by Lexi Blake
Somehow hearing he hadn’t gone to bed with the gorgeous, do-gooder reporter made her feel a bit better. “One of the things I liked about Bliss was that I didn’t get hit on very often. Most of the men around town are married, and the others are super respectful. Being there, it was the most free I’d felt in forever.”
He shook his head. “I would never have said you would be happy in a small town. You like the city too much.”
“I probably wouldn’t have dreamed it either. Then I found one I liked. That’s the funny thing about change. It doesn’t happen until we let it. I took that job because I was worried about you, and I ended up loving the people there. Of course, now they all hate me. That’s the story of my life.” Once they’d figured out she’d lied to them for months, that she’d been watching one of their own, they hadn’t been so welcoming.
“It’s the nature of the job. I had the same problems at first. No one at McKay-Taggart and Knight trusted me with anything until I sacrificed for them. For a long time I was the Agency dude they hated the least.” He sighed and seemed to relax a bit. “They didn’t really trust me until they realized I wasn’t ever going back to the Agency.”
“I don’t know. I think it’s more than that. I’ve felt it all my life—that distance from other people. When your parents are the not-so-kind overlords of all they survey it’s hard.” From an early age she’d realized her playmates were carefully cultivated. It hadn’t been until she’d entered the ultra-exclusive boarding school her parents selected for high school that she realized almost everyone she knew was afraid of her because all it would take was a whisper from her mother to ruin their family in their society.
“Well, that’s how he got to you,” Beck pointed out. “Levi, that is. I’ve been thinking about it all night. You were lonely and he was willing to be your friend. He should have been upfront with you. He should have told you what he wanted and let you make the decision.”
Some memories were sweeter than others. Some pushed out the darkness. A vision of Beck sitting on a barstool beside her, telling her exactly what he wanted, haunted her in the best way possible. “Like you did?”
His smile deepened, finally revealing the dimples that only showed up when he was genuinely amused. “Hey, I was very open and honest that I was trying to get into your pretty panties.”
Their attraction had been out of control. He hadn’t approached her until he was no longer teaching her class, but she’d had some ridiculously over-the-top fantasies about the man. “Yeah, well, I didn’t make you wait long. If I remember correctly we were going at it in a motel because neither of us wanted to wait to get back across town.”
“The Kingsman. I remember that motel fondly.”
She wrinkled her nose. “It was not nice in the cold light of day. There was a definite layer of grime in that bathroom.”
His expression went serious. “There was nothing cold about that day.”
No. It had been a sunny, gorgeous summer day, and they’d laughed as they decided to not use that shower. They’d held hands on the metro and bought bagels and gone back to her place where they’d spent all Saturday in bed. She’d known she was madly in love with him that day.
That day seemed so far away now.
“Are you all right?” Beck asked.
She wanted to break the intimacy between them. The moment felt too warm. It was a falsehood, and she would end up hurting again. “Yeah, you got the exact pressure point. I’ll be fine as long as I move.”
“I wasn’t talking about that. That call from Levi… He’s stalking you.”
He’d been stalking her for years, but no one called it that when the man stalking her used to be a friend, still pretended to be one. She was the bitch who couldn’t see how much he cared about her. “He is.”
“Tell me what he did. Not that sanitized report. I want to know how he made you feel.”
“If I do that, you’ll get angry again.”
He shook his head. “No. I promise I won’t make this about me. I heard you. I’ve let those words sit with me, and I realized I was doing exactly what you said I was. I’m marginalizing what happened because I can’t stand the thought that this wasn’t about me, that I was incidental in this story. It’s hard to think that all this pain I’ve felt didn’t have any real meaning.”
“That’s not what I said. Of course it has meaning.”
He shrugged. “But oddly it feels worse that the pain wasn’t intentional.”
He had some toxic masculinity to work through, but then she’d always known it. He had anger issues that he’d never turned her way before the incident with his brother. What did she owe him? In her rational moments she knew she owed him nothing. But her stupid heart kept wanting more. “He told me he was going to use the drug on me. He told me he’s got a dose with my name on it.”
Beck went still and she knew she’d made a mistake. There was a reason she’d left that specific part out of the report. She’d thought someone like Taggart would understand the underpinnings of the threat without putting it baldly out there to taunt Beck.
Or maybe she’d been worried Beck wouldn’t care.
It seemed one way or the other when it came to this man. He either went over the top with rage or he was cold. There was none of the in between she needed from him.
He pushed off the table. “I’m going to kill him.”
She should have known. “Good. Way to make it not about you, babe.”
He turned on her, his jaw clenched tight so every word came out peppered with tension. “How am I supposed to act? Am I supposed to be perfectly fine with the fact that he means to drug you and put you through everything McDonald put my men through? You expect me to be okay with that?”
She’d wanted to avoid more masculine bullshit. “This is why I didn’t put the specific threat in the report. And I seriously doubt he was going to train me to commit crimes for him. He was interested in other things. He wanted a good little wife who would submit to him.”
There was a fine flush to Beck’s face. “Don’t you bring that into it. That is not what submission is about.”
Why did she love him? Why did it have to be this one stubborn, obnoxious man? She bit back a wince as she got to her feet. “Fine. I didn’t use the right words to describe what he was going to do to me. Maybe you can write up my next report so I get it right.”
She was done with this, done with the seesaw of emotions this man brought out in her. Maybe Ari was right and it would genuinely be better for both of them if she walked away and was never heard from again. She would take her secrets with her and leave Levi and Beck to fight this out on their own. Or Levi would leave Beck alone once he realized she wasn’t trying to get close to him anymore. She could find a deserted island and Survivor the crap out of the rest of her life.
A big hand gripped her elbow and whirled her around. “Hey, where are you going?”
She was out of his hold in two seconds. One more and she was the one with hands on him. She wrenched his arm behind his back and had him on his toes. “I think I’ve been manhandled enough for one day.”
He went still. “I don’t know what I did wrong. I’m mad because he threatened to hurt you. You can’t expect me to not care that he’s planning to dose you with that drug. I’ve spent the last few months of my life trying to fix the results of that fucking drug. Tell me you wouldn’t be upset if he’d done the same to me.”
She sighed and let go of his arm. “I wouldn’t let anger take away from comforting you. You would be my first priority. The way I used to be yours.”
He ran a hand through his hair, pressing it back as he began to pace. “All this time and we lose it to him. To fucking Levi Green.”
She understood his frustration. “Levi always wins. It’s why the next time I have a shot at killing him, let me take it. No matter the cost.”
His jaw went tight. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I want this over with. All of it. If it means I go
down then I go down, but I will take him with me.” This could all be over with if he’d simply allowed her to get back in the limo. Yes, she would have probably been taken out, but Levi would be done.
She could have done one good thing before she died.
“I couldn’t stand there and let you die.” He moved in behind her, his hands coming to her shoulders. “I’m fucking everything up again. I swear I came down here to make sure you were okay.”
“I thought you came down here to make sure I hadn’t run.”
“I walked out of that shower and damn near panicked,” Beck admitted. “It’s because I know if you run this time, you won’t come back. My feelings for you are so complicated, but I knew I couldn’t sit there and let him take you. You’re right. I’m not putting you first. I haven’t in a very long time, but I don’t know if that’s my place anymore. I worry if I put you first, I’ll disappear.”
“No, you’re worried if you put me first, if you let go of the anger you still feel, you’ll be betraying your brother,” she corrected.
He gave her a slow nod. “Yeah. I guess that’s what it comes down to.”
“The funny thing is, the real Ezra wouldn’t have blamed me and you know it.”
He sighed. “I don’t want to talk about him. I want to talk about you. I’m sorry. Not that I got mad, but that I didn’t control it. You haven’t cried. Not the whole time. Your life fell apart and you haven’t cried.”
“Well, it wasn’t much of a life.”
“That’s something to cry about, too,” he said. “Talk to me. Tell me what you felt while you were in that limo. I want to hear it because you need to say it, because under all that toughness, I know there’s a soft heart. You need to cry and let it out or it’s going to fester.”
“You’re one to talk.”
“Yes, I’ve let things fester for a very long time and I’m a walking wound.” He drew her back against him. “I’m feeling helpless. I don’t handle that well. Maybe we both need to deal with the day. I’m not going to sleep tonight if I don’t try to take care of you. You can talk to me or we can try something else.”
She let her head drift back and then she was surrounded by him. Despite the fact that she knew it couldn’t work out in the long term, she wanted this moment, needed it so badly. It would be better to run back to her room and lock herself in, but she couldn’t do it. He was a drug and she’d never stopped craving him. The temptation to find out how this Beckett Kent could take care of her was far too much to turn away. “What do you want to try?”
“You are one big ball of stress and you don’t trust me.”
“Beck,” she began.
“No. It’s true and I understand it. I have trouble with trust, too. So let’s work on it. Let’s take this time and see if we can figure out a better way to deal with each other. Let’s start with brutal honesty.” He took a shaky breath behind her. “I’ve missed you.”
She closed her eyes and let the words sink in. “I missed you, too.”
“I’m still angry with you, but I don’t think that matters now. I think what matters is that my instinct is to protect you. I need to follow my instincts.”
Yes, she should definitely run because there was still so much he didn’t know, so many other reasons to be angry with her. But they didn’t matter because she couldn’t talk about them. Those promises had been made to someone else and she couldn’t break them. Not even to save her marriage.
“Can you trust me enough to let me touch you? I know I did that when I helped with your leg, but you know damn well it would feel better if you didn’t have clothes on, if it was my hand on your skin. Let me touch you.”
There was nothing she wanted more, but she couldn’t say it. All she could do was step out and turn to face him. She held up her arms and let him pull the T-shirt she was wearing off. She’d been ready for bed so she’d taken her bra off, and now cool air whispered across her skin. But it was the fact that his eyes were on her that made her nipples tighten.
“I’ve been with other women,” he said carefully.
They’d been divorced for years. She hadn’t thought he would be faithful. “I’ve dated some. Not much. Two guys. Not…”
He shook his head. “No. He wasn’t a date. I know that. He was a mistake you made, and Levi likely manipulated you.”
She suddenly felt so vulnerable. “If we’re going to actually talk about this, I should be dressed.”
“No. That’s been our problem all along.” He reached down and pulled his shirt over his head and tossed it to the side. “Every single time we’ve talked in the last ten years, we’ve put on our armor and gone into battle. This isn’t a battle. It doesn’t have to be. It can be something more.”
Like once, they’d been something more. “I’m afraid to be vulnerable with you.”
He kicked off his shoes. It was obvious he’d shoved them on his feet when he’d come down to look for her because he wasn’t wearing socks. How odd that the sight of his feet made her heart clench. She’d seen his chest, his arms and legs. But it had been so many years since she’d seen his feet, brushed hers against them when they were in bed.
“I’ve never loved a woman the way I loved you. I put it in the past tense, but we both know there’s still something here.” Beck shoved the pajama bottoms he’d been wearing down and revealed he wasn’t wearing any boxers. “I don’t know where we’re going, but I know as long as we’re stuck here together, I won’t be able to keep my hands off you. I’m sick of being angry with you.”
She was so sick of his anger, though she knew there was some justification to it. “You want honesty? You want to know what I felt when I was in that limo with him?”
He moved in, his body on glorious display. The man was even more lovely than he’d been all those years before. Though he bore a few new scars. She did, too. It was funny because they were almost in the same place. He reached out and touched the place where she’d been shot in Colorado. It was a few inches under her collar bone. She waited for his anger to rise, but he merely touched the spot. “Yes. I want to know. I want to know how you felt so I can try to fix it.”
He couldn’t fix it, but he might be able to make her feel something. She’d been numb for so long, forcing herself to not want anything. The few times she’d allowed herself to hope, she’d found the depths of despair. It felt good to want even though she knew it wouldn’t last more than a night or two.
“When I realized he’d come for me, I was scared at first, but then I felt so fucking lost because you wouldn’t look at me. Because you didn’t say anything. I wondered if you thought I was guilty and I was getting what I deserved.”
“Damon stopped me,” he admitted. “Damon begged me to stay calm. He knew we could get you back, but we couldn’t stop him from taking you. I wasn’t calm or cool in that moment. I was white-hot raging angry, and there was a part of me that was angry with you.”
Just like that she was done. She couldn’t handle another second of his anger. Not when they’d gotten so close to something else. He couldn’t help himself. He was made of rage and he’d found a place to put it all. On her.
This had been a terrible mistake. She shouldn’t ever be vulnerable with him because for all his sweet words, they were still at war. He wanted the chance to really wreck her this time.
“Hey, don’t,” he began. “I promised I would be honest and that anger was there, too.”
She nodded. “Of course it was. You’re always angry. I would bet you sat there and wondered if it wasn’t some sex game between me and Levi. Or if I was doing it to get your attention. Like a kid who acts out because she can’t get love any other way.”
His gaze went hard. “I was worried we might have to do it this way.”
“What way? It’s your way. It’s always your way.” It had been for years. The divorce had been his way. The anger had been his way. The inflexibility was his way.
“I assure you losing my brother wasn’t my way.” His hands clen
ched. “I didn’t mean to upset you. I meant to get you talking.”
“About what? About Levi? Are you trying to trick me into telling you I did it? Is that why you came after me? Did you think you could get the truth out of me better than he could?”
“I never once thought you were guilty,” he replied. “This is why we have to talk. You’re a bundle of emotions but you won’t let them out. If we’re going to get through this, we’ve got to do it together.”
Hearing the word come out of his mouth made her ache inside because that word was a lie coming from him. “Together? We haven’t been together in years, and maybe we never were.”
“I assure you we were together once. I still dream about it at night. It’s the reason I can’t have another relationship.”
She couldn’t do this with him. She’d been stupid to think they could have some sex and she would feel better. There was too much between them. God, the day had been too much. It all threatened to crash in on her. She’d lost it all, and now she was stuck with a man who actively hated her. He might be able to hide it for brief periods of time, but he hated her with as much passion as he’d ever loved her. He would turn on her and she wouldn’t survive it this time.
She tried to move to grab her shirt but he was right there, getting in her space.
He loomed over her, his face gorgeous in the low light of the dungeon. “No. We’re going to talk. I’m not leaving you like this.”
He was in his element. Somehow even without a stitch of clothing on, there was nothing vulnerable about Beckett Kent. He stood there, his stupid attractive feet planted on the ground, his gorgeous cock hard. He belonged here. Like he seemed to belong everywhere. This was his place of power. She didn’t have one. “Fuck you, Beck.”