Page 9

Oh, boy. “I can’t ask that of you.”
“You aren’t. I’m offering. I keep fucking up with you, Pix. Letting you get hurt. When all I’ve ever wanted to do is make you happy.”
My heart swelled. Damn. This man would be my undoing. “I don’t understand how some woman hasn’t already claimed your heart. Big scary biker on the outside. Sweeter than any man I’ve ever known on the inside.” I pressed my lips against his again, but he wouldn’t let me deepen the kiss.
“There’s something between you and Vaughn.” From anyone else it would have been an accusation. From him, it was just stating a fact.
I shook my head. “It doesn’t matter. It’s just attraction. It’s you I want to be with. You’re my safe place, Fang. That’s all I could think about when I was trapped on the bottom of that pool. I love you.”
It should have been weird to say those words to a man. I’d never said them to anyone but my mother.
But I meant them. When he stared at me like that, with his whole heart wide open and on display, telling him I loved him back was the easiest thing in the world.
His lips on mine were featherlight. “I love you too. And that’s why I’m not tying you down.”
Panic lit up inside me, and I inched back. “What does that mean? Are you breaking up with me?”
I couldn’t bear to hear the answer. This was why I’d been terrified to ever commit to a man. To ever tell one I loved him. Love was too big a feeling. Too all-encompassing. It had destroyed my mother over and over, and I had never wanted it to do the same to me. I had no one to pick me up the way I had for her. I didn’t get the luxury of loving someone so wholeheartedly it could devastate you if it went away.
His eyes went big. “Fuck no. We talked about this before. I’m just saying it better now. I’ll be here. Always. You’ve owned my heart from the minute I met you and you’ll have it ’til the minute I die. There’s no one else for me. But even I can see something between you and Vaughn, and I think you’re kidding yourself if you think there’s only friendship between you and Kian.” He ducked his head and stared deep in my eyes. “I’m saying that for as long as I’m breathing, I’m always going to be here. But there’s room for them too. If that’s what you want. The life I lead… Fuck. We both know what it is. You might need them one day.”
I didn’t want to think about that. I wrapped my arms around him and pulled him close. Something deep inside me knew he knew me better than I knew myself. He was giving me the permission I needed to build a support system. To build relationships that would hold me up if I gave in and admitted that what I needed was him and the way he loved me. When he said he was going to love me forever, I knew he meant it, but we both knew what he did for a living. He lived a dangerous life. One fraught with bad people who wouldn’t think twice about putting a bullet through his brain if the desire took them. The Slayers had lost their prez just months ago, and though his wife was a strong, badass woman, there was something a bit smaller about her ever since. She might not have been on the bathroom floor like my mother had a tendency to be, but she was broken in her own way.
It was the daily reality of loving a man who lived outside the law. It came with taxes that weren’t paid to the government.
“Shower, Pix. You’re freezing.” He rubbed my arms briskly.
I hadn’t even noticed the goosebumps that had popped up all over my skin. I slid off the vanity and stepped into the hot, misty water.
I wasn’t sure anything had ever felt as good. But as soon as I was warm, I turned it down and beckoned to him through the glass. “Come here.”
He stood slowly, stripping off his jacket and undid the Velcro fastenings on the Batman costume he’d worn to Caleb’s Halloween party. He slid it down over his shoulders and abs. I wasn’t sure if the sudden shaking in my legs was because of leftover drugs still wandering their way through my system or because Fang was the hottest man I’d ever seen naked.
I couldn’t help the urge to tease him. “Ooh. Take it off, Batman.”
He raised an eyebrow. “This doing it for you?”
“Just a few inches lower and it will be.”
He dropped the costume low enough to free his erection.
My mouth went dry, and I darted my tongue out to catch some water before groaning, “Get in here.”
The shower screen creaked when he opened it, but then his big body was inside the little cubicle and towering over me.
I reached for his cock, the need to please him rapidly rising inside me. He’d just said I could explore things with other men. At the very least, that deserved a blow job.
But he caught my hands. “Not a chance. You just nearly died. We aren’t doing anything tonight. I just want to take care of you.”
I let my hands fall limp at my sides. “I don’t get you.”
He reached for the bottle of shampoo, squirted some into his palm, and then rubbed it through my hair. “I’m not that complicated.”
But he was.
I’d barely scratched the surface and I was already in love with him.
The thought was terrifying. If I loved him this much now, how much harder would I fall when I knew every little detail?