try to avoid emotions. I’m very emotional. I need to hear those reassurances. I guess you do as well.”

Did he? Hell yes, he did. He felt for a long time that Seychelle was just out of his reach. He was always going to think that, because who would ever believe a woman like her could love a man like him? It didn’t make sense. He tried to twist it around in his mind and make it fit, but it didn’t. Sometimes in the middle of the night, he woke up and just stared at her, trying to comprehend how she was in his life, in his bed, how she could possibly look at him, let alone have genuine feelings for him.

She knew everything about him now. What he was. What he did. His many flaws. He had shown her too soon, without getting her body ready, what kind of sick fuck she was tying herself to, and he’d done it while breaking a promise to her. No matter how much he loved her, no matter how many good things he did for her, there would always be this—his cock hard as fucking steel to see the stripes he put on her body. There was no getting around that. No running from it. No changing it.