Jesus, she is beyond beautiful. So breathtaking it makes my heart weak.

I watch the smile fade from her lips and feel like a piece of shit for making that happen when all I want to do is put it there.

I’m upset. Fine, I’ll admit it. I realize she is not an open book and I accept that about her. Or I thought I did until tonight. The part of me that uses reason and logic in my daily business ventures knows I have no right to be a gnarled mess of emotions because she was practically married and didn’t tell me. But the possessive man in me who is in love with her is.

It would have been a blow to hear it from her lips but the reality is this news should have come from her, not him, and tonight I need more from her than I ever have before. I need her to strip herself to the bone. I need her raw and real and more open than she’s ever been. I need it all and I fucking need it like air.

You can’t beat your enemy if you don’t know your enemy and all I know is his weakness, but that’s not enough. His weakness is my weakness, too.

She reaches for me, but before I can think better of it I draw back.

“We need to talk.” Fuck, that felt like acid crawling up my throat.

I brush past her. It shreds me up inside not to take her into my arms and kiss her senseless or quell the worry I now see in her eyes. I take a seat on the couch, my jacket still on. She stands by the open door, considering me for long seconds.

Wordlessly she shuts it and slowly walks my way. She eases into an armchair right across from me, sitting on the edge, silent, as if she’s waiting for a bomb to drop.

I have a bomb, all right. But I’m not ready to drop it quite yet.

“Tell me about Mergen.” It’s a rough command. Leading but chock-full of knowledge she’d be a fool to miss.

She begins twisting her fingers but never looks away from me. Point to her. But I swear by all that’s holy if she starts beating around the bush, I am going to fucking lose it. And I’ll be taking it out well and good on her hide.

“Well,” she starts—sassily I might add—“by the look on your face, I’d say you already know the answer to your question.”

And a fool she is not.

“Don’t fucking play with me, Willow. I am standing on razor’s edge right now.”

She drops her head, eyes going to the floor. Her chest expands deeply before she stands and paces to the opposite side of the room. She looks out a small window that faces the front yard, that sexy nose ring of hers winking at me from the rays off the streetlight.

Oh, how I want to march over there and drag her back over my knee, spanking her ass until she spills every goddamn truth she buries inside. But I do that…she shuts down. She has to do this on her own. It’s an excruciating process to watch and even more so to be on the receiving end of. And I can’t even say I get it, why she’s like this. I simply have to accept it if I want to be with her. Which I do.

“Nothing I’ve told you has been untrue,” she says softly.

I bite my tongue hard enough to draw blood. I’m trying to keep from spewing caustic words, but…

“Except for the fiancé part. You conveniently left that out.”

Okay, so I am being a giant fucking bastard, but no one can rile me like she can. No one. She causes every emotion I have to be intensified by a thousand.

At my snarky comment, she twists her head my way, not even bothering to turn her whole body. I expect her eyes to be alight with fury and that signature fire embedded in her DNA but the only thing they’re full of is sadness.

I’m crushed all over again. My hand goes up to my chest. God, it aches.

“Yes, Reid was my fiancé and yes, I probably should have told you when he showed up out of the blue at your father’s house.” She faces me fully now. “But in all fairness, Shaw, up until this past weekend, I didn’t even know what you and I really were. Our contract ends in a little over a month now and I just…”

Ah. Her mistrust in us rears its ass-ugly head yet again. I wonder if I’ll go to my grave fighting for every single scrap of her. I have her body, I know I have her heart and soul, but the one thing I want most I don’t even deserve right now.

Her trust.

I’m sitting here accusing her of being dishonest when I have done the same damn thing. I kept the real reason I hired her in the first place a secret, and I’m doing the same thing with this devastating news about Annabelle and her father.

Yeah. I suck. I know it.

Yet that doesn’t stop me from claiming her, here and now. She is mine. It’s barbaric and primitive and wrong on so many levels, but at the moment, I don’t give a million flying fucks.

“We will never end, you and I. Never. That piece of shitty paper doesn’t hold any power over us and honestly, I’m not sure it ever has. You’ve had that from day one, Goldilocks. Day one.” What I don’t tell her because she’ll balk is that contract is already gone. Destroyed. I’m taking care of her. Of everything she and her mother need. Money will never be an issue for her again whether she ends up wanting me or not.

Her lips slip up. It’s brief before somberness returns, but I watch her muscles visibly ease in relief.

Satisfied we’ve resolved that issue, my eyes travel over her lush curves for the first time since she let me in. She’s wearing a pair of crazy multipatterned leggings and a loose-fitting gray top that slides down one shoulder. Her feet are bare, still painted that blinding pink from the other day. She’s casual, yet chic. She looks like royalty.

My slow trek back up her body ends at her face. My breathing slows. We hold each other’s eyes, tied together with this invisible string neither of us will be able to sever. I have to believe that. I’m aching with the need to pull her onto my lap and cup her face in my hands. I want to eat her up. I want to kiss her and love her until she curls into me, warm and sated. I’m not sure I’ve been in her presence this long without touching her in…ever.

I hate it.

She runs her tongue nervously over her teeth before coming to sit back across from me. She inhales deep, then starts.

“We met during a play we were both in.” That, I knew. “He asked me out a dozen times before I finally said yes.” Stubborn. Sounds familiar. “We dated a little over two years before he asked me to marry him.” Not feeling any better here. “It wasn’t love at first sight like with…”

She stops cold, throwing her glance to the floor nervously. Those fingers she rubs together when she’s nervous are going fast and furious. When her cheeks pink up, despite having to endure this horror story, I smile. I want to hear what she was about to confess. I should let it go…

“Like with who?” I prod her to finish. Like with me? Is it egotistical to think I would be the one she’d fall head over heels in love with on sight? Yes. Do I care? Not one fucking bit.

She cocks her head and throws me a brilliant, glowing grin. “Been awhile since you’ve gone fishing, hasn’t it, Drive By?”

I laugh. Under the circumstances, nothing is laughworthy, except when I’m with her. Always her.

“Anyway,” she goes on, skirting around my expedition, “do you want me to continue?”

My teeth snap together. Want? Hell no. I want her to tell me that when she stood outside my Rover and haughtily dumped pieces of her fender in my lap, she fell in love with me instantly. Because when I look back, I know that moment was it for me.

“Go on,” I growl instead.

Her lips curve and flatten back out again. “I knew he was going to do it. He had been acting all weird and nervous. He took my father out for coffee since my father didn’t drink alcohol and I knew it was to ask for his permission to marry me.”

Everything in me falls at that statement and a firestorm of emotions bubbles up to take the empty spot. Empathy. Fear. Regret. Hate. But sorrow probably trumps them all. I’ll never have the chance to ask her father for her hand in marriage because, in some cosmic impossibility, our lives are unwittingly entwined in tragedy.

One life lost.

One life saved.

I blow out a long breath. Clasping my hands together, I drop my head and absorb it all for a minute. I don’t look up when she continues. I just can’t.

“Reid was—is—a great guy, Shaw.” I snort. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. If only she knew what a low-life fucker her former fiancé is. “I know you don’t want to hear this but he treated me well, and he really did love me. I just…” I do look up, then. My gut twists. “It didn’t work out is all.”

I chew on my lip, an uncharacteristic trait for me. Do I ask the question burning my tongue or do I swallow it back? She told me that night in my parent’s bathroom that he hadn’t hurt her, she had hurt him. She’s told me more about Mergen than she ever has before, so I decide to go for it. “What happened between you two? Why did it end?” Does he have a chance in hell at getting you back?

That small laugh that usually sounds adorable is ripe with pure pain tonight. “After my father died…” She stops to swallow. Her eyes tear up. Fuck, I am dying here. She clears her throat and begins again. “After my father died, I kinda went on autopilot. I had Momma to take care of and a funeral to plan and paperwork to deal with that I didn’t understand because I was now power of attorney. I didn’t know crap about life insurance or pension plans or filing for death benefits through Social Security. I honestly don’t even remember those few months after he died. I had to shove aside my own grief, as usual, to make sure everyone and everything else was taken care of.”

She sniffles and wipes away the water running down her flushed cheeks. That’s it. I can’t keep my hands from her a single second longer. I grab a tissue to my right, pop up, and go to her. She tilts her head and the mourning I still see bobbing deep in her soul shreds me.

Without thinking I grab her and switch places. Now she’s sitting on my lap, legs hanging over the arm of the chair. Her head is tucked into my shoulder and she’s making a good effort to stem her tears. It’s not working, so I just hold her as she sobs softly, feeling each tear as if I share in her pain. And I do. A million times over.

“I’m sorry,” she says sometime later.

“Don’t be. I’m sorry I pushed you.” I stroke her hair. I kiss her forehead. My insides turn brittle at the thought of not being able to do this with her daily.

She looks up at me through red-rimmed eyes that glow like starlight. I want to crawl inside her and live there, bathing in her rays of purity. “Don’t be. I should have told you sooner.”

“If I could take away your pain, Willow, I’d do it in a heartbeat.” If I could bring your father back, I’d give my life for his. Jesus, what the fuck am I supposed to do?

“I don’t talk about my father much. It’s hard.”

“I understand.” More than you think.

She lies there with her head back, glassy eyes searching my face. Can she spot the secret I’m hiding? “I left Reid two weeks before the wedding.” She ducks back into the crook of my neck, hiding from me. I let her, mulling over her words. “We’d gotten into another argument that night. He wanted me to hire someone to take care of my mother because of the toll it was taking on me. He was right, of course, but I was defensive and unreasonable. I accused him of being selfish. I barely had time for him. He accused me of not letting people love me. Again, he was right. I lay awake that night while he slept next to me. It was four in the morning and I still hadn’t been asleep. When I looked over at him, I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was associate the pain of losing my father with him. It was wrong and unfair. He didn’t do anything to cause his death. But I couldn’t shake it and I just knew I couldn’t marry him.”

My stomach folds over, contracting violently as if ten thousand volts of electricity were just pumped into me. I can’t breathe at the thought she’ll soon associate me with her father’s death instead of him.

“Like a coward, I left him a note, along with his ring, and walked out. I refused his calls. I refused to see him. For months he didn’t give up and then he finally did. He moved and I didn’t hear from him until that night at your father’s.”

Christ, my fate was just painted, a mirror of his. Except mine will be justified.

I press my lips right above her forehead, on her hairline, and leave them there, breathing in the smell of her citrus shampoo. Fear burns like fire ants through my veins. These precious minutes together are now sands in the hourglass, rapidly depleting.

“My father would like you, I think.” I look up at the ceiling and bite back the sting behind my lids. “I know I don’t have to say this”—her head falls backward again, those blue irises piercing me—“but I never loved Reid the way I love you.”

My traitorous eyes well. I don’t hide. I let her see how weak I am when it comes to her. How only she has the ability to make me crumble. Palming her nape, I bring her lips to mine. I kiss her slow and thorough. Gentle and sweet. I taste the salt in her mouth. I’m betting she tastes mine.

“Thank you,” I whisper against her lips, sincere. “Thank you for trusting me with this. I know how hard it was for you.” I don’t deserve it.

“I trust you more than I’ve trusted anyone, Shaw.”

Gut punch. Right there.

I should do it now. She’s led me there, a horse to water. The longer I hold on to this, the more upset she’s going to be and the more unforgivable it becomes. Yet being the selfish man I am, I’m not ready to give her up. Not yet. I know I can find a way to save every one of us from devastation. I simply need a little more time.

“You tired?”

“You staying?” She draws back and cups my face.

“Try making me leave.” I don’t have a thing I need with me, and I have a six-thirty breakfast meeting, but that won’t stop me from holding her in my arms all night long. Will it be our last?

That smile of hers eats me alive. Every time. I scoop my arms under her legs and behind her slender back and easily stand. I make my way to her bedroom, depositing her gently on her bed. We undress, quietly. She’s drained. So am I. After we both perform our bathroom duties, she slips into bed and pulls back the covers, patting the empty side, that sweet grin my undoing.

I slide in beside her and tug her close until our bodies could be one.

“Will you be gone when I wake up?”

I don’t want to be. My fingers drift up and down her bare arm. “Unless you get up before the sun rises, yes.”

“That’s cruel and unusual punishment,” she replies with a smile in her voice, twisting her fingers in my chest hair. I’m growing hard.

“It’s why I make the big bucks.”

Laughing, she places her lips on my chest. The muscles under her mouth flex involuntarily. “You have a big ego, you know that?”

I need her.

Grabbing her hand, I slide it down my stomach, wrapping it around a dick that is now excited at the prospect of being sheathed in anything of hers. Hand. Mouth. Pussy. Tits. Ass. So many possibilities. I want them all. Tonight. She’s not getting any sleep. “Right now I have a big cock, Goldilocks.”

Her tiny hands flex around the fabric of my boxers, making me moan and jerk. “That you do, Drive By.” She pushes the sheet covering us aside before sliding down my body, settling between my legs. “Need help with something?” she asks, her impudence as endearing as her hot little mouth lingering inches above me.

Not waiting for my response, she dives her fingers under the waistband and pulls my underwear midway down my thighs. I’m butt naked yet Willow’s still wearing the tiniest, sexiest tank and shorts known to man. I’ll never forget them.

She hovers over my straining length, fist wrapped around the base, warm breaths torturing me with each exhale. Looking up my body under thick, dark lashes, those mysterious eyes of hers sparkle with mischief and unadulterated love.

I reach down to run a lock of hair through my fingers, memorizing the silky feel. Wondering how many more times I’ll be able to touch it.

“Fuck me with your mouth, Willow.” It’s more than a demand. It’s a supplication, a prayer for her to wash away all my sins. This secret has spread like black mold on my spirit. I need to atone.

Sliding those perfect full lips over me, she blows my mind. She teases at first, then gets down to brass tacks trying to make me come in record time, which the vixen accomplishes. No woman’s mouth has ever felt as good wrapped around my dick as hers. No one’s ever will.

After I return the favor, I tuck her now naked body back over mine and tell her to sleep for a while. In a few short minutes her breaths even out. I know she’s out like a light because of that little twitch thing her body occasionally does.

I lie awake for a long time, unable to shut my brain off.

Tomorrow I need to stop putting off the inevitable and figure out where we go from here. Tomorrow I need to see Annabelle. Tomorrow I need to have a hard conversation with Willow. Tomorrow everything I love in this world could be destroyed.

Everything.

I’ve never felt this fucking helpless in my life.

Dread sits like a lead mass in the pit of my stomach and I begin to pray, fervently. With the desperation of a man who sees his world crumbling down around him and knows he needs help. If there is a God or higher power that hears the cries of tormented souls, I’m hoping mine screams the loudest. That my prayers are answered first.

Please protect my baby sister.

Please, by some miracle, let me keep Willow.

Pleasepleasepleasefuckingpleasehelpadesperatemanout.

Please.