Page 30 of Past Due

“Actually, yes,” I said, tossing my purse and the store bag onto the nearest chair. “I got drunk. It was storming. My hotel was all the way back up the hill. He offered to let me crash in his room, and he slept on the floor the whole night.”

Besian’s expression turned dark. “You went to a hotel room with a man you hardly know and you were drunk?”

“Yes,” I said, not glancing away from his irritated glare. “I made a mistake.”

“Fucking right you did,” he swore, surprising me with his angry outburst. “You could have been raped! You could have been trafficked! You could have been murdered!”

My first instinct was to raise my voice in the same manner and argue. My second was to admit that he was correct. I could try to defend myself, to point out that everything turned out fine, but that was because I had been extraordinarily lucky. Andres was a good man. He was honest and respectful, but not all men were.

“I know,” I said finally.

All the fight left him. With a sigh, he closed the distance between us with powerful strides. He took both my hands and walked backward toward the bed, tugging me along with him. He sat down and pulled me closer, holding me captive between his legs. He let go of my hands and flexed his fingers, almost as if he didn’t trust himself to keep touching me.

In this position, we were eye to eye. I swallowed nervously, feeling uncomfortably aware of his body heat and the intoxicating tobacco and leather notes of his cologne. This close, I could see the gold flecks in his dark brown irises and the pink scar in his right eyebrow. I could see the faint glimmer of silver at his temples, a reminder that he was closer to forty than thirty.

We were closer now than we had ever been. He had touched me more in the last two hours than he ever had in all the months I had known him. Something had shifted between us, and I liked it.

Bravely, I cupped his handsome face in my smaller hands. His cheeks were warm, and there was a slight rasp of stubble under my fingertips. His eyes closed briefly, and he leaned into my touch, as if craving it, craving me.

“Why did you come for me?” I had to know what had brought him all this way. “You probably could have made one phone call and had me located, picked up and put on a plane bound for Houston.”

His eyes opened, and he looked so vulnerable. “You know why,” he insisted softly. “You must know.”

“Tell me,” I urged, needing to hear him say it. “You confuse the hell out of me, Besian. I don’t know what you want from me.”

He made a sound that was a mix of pain and amusement. Shaking his head, he said, “Marley, I want everything from you. I want everything with you.” He covered my hands with his. “Don’t you see? I love you.”

Taken aback by his profession of love, I was simultaneously elated and irritated. “If you love me so much, why didn’t come see me at the hospital?” I hated how pitiful I sounded, but there was no point in concealing my hurt feelings when he was finally being honest with me. “Why?”

“I was afraid.”

Certain I couldn’t have heard him correctly, I said, “I find it hard to believe you’ve ever been afraid of anything.”

“I’m afraid of you.”

“Of me?”

“Of disappointing you,” he confessed. “Of never being good enough for you. Of being too damaged and dark to ever deserve you.”

“The only time you disappointed me was when you didn’t visit me at the hospital.” I swallowed hard against the thick ball of emotion stuck painfully in my throat. “All I wanted was to see you. Every time the door opened, I looked over expecting you, but you never came.”

“Marley,” he said, his voice filled with regret. “I thought I was doing the right thing. That was twice that you were hurt because of your ties to other people. First, Spider and the cartel. Then Aston and the Triad.” His hands tightened around mine. “I couldn’t allow myself to be the cause of a third attempt on your life.”

“But you’re here now,” I pointed out.

“I am.”

“Because?”

“Because right now, being tied to me is the only thing that will save your life.”

I blinked. “What?”

He sighed and turned me sideways, pulling me down until I was perched on his lap. He curved his arm around my waist, and I inhaled a shuddery breath at the heat and strength of him surrounding me. As if completely unaware of the way he was affecting me, he interlaced his fingers with mine and said, “Spider’s MC was sitting on some shipments at their clubhouse.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “They wouldn’t be that careless. There are storage—" I stopped abruptly.

Besian turned my face with his fingers. He searched my eyes before asking, “How involved, exactly, were you with your stepdad’s business?”

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