Rogue (Real #4)(68)

I try to wipe my face and look into his eyes. “You made me feel unworthy, Grey. Like you’re hiding me. I don’t know who you are, your parents, your family, I don’t know anything about you. Please, I want to know you. Can’t you see I want to know you,” I sob.

His eyes look haunted as he looks at me. “I hide you to protect you, because you’re my princess.” He strokes my nose. “I’ll tell you about me. Just let me enjoy the way these eyes look at me a little longer.”

He kisses my wet eyelids almost desperately, like what he is telling me is going to be bad, real bad, and like he thinks I won’t be able to stay after I hear it.

I cry harder. I’m used to his touch. His touch is unique, delicious, and I’ve felt it for eight weeks, but I knew one day it was going to break me.





NINETEEN




* * *





LOST


Greyson


Melanie slides her hands around my waist and buries her face in my shirt, and I pull off my gloves and shove them in my pocket so I can run my thumbs down her cheeks to track her tears.

Peace.

She’s the most restless woman I know, but she gives me peace. Things were perfectly planned.

Melanie was in Seattle. I was here in Denver gathering the evidence for my second-to-last mark. I was going to steal into his place at midnight, blackmail and harass him for payment, so that by tomorrow, I’d be able to fly back to her.

But hours ago, Derek texted me that she was at the airport. By the time the incompetent f*ck parked, she’d checked in and he lost her past the security checkpoint. I barked at him to buy any f*cking ticket, get past security, and find her. He got a ticket, but failed to find her. So I asked C.C. to search the flight records while I finished the damn appointment with Tina and got to things myself.

But no. Melanie ended up here, at the same f*cking restaurant, at the same time as Tina Glass and I were here, and she saw me. I couldn’t afford to have a criminal like Tina Glass get any wind of us, otherwise Melanie would be exposed to Zero’s world, and she would be vulnerable.

God, but the hurt in her eyes? If that wasn’t enough to bring me to my knees, it almost was when I saw her in that *’s hotel room.

You can’t hurt a woman like Melanie and expect her not to react. You can’t expect her not to try to peel away the hurt so she’s the happy girl again everyone knows.

I feared I’d lost her.

I feared the determination in her eyes when the door to that hotel room opened and I saw her.

And I saw the hurt in her eyes.

And I was angry, so f*cking angry, but the most gripping, surprising, infuriating emotion in me was the fear.

Fear of never again tasting those lips, never feeling those eyes on me, never playing her stupid games with her . . . The only times I ever feel good are with her. Good not at killing, blackmailing, and doing what I was taught to do. Just good.

She moves now, and fire in my veins sizzles and smokes as her hair brushes against my neck. The curves of her body fit perfectly against me. She’s sitting on my thigh, and her hip is against my cock. When she shifts, I groan softly into the crown of her hair, my muscles knotting. Lava flows over me at the mere feel of her.

I want to f*ck her so hard, punish her for thinking any other bastard would do.

Her hair is messed as if she’s rolled out of that *’s bed, but she’ll never be satisfied until she rolls out of mine.

Her eyes are glazed with tears for me.

Every muscle in my body tight, I brush her hair aside and kiss the back of her ear. “I want to taste your bare skin very, very desperately,” I murmur.

She jerks my shirt out of the waistband of my pants and sets her hand under my shirt, over my heart, touching my nipple ring. We remain like this, her eyes closed, her cheek to my chest, her closeness turning me inside out.

I duck my head and she holds her breath as if she’d been praying for me to, and she tips her head up so we can kiss. Our lips meet, softly. There’s the tightening in my cock, the rapid beat of my pulse, the taste of her on my tongue. My hunger spins out of control as I open her wider and kiss her slow, but deep.

Each repetitive flick of her tongue sets loose a wildness in me, that elemental pull between us stretching and strengthening.

She eases back and I look down at her, absorbing the feel of her as she slowly lifts her eyes to mine, pure green, and I feel like my chest is being torn open and she’s squeezing my heart with those dainty white hands. I feel more for her than I’ve felt for anyone in my life. I never thought I could be capable. I lost something I loved too young. I built a fortress around myself, and it’s been there, not allowing anyone a fraction of real, raw emotion from me.

But what I feel for her . . .

Nobody has ever had the power to hurt me like she now has. Since my mother left, nothing has been truly important to me. I’ve never let myself care for anything or anyone. Not for my father, my uncle, my brother.

Now a little girl whose father calls her grasshopper has the power to break me in two—me, a f*cking criminal, alone most of his life. And if any one of my enemies knew, they’d use her to take Zero down in a heartbeat.

And now we’re too far in for her to stay in the dark any longer. I need to know if it’s me she loves, or the idea of me.

She will leave you. Despise you. Reject you.