Page 85 of Tamed

He pulled his thumb from my mouth and gripped my chin hard, his gaze a black storm. “It’s probably best if we don’t have this conversation.”

“It’s because you want to believe there’s hope for you, don’t you?” I ignored his grip. I ignored everything but the fury in his eyes and the need that lay behind it, because it was all very clear where it was coming from. “You want to believe there’s redemption.”

Shock flickered through his eyes, gone so fast I almost believed it had never been there at all. But it had and I knew what it meant all the same.

Hedidwant that. He wanted to believe there was hope.

My hands tightened in his hair, because even though he had a grip on me, I had a grip on him, too, and I wasn’t letting go. I brought his face close, and I looked into his eyes. “You don’t need to be redeemed, Caleb Cross. You might think there’s a monster inside of you, but I can see the truth. I’ve always seen it. You’re a good man whether you believe that or not, and you always have been.”Why else would I fall in love with you?I couldn’t say that out loud, not yet. I didn’t have the courage.

He was silent a moment. Then he leaned forward and kissed me again, hard, and I could taste his hunger. He might not admit it, but he wanted to believe me. He wanted it badly. So, I kissed him back, melting against him, letting him know without words that my belief in him was strong and that I trusted him.

The kiss became hot, the desperation falling away to leave behind it a slow sweetness that had me trembling. He released my chin, his hands stroking down my sides as if he wanted to check that I was still all there. Then he lifted his mouth from mine. “I have something else to tell you.”

I wasn’t ready for the kiss to end, so I lifted my lips to find his again. “What?”

But he pulled back and looked down at me. “I’ve arranged a meeting with your grandmother.”

24

Caleb

Isabel’s eyes went wide. “You what?”

The glass around her body had fogged from the heat of her skin and that heat was seeping into me, too. It felt so fucking good. She had felt so fucking good. All silky and soft and wet for me.

I hadn’t expected to feel so hungry for her the moment I’d got back from seeing Ten, but the moment I’d laid eyes on her, the most intense possessiveness had risen inside me. The pain from the punches Ten had delivered made my jaw ache and I knew I’d all but wrecked our friendship. But she was mine all the same and I was going to keep her.

Ten might be her father, but I was her daddy, and she was going to be my little girl from now on.

I hadn’t questioned the need to take her — she’d been wet and willing — so I had. But I’d also known that I was going to need to lay the truth out for her too. The truth about myself. Because if I didn’t, Ten would, and I didn’t want her hearing it from him. It had to come from me.

I don’t know what I’d expected. I certainly hadn’t anticipated the grief that had gripped me when I’d told her about my own father, a grief I hadn’t felt for years, buried as it was under so many layers of rage.

I hadn’t expected to feel again the agony of not understanding why he’d left me behind either, as sharp as it had been that day. I hadn’t let myself think of that for a long, long time, because it changed nothing. I was still alive, and they were dead, and fury was better than bewilderment any day of the week.

It had to have been her ripping those confessions from me and recalling old emotions I’d thought I’d cut out long ago. Her and her warmth and her softness. Her and the grief in her eyes. Grief for me.

I’d had to move on from that quickly, telling her the truth about Old Nick’s death, but she hadn’t seemed to care. She hadn’t seemed to care about who I’d been back then.

She’d thought I was searching for redemption, but she was wrong. I didn’t want redemption. What kind of redemption was there for a man with twenty years of violence behind him anyway?

I was a good man, she’d said, and then she’d kissed me as if she believed it. And for a moment I’d almost believed her, too. But that was a path I didn’t — couldn’t — go down. I had other things to deal with anyway, such as the meeting with Charlotte Hamilton.

Calling that woman had been the last thing I’d wanted to do. Exposing Isabel to the Hamiltons after a week of trying to keep her away from them had gone against every instinct I possessed. But keeping them out of her life forever was never going to happen, not when they wanted to be there. I was rich and powerful, but I didn’t have the two hundred years of history and lineage behind me that they did.

Plus, even though I could have kept Isabel locked up and safe, for all my talk of keeping her in a cage, after seeing Ten I knew I couldn’t do that to her.

I couldn’t be him, keeping her from the only family she had apart from him. Not when I knew how painful that was. I’d lost my family and I wouldn’t wish that agony, that loneliness, on Isabel.

It was a risk. I didn’t know what the Hamiltons might want from her and what they’d tell her. They were powerful enough to do anything they wanted. But Juliana had been Charlotte’s daughter and Charlotte wouldn’t hurt her. She only wanted to know her.

So, on the way back to my penthouse, I’d called Charlotte’s personal secretary and demanded I speak with her. I’d been confident she’d want to speak to me since she knew who I was and that I was close to Isabel. And sure enough, she did. It had been a brief conversation, enough to set up a meeting time. We’d had a brief, tense discussion about where — Charlotte had wanted it at the Hamilton’s New York mansion, but I’d insisted it be on neutral ground, so I’d given her Arcadia’s address. If she knew what the club actually was, she gave no sign, merely agreeing and saying she’d be there tomorrow night. If she’d found me calling her out of the blue and offering her the granddaughter Ten and I had been hiding from her all these years a shock, she gave no sign of that either.

“I called her this morning,” I said to Isabel now. “After I saw Ten.”

Isabel was still staring at me as if she’d never seen me before in her entire life. “But…why?”

“I always thought Ten was wrong not to tell you about Juliana,” I said. “You need to know where you came from Isabel. You need to know about your mom. I didn’t know her that well — Ten was a possessive asshole about her. But your grandmother does. She can tell you all you need to know.”

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