Chapter 20
CHAPTER TWENTY
Promise
I can’t keep the dreams away.
I’m in a maze, branches pulling at my tiny white tube top dress. They’re scratching my skin and tearing at my dress, but I keep running. Searching.
My feet are bare and rocks dig into them, but I push faster, my breath gasping in and out.
“Promise,” Angel rumbles and I slow my pace, swiveling my head to find him. He’s not who I’m searching for and I know it. Do I stop? Keep going?
“I’m here,” I call back and then keep running. I’m searching for her…my mother. She’s here, I know she’s here and if I can find her…
But as I round a corner, it’s my father who stands before me, blood on his hands, his face twisted in ugly rage. I stop dead, a scream ripping from my lips.
“Promise,” Angel calls again. “Wake up.”
“No,” I whimper, knowing I’m too late. “No.”
“Come back to me, baby. Come back.”
My eyes open with a jolt. Angel is curled around my back, his arms tight around me. I gasp as my whole body flinches. He only holds me tighter. “You’re all right.”
I’m drenched in sweat, even as a sob breaks from my lips. He holds me tighter yet, softly rocking me as I try to slow my breathing and my racing pulse.
We stay like that for several minutes, him holding me while I slowly shake off the fear of the dream.
I don’t even realize I’m crying until Angel’s hand swipes at my eyes. “You’re all right,” he whispers in my ear. “I’ve got you.”
I turn then, pressing my front to his as I burrow into the strength of his body.
His strong arms wrap tightly around me, one of his hands burrowing into my hair as he kisses my forehead, my wet cheeks.
“When my dad died,” he says as he kisses the tip of my nose, “I had nightmares for months. Maybe years.”
I cock my head back because I’m surprised he’s sharing this detail with me.
“I don’t remember my mom. She was gone by the time I could remember shit, but my dad stuck around until he OD’d.”
I reach up then, brushing my fingertips over his cheek and down his jaw. “I haven’t dreamed at all until I came here.”
He looks down at me as he lightly massages my scalp. Then he softly grunts. “You’re opening shit in me too.”
“What kind of shit?” I ask, hardly able to believe, after all this time, I’m having a conversation.
“I don’t know. What I’m doing. Why I’m doing it. My brothers think…” He stops.
“What?” I ask, my fingertips skimming down the cords of his neck. The feel of his body, the rougher texture of his skin, they make me feel safe.
“Promise,” he whispers. “No one has ever touched me like that.”
“Like what?”
“Like…I’m special.” And then he tilts his head down, kissing my lips. But this kiss is different. It’s soft and gentle and it makes my toes curl.
How can he not know that he is special? Larger-than-life sexy, he feels like he might be able to hold up the entire world. “What do your brothers think?”
“That I’ve put us all in danger for a game I can’t win. That I’m punching above my weight.”
My mouth turns down. Maybe it’s because I haven’t known Angel that long, but he feels far more powerful than my father ever could. “You’re not.” I shake my head. “But you have to be punching for the right reasons.”
His body stiffens. “I told myself it was for all of us. A better life. But now…”
I understand. “My father isn’t running for governor because he cares about New York. He likes power. He wants to be worshipped.”
Angel frowns, deep lines cutting his face in the moonlight. “I want to walk in the light instead of the shadows. I want to belong in that other world.”
I hear the bit of raw shame that colors his words. Orphaned, raised by criminals, he feels like the other. I draw in a deep breath as I carefully choose my words. “The light is a myth.”
His scowl deepens. “But—"
But I tap his shoulder. “I walked silently through their world for a year—”
“Their world?”
He’s right. I’m talking like I didn’t belong. I guess I never did. “Every one of them has dark and dirty secrets. They are all hustlers and gangsters. I told you before. They just hide it better. And when I stopped talking, they ceased putting on their masks in front of me.”
He stares at me, his eyes filling with an intensity that leaves me breathless. “You can teach me how to hide the predator, can’t you, Promise?”
I would imagine I could. There is a part of me that feels so connected to Angel. When we touch…kiss.
But the dream is a reminder. I’m on a mission for my mother. I can’t help him and lose my purpose. I won’t.
He senses my hesitation and his jaw hardens. “But you won’t.”
“I didn’t say that.” I push up on my elbow, wetting my lips. “I told you. I can’t help you if you’re helping him.”
He grunts softly. Is that an admission that I’m right?
His hand skims down my arm and circles my wrist. Then he lifts my arm, kissing the inside of my palm.
Slowly, he trails kisses down the inside of my arm until he reaches my elbow, his lips tickling my skin.
“There was one thing that saved me when I was a kid. My brothers,” he says as he nips my skin, dragging his teeth over my flesh. It makes me ache in all the right places. “We could be that.”
“Family?” I ask, my pulse ticking up as my nipples peak. “We are getting married.”
He rolls me onto my back, his body coming on top of mine. “If I marry you tomorrow, we’re following his plan.”
I close my eyes even as he kisses the sensitive spot on my neck that makes me shiver.
Trusting Angel is a risk. Earlier today, he proved to me that whatever connection we shared in private, when tested against my father, I lost hard.
But Gunner told me that what I needed was a soldier. And I don’t have a better plan…
“My father excels at the double cross. He’s planning one for you, I’m certain.”
Angel uses one of his knees to part my legs, and then he pushes the other one in so that his hips settle between my thighs. “I keep my promises.”
I’m realizing this is a code with Angel. “What promises are mine? What promises are your brothers’?”
“To you…” He leans down and kisses me again. But this one is with more pressure and more insistence. “I promise safety.”
That’s not a bad one. “Death is not the thing I’m afraid of.”
He grimaces. “You keep saying that.”
“What I want is to avenge my mother.” I’ve never admitted this to anyone. Not in words, and definitely not in writing. My breath catches as I wait for his response. “By telling the world exactly what kind of man he is.”
He looks away, like he really has to think about it. It makes me a little nervous and I try to wiggle out from under him, but he holds me tight.
“To my brothers, I promise to think of what they really need before I think about what I want. That doesn’t mean they’ll always like it.”
I stop wiggling. I’m not sure where that leaves me.
“I won’t break my promises to your father, Promise. Keeping my word is the only rule I’ve ever upheld for myself.”
I nod and then I touch his face, skimming my fingers down his skin. “You know what that means, don’t you?”
“No.”
“Angel, it means you already walk in the light. Putting your brothers first. Keeping your word. That makes you a far better man than my father could ever dream of being.”
His nostrils flare as he looks down at me. “I’m a drug dealer, Promise. I run whorehouses as a way to wash money.”
“My father buys votes, uses taxpayer dollars to buy large swaths of land and then sells them for pennies on the dollar, and he murdered his own wife.”
“True,” he answers, his chest coming down to mine. He brushes my hair back, holding my face. “All right.”
“All right?”
“I’ll help you.”
My mouth falls open as I stare up at him. “Angel.”
“Promise.” His hips push into mine, his erection pressing against my seam, which makes my body throb with a deep ache of need.
“But how—”
“Leave that to me.” He pushes again. “But to bind our contract, I’m going to need to hear you scream out a yes.”
He is persistent. “I hardly know the details,” I murmur, but I turn my head as he drops down to kiss my neck again.
He smiles against my skin. “I help you with your plot of revenge, you teach me to walk among the elite, we both have a lot of orgasms.”
There is so much that isn’t clear. We’re obviously still marrying. But what about the arrangement he has with my father? But he’s promised to keep me safe and to help me with what I most want.
Is that enough?
I close my eyes as his mouth skims over my collarbone and down my chest.
He pulls the fabric of the cotton tube top down over my chest and then slides his hand under my back to pop open my bra.
I’m reaching the point where I won’t be able to ask more questions, won’t be able to help but beg him for more.
I grab his shoulders, digging my fingertips into the thick muscle. “Does this mean that you’re choosing me?”