Diamond (Rare Gems #2)(43)
“Come here. I want you to undress me. But don’t touch me.” She moved slowly forward to do as he bid. “When I’m done, I’m going to take a shower and you’re going to bathe me.”
Diamond wasn’t sure her * could have gotten any wetter, but she could feel her juices as they moved down her leg. When she pulled his jacket off, she laid it over the chair and tried to figure out how to do this.
“My tie next.” She wanted to thank him for helping her but reached for his silk tie first. “I will need to go to Texas again in a few weeks, and I’d like for you to go with me. I know that you have to work, but I need your help down there.”
“Doing what?” She flushed, not knowing if this was a master/slave thing. “I’m not very good at this just yet.”
“You’re doing fine. Because we have a house there that needs to be sold, and I’d like for you to see if there’s anything in the house that you’d like. Some of the things were my mother’s, but my father’s things…they’re all gone.”
She stilled and looked at him. “You didn’t care for him? And whatever was your mother’s, I’ll take. I may not have any rights to it as your wife, but if we have children, they should at least see it.”
“You have every right to it and more. And no, my father and I never got along. He is the one that spoiled Ward to the point where he thinks everything is owed to him. Then when he died, Ward seemed to think that the world owed him everything. I tried to work with him, to get him on the straight path, but….” He moved out of her reach. “He killed a man back home. Murdered him, stole his money as well as what was in the register, and even had the nerve to steal his suits. He’s here in Ohio now, Ward is. I’m not sure….”
“We’ll take care of this.” Diamond moved to stand in front of him as she unbuttoned his shirt. “There are a great many things we can do as a pack that humans can’t. Like, for instance, we can move in and out of areas that a human…most humans…won’t. And do things that no sane person would be able to do.”
“Like?” She stepped behind him to take off his shirt and forgot about the cufflinks. She had to work at them while she tried to think how to answer his question.
“Like wooded forest where there is no light. We can see much better than they would be able to. We can also sniff out our prey when all a human has to rely on is their own, lesser ability.” Diamond didn’t want to tell him all of it, but when he put his hands on her bare arms and held her, she couldn’t keep it from him.
“We can kill without thought. Our kind can murder in ways that would sicken most people; our prey would be no more. I don’t mean they would be dead, I’m saying that no trace of them would ever be found by any means.” She looked Thad in the eye as she finished. “I can kill him and you’d never know it but for my confession.”
Neither of them said anything for several seconds. She wanted to step back and leave him, knowing that he was going to ask her questions. Diamond didn’t want to answer them, but if he asked, she’d have no choice.
“How did he hurt you?” She was more startled by the question than she could believe. When she started to pull away from him, he pulled her back and held her still. “How?”
“It was the night that Jeffery Benetton tried to hurt Sapphire. A man, one of his enforcers, was dragging us out of the house when he suddenly stopped. Harris, Jeffery’s brother, had gone ahead with my sisters, but Derek decided to….” Diamond moved away, and he let her this time, so she pulled his shirt over her nakedness. “He was going to kill me, after he raped me. He told me that…he said that I was going to bleed out while he f*cked me.”
She moved to the window that was nearest the fireplace, and despite the warmth outside, she was suddenly cold all the way to her bones. Closing her eyes, she thought of him dragging her to the shed just out from the house.
“Derek said I was his prize. He said that Jeffery had told him he could have his pick and I was his for the night. He’d hit me before, so I was stunned a little, but as soon as we got to the shed and he locked us in, I started to feel a little less out of it.” She remembered his breath on her throat and his body, soft and smelling of sweat as he slammed her against the wall. “I didn’t have a choice, and my wolf knew it. It was him or me. She took me and…and she killed him in cold blood.”
“He would have killed you if you hadn’t.” She shook her head, not looking at Thad as he spoke. “Do you think that you did something wrong?”
“I took his life.” Thad wrapped his arms around her waist and held her back to his chest. “His family never knew what happened to him, never found a trace of him to this day. I’ve lived with this since that night.”
“Thank you.” She looked at him over her shoulder. “You killing him saved me. Had you not, then I would have come along, me this puny little human, and died protecting your honor. You killed him to be with me.”
Diamond laughed, which she supposed he meant for her to do. “I murdered someone and got away with it.” She nodded when he shook his head. “I did. You can’t think that what I did was right.”
“Of course I do. I told you, had you not killed him, he would most assuredly have killed you. And there is no way of knowing how many others he would have killed after you.” He kissed her gently on the mouth. “You are an amazing woman, have I told you that?”