Then he was touching her again, fingers stealing into her body, stealing her breath, making her melt and run, making her clutch at his arms with desperation. His mouth trailed down to suckle the pink nipples that peeked at him through her glorious hair, tugging first one, then the other into his mouth until she moaned and her knees buckled. He held her up with one strong arm while he bent her backwards and continued his assault on her senses, until she shuddered uncontrollably and cried his name again and again, giving to him so sweetly, so completely, he knew he would remember this day forever.
His arms were iron bands around her body as he pressed her head against his shoulder, holding her close until the last tremor faded away. His body throbbed and he let her feel his desire, hot and hard against her stomach, begging for release. But he wouldn’t let it go further. He couldn’t. He knew there was a bed...soft...inviting...in the next room. But he didn’t dare trust himself anywhere near it. He yearned to lay her down and come into her welcoming body, sealing himself to her in the most elemental way. But once wouldn’t be enough, would never be enough. If he once made her his, he would kill to keep her his forever.
And he knew he couldn’t keep her. She could never be his. Even if she loved him anywhere approaching how much he loved her, she could never be his. The school year would end and she would have no choice—she would return to Zakhar, abandoning him. Leaving him in hell.
But that wasn’t the worst thing he could imagine. That wasn’t what caused his eyes to burn as he stared sightlessly into the distance over the top of her head. That wasn’t what caused the ache that shuddered desolately through him. He’d been abandoned before, and he’d survived. He was tough—he could take it. But she wasn’t.
She was completely vulnerable. The trust in her eyes when he’d knelt at her feet and she’d let him see all of her was his undoing. She loved him—how much he was afraid to know. She would give herself to him and never count the cost until it was too late. But he would. He would rather die than let anything happen to her—because of him.
He’d let his control slip twice now, and that was two times too many. It would be like dying to give her up, but he needed to end it. Now. Somehow. Not just the physical side of things, although that would be hard enough. No, he needed to end everything. The sharing. The emotional bonding over which he seemed to have no control. The way her smile had twisted itself into his heart. The way she looked at him as if he were her world.
That all had to stop before it was too late. If it wasn’t already too late. He had to find a way to cut himself out of her heart, even if it meant leaving his heart bleeding on the floor. He had to do it. For her sake, and his own.
Chapter 12
Trace deliberately took a corner much too fast, then swung the steering wheel sharply to the right and brought his car to a dead stop beside the curb. Then waited, his eyes on the rearview mirror.
There! There it was again, that dark sedan he’d spotted a few miles back. It turned the corner quickly, too, then drove right past him as if it wasn’t following him. But in the few seconds as the car passed him he saw the two men in the front seat exchanging glances when they realized he’d spotted their tail. He quickly memorized the make and model of the car and the license plate number, then jotted the info in the little notebook he carried in his pocket as soon as the other car was far enough away.
He cursed under his breath. The same car had been following them the week before as the princess drove to school in her Lexus SUV—he was sure of it now. The university had been closed for Thanksgiving week, but the princess had left two research books in her office at the university that she needed to work on the textbook she was writing, so they’d gone there last Monday to fetch them. He’d only tagged the car once, noting it in his subconscious as he was trained to do, but the vehicle had turned off several blocks away from the faculty parking lot where the princess usually parked, so he’d dismissed it as a tail. But now...
They weren’t following her, they were following me.
He turned cold at the thought. If that was true, the princess was in far more danger than anyone realized, especially him. His thoughts flew to memories more than two years old, and a bloody scene in a hospital parking lot. Two men dead in the front seat of their pickup truck, his then-partner, Keira, sprawled on the ground bleeding out, a bullet that had come within inches of her heart lodged in her shoulder.
Michael Vishenko, the New World Militia, and the Russian mob all had reason to want revenge on the four of them—Ryan Callahan, Keira and Cody Walker, and...himself. They’d been extremely careful for the first year after the arrests of Vishenko and the others, but as one conviction after another had piled up with no attempts to silence them, they’d...well, not exactly grown careless, but they hadn’t been quite so sharply watchful. At least he hadn’t. He couldn’t answer for the other three.