heart.
Hadrian could protect me. He had protected me. He’d shoved me under the bed and then fought off an assailant in the night.
“I can’t imagine the pain you’ve gone through. Losing Finola the way you did…but I’m not her. Let me stay. Let me be here with you.”
“Why would you knowingly put yourself in danger?” he demanded. “Do you have a death wish? Don’t you understand? I’m cursed.”
“You’re not cursed, Hadrian,” I said, my heart fracturing for the man standing in front of me, fracturing for the hurt he’d borne through the years.
“Aye, I am,” he said, his tone emphatic.
“You live on an island, away from civilization. Why? To keep others out? Or to keep them safe from you?”
His expression cracked, finally showing the bleak pain shackled to his soul.
Only Hadrian could be the one to break free from it. I could be there to support him. I could prove to him I wasn’t going anywhere, but that was all.
“You have no sense of self-preservation,” he stated, his gaze flinty. “You’re leaving the moment the storm clears, and that’s final.”
He marched to the balcony doors and placed his hand on the glass. His back was to me and his shoulders were tight with tension.
He was right. I didn’t have any sense of self-preservation.
There had never been anyone in my past that elicited even a fraction of emotion that I felt for Hadrian.
I set my glass of brandy down on the bedside table, and with a boldness I didn’t expect, I trekked across the bedroom floor to stand behind him. I brushed a kiss across the middle of his back and then pressed my cheek to his skin.
He tensed and then shuddered.
“You need me,” I whispered.
“No,” he lied.
“Well, I need you.”
I thought he’d shrug me off, not wanting me to touch him, but he suddenly turned around to face me. He cradled my face in his hands. “Say it,” he commanded. “Say it now or get out and never come back.”
I swallowed, tears brimming in my eyes. I’d been fighting it since the moment I met him, the magnetic pull I didn’t understand. The pull I thought was only lust.
But it was more.
So much more.
More than anything I’d ever felt in my entire life. Hadrian was my reason for being on Earth.
“I’m yours, Hadrian,” I whispered, my throat tight with emotion.
“I’m not a normal man,” he said, his voice so low I had trouble hearing him over the sound of the storm through the glass. “I can’t promise you normal.”
“What are you promising me then, Hadrian?” I asked, my heart thundering in my ears.
“The world, Sterling. I’m promising you the world.”
His words lay at my feet, like a prize a warrior would offer his queen after a battle hard won.
Silence reigned between us.
“I don’t want the world, Hadrian,” I finally said, continuing to hold his stare. “I just want you.”
He claimed my mouth.
I wrapped my arms around his neck, trying to get closer, trying to burrow into him. It would be different, this time.
His phone rang, pulling us out of the moment. Hadrian answered it.
“Patrick?” His lusty gaze remained on me while he listened to his head of security. “Aye. All right. I’ll deal with it tomorrow morning.”
He hung up and stared at the fireplace for a moment.
“Hadrian?” I prodded.
“Patrick found the intruder.”
“In this storm? How?” I asked in shock.
“The infrared cameras picked up a foreign vessel in the outcrop on the other side of the island.”
“Infrared cameras? Oh sure.” I shook my head. “How did he get past your state-of-the-art security system? How did he manage to get here undetected?”
“I’ll find out tomorrow morning when I question him,” he said, clenching his jaw. “But he’s clearly a professional, otherwise he wouldn’t have gotten as far as he did.”
“How are you going to—are you going to hurt him?”
“Hurt him?” His tone was arctic. “I’m going to kill him.”
My breath hitched.
His expression hardened at the sound. “Are you sure you know what you’re signing up for by choosing to be with me?”
I was silent.
“Sterling? Answer me,” he commanded. “Answer me before I take you to bed.”
“I don’t know, Hadrian,” I said softly, looking up at him through the sweep of my lashes. “All I know is that I want to be with you—and I’ll sort out the rest as it comes.”
He slowly untied the belt from around my waist and pushed open the robe, guiding it off me, and then urged me to the bed.
When I was naked and splayed out, he