Chapter 16
The woman gutted me. I can’t move because something hard inside me was smashed to pieces.
With my throat raw and my mind racing, I try to figure out what the fuck is happening.
Holding Camile fulfills some primal protective urge in me to watch over her. I’ve never sat in a chair and held a sleeping woman in my arms.
Everything about the way Camile is curled into my body feels right.
No.
It’s wrong.
This whole situation is ridiculous.
I have a job to do. I’m here to lead the new team on an important mission.
I can’t really crave this as much as my body wants to think it does. I don’t need validation. Or soothing. Or connection…
Or…
Fuck.
I don’t know what I need.
But I don’t need the headache that will surely come from letting myself take this farther.
I drop my head back and look at the ceiling as if answers are there like some random hidden message in the contours of the plaster. Next, I’ll be looking for pictures of Jesus in my toast.
I shake myself mentally.
Get it together, Beast.
Focus on the facts.
Camile is safe. Tonight, no monsters can get to her with her as close as a second skin. But I wasn’t there when she needed someone to protect her before.
That worthless, coward-ass bastard. Thinking about her father makes me see red.
Visions of Camile as a tiny redhead girl cowering in front of a drunk monster makes me livid. As I hold her in my arms, my blood pulses like black poison in the brambles of veins that fill my body.
I’d love to get my hands on the bastard.
It would be painful.
I’d scare the fuck out of him first.
Only nothing I could do to him would ever approximate the terror he wrought on his child.
With a ragged inhale, I tighten my hold on her.
I can’t take her past pain away. I can’t erase it. God knows I’ve tried to erase my own shit and it doesn’t work.
But I can keep her safe tonight.
Then her team will leave town. And I can get back to business.
The short hand on my tactical watch moves from the nine to the ten. Then the ten to the eleven. The night grows quiet.
My churning thoughts roll into another dark place—the vault where I store things that come out in the middle of the night and haunt the shadows.
Camile will keep me awake now, too.
Just like Nyx.
Fuck. I should call her…
The fist in my chest tightens. Nyx deserves to hear from me.
A deep wave of guilt, as inky as the bowels of the ocean, sweeps in tumbling with the fury that’s burning inside me.
Camile makes a little sound and shifts in my arms. When she burrows closer, I gently wake her. “Hey, let’s get you to bed.”
She stretches against me. Perfect. Warm. Sweet curves. Long creamy legs curled in my lap. Just the right size for my arms.
After a beat of comfortable silence, she murmurs, “I can’t believe I fell asleep.” She yawns and nuzzles closer. “I really want a shower.”
“How about some sleep first?”
She nods against my chest.
I rise from the chair and carry her the short distance to the bed. She sighs in pleasure as I stretch her out.
That sound…
I clench my abs in an effort to extinguish the fire that’s building in my groin.
As I lean over her to settle her in, her fingers brush my cheek. “I wanted to see what your scruff feels like.”
I… I can’t inhale.
Couldn’t speak if I had to.
A rumble in my chest is my only reply.
But when she strokes her hand over my jaw, and down the cords of my neck, that rumble in me morphs into a choked moan.
“So strong.”
No. I’m weak.
Fucking weak as a teenage boy.
I close my eyes as I fight for control. I mastered the domain of my arousal years ago. But Camile’s touch is too much.
My pulse goes haywire.
That wandering hand slides up the back of my neck and into my hair.
I exhale slowly and soak in the sensations of her touch. A meteor strike would have less impact.
Electricity zings through my nerves. My skin goosebumps from my scalp to my collarbone. A rush of blood lengthens my cock.
I want to lean in. I want to run out the door. I want to…
My moan turns ragged. It’s more of an animalistic growl than anything else.
Camile teases the hair at the nape of my neck. “Your hair is so thick and soft. I love the color too, it’s like the darkest night sky.”
A shudder beats its way through me.
She frames my face with both hands. My eyes snap open. Something acute pulses inside of my bones. It’s more than an ache, it’s a howling wind, scorching the barren lands inside my soul.
“Careful, beautiful. I’m hanging by a thread.”
“Maybe we both need this.”
I can’t risk the consequences.
Annihilation.
The edge of a cliff begging me closer.
Haunted places locked deep inside me that should never be breached.
My words come out gruff. “We would cross a line we shouldn’t cross. We’re both working. We have two very important missions. We’re riding high on a flash fire of chemistry, adrenaline, and fatigue.”
Her expression softens, and a look of embarrassment fills her gaze. “No, you’re right.”
But her fingers don’t stop. She watches them trace a line on my cheek. Her next words are whisper soft. “It was folly. I don’t know why I touched you.”
For the same reason I touched her. Held her.
“Don’t apologize. It feels amazing.”
She turns sad as she carefully explores a scar on my temple. “I can’t imagine how you got this.”
“It’s better not to think about it.”
She shifts, exhales quietly, and then both hands dive into my hair again.
My eyes drop closed as I’m consumed with the urge to climb on top of her, shove those delicate legs wide, and fall into that soft sweet place that will make me forget the things I can’t face tonight.
I lock up every muscle in my body.
She picks this very unfortunate moment of weakness to ask a dangerous question. “Would it be so wrong to kiss?”
“If I kiss you, I’m taking you.”
Her brows crinkle in the most adorable way. “Take me where?”
I groan. My eyes slam closed, and this time I squeeze them until my brain protests. “Tell me you’re not that innocent.”
Her fingers go stiff around my face. When I open my eyes, she’s back to firing daggers at me.
It takes work to inhale and speak. “God, you’re fucking beautiful. I love trying to figure you out.”
She gives me a fleeting, rueful smile that’s quickly replaced with an edgy frown. “I gave up on figuring you out.”
I chuckle, but she doesn”t. Her eyes are burning me to ash.
“Take me where, Beast?”
Instead of replying, I rasp out a dangerous request. “Say my name.”
I crave it from her mouth like water in the desert. I am Beast, yes, but for some reason, for her, I want to be me. The me I was meant to always be. The man behind the beast.
“I don’t know your name,” she fires back.
“Lucas.”
There’s an instant transformation to her face. It causes me to freeze as her smile flashes brightly. “That’s a beautiful name.”
“Say it.”
Always riled by my orders, she lifts a brow at me. “And if I don’t?”
I pull back, lifting away from her, and move to sit on the edge of the bed.
What am I doing here?
Fucking up.
Making a bed of nails.
Jeopardizing my first mission leading a team for Agile.
About to take a woman who deserves more than I have to give.
I scrub both hands over my face, but before I can get up, Camile is shuffling around, scrambling after me. Climbs her pretty little self up on my lap and settles her knees on either side of my thighs.
God bless.
Crazy, uncontrollable need bounds through me like a stampede of wild horses.
She wraps my face with delicate hands and seals my fate by saying my name in a husky whisper. “Lucas.”
The word hangs in the air like a glinting blade.
I’m frozen. Inside, I’m vibrating with frustration.
When she whispers it again, “Lucas,” it’s the softest word with the sharpest edge I’ve ever felt. It rips right through me, leaving me raw, naked. My hard skin sheds and my control bleeds out of me with the speed of a raging river.
I shove a hand in her hair and kiss the fuck out of her.
I’m doomed.