He continued, his voice hoarse but steady. “That night, the switch in me flipped automatically. I went on autopilot. They killed my brother, and then they laughed right in my face. That was the last sound I heard until the silence around me was so loud everything came back into focus.”
“What happened?” I asked, fingering my throat as my stomach twisted and I readied for his reply.
“Blood was everywhere. It stained the ground, the rocks around the fire. The makeshift walls of the shacks were splattered, and my boots stood in a puddle. I glanced behind me at my team, who all stood stoic and pale in the dark. They stared at me like I was a stranger, like we hadn’t just spent the last few years shoved up each other’s asses. They were shocked, and at first, it didn’t really penetrate. We’d been in these situations before, where missions turned into bloodbaths, where we had to make decisions no one else could have made.”
He paused and glanced at his hands. Lifting them in front of his face, looking at the front and then the backs as if he were seeing them not as they were right now, but as they had been that night.
“I was covered in blood, too. My hands were slick with it. So was my gun. My uniform was stained and saturated… Then I realized I could see myself too well for the middle of the night and in a place with no electricity.”
Alex walked to the fireplace, taking care to give me a wide berth. Both his hands hit the mantle, and he leaned down, his head dropping low, and gazed into the crackling fire. “The entire village was burning. The crappy buildings, the little belongings they all had…” He sucked in a breath and straightened. “A wooden toy truck.”
How horrible. How life altering. I was wrong before. I didn’t understand. Yes, I tried, but I would never know what his eyes had seen. I went to him, speeding across the space with full intent to comfort him.
“Don’t touch me.”
His warning stopped me in my tracks. The way he spoke was low and hard. It wasn’t a request. It was a demand.
“Alex…” I wanted to badly to reach out. I knew I couldn’t comfort him, but oh, how I longed to try.
“I don’t deserve your comfort, Sabrina. I deserve to live with what I did. With how I acted.”
“That was an extreme situation.” I asserted. “A situation that no human should ever have to be in. You can’t know—”
“I killed kids! Women!” he yelled, spinning around to stare at me. His face was a mask. A mix of the Alex I knew and the man he was describing right now. “I killed families.” I watched him swallow, and some of the chill left his eyes. He became more recognizable. “I killed kids whose only crime was being connected to the scum who lived there.”
He expected me to be horrified and ashamed. Maybe he hoped I would be. He hoped I’d be so disgusted I’d never touch him again.
He might hope it, but that wasn’t what Alex wanted.
His chest was still heaving when I started to move again. His eyes flashed in warning, and he took a step back. I ignored the look and his movement, instead quickening my steps.
He didn’t shove me away when I slipped my arms around his waist or pillowed my cheek in the middle of his chest. Pressing close, I wrapped my arms around him so tight I had room to rest my forearms up his back and press both palms against the backs of his shoulders.
“It’s okay.” I soothed.
His body was rigid. The way his heart hammered at my cheek almost hurt. He believed he didn’t deserve any comfort, but he was hurting enough to not push me away.
“How can you touch me right now?”
It was simple. “I love you.”
His heart literally skipped a beat. When it started up again, it was at a much slower thud than just a second ago. His body was still locked. Upon my confession, it stiffened even more.
“What?” His voice scraped from his throat, rough and low.
I lifted my head to meet his eyes. “I love you. You shattered my heart three years ago. And all that did was create a million pieces inside me to love you still. There is no limit to what I feel for you, so if you’re telling me these things to try and scare me away, it won’t work.”
Emotion flooded his eyes at the same time he moved. My legs wrapped around his middle, and his hands cupped my ass.
He didn’t kiss me. He kept his head back so our stares could meet. I kept the truth right there for him to see, proving it, not backing down from it. Loving him wasn’t something I should be ashamed of, and it wasn’t something I wanted him to be ashamed of either.
“I’ve killed so many people. So many it’s not even hard anymore,” he confessed, the words ripping out so jaggedly it tore through him and into me. “I’m not a good guy.”
“You’re not a bad guy either.”
“Say it again.”
“I love you.”
“Again.”
“Alex. I love you.”
He turned and pressed me against the wall beside the fireplace. The stone facing was cold and rough against my back. His body pinned me so his hands could cup my face. Strands of hair fell around us, tangling in his grip and lying across my chin.
He stared another moment, and I let him look his fill. Finally, his eyes drifted down to my neck, still searching for a bruise he hadn’t left. As if seeing a bruise would somehow justify everything he felt. He whispered, “I’m sorry. You’ll never know how fucking sorry I am.”
When he tried to look down, I lifted his face. “I’m not sorry. I want all of you, Alex. Even the parts that scare you to death.”
“I am scared, kitten. I’m so afraid of not being the man you deserve.”
“You already are.”
A sound ripped out from somewhere inside him, and his head finally swooped in. The first touch seared me. The second touch melted me, and when his tongue swept into my mouth, taking command, I gave in completely.
Alex held my head, keeping me still while the assault of his kiss sent a frenzy of emotion through me. The way he pinned me, the way he owned every inch of our mouths as we moved together, left me feeling like a volcano filled with molten hot lava, ready to erupt.
But I would only erupt when he allowed it.
I succumbed. As strong and capable as I was, I gave up all control to Alex. At times, I loved fighting against him. I loved pushing back and getting a reaction.
But right now, I wanted him to feel just how much I trusted him. I wanted him to see that even if he was afraid, I was not.
I wanted to be owned right now. To be owned and commanded by him and his touch. There was nothing more I wanted as badly as I wanted him. And so I surrendered to every feeling he ever elicited in me. I gave in to the love I so desperately tried to deny.
My center pooled with desire, and twinges of pain sparked through my lower belly. My mouth ripped away, my head fell back, and a deep moan tumbled from my lips. Alex kissed across my jaw and down my neck. I lifted my chin, exposing more skin, and he took full advantage.
He held me prisoner against the stone, his hard body, soft lips, and I endured every single twinge of pain from my already damp entrance that nearly wept for him.
Alex pulled back, leaving me drunk and dizzy. “Tell me I don’t have to stop.”
“Please don’t stop. Don’t ever stop again.”
Our lips fused again, and my body left the wall. He was clutching me against him, and I tightened my thighs as he walked down the short hall and kicked open the bedroom door.
My back hit the mattress, and Alex came over me, straddling my thighs. His cock strained against his sweats above my middle, and I reached out to brush my fingertips over the bulge.
Gently, Alex moved my hand aside and reached for the buttons on the flannel. With agonizingly slow, patient movements, he undid each button, one at a time.
I arched up when he was partway done, making the shirt fall open a little bit more, and his eyes caressed the exposed skin. When all the buttons were undone, he spread the shirt on either side of my body, fully revealing all of me to his heated gaze.
&nbs
p; His hand hovered over my bare breasts, making my breath catch as I anticipated his palm on my delicate flesh. At the last minute, he drew back, instead brushing his fingers through my hair, spreading it across the blanket beneath me.
“You are so goddamn beautiful,” he whispered, raking his eyes over me again. I was flushed and heated. He wasn’t even touching me, yet I felt seared to the core.
“Like an angel.” He went on. “When I was out there… when things were really bad, it was you I thought of.”
“Me?”
He nodded. “You were always the purest thing in my world.”
I whispered his name, sitting up and reaching for him. Our chests collided, my skin on his, and we tumbled back onto the bed with him falling between my legs.
Alex pushed in with one single stroke, and my body clutched him tightly as if vowing to never let him go. He groaned and pushed up, staring down. “I don’t think I can walk away this time.”
“Don’t ever,” I echoed. “Don’t ever leave.”
Leaning down, he kissed me deep as he thrust into my body passionately.
A little while later, I arched up into his body, my mouth falling soundlessly open. He grazed feather-light kisses over my neck, yet another apology for how he’d reacted to the dream.
My back hit the mattress once more. My eyes sought his, and our stares collided. “I love you,” I told him. “That won’t ever stop.”
His eyes flared, and his hips bore down.
Both of us crested and fell together, finally dissolving into a heap in the center of the mattress, two bodies creating a single imprint.
Alex
“Do you want to know why I left?”
She sucked in a breath, and a little of that post-sex haze in her greenish-golden gaze lifted. A ribbon of pain passed over her features, almost like a ghost haunting an old house. “Because my brother told you to.”
I moved, sliding off her supple, flushed body to fit myself right beside her. She shifted, too, and we ended up spooning against each other, my front against her warm, fine ass. “We’d only been back from that mission, the one I just told you about, for a couple weeks. We were all still raw. Still on edge.”
“That’s the one where Wells died.” Her voice was solemn.
I nodded and rested my chin on her bare shoulder. “Such a waste of a good man.”
Sabrina wiggled a little closer into me. Her presence affected me right down to the bottoms of my feet. The urge to bury myself into her so deep I didn’t know where she ended and I began called to me. It tempted me. It didn’t matter I’d just had her. I wanted her again. Talking about this kind of thing left me raw and essentially vulnerable. Her body was like the devil on my shoulder, whispering that I could forget everything the second she was under me.
I kept talking, telling the devil I knew he was a goddamn liar. We had to talk about this. It was beyond clear to me I couldn’t walk away this time. I wanted us to endure.
The truth was endurance. She had to know everything, the darkest places I kept hidden. Only then would we have a fighting chance.
“You made me feel better… more human. You were the only one who still looked at me like I was just me and not some frozen-over ice block. I just wanted to be around you,” I whispered in her ear. “You were all I could think about.”
“The night my brother walked in and found us kissing…” She recalled softly, as if my words had taken her back to that night.
“We were more than kissing,” I said, kind of rueful. “If he hadn’t walked in, I wouldn’t have stopped.”
“I didn’t want you to then. Just like I didn’t want you to tonight.”
“You have no idea how much it tortures me I wasn’t your first. Your only.”
Her body softened against mine, and she whispered, “You are my only.”
“Maybe if I hadn’t killed all those people. Maybe if I hadn’t lost control.”
“I don’t understand.”
Gazing over her shoulder and down her body at where our hands were clasped tightly together, I explained, “Mercer didn’t want me around you. He’d just witnessed me slaughtering people without any kind of attachment. Yeah, the guys all knew I was icy. Hell, they already called me Ice. But this was a whole new level. I think some of them had actually been afraid of me that night.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” she said bravely, like a kitten with a giant roar. I loved she wasn’t afraid of me, but I wanted her to look past any allusion she might have. I was only a man. A flawed one at that.
“Maybe you should be.”
“My brother had no right to tell you to leave.”
I kissed her shoulder. “He didn’t.”
She jolted, turning to gaze at me over her shoulder. “What?”
“He told me to stay away from you. He told me he’d kill me if I touched you again.”
She hissed out a breath and turned back around, pushing my arms away and sitting up in the bed. “You should have fought for me!” she yelled, hurt raw in her eyes. Her fist collided with my chest, and then she hit me again.
I let her hit me. I deserved it.
She started weeping. Her fists fell away, and her head hung low. I wanted to reach for her. To curl my hands around her body and pull her back down.
I refrained.
“He was right,” I whispered, reliving some of the misery I’d felt that day. Of all the fucked-up shit I’d seen and done in my lifetime, nothing compared to how miserable it was to hear from a witness how savage I’d been. Those images in my head coupled with my own spotty memories and recalling how my own brothers had stared at me that night convinced me. I had to leave.
Her eyes flashed with anger, but I wanted to make her understand.
“He painted a bloody and grim picture of what I did that night, filled in details my own mind omitted. Daniel said I couldn’t be trusted around you. That switch inside me could flip anytime, and you would pay the price.”
She swiped at her cheek deftly, then grabbed the ends of the open flannel still on her body and pulled it closed over her chest.
“I had to go. After what I’d done, who I thought I might become. I couldn’t even stay with the team anymore. Wells was dead. I was a liability to their safety. To my own. If I couldn’t be one hundred percent trustworthy, if those guys couldn’t know without a shadow of a doubt that I would never turn on them, I couldn’t stay. My contract was almost up, and around that time, I got word Liam had been injured.” My mouth tipped up a little, remembering when I’d gotten to the hospital and saw Liam for the first time in almost a year. “He was more of a mess than I was.”
“Seriously?” she asked, unbelieving.
I nodded. “In a fucked-up way, focusing on his problems helped me with my own. So I took leave, and when my contract expired, I refused to reenlist. They were shocked. They offered me a huge pile of cash as a signing bonus.”
“You still said no.”
“My place is here at home. With my family.”
Her lower lip wobbled when I said it, and I knew it hurt her. I didn’t want that, but it was my truth.
“I could have been your family, too.”
“You are my family, always have been. You wouldn’t be here right now if you weren’t.”
“You left anyway. You didn’t even say good-bye.”
“If I had tried to say good-bye to you, I never would have left.”
“That’s the lamest excuse I’ve ever heard.”
I sat up, catching her by the shoulders. Giving her a gentle shake, forcing her to look into my eyes. “It’s not lame. It’s the truth. You would have asked me to stay, and I would have buckled. I would have gone to war with your brother, the guy you love most in this world. It would have ripped you apart, and you would have had to choose.”
She looked away, knowing I was right.
“I was fucked up in the head, kitten. I felt like a walking timebomb. I wasn’t about to go off in your vicinity.”
“Y
ou would have stayed if I asked?”
A choked sound ripped from me. “I tell you how fucked up I was, how I massacred an entire village by myself and I was terrified I might go subzero again and hurt you—and that’s what you say?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Well, would you?”
I laughed. “I fucking love you.”
She froze.
I froze.
We both stared at each other.
Her throat began moving first, working and trying to swallow. Eventually, she dragged in a ragged breath, the sound making her sound asthmatic. “You love me?”
“I’ve loved you from almost the first moment I saw you sitting at that poker table, shuffling cards and purring like the kitten you are.”
She sucked her lower lip into her mouth and released it. My still semi-hard dick jerked. “And still?”
Unable to stop, I dragged the pad of my thumb over her damp lip. “Always.”
Her body folded into mine. She felt so right it physically hurt.
Sabrina sniffled, burrowing in a little closer, then wiped her nose and cheek on my shoulder before pulling back. “You’re a stupid jerk.”
I stroked the side of her head. “I know, kitten.”
“I like when you call me that,” she confessed like it was some kind of crime. Like I didn’t already know.
Remembering how upset she was before the accident, before meeting my parents, I took the chance to tell her, “You’re the only woman I’ve ever called that. The only one I ever will. You will always be my kitten in a world of lions and tigers.”
Her forehead rested against my chest, and I didn’t resist filling my arms with the rest of her.
“I had to go, Sabrina. I didn’t trust myself enough to say good-bye. I never would have left.”
“I didn’t want you to go.”
I didn’t want to go either. “I know.”
She sat up again, facing me. “We have another chance now.”
I searched her eyes for long moments before asking, “Is that really what you want?”
Her eyes rolled heavenward. “Really?”
I chuckled. “I know it’s hard to see past all this.” I gestured to my naked body. She gave me a playful shove, and I fell back into the blankets.
Subzero (BearPaw Resort Book 4) Page 18