Page 19 of Assassin's Prey
Bryant spread his hands wide. “Right now I’m leaving all avenues open. But I will be meeting with Mr. Chadwick. And doing more digging. In the meantime I think it’s important that you both proceed with caution.”
I nodded. “Abby has an excellent security team at her disposal. We’ve already called them in.” Not that we’d ever been out.
“I’d also like to meet with your brothers, see if they remember anything that might help us.”
“Are you reopening my parents’ case?”
“Not formally.” Bryant narrowed his eyes, the bulldog expression making me wary. “But I can’t deny that there might be a connection.”
“My brothers no longer live in town,” I lied. “I’ll check with them and see what they might know.”
Bryant didn’t like the evasion; I could tell. “Or you could give me their numbers. I could call.”
I stood. “Let me talk to them first. As you can understand, this is a sensitive subject. I’ll have them contact you soon.”
He didn’t argue further, but as we said our goodbyes, Bryant’s focus on me never relented. The man wasn’t about to give up, not now. I’d been right all along. Good cop or not, he was definitely going to be a problem.
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Chapter Nine
There was a period in my life when being alone wasn’t possible. With two kids to protect and take care of, my time wasn’t my own. When my brothers were old enough, I would sometimes go out for a ride on the old Harley I’d managed to rebuild from junkyard parts, or sit for a couple of hours beneath the stinging pain of a tattoo needle, letting it wash away the nightmares. Neither was an option today.
But I had to get away.
The ride back to the warehouse had been silent. Not because we were lost in our thoughts. I simply couldn’t bring myself to open my mouth. I mean, what the hell was I going to say?Your life is totally fucked up because of me. You probably hate me—and who could blame you—but I couldn’t have known.
Maybe that wasn’t totally true. Maybe, if I hadn’t been hiding from my past, so fiercely focused on the now, this could have been avoided.
I’d shared sex and laughter and agony with the woman beside me, but I realized now that all the emotion had been on her side. I loved her, I knew that, but I hadn’t truly shared that with her. Hunger, yes, but not love, not till I’d been confronted with her leaving. The laughter had come from her, the agony too. I knew in my gut that she wanted me to give those things back to her, to share it all, carry each other’s burdens, but this…it was too intimate. A weapon that could shatter me. A box that could very well explode in my face.
Or it might have already. Because just as I hadn’t spoken, neither had Abby.
I pulled up to the door of the warehouse, but instead of turning the SUV off, I let it idle. Abby didn’t miss that fact.
“You’re not coming in.”
If I’d wanted to keep everything in my life just as it was, I shouldn’t have fixated on such a smart woman. “I need a little time.”
She faced me in her seat. I waited in the silence, knowing she wanted me to look at her, but the shame that had engulfed me at the station felt like a mold around my body, paralyzing me. Freezing me from the inside out.
Her palm settled on my jaw, the warmth of her sizzling through my frostbitten skin. I gasped at the heat.
“Levi.”
“What?”
There were so many things she could say, some of them cruel, all of them true. She didn’t say any of them. Not aloud. Instead she nudged my head up just enough that her mouth could settle against mine.
It wasn’t a passionate kiss. The casual observer would’ve labeled it platonic, maybe sweet. It wasn’t about sex. That simple touch—Abby’s lips and mine—was an affirmation. I opened my eyes and stared into hers and saw…everything. And nothing. No judgment, no blame. Just all the love that she somehow contained in her delicate body, enough to cover and comfort and connect us both. She could manage that all on her own, with more emotion in her little finger than I’d probably allowed myself to feel in a lifetime.
But I didn’t want her to do it alone. I wanted it all, everything, with her.
So I opened my mouth. Took over. Delved into the sweetness that was Abby, greed roaring to life inside me at the flavor of her on my tongue. And when she moaned in pleasure? All I wanted was to get down on my knees and beg her to stay with me. To never leave, not even for a second.
Except that’s what I was planning to do right now, wasn’t it?
I drew back, easing her down with little licks and sucks and brushes of skin on skin. She seemed as reluctant to open her eyes as I was to end the kiss, but I had no choice.
