Blade (The Alpha Elite #11)

Chapter Seventy-Three

Blade

V ertical and awake, she was a fucking force—all five feet of her.

Horizontal and asleep in my damn loft, she looked broken as hell.

Still all tits and ass, but curled into a ball, she hugged a pillow like she needed it to breathe.

I wanted to fuck her as much as I wanted to kill the piece-of-shit drug runner in Detroit. But at the moment, I also wanted to maim Delta because I’d lied.

To my goddamn self.

I did give a fuck that Delta had gotten her to eat. The house smelled like steak, and I was betting my Sig this woman didn’t cook.

But Delta did.

In that moment, I didn’t know what was pissing me off the most. The piece of shit in Detroit I’d left alive because this woman had turned me into something I wasn’t, the Culiacán Cartel knowing this woman existed, or the fact that another man had given her a meal.

Toss-up. Fuck .

“Hey,” I growled, sounding like the asshole I was.

Instantly and with a sucked-in breath, her eyes opened. “ Oh my God .” She shoved hair off her face and sat up. “I wasn’t sleeping.”

“I don’t give a fuck if you were.” Another lie.

“I was just… resting.” She swung her legs out. “And you’re back. I can make the bed. I didn’t think—”

“Jesus fucking Christ, woman. I don’t give a damn about the bed or you sacking out.”

Her face flushed red, and I saw it coming before it hit her mouth. “Well, I didn’t ask to fucking come here or for you to—” She waved her hand through the air. “—run off and be your SEAL self, or do whatever it was you were doing, and I don’t care either, so I guess we’re even.”

“We are not even.” Christ , I was fucking this up.

She let out a sharp laugh without an ounce of humor. “No kidding. Just….” She looked up at me and shook her head. “Just move so I can get up.”

“No.” I squatted.

“No?” Her tone was all attitude, but her arms wrapping around herself was all fear.

“Jesus, I need a fucking safe word with you, woman.”

Alarm crossed her features. “That’s what you’re really into?”

“ Fuck me ,” I muttered, scrubbing a hand over my jaw. “No, I’m not a sadist.” But her expression when she asked, considering the shit she’d told me, was a fucking landmine I’d have to disable later. “I was aiming for a time-out. A word to get you to pump the brakes.”

“Me?” Her back went straight.

“Work with me, woman.” It’d been a couple of long fucking days. “I’m asking.”

She stared at me a beat. Then her shoulders slumped, her gaze dropped, and she pet the comforter like it was a dog. “I’m sorry.” Her voice went quiet. “About all the stuff I said in the kitchen before you left. I’m really sorry, Blade.”

“Got it.”

She looked up, but she didn’t meet my eyes. “That’s it?”

About to ask her what the fuck she expected, I derailed the irritation train, narrowed my scope, and fucking focused up. “What do you need from me?”

It worked.

She immediately dished. “To know that you’re not mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you, woman.”

She met my eyes. “For anything.”

I knew where she was aiming. The alley. “I’m not mad at you for anything, including your shit at the bar.”

She breathed twice. Then she let me have it. “My shit?”

“Poor choice of words. Our shit. I’m not mad at you,” I repeated.

A thousand fucking emotions flew across her face.

I dug in. Deep. “I am not angry with you.” Low and slow, I enunciated every damn word. “I don’t want you angry with me.”

The woman threw her arms around my neck, a sob broke through her wall of attitude, and she said the last damn thing I was expecting. “Please don’t ever go away on me like that again.”

I took her words and processed her hurt. Wrapping my arms around her, it felt like I’d been kicked in the chest—by an RPG. “Copy that, woman. Loud and clear.”

Her face buried against my jacket, she let another sob loose.

“Hey, we’re good.” Christ, I didn’t do this shit. “Don’t cry.”

She kept fucking crying. “I’m sorry.”

Pulling her off me like a hot extraction, I held her face back from mine. “I don’t do tears.” Not with her.

Eyes red, lip quivering, another round slid down her face. “Me neither.”

I raised an eyebrow.

She let go of me only long enough to swipe at her face. “Those weren’t tears.”

“Then what the fuck were they?”

The woman smiled at me. Slight, sweet, shy, those full lips tipped up like the innocent girl from the photos in that damn house. “A leaky faucet.”

She was fucking beautiful.

Out of my head, I stroked my thumb across her lower lip and gave her more truth than I should. “I need that time-out right now, woman.”

She frowned.

“Take your arms off me,” I ordered, dropping my hands.

“Oh.” Those lips formed a perfect fucking O. “I’m sorry.” She pulled back. “I didn’t mean—”

“Nothing to do with you right now. This is all me.” And my hard fucking cock that wasn’t getting with the program.

Sucking in a breath, clasping her hands, her gaze dropped again. “Right. I got it.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yeah, I do.”

She fucking didn’t. Grasping her chin, I brought her face up, but she didn’t give me her eyes. “Look at me.”

“No, thank you.”

“Wasn’t a request.”

Her gaze shot straight to mine. “You can’t just order me around all the time. I’m not—”

“You’re fucking beautiful.”

Her lips already parted, her gasp was barely audible.

“More so when you sleep in my place. Like I said, it’s not you. It’s me.” I couldn’t not touch that lip again. Dragging my thumb across it, living the fantasy, I fucking thought about it. “I’m an asshole. No two ways about it. I don’t make excuses or apologize for who I am. I also don’t fucking lie to you, woman. I’m not mad at you. Past is spent, and we need to talk, but I don’t want you getting the wrong message from me right now. Time-out on this?”

“This,” she echoed, averting her gaze for a second.

Drawing that fucking line I should’ve back in the alley, being exactly who the fuck I was, I didn’t give her more.

I waited.

Jerking her chin out of my grip, she pushed away from me. “Yeah, whatever, fine. Talk.”

Refraining from grabbing her again, I planted my arm on my knee. Then I really fucking earned my asshole status. “I got a proposition for you.”