Page 51 of Forbidden Bond

“Vex.”

She stalled. He unbuttoned his shirt while she absorbed the ramifications of that.

“He’s dead?”

“No.” That actually provoked zero emotion. Dead or alive, she really didn’t care. “Wishes he was.”

Which suggested he was living only at McDade pleasure. As in, Conn had him fully in control. Was he injured? Tied up? Abandoned somewhere? Did that mean their plan went off without a hitch? What did “no one important” mean when it came to murder?

“If he’s not dead, why do you want me—”

“It’ll have your name on it.” That’ll send a helluva message from one faction to the other. “We’ll make sure he sees it, Silvio too.”

“Won’t that cause a problem? If I write it, and Steeple prints it on my word, people will see Evander in the street and…”

The sly slant to those delicious lips said so much, not as much as the darkness around him.

“No one will see Vex in the light of day again. Not without my permission.”

“You got him.” Unbelievable. “You actually—oh my God, baby.”

The weird elation that could only be identified as joy at reprisal dwindled to nothing when he took off his shirt. And there it was, the fresh scar on his torso. A stark blemish on his enticing flesh.

“You write it, we’ll handle the printing.”

She didn’t care about that, about Evander, anymore, not in light of the memories. Was that why her love pulled her hand away before? So she wouldn’t feel it? Did it still hurt? She’d sent him out there to Evander while…

“Conn…” Going to him, her fingertips met the edge of the wound. “Are you in pain?”

“No,” he said in time with opening a drawer to pop a couple of pills from a bottle. “Do you need your computer? Everything you need will be brought to you.”

What she needed was a conversation with him.

“I need us to talk about this. It’s like it never happened. We’re out here, we haven’t talked about it, now there’s Evander mess. Baby, I want to know what happened the night my father took me from you.”

“You were there, you know what happened.”

Probably better than anyone else. She couldn’t see him calling his guys in for a rundown of the evening’s events. They’d have even more questions than her. If he didn’t want to talk about it, that was one thing. If he was keeping specific details from the others, she needed to know, or else she could reveal something he wanted under wraps.

Okay, that sounded like a reason, it was a reason. In truth though, his wellbeing was her main concern.

“After my attack, you said I had to talk about, that if I couldn’t, I wasn’t dealing with it.”

He caught her fingers in a fist. “Wasn’t my first time, I’ve been shot before.”

“That doesn’t make it okay. The trauma of being hurt—”

“The trauma was losing you, watching him take you out of there, away from me…” He gritted his teeth, clearly still riled by the memory. “No one takes you from me.”

“No one did,” she said, adamant in getting closer. “Physically, he might have led me away, but I am always yours, Connel McDade. Always.”

“I vowed to keep you safe.”

“You did keep me safe. If you hadn’t come with me, I’d be dead by now. That doesn’t make it okay though. Don’t you think I dealt with my own guilt? I put you in that room. You gave me the choice and I asked you to come. If I’d told you to stay in bed—”

“I wouldn’t have.”

Confused, she frowned. “You wouldn’t?”

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