“Gabriel,” she murmured softly.
Fuck, but how easy it would be for me to slide her panties down and bury myself deep inside her.
I rested my chin on the top of her head, my gaze focused on the wall in front of us.
We didn’t speak for a moment, and I let myself bask in the peacefulness of it.
Peace was something I had very little experience with.
Even in my early years, there had been chaos and crying and violence.
But with her in my arms, it was how it was supposed to be all along.
And it wasn’t something I deserved or didn’t deserve.
It just was.
“Luis is my little brother, but you already know that,” I said. “He was five years younger than me, so I suppose I always felt a little protective of him. Not that he deserved it.”
I squeezed her tighter to me.
“What did he do?” she asked, and it was hard for me to tell what she was feeling because I couldn’t see her face. But fuck, it was easier for me to tell her all this shit when she wasn’t looking at me with those baby-blue eyes.
“Are you sure you want to know,mi corazón?”
“You want me to keep the pretty illusion, right?”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” I asked, half hoping she would agree to let me keep up the façade and half hoping she wouldn’t. I wanted her to fall so deeply in love with me, there would be no her without me, but could she fall in love with a man she didn’t know?
Or would she be able to fall in love with a monster?
“You want to keep me ignorant,” she said, and there was no mistaking the anger in her voice.
“I can give you the world. You and our baby. I’ll spoil you. I’ll cut myself open for you. There will be nothing I won’t do for you.” I squeezed her tighter to me. “No line I won’t cross. I can keep you in the light while I drench myself deep in the darkness. In theuglinessof it all.”
She turned around slightly and looked at me. “Why can’t I be the one to bring you into the light?”
I smiled a little at her. How like an innocent, to ask such an innocent thing.
She scowled at me. “Don’t look at me like that. I’m not naïve.”
I let my lips gently skim the side of her face, and kissed the corner of her lips lightly before I turned on my back, looking up at the ceiling so I wouldn’t have to meet her eyes.
“You’re not. But that doesn’t mean I want to expose you to everything.”
“Tell me,” she said. “You’ve given me no choice but to be a part of your world. The least you can do is to be honest with me.”
“And what happens when you don’t like the kind of man I am? There’s no divorce,mi corazón. No leaving for you. I will tie you to me forever if I have to.”
She shuddered against me, in fear or something else.
“Tell me.”
“I killed my little brother. And my father.”
I felt her stiffen against me. Her breath caught before her breathing picked up. I could feel the way her chest pushed in and out with every deep intake and release of air.
When she didn’t say anything, I continued.