Page 126 of Temptation
She feels right.
He carried her down the stairs. She nestled against him. They didn’t speak, not until they were in the den. In the oversized armchair. Her on his lap. His arms around her. He pulled in her scent, just needing to have that sweet strawberry smell close. Needing to feel her breathing. Her. Warm, soft, alive.
His angel.
I couldn’t get to the woods fast enough. Couldn’t run to her fast enough. Couldn’t kill that bastard Adam fast enough.
Adam had been dead the minute he’d taken Sloane, brother or not. Even if Preston had known the truth about the guy before he’d picked up that shovel and swung it, nothing would have changed.
No one hurt Sloane in this world. No one.
She came before blood. She came before any other bond out there.
She was his family. His future. If she’d have him…
Even if I will never feel like I deserve her.
“Talk to me,” she whispered. She kissed his cheek. She sat in his lap, with her gorgeous legs sliding off the side of the chair. Her hands were in front of her. Two of the fingers on her right hand—her pinky and her ring finger—were in a splint. Because the bastard broke her bones.
“I would do it all again.” She needed to know this. So he spoke deliberately. “I would kill again in an instant and have no hesitation.”
A swift inhale from Sloane. “Even knowing…who he was to you?”
“Yes. Because you are more to me.” His head turned. His lips pressed to hers. A soft, brief kiss. For now, because that was all he could allow himself.
For now.
Confession first, and then…
Preston tried to relax the tense muscles in his body. “He grew up with the Last Breath Killer. He grew up in hell. In a nightmare. I can only imagine how twisted and dark and…” Fuck. This was the part that ate at him. Things could have been different. If he’d known about Adam, then maybe he could have gotten his younger brother to come live with him and his adoptive family. Maybe…maybe they could have changed things for Adam. Gotten therapy, help, gotten…
“Mourn for the boy he was,” she told him. “That’s what you should do. That’s okay. That’s normal. You lost someone?—”
“He killed our mother.” Because, yes, Sloane had told him that terrible part, too. “He was a serial killer with victims across the US. He was twisted and sadistic and evil…and how do I know that I will not wind up exactly like him?”
“Preston.”
Soft lights sent a gentle glow through the den. Not too many lights. Not too many…
“You will never be like him. You don’t hurt people.”
Oh, but he’d wanted to hurt those who’d taken her. He’d wanted to rip Adam apart. Wanted to destroy the deputy when he realized that the bastard was part of the whole twisted mess.
So when he’d seen Eugene lunging for Sloane and Noble, Preston had fired his gun, again and again. He’d killed the deputy. He’d killed Adam.
When he’d held the shovel in his hands, he’d wanted to keep swinging it at Adam. To keep beating him. Until there was no chance that Adam could ever hurt Sloane again. “I am twisted,” he confessed to her. “And you know, angel, you know that the Last Breath Killer succeeded with me, so long ago. He killed part of me, and he brought something else to life.” A shake of his head even as his hands tightened around her. He was hugging her, pulling her closer, when he should be letting go. “I will never be like everyone else.”
“I don’t want you to be. I don’t need you to be.”
What did she need?
“Preston…” A gentle sigh. Then she was kissing him again. Feathering her lips over his. Soft, sensual, open-mouthed kisses. Her tongue darted inside his mouth. Teased. Promised. Then slipped away. “I knew you were going to find me in those woods.”
A hard feat, considering that her tracker had been left behind at the hospital.
He’d already gotten her another one. A permanent bracelet that she wore around her left wrist.
“I knew you would not give up, so I didn’t give up. I knew you’d come…and I knew that you would kill to keep me safe.”
