Page 168 of Beyond the Blue Horizon
It felt as if I might be able to reach out and run my fingers through the truth that spun in the periphery of my understanding.
My throat thickened as Theo slowly pulled my sleep pants back around my waist.
Regret and apology and something so much fiercer was seeded in the taut, ferocious angles of his hauntingly beautiful face.
A frown pinched my brow as I tried to decipher everything.
The fact that Cash was talking aboutinteland whatever Emery had been implying earlier and the bare fact that I’d known from the beginning that Theo was dangerous.
His whole group was.
His family, as he claimed them.
Which was hard to entertain when Kane was so easy and kind and funny. But I knew that sometimes malice could be scored underneath.
“Looks like I need to go.” Theo’s words scraped through the dense air that had become too stagnant to breathe.
“Why?” It was clearly a challenge.
Theo’s hands quivered where he had them wrapped around my waist. “Meet with my crew at Kane’s every Saturday night.”
He attempted to keep it casual, but I felt the severity woven in the words.
“You’re going to leave like this to have drinks with your friends?” That challenge only deepened as I dropped my attention to his cock that still strained against his jeans, the button popped but the zipper still closed.
“That interruption was probably for the best, don’t you think?”
Probably.
Okay, definitely with the way I was feeling right then.
But sometimes what was for the best didn’t come close to what we wanted most.
And I realized it then.
That’s what Theo had become.
What I wanted most.
When I didn’t answer him, he let go of a weighty exhale. “Not leaving you for drinks, Piper. We have…business.”
It was only the fragment of an explanation.
“What kind of business?” I felt desperate to know.
I watched his expression morph and rage.
A clash of ghosts and demons.
“Penance.”
I blinked, caught off guard by his answer. “Penance?”
His hand came to my cheek, and he brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “Warned you that I’m not a good man.”
“You aren’t or you weren’t?” It came out an appeal.
Begging him to be the man he’d shown me that he was.
