Page 8 of Shielding his Legacy (Shattered SEALs #7)

Gavin made a fist and slammed the side of his hand into the granite counter, sending a painful vibration through his wrist and up his arm.

He wanted to keep punching the rock, let the stone turn the bones of his hand and wrist into gravel, pummel his limb against the surface until all feeling and responsibility had left his body.

He thought he’d hated himself before today, thought nothing could intensify the remorse he felt for his actions.

But seeing that beautiful woman upstairs so completely gutted by what he’d done was the last straw, this new crest to his self-loathing threatening to crash over his life and drown everything in its wake.

The desire to end his life had been his bedfellow for what seemed an eternity, but now it was hulking over him, overpowering him.

He’d shared a single weekend with Eva and decimated her entire future.

He’d all but forced himself on her, impregnating her with his bastard child while he ran in the opposite direction, and still she’d said she loved him.

She didn’t even know him. She’d been young and innocent, so much of both that she was completely out of his league.

Yet he’d crossed that line and bedded her time and time again, burying himself in her body for hours on end, as if by bringing her pleasure and wringing himself dry, he could become even remotely worthy of the love she so freely offered.

Even holding her in the darkness, he knew it was wrong to be with her that way, knew she was falling hard for a fantasy that didn’t match the ugliness inside him.

But being with her had felt so damn good, he’d almost allowed himself to believe it, too.

His mistake wasn’t in leaving her—it was in allowing himself to get that close to her in the first place.

And what about now? He’d just thrown her in his truck and dragged her out of the city, bringing her to his private sanctuary where he’d never brought anyone except his mother.

Did he really believe that this time Eva would escape from his clutches unscathed?

That the asshole in the mirror truly had her best interests at heart, and he wouldn’t manage to ruin her life any more than he already had?

All she’d had to do was run her hands along the countertop and he’d wanted her. She was grazing the stone, but she may as well have been tracing the swirls of hair on his chest and down lower, for how erotic that simple movement had been.

His cock was engorged from wanting her, still.

Seeing her in his bedroom had twisted up his insides, her achingly familiar scent drawing him closer like the pheromones of a ripe, purebred bitch to a desperate junkyard dog.

Rational thought and decision-making had been cut off from his brain as surely as if they’d been amputated.

Damn his memory and the secrets stitched tightly within. The feel of her beneath him, how her back had arched in pain when he greedily took her virginity with one sure thrust and something approaching sexual glee.

Every sensation he’d felt in her arms had been soul-shattering, from that first delirious undressing of her softly scented body to the rhythmic jerking of his shaft as her fisted muscles milked him tightly inside her.

Ecstasy had coursed through his every artery and vein, his field of vision blooming in riotous color before his body went blissfully numb, his primal need to claim her having been satisfied.

It had been wrong, so very wrong of him to do it.

He knew that no matter what he’d tried to tell himself to the contrary. And the baby… Abby was living proof of his misdeeds, a weight Eva would carry all the days of her life because he had been too self-absorbed and devastated by his own pain to give much thought to her end of the bargain.

It was as if by making love to her he could excise the demons that haunted his waking moments and tormented his nights.

Only when he was with her did a light shine into the abyss, only when he bedded her did that light reach the utmost corners of the cave within him.

All these things and more, he remembered.

He remembered, and he wanted her beneath him again.

All the more reason to find out who was after her. He needed to make sure she was safe, then put as much physical and emotional distance between Eva and himself as possible. And if the thought of losing her and his daughter made him sick with a desperate ache, then he deserved that pain and more.

Pulling out his phone, he dialed Moto and explained about the murder Eva had captured on film.

“I need you to go to the printer and get the pictures, then find out everything you can about the detective who was killed. What he was working on, who might have wanted him dead.” Even as he said it, Gavin knew every police detective who’d been on the job for any length of time was responsible for collaring a long list of perps.

They’d be looking for a needle in a haystack.

“I saw the story on the news,” said Moto. “Somebody took him out in broad daylight in the middle of Central Park. You’ve got to want this guy dead pretty bad to take a chance like that.”

Gavin narrowed his eyes. “Or think you’re untouchable.

” His mind was racing. “See what cases the dead detective was scheduled to testify at in the near future. Find out what he was working on that would make someone risk a public execution.” Not to mention ransacking Eva’s apartment in search of the evidence and taking out two of New York’s finest at the safehouse.

He told Moto everything he knew, then added, “There’s got to be a mole in the PD. Either the shooter’s a dirty cop, or someone in the department is trying to cover this up. Either way, you’ve got to watch your back on this one, brother.”

“Sloan has a cousin pretty high up in the department. I’ll see what I can find out.”

The baby’s cries shattered the silence that had forever cloaked his cabin, the sound so foreign in his private space that for an instant he didn’t realize what he was hearing.

“Abby,” he said aloud, noting how the name sounded on his lips, knowing that particular combination of sounds would forever be dear.

“What?” asked Moto.

“Nothing. I’ve got to go. Let me know as soon as you’ve found something.” He disconnected the call, listening to the baby’s cries and wondering what he could do to help. Eva was attempting to get five minutes of peace, and he wanted her to have that, at the very least.

He took the stairs two at a time. The bathroom door was closed, the baby’s cries reaching a volume Gavin reserved for his favorite metal band, or the surround sound on the entertainment system when his mother watched Dancing with the Stars.

He scowled at the closed door, wondering if he was qualified for this shit and if Eva would even accept his help.

You’ve taken out tangoes from a hundred yards, and you’re wondering if you can handle a baby?

The absurdity was enough to make him wrap on the door with his knuckles. “Eva?” he called over Abby’s screams.

Eva didn’t answer.

He knocked harder. The baby, seeming to think it was a competition, increased the ferocity of her cries.

“Eva, can I help?” Taking a step back, he stared at the door, put his hands on his hips, and waited for a response.

When none came, he grew concerned, but didn’t know what to do.

Suddenly, Abby’s cries stopped so abruptly, he imagined she’d wiggled her way out of the car seat and hit her head on the stone tile floor.

Truly worried, he threw the door open. Eva knelt on the floor, dripping wet and naked, leaning her chest over Abby’s car seat with one tit in the baby’s mouth.

She gasped wildly, sitting upright and exposing both breasts to his view while the baby wailed anew.

Eva’s right nipple was flushed a deep crimson from the baby’s suckling, her left one dripping white liquid down the curve of her breast.

Gavin stood there, mesmerized.

Milk. Her breast was leaking milk, and her mouth was screaming as she pointed toward the door.

“Get out!” For her part, Abby squealed in righteous indignation, warring with her mother to see which female would dominate the conversation.

At the baby’s increased cries, milk flowed from both of Eva’s nipples in a dribbling stream clearly meant for her hungry daughter. “Ooout!” Eva demanded.

He nearly tripped over his own feet in his haste to get out of there, pulling the door shut behind him and causing the baby’s wails to take on a terrified quality.

“I’m sorry,” he called through the closed door, unsurprised this time when Abby abruptly went silent. “I didn’t mean to barge in on you.”

Eva’s irate voice echoed through the thick wooden door. “What the hell did you think was going to happen when you opened the door on a woman taking a shower?”

Well, it certainly hadn’t been that.

If he lived to be a hundred and eighty, he’d never forget the sight of milk dripping from her sweet breasts and his desperate, even carnal desire to lap it up.

He’d suckled those buds more than once, his mouth and tongue making her frantic with sexual need, and he couldn’t help but wonder if having her breasts suckled would still feel as good to Eva as it would be for him to taste her.

He put his hands on his hips and hung his head.

He longed to change the actions he’d taken since first setting eyes on her in the HERO Force office today.

He wouldn’t take her in his car, he wouldn’t have brought her to this cabin, and he sure as fuck wouldn’t have walked into her breastfeeding her child.

Their child. Abby was their child.

Walking miserably toward his room, he longed to stroke himself through his pants to relieve the urgent need pressing against his fly, but he couldn’t do it.

Pushing the thoughts aside, he groaned in frustration at the sight of his bed covers thrown back and Eva’s bag on the floor in the middle of his bedroom.

There was an intimacy in those two things that stunned him like a taser to the solar plexus.

The sound of his panting reached his ears, and he told himself to calm down, to stop making more of this than needed to be made.

Eva and Abby were here for a few days at most. He’d make sure they were safe, then he’d limit himself to child support and the rare visit to see the baby.

It wouldn’t be right not to see Abby at all.

Shit like that fucked kids up, and he was damn sure going to try to stop fucking this shit up altogether.

You did a fine job of that by walking into that bathroom just now.

He ran both hands through his hair, crossing to the bedroom window as he acknowledged his stupidity.

He wasn’t cut out for this parenting crap.

He didn’t know the first thing about babies or crying fits or any of this stuff.

Hell, he’d seen Eva give the baby a bottle at the HERO Force office, and he’d assumed that meant she wasn’t breastfeeding.

He’d even been grateful for that fact! Now his brain was fixated on the images he’d seen in that room, and he knew he’d never forget them for as long as he lived.

He shook his head, staring into the distance and seriously distracted by the vision she’d made. Any man who thought that wasn’t sexy as fuck had no goddamn clue what he was talking about. He’d never wanted a woman more than he wanted Eva right now.

The realization was sobering, a deepening panic making him sweat.

He had to get her out of here, had to get her safe and back to her regularly scheduled life as quickly as possible, before he once again took things further than he had any right to take them.

She deserved so much better than that. She deserved a man who’d love her with the intensity Gavin had glimpsed in her arms. She deserved a man who wanted to feel those feelings, who’d welcome her into his life and hold her tightly by his side, come what may.

But as he tried to imagine that faceless man he wished would love her, a fierce surge of possessiveness rose up in him. For as much as his brain might understand his inability to be the partner she needed, his entire being refused to imagine anyone else standing in his place.

He leaned his head on the windowpane and closed his eyes.

Just twelve hours earlier, he’d been thinking about leaving HERO Force behind, figuring all his problems would fall by the wayside.

Now he knew there was no freedom in sight.

His life had just gone off the rails, but good—and he had no idea how to get it back on track.

“Fuck me,” he said miserably, lightly bouncing his head against the glass before straightening.

He needed to call Marina. If ever there was a time to start seeing a therapist, this was undoubtedly it.