a quiet strength that he counted on. He’d taken the lead when they’d been together for that one perfect year. He was always going to take the lead. He’d been doing it since he was a child and had been ripped from his parents and brought to the hellhole Sorbacov called a school. He was good at thinking through problems and coming up with solutions.
Breezy was good at life. She read people, but not in the same way he did. He had been taught to assess people with the idea of getting close to them, so he could seduce and kill them. He looked for weaknesses and he used them against people. Breezy read people with the compassion in her. She did it and quietly set about helping them, giving them whatever it was they needed. She’d done that for him the entire year they’d been together.
His woman had focused on him and given him everything he could possibly want or need. She’d anticipated and provided. She’d done so quietly and without thought of him giving back. He hoped he hadn’t taken her for granted, but knew he had. That was one of the biggest lessons he’d learned in her absence. He’d had three years to figure out everything that he’d done wrong.
Steele had no trouble turning the spotlight on himself and analyzing his strengths and weaknesses. He did it all the time. He had no understanding of people who pretended their failings away. How could you fix what was wrong, if you didn’t admit to it first? He had made up his mind that he would find her and when he did, he would offer her the world. He wanted her to always have more reasons to stay with him than to go.
Breezy wasn’t the type of woman who would stay for money or advantage. She would stay for love. He knew that. He respected that. And he was going to make certain she felt it in the way she made him feel when they were together. It was just when they were away from each other he found his demons rising to tell him there was no way she could love what a monster he was.
“I’m going to have to get quite a few tatts when we get home, baby,” he murmured softly.
She tilted her head to look up at him. “One will do.”
“When I’m feeling like this, one isn’t going to do. Besides”—he sent her a wicked grin—“I need them, so you can see them from every angle when you’re busy.”
She rolled her eyes. “You’re getting out of hand, Steele. Once we get Zane and get back home, I’m going to have to take you in hand.”
He pretended to think about it, then shook his head. “I don’t mind a hand job, babe, but I prefer your mouth. I’m not saying I’d turn it down, but …”
She punched his arm. “Everything is about sex to you.”
“Isn’t it with you?”
She laughed softly. “Only when I’m around you. I think it’s contagious then.” She turned in his arms, facing the window. “It’s really beautiful here, isn’t it?”
“Yes. Does it feel like home to you? You were born in New Orleans.”
She shook her head. “The only good times I associate with this place are from the year I was with you. Everything else was just learning to keep my head down and see what was going on around me so I could figure out what Bridges was going to want before he did. I wanted to go to school.”
There was longing in her voice that Steele was certain she hadn’t intended to show him. “Were you ever in school?”
“He’d put me in and then yank me out, even when I was really young. He liked being waited on and if I wasn’t around to get him his beer, he’d fly into a rage. I was fortunate in that I learned to read early on so I could do the schooling at home. There was a teacher who would come in to work with me once a week. He was afraid of Bridges and that was never a good thing. Eventually Bridges couldn’t help but taunt him and the teacher stopped coming.”
“How old were you?”
“Probably seven or eight. I don’t know how Bridges managed to get a teacher to come to our home or the club and for the state to allow it.”
“You come from a very wealthy family with a lot of pull.” He indicated the mansion situated a few