Page 76 of Recurve Ridge

The thought thrashed through my mind in a disjointed stream. I saw truth in it, but also something that existed between us—something I never had with Gideon but fought and ached for with Robe.

Trust.

The tiny sound I made hovered in the air between us, lost in a rush of breath and words.

“Mari, I’m… not suitable for someone like you.” Breath hissed between his teeth as he twisted the pillow beneath my head. “I’ll hurt you.” Lust raged in dark, glittery eyes, leaving me a hot liquid mess below his enormous frame.

Still, his rejection stung like a motherfucker. My hand stilled behind his neck. I tried to draw him down to me, but he refused me—again.

Fine. Two of us can play this game.

I raised myself onto my elbows and grazed my lips against his before he could protest. “You’re a different kind of dangerous, Robe Huntingdon. Your moral compass may not point north, and it might be a different shade of black, but you aren’t anything likethem.”

The words scattered to ash in my mouth. I’d run out of innocence, that critical part of my soul ripped from me without choice.My choice.Not the virginal sort, but the part of me that believed horror movies were the stuff of the silver screen and nothing more. Now, I knew better.

The monsters lived among us.

Robe Huntingdon wasn’t one of them.

“You have no idea who I am,” he grated, his voice harsh and unforgiving.

Robe couldn’t give my innocence back or take away the harm I’d suffered at the hands of another. No one could. He could give me love, new memories to replace the terror of those hours. He had given me the time and space to heal, and now I was ready to move forward with my choice ofwho. Maybe even somewhat ready to heal in my heart.

Tears filled my eyes, but I refused to let them flow—not anymore.

“Please, Robe.”Help me.

His black gaze cleaved straight through me. “I can’t be your therapy fuck, Mari.”

Robe’s stillness shattered as he pushed back till he was kneeling on his haunches at the end of the bed. A giant mountain god living in a house never built to fit such a demand. He dwarfed the building with his presence alone, even though it suited his physical form. But there was so much more to Robe than what the eye could see. I followed him, rising onto my knees, and crawled toward him.

His breath came faster. He watched me in silence, rock still, his hands resting on his knees. I’d called him a stone sentinel to Alan, so full of life, too full of energy, regardless of how he channeled it in dark ways.

When my hands brushed his thighs, I stopped. Looking up at him, I curled my feet beneath me. “I don’t want your therapy. But I could use a teacher, a guide—someone to take me back to real life. A f-friend.”

Someone to love and to be loved by.

I said all of that without extending an invitation for more, scared of what would happen if he threw me away, but I knew I could offer him something missing from his life. From all their lives. I wanted to be given the chance to try. I couldn’t force those words past my lips, so I lay back and waited. Hoped.

Prayed.

Even if no god could want a twisted thing like me.

I knelt before him, begging.

His fingers rose from his knee to graze my cheek. “I’m not the man to take you back to reality, Mari.” This time the corner of his lips did work, and he smiled.

The change in him was instant, ripping away the man who threatened torture and murder. He ran his household of broken misfits with an iron fist. That smile replaced him with someone he thought dead, ruined, but I saw him in a shot of clarity.

“I think you are.” I leaned into his touch until he curved his hand around my cheek.

A dark gleam in his fathomless eyes was all the warning he offered.

The hint of a smile remained on his lips as that dormant growl rose in his throat. Robe’s brand of fierce had become my standard, what I measured everything else against, but this kind of intimidation settled low in my stomach. A searing shot of arousal zinged through me, lips to tiptoes.

His fingers curved, brushing over my throat in a protective claim that promised violence to anyone who threatened me. Every caress staked a deeper mark on my soul, seeking possession. His touch verged on pure temptation, everything I wanted but knew I shouldn’t take.

If we did this, our world would change.

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