Page 45 of Savage Fire

Fang growled at her, making her nipples hard.

“I did notrejectyou—if anything you rejected me.”

“I rejected your offer to be your sex slave. Do you know how humiliating that was, to find out how little I meant to you when the truth of it slapped me in the face around your dining room table?”

He growled again, moving to grab her biceps, his grip hard enough to keep her in place but not rough enough to leave bruises.

“I know I fucked up,mi fuega, I own that. And I will apologize for it for the rest of my life. But you have to know what I never meant to humiliate you. My intention—as arrogant and skewed as it was—was to show you how much you meant to me by offering you a place in my Hive.”

Tessa stared at him, his pained expression. She gazed into his eyes, two chocolate eyes that were bleeding remorse, hurt, fear.

Sighing, she dropped her arms, sagging her shoulders and shaking her head. She was so tired…exhausted by the events pummeling her the last twelve months. She was ready to throw in the bloody towel, give Vegas the finger, and find someplace out of the way to re-settle.

You’re not a quitter. No, she’d never been a quitter. But the betrayal of the man she was falling for and the men she’d trusted with her life was wearing on her like nothing ever had before.

Feeling a little too close to defeat, she sighed, “I just don’t understand, Fang.”

He smirked, leaning in until all she could sense was him.

“You only need to understand one thing right now,mi fuega,” he murmured all velvety—smooth, rich, decadent.

“Oh, what’s that?”

“This.” Without a moment to breathe, think, or move, he swooped down and took her mouth, growling like a beast escaping its cage. He sank his tongue into her mouth, bold, remorseless, deep. Like he was determined to dive into her and live inside her for the night. Like he had the right. He gripped her hair tight, pulling just enough to control the depth and direction of the kiss, and just enough to create delicious, prickling pain in her scalp. She shuddered, her nerve endings coming to life, a fire racing from her mouth to her head, down her spine, and into her pussy. She groaned and he answered with one of his own, a deeper, darker sound. Their kiss was ravenous, hungry, devastating. Thrills of pleasure and heat vibrated through her, from her diamond hard nipples to her clit.

“Dios, mi amor, what you do to me,” he rasped, taking her mouth with his once more.

Mi amor…his love. But she wasn’t his love. Not when he had five other women he “loved.” The heat of her need doused, Tessa could finally think past the pleasure of his kiss. Pushing back against the rising animal of lust, snapping to be released, Tessa physically pushed against Fang’s chest, gasping for air once his mouth was no longer holding hers captive.

“You can’t do that,” she snapped. “You can’t just come in here and act like nothing happened, like you didn’t set a trap for me and expect me to fall right into it. You hurt me, Fang, so fucking much I still can’t verbalize it. You know me, know the kind of woman I am, and you still thought making me one of your Bees was acceptable. That I wasn’t good enough for more than bits and pieces of you, bits and pieces I would still have to share with five other women.” She sucked back a sob and brushed her hair back from her forehead, needing to do something with her hands because the urge to punch him was strong.

“I know you won’t believe me, but I haven’t been with any of them for months.”

Tessa knew what “them” he was referring to, and the mention of them made her stomach flop painfully.

She laughed flatly. “You’re right, I don’t believe you. You’re a passionate, Alpha male, Fang. Sex is like your lifeblood. I cannot believe that you haven’t had sex in two hours let alone months.”

Fang growled, his large body tensing, the heat of his desire and his frustrations pulsing from him like a heartbeat.

“Yes, I’ve been with them since we met, I wasn’t sure there could be anything between us—even though I’d hope there could be. I foolishly thought that I could flirt with you, tease you, taunt you, and still go home to my Bees to let off the tension.”

Red flittered over her vision, and she crossed her arms over her chest, hoping to hide that her anger was only feeding her need for him. A need she fuckinghated.

“So…you’re telling me that you would fuck with me, tease me, get yourself all wound up, then go home and fuck your desire for me off with another woman? I was your own personal spank bank, right? Instead of scraping off the bad body Latin Lover persona and being real with me in an effort tohavesomething real with me, you played me then fucked someone else in place of me. Like a goddamn stand-in for the real deal. The real Tessa. That’s some shit right there,pendejo.”

He nodded slowly, giving her a moment to gather her thoughts once more. He knew she needed this, that they both needed this time of venting, ranting, clearing the air. So that when he told her what he needed to say, she’d be all emptied out, ready to refilled with something good.

Can Fang give me that?

God she wished it was possible. When they were just friends, back when he was her rock after her kidnapping, and during her recovery, she’d lived for those moments with him. He’d been kind, thoughtful, careful, funny, fun, protective, and still damn sexy. It twisted her up that some of those nights that he hadn’t spent with her, he was probably spending with his Bees. But they weren’t together then—still weren’t—so she really had no reason to be jealous.

Except for the fact that he made you believe you two were more than what you really were, so your heart tumbled into something stupid.

“You’re right, Tessa. I am an asshole; I can’t deny that. It’s been my default setting for fifteen years. The kid with the wide eyes and open heart died the day I turned fifteen, and I became the man standing before you. The idiot. The asshole. The arrogant bastard. I cannot change what made me who I am, but I can change who I am to you. I can be the man you need me to be,mi corazon.”

Her chest tightening at the sincerity in his words, in the way he carried himself, the tension in his shoulders, the determination in his eyes.

God, she wanted to believe him…but the Bees. And what was that about him dying at fifteen? She knew next to nothing about Fang from before she first met him. She knew he was originally from Colombia, he had no family save the club brothers, and he spoke Spanish and Portuguese. He shared nothing of himself from before he came to Vegas. Then again, she’d been vague about own past as well.

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