Letting out a breath, Michael nodded. “Deal. And the first truth I’ll tell you is that it was never about whether or not I wanted to tell you. I physically couldn’t.” He touched his temple. “They used drugs and posthypnotic suggestion to shut me down.”
“They?” she asked, then shook her head. “No, don’t answer that. You can tell it to everyone in a few minutes.” An edged smile touched her lips. “Rabbit says you’re safe to release back into the wild.”
The words “for now” hung between them, unspoken.
“Before we go, I need to tell you something.” He reached out to her, though she still stood across the room, near the door. When she didn’t move, he let his hand fall. He didn’t stand and go to her, though. Didn’t want to loom over her, didn’t want her to fear him any more than she already must, after seeing what he was capable of, what was inside him. And it was only going to get worse when he told them the real story.
Her expression stayed guarded, but she nodded. “I’m listening.”
He hesitated, trying to find the right words. He couldn’t tell her everything at once, didn’t even know where to start, so he went with the piece of it that belonged just between the two of them.
“You’ve probably figured out that a big part of what’s happened between us has been dictated by what’s inside me, and me trying not to let it touch you.”
“I’d already figured you were hiding something. I’ll admit that what we saw yesterday . . . well, that was more than I’d been thinking.”
She might as well have said, beyond my worst nightmare , because that was what he heard in her words, in her voice. He opened a hand, stared at the white scar-stripe across his palm. “I tried to stay away from you, but by the gods . . .” Giving up any pretext, he looked straight at her, let her see what she would in him. “The good parts of me want you more than anything. Unfortunately, so do the bad parts. Sometimes having you near me unsettles the balance and makes it harder for me to hold it together. Other times you bring me back to myself.”
“Maybe it’s not me,” she suggested diffidently. “Maybe it’s the three-year countdown. Big changes are coming, remember?”
“Trust me, babe. It’s you.” Now he did take the chance of standing and crossing to her, compelled by the better parts of himself, and the gift of honesty. He moved slowly, waiting for her to retreat.
When she didn’t, he stopped in front of her and lifted a hand to her cheek, cupping her jaw in his scarred palm and drawing his thumb across her smooth, pale skin. “It’s always been you, even back when you were just a couple of photographs and some dreams.”
“Oh.” The word held a tremor, but not of fear. Eyes steady on his, she reached up to cover his hand, holding his touch against her face. But as she did so, she shook her head. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“Yeah.” It wasn’t a surprise. But it was a lead weight in his chest. “You don’t do crazies.”
“I need—” She broke off, as though it were her turn to find the right words. “I’m just starting to find myself, to figure out who I’m meant to be, what role I’m meant to play in this mess. I need someone I can lean on when things go wrong, someone I know is going to be there no matter what. I don’t have enough stability in me to stay strong when you start to spin off the rails. I’ve lived that life.
I can’t go back.”
“I know. I don’t want you to.” And that was the truth too. “I wish I could undo it all.”
“Jox keeps telling me that I’m exactly the way I was meant to be, that I shouldn’t wish to rewind and change my relationship with Ambrose, or my decision to leave him.”
“Jox is full of shit.”
She looked away, snorting a laugh. “I don’t think I’ll tell him you said that.” But when she looked back up at him, the gleam remained in her eyes. “I wish you could go undo whatever it was, too. I think I would’ve liked the man you would’ve been.”
“You would’ve loved him,” he said lightly, though he wasn’t sure that was the case. Needing the contact, the woman, if only for just the next few seconds, he leaned in. And kissed her.
Sasha saw the kiss coming, could’ve moved away. She didn’t.
He was unshowered and wearing his combat clothes; his scent was strong, though not unpleasant, as though his natural aura had been distilled to a potent, masculine jolt that fired her blood in her veins and tightened her skin, heightening sensation. His taste, too, was concentrated, his skin hot beneath the skim of her hands, his muscles bunching and flexing as he wrapped his arms around her, surrounding her with his presence.
For the first time since she’d met him, she felt that he was present in the moment, entirely with her.
He wasn’t sparring with an inner opponent, wasn’t trying to blunt his responses to keep from triggering whatever lay within him. He was there, with her. Kissing her.
And oh, what a kiss.
He slanted his mouth across hers, touched his tongue to hers, and then slid deeper, mimicking the thrust with the drag of his hands across her ribs and hips to her ass, where they fastened, cupping her up against him as he explored her mouth, her cheeks, the curve of her neck.
Where before they had come together in a tumult, propelled by an inner drumbeat of lust and magic, now the magic was a background hum, seeming so much less important than the feel of his mouth making love to hers.
And then, finally, she heard his song, a single electric guitar with a skirr of feedback that raised the fine hairs on her arms and the back of her neck.
There you are, she thought, and gloried in the music.
She nipped her way down the strong column of his neck to his collarbone, then touched her lips to the place on his shoulder where a bullet had gone in the day before, and his healing talents had pushed it right out again. Lips stinging with the salty potency of his skin, she returned to his mouth, kissed him and twined herself around him, feeling his thick hair brush the backs of her hands, the sides of her face as they kissed long and hard, deep and wet.
An ache opened up within her, a hollowness she hadn’t been aware of until that moment. She drew back and sucked in a long, shuddering breath that did nothing to fill the emptiness.
They stared at each other for a long moment, eyes questioning. Did you feel that? she imagined her expression said, with his answering, Hell, yeah.
“We should get upstairs before Rabbit comes back down looking for us,” she said, though she would’ve rather stayed just as they were. The others needed to see him, see that he was okay. And they all needed to hear what he had to say.
“Or worse, your brother.”
She grimaced. “Yeah. He’s not a happy king at the moment.”
“Doubt what I’m about to tell him is going to help.”
“The truth is what it is,” she said pragmatically, her arms still wrapped around his neck, his hands fastened to her waist, holding their lower bodies together, warm and sure, the contact enticing. After a pause, she said, “And the truth is, I was right. I like this version of you.”
You would’ve loved him, he’d said, and she had a feeling that was the truth too. But at the same time, she knew she was in danger of falling for the man he was now, not just because of his kiss, but because of what he’d sacrificed in an effort to keep her safe, how he’d driven himself to the edge trying to do the right thing. Where Ambrose had wallowed in his own pain, rarely noticing when it caused her distress, Michael had tortured himself, nearly killed himself in an effort to protect her.