In this position, we were eye to eye. I swallowed nervously, feeling uncomfortably aware of his body heat and the intoxicating tobacco and leather notes of his cologne. This close, I could see the gold flecks in his dark brown irises and the pink scar in his right eyebrow. I could see the faint glimmer of silver at his temples, a reminder that he was closer to forty than thirty.
We were closer now than we had ever been. He had touched me more in the last two hours than he ever had in all the months I had known him. Something had shifted between us, and I liked it.
Bravely, I cupped his handsome face in my smaller hands. His cheeks were warm, and there was a slight rasp of stubble under my fingertips. His eyes closed briefly, and he leaned into my touch, as if craving it, craving me.
“Why did you come for me?” I had to know what had brought him all this way. “You probably could have made one phone call and had me located, picked up and put on a plane bound for Houston.”
His eyes opened, and he looked so vulnerable. “You know why,” he insisted softly. “You must know.”
“Tell me,” I urged, needing to hear him say it. “You confuse the hell out of me, Besian. I don’t know what you want from me.”
He made a sound that was a mix of pain and amusement. Shaking his head, he said, “Marley, I want everything from you. I want everything with you.” He covered my hands with his. “Don’t you see? I love you.”
Taken aback by his profession of love, I was simultaneously elated and irritated. “If you love me so much, why didn’t come see me at the hospital?” I hated how pitiful I sounded, but there was no point in concealing my hurt feelings when he was finally being honest with me. “Why?”
“I was afraid.”
Certain I couldn’t have heard him correctly, I said, “I find it hard to believe you’ve ever been afraid of anything.”
“I’m afraid of you.”
“Of me?”
“Of disappointing you,” he confessed. “Of never being good enough for you. Of being too damaged and dark to ever deserve you.”
“The only time you disappointed me was when you didn’t visit me at the hospital.” I swallowed hard against the thick ball of emotion stuck painfully in my throat. “All I wanted was to see you. Every time the door opened, I looked over expecting you, but you never came.”
“Marley,” he said, his voice filled with regret. “I thought I was doing the right thing. That was twice that you were hurt because of your ties to other people. First, Spider and the cartel. Then Aston and the Triad.” His hands tightened around mine. “I couldn’t allow myself to be the cause of a third attempt on your life.”
“But you’re here now,” I pointed out.
“I am.”
“Because?”
“Because right now, being tied to me is the only thing that will save your life.”
I blinked. “What?”
He sighed and turned me sideways, pulling me down until I was perched on his lap. He curved his arm around my waist, and I inhaled a shuddery breath at the heat and strength of him surrounding me. As if completely unaware of the way he was affecting me, he interlaced his fingers with mine and said, “Spider’s MC was sitting on some shipments at their clubhouse.”
“That doesn’t make sense,” I argued. “They wouldn’t be that careless. There are storage—" I stopped abruptly.
Besian turned my face with his fingers. He searched my eyes before asking, “How involved, exactly, were you with your stepdad’s business?”
“Not that involved,” I assured him. “I’ve come across contracts and leases when doing my mom’s taxes and getting her paperwork together. There’s no reason she would need that many storage units unless she was holding stuff for Spider.”
“Is that it?”
Reluctantly, I admitted, “Before I turned eighteen, I sometimes carried things for him.”
“Things?” he repeated tightly.
“Smaller packages.”
“Drugs?” He asked for clarification in a calm voice, but I sensed he was maintaining a razor thin control on his emotions.
“Yes,” I admitted, embarrassed. “He never asked again once I was old enough to actually go to real jail.”
“He should never have asked!” Besian snarled. “You were his child! You were his to protect! Ending up in juvie would have been the best outcome. At worst, you could have been shot!” He blew out a noisy breath and stunned me by pressing his lips to my temple. I couldn’t help it. I leaned into his gentle kiss. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t raise my voice like that.”
“You aren’t wrong. Spider overstepped massively.”
“Yes, he did.”
“So,” I said anxiously, “who wants to hurt me now? The cartel? Russians?” I hesitated. “Albanians?”
“Not us,” Besian hastily promised. “And not the Russians.”
“But maybe the cartel?”
“Maybe.”
“Or maybe someone even worse?’
He nodded. “There’s a contract on your life.”
As his words registered, I jolted. “A hit? On me?”
“Yes,” he said solemnly. “Someone is very pissed off at Spider, and you’re the pressure they’re applying to get whatever it is that they want.”
Terror tore through me like a wildfire. I jumped off of his lap and pushed him away when he tried to grab me. “You have to go!”
“What?” he stared at me with confusion. “Go where?”
“Anywhere! Just away from me!” My panicked gaze fell on the bright afternoon sunlight coming through the windows. “Oh no!”
“What are you doing?” he asked as I rushed across the room and yanked the curtains closed.
“Snipers!” The memory of the gunshot that ripped his chest open burned through my mind. I could almost smell the blood, feel it under my fingers as I tried to put enough pressure on the wound to keep him from dying right there in that filthy lot.
“Marley!” Besian embraced me from behind, wrapping his powerful arms around me and dragging my back to his chest. He kissed my temple, my cheek, my neck. “We’re safe here. No one can touch us here.”
I sagged against him, desperate to believe he was right. “Then you should stay here when I go back.”
“Out of the question,” he said, spinning me around to face him. He slipped one arm around my waist and cupped my cheek. “Marley, from now on, your place is right next to me.”
There was no other place I wanted to be.
Chapter Nine
“Zec hasn’t been able to find anything on the hit against her,” Luka said, his voice nasal and thick on the other end of the phone. He coughed and cleared his throat. “We’ll keep looking.”
“Have you seen a doctor? You sound like shit.” Besian’s concern for his nephew momentarily overrode his worry for Marley.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me. Worry about your problem.”
“My problem,” he sighed. “I don’t know if I should take her back or find a way to keep her here.” Exhausted, he sat back in the chair by the window and rubbed the spot between his eyebrows. “Either way, it’s a risk.”