Page 104 of Forged in the Fire
I barely slowed to nab my cut from the back of the chair before I stumbled out of the house like I’d been trapped in noxious fumes and was in desperate need of a fresh breath of air.
Ripping at my hair and blundering around like a fool.
How could this woman affect me this way when no one else had ever held the power?
I had enough on my fucking shoulders to last fifteen lifetimes.
Enough baggage that nothing else would fit.
Enough vileness running through my contaminated veins that I knew never to get close.
I would only desolate and destroy.
Not to mention she was so off-limits, it wasn’t funny.
Even looking at her was a crime against my own law, and I’d never taken myself as one of those pathetic hypocrites who meted rules but didn’t follow them himself.
I’d already drilled it into my entire crew. Had warned them of the dire consequences of turning their attention toward our specialguest.
Because Brinley was right.
Shewasa job.
A means to an end.
Because of her, we had the chance to rid the earth of that entire group of scum.
She had one thing wrong, though.
I’d never let anyone touch her. I would protect her to my last breath.
It was an oath I made.
A promise.
And that meant something to me.
What I hadn’t been prepared for was everything that she turned out to be.
That smart mouth almost as keen as her sharp-witted mind that I could see working at a thousand miles a minute.
Way those eyes toiled and whirled with that unrelenting curiosity, pilfering through the bare facts I’d given her like she still might be capable of coming up with the sum.
But it was the tender, genuine care underneath it that made her stand out.
What made her shine in some kind of rarely seen brilliance.
The way she worried about her brother was a true testament to her character.
I mean, fuck, I’d nearly been blown back into the wall when I’d come into the kitchen and found her holding Kai. Expression verging between bewildered and awed, and her heart gushing out onto the floor.
I’d had to shove down the awe myself.
Then I’d had to sit through that torturous meal with her.
Had to sit and watch her hold that baby. Had to watch her soft smiles and listen to her sweet coos.
Things had gotten insurmountably worse with her groaning and moaning over Meems’s delicious dinner.
