Chill

by Stephanie Rowe

  He kissed her lightly and moved his hips. Teasing. Nudging. “Are you sure?” His voice was tight with the effort of restraint, and tendons were taut in his neck. He moved his hips again, pressing a little deeper. “You say yes, and I’m going to take you at your word.”

  She knew the answer. She was utterly committed to wanting him in whatever way she could have him. He filled that void in her heart she’d been struggling to fill her whole life. Luke had the home, he was strong, he could protect her and she wanted him.

  The future didn’t matter. It couldn’t matter. She had to take what she could get.

  His hips began to move faster. Press a little harder. “Isa?”

  She met his intense gaze and trailed her finger over the tense set of his jaw. “Yes,” she whispered. “I want you to make love to me.”

  “Isa.” He whispered her name so reverently she felt like a goddess to whom he was paying homage, and then he kissed her. A hot, passionate kiss that shattered all her restraints. She was suddenly desperate for more, to kiss him deeper and—

  He plunged deep inside her, and she gasped at the sensation of him entering her, of her body adjusting to fit his, of them coming together in the way that bound a man and a woman forever.

  “Jesus, Isa.” He caught her face as he withdrew and sank deeper again. “You feel amazing.”

  Her heart tightened at the raw passion in his voice, and then he was kissing her again, and she was swept up in the sensations rushing through her. His weight pressing her to the bed was erotic and sexy, not a threat. Her skin felt like it was on fire, radiating heat, so sensitive to every touch as he kissed her, touched her, drove deeper and deeper, again and again, until her whole body was shaking and trembling, until she couldn’t think of anything but him, couldn’t feel anything but his body against hers, inside hers, until the pressure built inside her so much she felt like her skin was going to explode and—

  “Let it go, hon. Just melt into me.” Luke’s husky whisper went right to her core, and her whole body went rigid as the orgasm shot through her.

  Luke drove deep and then let out a shout. His body vibrated and his muscles went utterly taut as he buried his face in her neck, his body convulsing against hers. She clung to him as the orgasms rolled through them both, together. He wrapped his arms around her and held her so tightly she could barely breathe, his body still convulsing as he whispered her name again and again against her skin.

  It wasn’t until they were both still that her tears began to fall.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Luke didn’t want to ever let Isabella go.

  Ever.

  Her body felt so right beneath him, and he couldn’t bring himself to loosen his grip on her. Making love to her had been unlike anything he’d ever experienced. Even being with Anna hadn’t been this intense. And since Anna, he hadn’t let himself care about anyone he’d been with. He hadn’t been able to afford to.

  But Isabella had gotten under his skin. He pulled back to look at her face. Tears were rolling down her cheeks. He swore. “Did I hurt you?”

  She shook her head once, and laid her hand over his jaw. It was such a tender gesture, and he pressed his face into her touch. “I need to know something.”

  He raised his brows. “Sure.”

  She brushed her thumb over his whiskers. “Why did you leave Marcus?”

  Luke stiffened. “I told you. My mom—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “That happened when you were eight, but you didn’t leave until you were thirty. Why did you finally leave? What happened?” She caught his face. “I need to know exactly what it is about Marcus that you can’t forgive.”

  With a groan, he rolled onto his side and pulled her up against him. She snuggled into him, and he closed his eyes to enjoy the feeling of skin to skin…but at the same time he kept listening for the sound of approaching planes.

  Not that he thought there was a chance they’d be found, but he was keeping alert. He’d give himself five more minutes to enjoy Isabella, and then he’d get up. It simply felt too good to have her skin against his, to feel the heat of her body, the softness of her hair…“After the incident with my mom, Marcus brought me back and kept me tight by his side. Before her death, he kept me out of his business, but afterward, he sucked me in as much as he could. He taught me to shoot within three months, sent me on missions, taught me about the business.”

  Isabella began tracing circles on his chest, and he concentrated on that sensation, making sure to keep his emotions partitioned from the story he was telling. “His business became somewhat less violent after my mom’s death, but it was still heading in that direction. His ethics were questionable at best, and I wanted out. I cut bait after college and I figured if I got a PhD, I’d be able to have my own career and ditch him.”

  “But he co-opted your degree for his purposes.”

  “Yeah.” Luke lifted a lock of Isabella’s hair and rubbed it across his cheek. “So damn soft,” he murmured.

  Isabella scooted on top of him and propped herself up on his chest with her elbows. “Then what?” Her face was intense, her voice demanding. He could read her desperation for answers in the determined set of her body.

  “Then I met Anna.”

  She blinked in surprise. “Who?”

  Luke tucked Isabella’s hair behind her ears. “She was a fellow grad student. Brilliant. From a good family. Her dad was a college professor and her mom was a minister. A minister. I loved that. Freaking loved the fact they said grace every night and that no one in the family would consider killing a business partner who tried to screw them.”

  Isabella’s lips tightened. “She was the antithesis of your life. An immaculately clean existence and background. No skeletons in her closet, I assume?”

  “Anna had never uttered a curse word in her whole life, let alone killed anyone. I think her purity was part of why I was so attracted to her.” Isabella tensed, and he squeezed her more tightly against him. “Anna and I started to date, and it got serious.” He kept tunneling his fingers through her hair, needing the touch of her body to stay in the present. “We got engaged.”

  “Did you love her?” Isabella’s voice was tight.

  Luke shrugged. “I loved what she represented at least. I dated her for three years before I finally asked her to marry me. When she said yes, I finally told Marcus about her. I’d worked hard to keep Anna under the radar, and I’d succeeded. Marcus was furious when I told him.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice at the memory of how Marcus had lit into him when he’d come into his office, riding the high of the new engagement. “The bastard couldn’t afford to share me.”

  Isabella cocked her head and gave him a thoughtful look. “Did it occur to you that maybe he was angry because loving your mother had gotten her killed, and he was afraid the same thing would happen to you? Maybe he was trying to protect you and Anna.”

  Her comment made Luke freeze for a second. Was she right? Then he thought of the man Marcus had been, and he dismissed it. “Marcus wasn’t that sensitive.”

  “But—”

  “Two days later,” he continued, “I got a request from my father to go to South America to retrieve the earrings that went with the necklace you stole. I refused. He said if I didn’t go, Anna would get hurt.”

  Isabella frowned. “He threatened her?”

  “Sure did.”

  “What did you do?”

  “When Anna found a photo of my mother in her locker at the gym, I realized it was my dad’s way of saying he could get to her anywhere. So I went.” The same anger began to fester inside him again. “He gave me three days, but I took my time, just to piss him off. On my way back after a week, I got a call from Anna’s father.” He worked his jaw, feeling that same fury and disbelief that had nearly destroyed him eight years ago. “She’d been critically wounded in a hit and run while she was jogging.”

  Isabella stiffened. “Dear God.”

  “She died two da
ys after I got to the hospital.” He felt a raw satisfaction in the shock he saw in Isabella’s face. Maybe now, she would understand. “It was my punishment for taking too long.” He worked his jaw. “I sat through her funeral and watched them bury a beautiful young woman who had done nothing but fall in love with the wrong man. Afterward, I drove to Marcus’s house. I walked in there with a gun. I was planning to kill him and Leon. To end it all. Nate was with me, and we were going to do it together.”

  “Oh, Luke.” She set her hand on his arm.

  “The place was empty. No one to shoot.” His body was trembling now with that same fury and betrayal. Seeing Anna in the coffin had made something inside him snap. “Nate and I sat there all night waiting for someone to come home, pounding back Marcus’s finest scotch. When the door to his office finally opened in the morning, I shot right through the wood. I didn’t even give a shit who was on the other side of the door. Anyone involved with Marcus deserved to die.”

  Isabella sat up, her hand over her heart. “Who was it?”

  Luke fisted his hands to keep from pulling Isabella back toward him. If she wanted to go, he would let her. “It was the interior decorator dropping off samples on her way to the gym. My bullet hit her in the chest, two inches from her heart.”

  Isabella’s jaw dropped. “Dear God, Luke!”

  “As I stood there, in my half-drunk state, watching her clasp her chest and fall to the floor, everything came crashing down on me. I realized what I’d become, that I was willing to trade a life for a life, that I’d turned into a man who would murder in cold blood.” He stared at the ceiling, remembering the sensation of the world crushing down on him, unwilling to see the recrimination on Isabella’s face. “So, I hid the earrings and I walked out. I was done with that life, and I was getting out before Marcus could wreck me and use me to destroy others.”

  Isabella was still staring at him as if he were a freak. “What about the woman? Did you even stay to see if she was all right?”

  “Fuck, Isabella, of course I did. She recovered just fine, and Marcus paid her a fortune for her troubles. She quit her job and now splits her time between her flat in Paris and her mansion in the Florida Keys.” He knew, because he’d tracked her for years. It wasn’t until he’d read she’d married some rich entrepreneur and had two kids that he’d finally allowed himself to accept she was okay. That he hadn’t stolen her life from her.

  “Oh.” Isabella sank back down onto the bed. “Wow.” To his surprise, she snuggled up against his side, as if he hadn’t just told her he’d shot a woman in cold blood. “I understand now,” she said quietly. “You had to leave.”

  “Yeah.” He shuddered as she set her hand on his chest and gently stroked him. He hadn’t been expecting Isabella to reach out to him after his story, but he should have. He’d never met anyone who stuck so firmly to those she had decided to believe in. He wrapped his arm around her and hugged her close, pressing his lips to her forehead. Thank you, Isa.

  For the first time in his life, he didn’t feel dirty. Isabella made him feel like he had a chance to cleanse the rot from his soul. He rubbed her earlobe between his thumb and forefinger and rested his cheek against her hair. “Once I got out, I swore I would never aim a gun at another living soul again,” he said quietly. “I also promised myself I would never get in a position where I could be manipulated again, and I would never endanger anyone by letting them get close to me.”

  She propped herself up so she could see him. Her brow was furrowed with understanding. “But then your friendship with Cort got him shot.”

  “Yeah. I can’t do this again.” He framed her face and pulled her down so he could kiss her. “You will stay safe, Isa. I swear it. The cycle breaks now.”

  Tears filled her eyes. “Luke,” she whispered. “I didn’t understand why you left.”

  “I know.”

  She touched his jaw, a brush so gentle and tender he wanted to grab her wrist and never let her go. “I didn’t know how you suffered,” she said. “I had no concept of how going back there will make you suffer.”

  “Fuck that.” He brushed his thumb over her cheek. “It’s long overdue. I’m ready to end it.”

  She shook her head. “Before you go back there for me, I need to tell you something.”

  “No, hon.” He held her gaze. “I’m going back for me. Keeping you alive is an added bonus. Nothing you could say is going to change my mind.”

  She put her hands on his wrists. “I have to tell you something.”

  He raised his brows at the urgency of her tone. “Okay.”

  “I killed a man.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Luke’s face went from compassionate to utterly impassive instantly. Almost cold. Isabella realized he was hiding all his emotions. “What happened?” he asked.

  She swallowed, afraid to continue, but knowing she had to. Luke had confirmed her hopes, that there was more to the story than him simply judging his father for being imperfect. A woman had died because of him, and he’d almost crossed a line for which he could never have forgiven himself. Despite the fact that he’d pulled himself out of it and changed who he was, his blame and self-recrimination was relentless, and it broke her heart.

  For that, she would trust him with her secret. Because she had to. His story had opened her heart to him even more, and so had making love. She couldn’t go any further, wondering if he would ultimately reject her. She needed to know now. “My mother was a prostitute,” she said.

  She kept her gaze pinned on his chest, unwilling to see the possible censure in his eyes. “It was the only way she knew to earn money to provide for us. But when I was fourteen, she got a job as a secretary and quit working the streets.” She still remembered when she and her mother had burned her mother’s wigs in a small fire in the alley behind their apartment. “My mom was so happy that day,” she whispered. “It was the first time I’d ever seen a grown-up cry with happiness.”

  Luke began to stroke her hair, and she leaned into his touch.

  “For three years, she worked at that office. She made me promise I’d go to college. No matter what. Nothing less than an A was acceptable, because she wanted me to have the future and the choices she hadn’t had.”

  “She sounds like a great mother.”

  Isabella looked up at the softness of his tone. His eyes were dark, and kind. “She was.”

  He smiled. There was a tinge of sadness in his expression, and she realized he was remembering his own mother. “What happened?”

  The warmth in her heart faded, replaced by tightness as she tried to block the pain of the memories. “She met a man. A wonderful, amazing guy named Stanley Henderson. He had money and could take care of her. He treated her like the princess she’d always wanted to be. They fell in love and he proposed to her.” She smiled at Luke. “You should have seen her dancing around the apartment. I’d never seen her like that in my whole life. She was practically radiating joy. We would dance and sing and run down the street screaming, just to be silly.”

  Luke returned her smile. “She deserved to be happy.”

  “She did.” Isabella’s joy faded, and she toyed with the hair on Luke’s chest, unable to meet his gaze as she continued. “The night before the wedding, my mom decided she had to tell him the truth about her past.”

  “Oh…hell.”

  “Stan walked out the minute she told him.” Isabella brushed the back of her hand over her damp cheek. “He told her he could never touch her again, knowing how dirty her body and her soul were.”

  Luke swore. “Son of a bitch.”

  Isabella blinked back tears. “My mom was devastated. Just crushed. It hadn’t even occurred to her that his love was conditional.”

  Luke began stroking her hair again, and his touch felt so wonderful. It chased away some of the pain and loneliness that had held her heart hostage for so long. “I was at the library studying, and she called me up, absolutely hysterical. I tried to talk her down, but she was
insane with grief. She told me she was going back to a life where the men never rejected her.”

  Luke’s fingers tightened in her hair. “Shit.”

  “I screamed at her not to go, but she hung up on me. I raced home.” She wiped the back of her hand across her damp cheeks. “I ran as hard as I’d ever run, my heart screaming for her, but when I got home, she was gone.” The grief and horror from that night welled up hard and fast, just as painful as they had been in that moment. “I was too late. I called her pimp and I had to threaten him with the cops before he told me where he’d sent her.”

  Luke was rubbing her back now, but it didn’t stop the pain, the tears. “It was some high-class club. They wouldn’t let me inside. I kicked one of them in the shin and then ran inside, searching for my mom. I couldn’t find her. I looked everywhere. The dance floor. The tables. The lap-dance rooms. I looked and looked and there were so many people and then I found the other rooms. The ones with beds. I pounded at each one, and no one would help me, everyone was just doing their thing and too busy to care, and then I reached one and I heard my mom screaming.” She covered her ears at the memory of that sound. “She was screaming, an awful, awful noise. I got the door open, I don’t know how, I don’t remember, but when I got in there, my mom was on the floor and this man was beating her, and I couldn’t stop him, and he grabbed me and tried to touch me and I got away and he went back to my mom and I hit him with the lamp again and again and again and then he finally stopped and he fell to the ground…”

  She shuddered. “There was so much blood,” she whispered. “Mine, his, my mom’s…”

  “Isa.” Luke wrapped his arms around her and hugged her against him. “I’m so sorry, hon.”

  Isabella buried her face in Luke’s chest. “I called an ambulance and then crawled over there to hold her. She was so broken and battered. I held her on my lap and told her I loved her and that it would be okay and that the ambulance would be there soon…” Sobs caught her off guard, and Luke’s arms tightened around her. “It took an hour to come,” she whispered. “They said afterward that the internal bleeding was just too bad and too fast. By the time the paramedics were there, it was too late. If they’d come right away, they might have had a chance. But no one came for her. She wasn’t worth it.”