Rogue (Real #4)(73)
“Stop.”
“I’d stop it if you meant it. Mean it,” he commands, then cups my face and looks at me, waiting for me to mean what I say, his eyes electric. “Right now. Mean it,” he whispers seductively, his breath hot on my face. “Tears?” He edges back, his eyes sober and yet relentless. “Tears . . . why? I haven’t made you come yet.”
I want to pull free.
But I’m shaking and craving and wanting. It’s true that I want his body, every hot, delicious inch, but more than anything I want to know who he is—who the man who has this effect on me is.
He. Is not. Real, MELANIE!
He is a liar, a player, a f*cking scoundrel and a rogue. You don’t need him! You don’t want him!
“Tell me who you are!” Suddenly my voice rises with my bewilderment.
He looks at me, dark shadows crossing over his eyes, then he surprises me when he leaves me and sits on the bed. Setting his elbows on his knees, he leans over, looking at me, every inch of him tormented. He runs his hand through his hair and, slowly, I watch as each copper-streaked strand falls into place one by one. Silence drags on, the tension palpable until he breaks the silence, a low, hard bitterness spilling into his voice.
“I was raised by my mother, Lana King. She left my dad when she got pregnant, to protect me. One day when I was thirteen I came home and she was tied up in a chair, gagged, among a group of men—among them my father. He offered . . .” He trails off, then smirks coldly. “He told me if I killed one of his men, she’d be untied and set free. I didn’t know he had a deal with her, that she’d told him I wasn’t a killer like him—that he’d promised to let me go if that was true. I didn’t know about that f*cking deal when I took the gun he offered, aimed it, fired it, and killed him. And I never saw her again.”
His voice turns empty and cold, like an echo of an old tomb.
I’m not sure if it’s the tone he uses, the words he tells me, or the lack of sparkle in his usually brilliant, beautiful eyes. “My uncle Eric told me my father had made a deal with my mother. He would take me if I proved to be his son. My mother promised him that I was nothing like him. And then I shot a man. I didn’t hesitate. I shot him.”
A war of emotions rages in me, my feelings toward him becoming confusing and as painful as anything in my life has ever been.
“I doomed myself to a life of this.” He signals around him. “Maybe I should’ve shot my father. It could’ve been over, right then and there. But blood is a curious thing.” He looks at me, a slight confusion in his hawklike eyes. “It ties you. Even when you loathe your kind, something here . . .” He puts his fists to his chest. “Somewhere here you’re still loyal. I spent eight years with him, believing he’d let me see her. Until I realized he wasn’t ever letting me see her so long as he knew I didn’t really give a shit about him. So I went rogue, dropped him, and tried to find her, doing little jobs in between. I followed every trail I could find. Nothing. She vanished without a trace.”
His bearing is stiff and proud, but I can finally see the chaos in his eyes. I imagine him, a young teenager, torn in two. Using his smarts to survive, while still trying to find and protect his mother.
His every disquieting word races through my mind, his childhood so different from mine that I don’t understand it, almost.
“He’s summoned me back now that he’s dying. He’s got leukemia and he wants me to take the reins of the Underground.” He laughs sadly. “A man like him, I can’t even imagine him sick. But he needs to pass on his torch. Wyatt—I know he’s been more of a son to him than I have. But he wants the alpha.” He pulls out a piece of paper. “When I saw you on this list, you were supposed to be something I worked out of my system. That blonde in my dreams. Then there you were. There you were in the f*cking bar with that f*cking * trying to take you home—and then there you were, a f*cking devil of an angel in the rain.”
“Don’t even talk to me about the rain!”
“You wanted to talk, so I’m talking to you now.” He walks forward, stopping in front of me, the faint smile tugging his lips holding an infinite amount of sadness. “This isn’t how I wanted to spend your birthday, Melanie.” His voice is a tender murmur, squeezing my heart.
I won’t cry, I won’t f*cking cry. I blink and swallow.
“All I ask is that you let me celebrate you when I get back. If I only get to spend one day with you, I want to spend this day. With you.”
I can’t stand the way he knows me. The way he understands me. The way he makes my every dream come true and breaks my every fantasy. If there were a day I’d need him in a year, it would be my birthday. But suddenly I desperately need to go home.
“You’re leaving right now?” I whisper.
His eyebrows rise inquiringly. “I have to. Just one more mark. I owe it to my mother.”
He comes over and wraps me in his arms. I close my eyes as his heat envelops me, his scent, him. When he tries to pull away, I pull his arms closer, suddenly just needing this a minute longer. “Why do you want my arms?” he whispers in my ear. “I just told you they’ve done more harm than good.”
“Not to me.”
“Because you fell for me, you fell for me and all my bullshit, and even with everything I just said, you’re still falling, aren’t you,” he rasps. He kisses the back of my ear. “I’m right here to catch you.” He kisses the back of my ear, harder. “Let me catch you.”