Page 51 of Lesson In Forgiveness

Showing him her full rack of teeth, she shook her head in denial.

“I’ve decided I’m going to be more forthright about my intentions where you’re concerned,” he continued as though she wasn’t sending him silent death threats. “You’re not a virgin, Tabitha, but you have a similar mindset. Rather than being afraid of the unknown, you’re scared of what you’re familiar with. Understandably,” he added when she hissed a protest. “So, you and I are going to reprogram some of those triggers—mainly the verbal ones.”

Punching him in the throat would solve that issue here and now. Talking required breathing, and he’d lose that privilege when she thumped him in his Adam’s apple.

Puffing herself up into fighting mode, she levelled him with a cold, deadly stare. If she heard any of the horrible, debasing shit her father had drowned her in on a regular basis coming from Grit’s mouth, in his voice?

She wouldn’t, couldn’t, be held responsible for what she did.

Hands fisting, she ground out, “How slowly do you want to die, Rory?”

“Oh, I’ve hit a nerve. You only call me Rory when I ruffle your emotions.” Resting his forehead against hers, he confronted her threat with calm authority, not nearly enough wariness in his gaze for her liking. “Growl all you want, little tiger. Sink those claws into me if you feel the need. I’ll still be standing here, ready to hold you when you’re done.”

Goddamn him. The roots of her obsession with him throbbed and extended, stretching their reach out for a firmer hold. At some point, she was going to have to sever them, brutally, if she had any hope of surviving him.

Somehow, it was like he no longer saw her as one of the top contract killers in the country, but simply as a woman. Something she had trouble recognizing half the damn time.

Probably because she didn’t feel like one. From her earliest memory, she hadn’t been treated like anything but an asset. A star pupil, advancing in all her classes through her will to live, even though that had wavered more than once, especially when she developed her female attributes in a more obvious fashion.

No one had given her a sense of being a woman until Grit.

“We’re going to watch a movie, Tabby. My attention isn’t going to be on the screen. It’s going to be on you while you sit on my lap, my cock hard under your ass, with my hands petting you until the shy little pussy hiding between your legs is wet and aching.”

Her breath hitched. “I told you, that only happens with drugs.”

“And I’m telling you, by the time I’m done, you won’t need drugs. You’ll get wet from the sound of my voice or the lightest brush of my skin on yours.” The underside of her jaw prickled beneath his stubble as he kissed her throat. “Maybe one day, you’ll be excited at the thought of me touching you, little tiger.”

She wanted to pat his head and pity his hopeful tone. Didn’t he know she was too broken for one days? Broken and afraid, mired in the thick shell of her protective shield, there weren’t any one days beckoning her forward.

Luckily for her, Evander returned before she answered Grit without thinking through her reply properly. Strong arms laden with blankets and pillows and God only knew what else, he shot her a smile as he walked past.

Actively avoiding Grit’s eyes, she took a step back from him, away from the skim of his beard and the reassuring caress of his hands. The more he touched, the more he petted her, the harder it was to calculate a successful escape plan.

Tiny fragments of her soul seemed to preen under his care, humming in delight whenever he lavished his attention on her. They were shards of the child she’d been, she assumed. The lonely, traumatized young soul who’d never really lived.

Souvenirs of what could have been.

Reminders of what was.

Who she was.

Tabitha watched their host set out the pillows and drag the furniture around—with one hand—to construct the foundation for Callie’s eagerly awaited fort.

It wasn’t in her nature to sit back and let others handle her problems; after all, wasn’t that what Ashford had accused her of so blatantly, using her brothers to get her out of the shit?

This was not the Tabitha Fairfax the world knew and feared. Christ, her peers would piss themselves laughing if they saw her dressed in a unicorn onesie, hanging out with a woman who embraced her inner child fully, watching some animated movie from a pillow fort.

Ireland was calling her name. It was what she needed—space away from her obsession, time to recalibrate her true self, a fucking good hunt for the asshole who thought he could put a hit out on her and not expect retaliation.

Besides, it wasn’t only her ass she was covering, she told herself. Elias might be temporarily off the radar, but it wouldn’t be long until he was back in the crosshairs. She didn’t know if it was a lack of funds postponing his contract, or whether the client wanted her dead and unable to protect Elias first.

She suspected the latter.

Regardless, she was wasting time. The mission always came first. A few weeks hunting down and casing the fucker who was causing so much trouble should alleviate her of this unnatural attraction to Rory McCabe. If she wasn’t careful, he’d lure her into giving him everything she had… including her body.

Callie bounced over from the kitchen, her arms full of enough snacks and drinks to last a week. Beaming, her lips reddened and slightly swollen, she dumped the whole lot enthusiastically on the table and skipped to Evander, who paused in the act of throwing a blanket roof over the framework of his fort.

They kissed without hesitation, Evander bending low to capture his wife’s already kiss-marked mouth with a hum of pleasure. A long, lush kiss that turned Tabitha’s stomach even as she wondered how it might feel to be in Callie’s place, one of Grit’s powerful arms hooking around her back to keep her safe.

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