as sure as I knew it now. If I’d taken her virginity that night, I would’ve stripped her innocence and broken her with my demands. She would’ve been left reeling when I deployed the next day, and I wouldn’t have been able to guarantee she’d be waiting for me when I came home. I’d selfishly wanted to make her my wife before I introduced her to my dominance.
I didn’t psychoanalyze why the fuck I needed to dominate. I just did. But I’d been losing the power exchange with her, even back then. The second that video went viral, I’d lost control—of her, of the situation, and of my future. Joining the Marines was the best decision I’d ever made, but it also took away my control. Which had only made my need for her worse.
Logically it was easy to understand why she’d wanted Vance to be me, but I wasn’t a forgiving man.
“Life is war.” I’d fought for every damn thing in it. Except maybe I hadn’t fought hard enough for her. Her eyes, her curves, her smooth skin, the submissive pose, I wanted to fuck her so bad right now I could taste the dominance coursing through my veins.
But I didn’t deserve her.
Maybe I never had, and fate had made the hard decision I’d refused to.
“Life is a gift,” she corrected as she regally knelt at my feet and mocked my entire fucking existence.
But even that didn’t stop me from wanting to wrap my hand in her hair and pull until her head was back, her neck was exposed, and she was breathless just from that single touch. I wanted to push her to the edge and dominate the fuck out of her.
With my mouth, my hands.
Then I wanted to fuck her harder than any sparring session with my brother she’d ever experienced. I wanted to show her she didn’t need him or that bullshit he fed her disguised as control. He was sparring with her because he wanted it. He wasn’t giving her what she really needed.
But I could.
I could give my Songbird everything.
Except right now I needed to ask her about Abernathy and what she and Vance knew, if Amherst was a liability anymore. I also needed to check in with Luna and Harm. I needed to do my damn job.
But I fucking stood here.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she whispered.
“Like what?” It wasn’t a question. It was a test.
Quieter, lower, her voice dipped to submissive. “Like you want me.” She dropped her gaze. “Like you want to touch me.”
Shoving my hands in my pockets so I didn’t wrap them around her throat, I leaned down and let my breath touch her ear. “I don’t want to touch you.”
She sucked in a sharp breath.
Coating my tone in deceptive seduction, I gave her reality. “I want to break you.” Then I wanted to put her back together with my own brand of dominance.
The wind howled outside, and she shivered. “I’m already broken.”
It wasn’t the rawness in her voice that surprised me or the way she said broken that made me want to feed my cock into her mouth. It was her actual admission. I never knew if she saw it all those years ago. If she saw my need like I saw hers. If she knew why she’d been drawn to me. Or if she knew she was the gift between the two of us, the Songbird that’d brought music to my darkened soul.
“Now you’re telling me the truth?” I challenged, feasting on the curve of her ass and the swell of her full hips as she rested on her heels. I wanted her to lie. I fucking prayed for it. Because the second she gave me permission to touch her, I wanted to punish her.
“I never lied to you.”
My dick pulsed. “Except about the contract, my brother and Kyle Abernathy.”
She flinched as if I’d struck her.
A better man wouldn’t have salivated to taste that fear.
Her throat moved with a swallow, but her hands, her long fingers, they remained on her thighs. “What do you want to know about Kyle?”
Kyle. First name. Familiarity.
“What does Abernathy have on you? Besides the fact that I killed his assistant and beat the fuck out of him,” I clarified.
All the color left her face, and she turned her head to look out at the ocean. “You should keep the past in the past.”
Too late. “How deep is Amherst involved in this?”
“Call Vance,” she evaded. “Tell him to come here.”