Page 30 of Assassin's Prey
“That’s my choice to make, don’t you think, Remi?”
We both startled at Abby’s voice, like two guilty boys raiding the cookie jar. Abby moved into the room, her pajamas replaced with jeans and a light sweater, her red hair still wet and pushed back from her face. She looked so young like this that I sometimes felt like the pervert she’d jokingly named me last night.
And the way my heart squeezed said it didn’t matter. I’d rather be labeled a pervert than be lost to her forever.
“That’s where you’re wrong, little sis.”
Because even Remi knew, fighting or not, that Abby was a permanent part of my life now. I could never let her go.
“Your life would be far better if he’d never walked back into it,” Remi was saying. “If you’d been allowed to continue on the safe path and never got pulled over to the dark side.”
Abby rested her elbows on the tall back of a dining room chair and leaned in, a sudden flush of anger turning her creamy skin pink. “Let me tell you something,bro—I’ve lived on the ‘safe path’ since I was born with a silver spoon in my mouth. And you want to know what it got me? Not a damn moment of actual safety. My mother was murdered and buried in concrete before I ever got the chance to remember her. My stepmother was murdered by a cut brake line. I lived with a man who abused and manipulated me with every breath I took. I was never safe. I didn’t know what safe was.
“Until I walked into Levi’s arms. That’s the only safety I’ve ever known. And it’s worth anything I have to give up to keep it.”
“Then why try to walk away from me, Abby?”
This wasn’t a conversation we should be having in front of Remi, but I couldn’t stop myself from asking. Couldn’t hold back the pain of the hole she’d ripped in my heart. We’d been too busy trying to figure out who was trying to kill us to think about anything else, but even when I’d had her in bed, when I’d been inside her, I couldn’t forget that she’d wanted to leave.
“Because…what you were doing to me is only a little less torturous than what Remi is doing to himself,” she said. Straightening up, she met my eyes. “Remi refuses to try in the first place. You’re braver than that; you’ve at least tried to give me some semblance of what I want. What I need.”
“But?”
Her frown said she wasn’t sure how to explain it in a way I’d understand. I wasn’t sure that was even possible. Wrapping my head around anything that risked Abby’s safety probably wasn't going to happen.
“It’s like offering a starving man a bite of the best food you could possibly conjure,” she finally said. “And then refusing to give him any more. There isn’t much he wouldn’t give up to finally feel satisfied. At peace.”
“He doesn’t have much to give up. He’s starving,” Remi pointed out.
“Shut up, dumbass.”
I couldn’t help grinning at Abby’s comeback. For never having had any siblings, she handled mine with ease.
Seeing them suffer her lack of patience, and not just me, was a bonus.
“The point is, all you’re focused on is what she might have to give up. And I’m here to tell you that, for the right woman, it’s all about what she would gain.”
Remi stood. “She’s not you, Abby. And while you may volunteer for this gig, I won’t let her do the same.”
Abby’s eyes went sad as she watched him walk out the door. I felt for him, I truly did. But I also understood him in a way she never would. As men raised to protect, letting someone we loved walk knowingly into hardship, much less danger, was like asking us to sever our own tongue with a dull blade. Almost impossible.
Although having Abby say she wanted to leave me had sharpened the blade a good bit.
“Like denying a starving man, huh?”
Abby turned to me. Her arms came up, hugging her middle. Holding herself together, or protecting her vulnerable parts?
She shrugged. “Yeah.”
I drew up the visceral memory of her cream on my tongue last night, her muscles strangling my cock. “I wasn’t denying you last night.”
She sighed. “This is not about sex, Levi.”
Only a woman could use that tone of voice when denying the power of sex—dismissive, impatient.
I laughed. “Not all about sex.”
When I started a slow stalk through the kitchen, she retreated into the living area, behind the couch. “Aren’t we going to talk about this?” She swallowed hard. “About us?”
