by Lora Leigh
She stood beneath the parking lot lights, her hair falling around her face and shoulders in thick waves, her slender hips cocked, one hand propped on one hip, the other hand hanging loose and ready at her side.
“I don’t want your honesty.” She sneered at him. “Shove it. It sucks.”
She turned and started walking.
“Where the hell are you going?” He strode after her, caught her arm, and pulled her to a stop. “Back to that damned bar where those cowboys can sniff around you like wolves after fresh meat? The hell you are.”
“Oh my, Mr. No-commitment. Are we jealous?” The sarcasm in her voice was doing things to him. He could feel it. Like that fucking fever rising inside him, filled with lust, dominance, and a dark, hungry need. “You’re right. You’re not my husband. My husband had better sense than to tell me when I could or couldn’t do something.”
She had never confronted him like this during their marriage. Sarcastic and defiant. She had always spoiled him, and he saw that now. And the love that rose inside him threatened to strangle him. As did the pride. And fuck it, the fear.
He wasn’t the man she had loved six years ago. The man who crooned Irish lullabyes to her, or the man who would whisper “forever” in Gaelic because it made her shiver with pleasure.
He was scarred, changed. Inside, the man he was had been scarred forever, and admitting it to her would kill him. She would want answers. This Sabella would demand answers. And when she learned that for four years he had refused to let anyone come for her, she would hate him. Hate him because she would realize that he’d thought her weak. Weak and unable to handle the monster he was. And that would destroy her pride.
He’d weaved a web so damned tangled that now he had no idea how to get out of it.
“What do you want from me, Noah?” she cried, causing him to jerk his gaze back to her, to see the tears on her cheeks.
“Don’t you dare cry!” he snarled. “Don’t you use tears on me, Sabella.”
He couldn’t handle her tears. Silent tears. She had never sobbed, but he heard a sob in her voice now.
She shook her head, pushed her fingers through her hair, and turned and walked away.
It took him long seconds to realize exactly what she was doing. She was walking. Walking past the motorcycle, walking away from him.
“Sabella, no.” He covered the distance, gripping her arm and pulling her to a stop as he placed himself in front of her. “We can talk about this.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” she snapped. “You can’t just blow into whatever town, find yourself something to fuck for a few weeks, and then blow right out.” She jerked her arm out of his grip. “God, Noah. You’re breaking my heart and you don’t even care.”
“How can I break something that belongs to another man?” he yelled in jealous frustration. “That damned house with pictures of him spread through every damned room. The bedroom you shared with him, you still have his clothes in the closet. And look at this.” He jerked her hand up, the gold wedding band gleaming beneath the lights, ripping through his heart because she wore it on her right hand, not her left. “Look at that ring, Sabella. You still wear his ring.”
His ring, the ring she had slid on to his finger, burned a hole against his thigh. It was tucked in his pocket, always with him, always a part of him.
She was crying now. Her breath was hitching on her sobs and her gray eyes were washed with diamond-bright pain. It sliced through his soul.
Her lips parted. Her hand lifted as though to say something. At that moment, the clash of sirens sounded for the briefest second.
Sabella swung around as the sheriff’s cruiser pulled up, stopped, and Rick Grayson eased out of the cruiser. He took one look at Sabella then sliced a hard glare at Noah.
“Get in the car, Belle.” Rick nodded to the passenger side.
“Sabella. Don’t.” Noah stood still, every instinct inside him demanding that he not let her go with the sheriff. The sheriff was no longer a suspect, but Sabella was still Noah’s wife.
He stared back at her intently, willing her to remember the danger. “Please, Sabella.”
She looked from Rick to Noah. He could see the indecision in her face, her eyes.
Rick stood silently, watching them, his face creased into a scowl as he kept one hand carefully on the butt of his weapon.
“Let me take you home,” Noah said then. “I’ll just take you home. I swear it.”
A sob caught at her throat. “You’re killing me.”
“I know, baby.” And he did know. He was ripping them both apart and she had no idea how it was killing him too.
She ducked her head, shook it, then walked past him toward the motorcycle. Noah looked back at the sheriff intently, seeing the worry and the concern on his face as Grayson watched Sabella, then turned his gaze back to Noah. He was silent for a long moment. Finally, his hand lifted from the butt of his gun and he laid his forearms over the open frame of the door.
There was something knowing in the other man’s gaze. Something suspicious that had Noah tensing.
“You know,” Grayson finally said. “I’ve seen some real losers pass through this town in my day.”
“Really?” Noah drawled. Like he gave a damn.
“Really.” Rick nodded. “But I have to say I think you’re the biggest loser I’ve met to date. And for some reason, I just didn’t expect that of you.”
“I needed your opinion,” Noah grunted as he glanced back at where Sabella was wiping her cheeks and staring into the park.
“You need a bullet in the ass,” Rick growled, shaking his head. “Stay out of trouble, Mr. Blake. Otherwise, we’re going to talk.”
Noah arched his brows before deliberately turning his back on the sheriff and moving to where Sabella waited on the Harley.
He wrapped his jacket around her, pulling it over her arms before tipping her head up to him and staring into her tear-drenched eyes. His hands framed her face, his thumbs smoothed over her trembling lips.
“One more night, Sabella,” he whispered, so hard, so desperate for her, he wondered if he could survive it. “Give us one more night.”
Sabella stared back at him. Anger and hurt and fear all clashing inside her, raging inside her. And mixed with it was the need. The fiery hunger she wondered how she had lived without for six years.
“You bastard!” she sobbed.
“The worst bastard,” he whispered, and kissed her lips, the tears from her eyes.
She sniffed, her hands lifting to grip his wrists as her lips softened, felt his kiss, and needed more. She needed so much more.
“Take me home, Noah,” she whispered. “Please, just take me home.”
She wasn’t going to cry any more.
Holding on to Noah as they rode to the house, her head buried against his back, his heartbeat against her cheek, she tried to sort out the future. The near future. The far future. She tried to sort out her emotions. They weren’t that damned far from the house.
She lifted her head as they pulled up to the house and waited until he helped her off the Harley then swung free himself.
“Where’s your key?”
Her husband.
He’d always made certain he checked her small apartment after bringing her home while they were dating. After they married, he always went into a room or the house first. He’d always been protective.
She handed him the key and watched as he opened the door, going inside cautiously before turning back to her. She walked into the house and waited in the large entryway and living room while he went through the place.
She pulled his jacket tighter around her, breathed in his scent, and promised herself again, no more tears.
Was she going to throw him out, hang on to her anger, or give him one more night? And every other night she could steal before he left? Because the next time he left—she stared around the house. The next time he left, she knew exactly what she was going to do.
It was the
only way to survive the loss.
She was standing in the living room, staring at the mantel, at the pictures. Their wedding picture. Their faces close, his wild blue eyes dominating the picture. His dark skin against her paler cheek, his expression quiet, confident.
She walked over to that picture, her fingers playing with the wedding band that she slid back onto her left hand. She wasn’t a widow. She was a wife. She would always be his wife, no matter what name he used. And wasn’t that pathetic? No wonder he hadn’t wanted to come home. He’d had a wife who presented no challenge, no defiance. A wife who only knew how to love him.
Noah stepped into the bedroom, checked the closets that still held his clothes, the large bathroom he and Sabella had planned together.
When he went back to the bedroom he stood in front of the small table by her bed and stared down at the picture of them together.
Sienna Grayson had taken that picture just after they married. He was touching her cheek, the broad gold band of his wedding ring bright and new on his finger.
Reaching into his jeans, he pulled the ring free, rolled it between his fingers then stared down at it. It wasn’t new anymore, but it was still bright, and warm.
He gripped it and pushed it on his finger, his fist clenching as a furious, agonized grimace twisted his lips and he fought the raging need to tell her. To own her. To be the man he knew she missed. The man she loved. Because the man who had come from the ravages of hell wasn’t the same man. And the life he would lead now, after signing on with the Elite Ops, wasn’t a life she would want to be a part of. A life he couldn’t resign from. Nathan Malone could have left the SEALs. If Noah Blake tried to leave the Elite Ops, then he would simply disappear and never return.
It was a life of always lying. Always hiding. Hell, he’d thought he could do it. He’d thought it would be best this way. But with his wedding band branding the flesh of his finger, he wondered how things could have been different. Tried to imagine something different, and he couldn’t. Because he was still the man he had been turned into. And though Sabella was different from the woman he remembered, she would never accept anything but the man she had loved.
She was stubborn. Determined. She thought she knew what he was, who he was, and she was wrong.
He slid the ring from his finger, stared down at it, then shoved it back into his jeans. It was his talisman. His lifeline. His lifetime reminder of what could have been.
Sabella turned away from the mantel as Noah came down the stairs, his gaze finding her instantly before his eyes slipped to the pictures behind her.
She watched him pause, saw the somber sadness that flickered in his eyes for just a second.
“You made a beautiful bride,” he said softly, standing before her, his legs braced solidly beneath him, those black riding chaps emphasizing the heavy bulge in his jeans.
God, he was so thick and hard. And she ached. Ached as though it had been years since he had touched her rather than mere days.
“He would have made any woman look beautiful in a picture with him,” she stated ruefully. “Cameras loved him.”
“And he loved you.” It wasn’t a question.
“He did love me.” She knew he did. “I wonder sometimes if he would love me now.”
He tilted his head, looked at the pictures for a long moment, his expression almost softening as he nodded slowly. “He would have.” He met her gaze once more. “The man in that picture knew how to love. And he knew how to live. You can see it in his face.”
But he didn’t any longer. He didn’t love, and he didn’t live for that love. She could accept that. She had no choice but to accept that.
She moved to him, letting all the hunger, all the need, that had tormented her for two days rise inside her. He had stripped her bare at the park, jerked all the illusions from her eyes, and showed her what she was dealing with. No more dreams, no more pretty, flowery memories.
His eyes narrowed on her as she let his jacket slide from her arms to the floor, her gaze gliding over his jeans.
“One more night?” she asked then.
“As many nights as you’re willing to give me,” he stated.
“Until you have to leave?”
His tongue touched his lower lip and she felt everything inside her tighten.
“Until I have to leave,” he agreed.
She let a small laugh slip free. Bitter. Taunting.
“Who says I’m even going to care when you leave?” She edged up to him, looked up at him from the corner of her eyes. “You know what, Noah?”
“What, Sabella?” The careful tone of his voice warned her, and she didn’t give a damn.
She was doing something that was going to get her spanked, and she wanted spanked.
She took her finger and ran it across his chest. “Perhaps your leaving is for the best.”
“You don’t say?” Beneath the rough, gravelly tone of his voice was a hint of that sexy, lyrical brogue she had always loved.
She smiled, licked her upper lip, and cast him a look from beneath her lashes.
“Just think. You helped me pull my head out of my ass where my husband was concerned. Getting over your leaving should be a breeze. It’s not like you’re going to be here long. Right?”
Did his eyes just darken? Grow wilder?
“You don’t want to push this, baby,” he warned her softly.
She smiled. A slow, easy smile before catching her bottom lip between her teeth and taunting him with her look.
“What, you don’t want to hear the truth?”
His hands gripped her hips as something wilder, something hungrier, suddenly lit those supercharged eyes.
“That’s not the truth,” he growled.
She reached up, caressed his lower lip with her tongue, then nipped it. Hard.
He jerked back, his eyes narrowing as his tongue swiped over the little wound a second before he jerked her closer, his erection burying against her stomach.
“But you’ll be gone, Noah,” she taunted him. “Like the wind,” she stated mockingly. “Goodbye, so long. Just like my husband.” She looked back at the pictures.
Nathan’s loving smile mocked her from the frames, his blue eyes, so full of love, so soft with desire, lied to her every time she looked at them.
That was the hardest part to accept. It made her wish she had never known who Noah Blake was; it would have been easier. She wouldn’t have loved him, this deep she wouldn’t have hurt with the ragged desperation that she hurt with now. She could have let Noah go without a whimper, because she would have hated him for stealing anything that belonged to her Nathan. But how could she hate the man Nathan had become?
“Say goodbye, Noah,” she told him. “You have tonight to do it. Because if you intend to walk out of my life, then it may as well be goodbye. I won’t wait on another man. And I’ll be damned if I’ll become a living shrine to another.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
It rose inside him.
He could feel the dominance fueled by her challenge, her defiance, her intention that tonight was going to be their last night.
He let his gaze flicker over her face, the slight throb on his lower lip reminding him that she was pushing him deliberately.
Those soft gray eyes roiled with shadows, light and dark clashing together as emotions tore inside them both. He wanted to be tender. He wanted her last memory of being his woman to be one of tenderness. But it wasn’t tenderness she wanted. It wasn’t tenderness rising inside him.
The lust wasn’t tempered, but neither was it mindless. Like the death that filled him when he hunted, this lust that rose inside him for this woman was patient, determined.
She smiled tauntingly. As though she didn’t believe he could do it. Couldn’t master her. Couldn’t fight the memory of the man she had become a living shrine for.
His gaze flickered to the pictures behind her, and agony, sharp and red-hot, lanced his soul. He wasn’t that man anymore. A part of him wanted t
o be. A part of him needed to be. But that man really had died, leaving only what had risen from his ashes.
He stepped back from her. He didn’t touch the chaps, he unzipped his jeans and released the thick, heavy length of his cock. He stroked his hand from shaft to tip as his hand struck out, tangling in her hair as she moved to jerk back from him.
“Do you want it all, Sabella?” he drawled then, smiling back at her, daring her. “Do you want it, or do you just want to play games and talk the talk, baby?”
She glared back at him, her lips parting, teeth clenched.
“You came to the bar this evening because of me, didn’t you?”
“I did.” He lowered his head, bared his teeth. “You’re mine. Right here. Right now. As long as that tight, sweet little pussy gets wet for me then you belong to me. Not those jackin’ assed cowboys puffin’ around you like a bunch of damned stud horses butting around after a favorite mare.” Indignation ripped through him. “You were dancing with them.”
“Where were you?” she asked deliberately, her lips pouting back at him mockingly. “Where were you, Noah? Were you here? Were you keeping your mare satisfied, or turning her loose to pasture?”
His eyes widened. “You little witch,” he growled.
His fingers tightened in her hair. “Did you find my replacement?”
“I haven’t started looking yet. Should I let you know before I do?”
He had to grip the base of his cock to keep from blasting his come. She was more than challenging tonight. She was standing before him daring him, fucking daring that dark, deliberate hunger inside him.
“Just waiting on me to leave?” he growled, tipping her head back, feeling her hands against the leather vest he wore over his shirt.
She was peeling it back from his shoulders, tugging at the hold he had on her hair to rid him of it.
“Do you think one of those jackasses on that dance floor can even come close to this, baby?” He shed the vest, releasing her and his cock just long enough to let it drop to the floor.