Page 29 of Hell to Pay

Her eyes flashed like emeralds in sunlight. “I don’t want your charity. That won’t change what happened.”

I sighed. “I know. But it’s not charity if you care about someone.”

She stared at me. “Don’t you thinkcaringmight be a stretch here?”

I held her gaze. “No.”

She pressed her lips together in a thin line, like she was trying to keep herself from saying more.

“It’s… it’s a nice offer,” she finally said. “But I can’t let you pay my rent.”

“Why?” We’d made her life so hard — so fucking hard — and I just didn’t understand why we couldn’t make it easier for her now.

“Because my apartment is for Matt and me,” she said. “It’s a thing I’ve done forus.”

I tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. She’d worn her hair down instead of in a ponytail and I knew it was because of the brand on the back of her neck, wanted to kill someone every time I thought about it. “It will still be for you. There will be no strings attached. I promise.”

She shook her head. “That’s not how life works. I’d feel the strings even if you didn’t attach them. It wouldn’t be mine anymore.”

“You don’t trust us.” I wasn’t surprised, couldn’t blame her.

She squeezed my hand. “I don’t trust anyone, Nolan. Not really.”

I’d known it was true, but it still broke my fucking heart to hear her say it.

It broke my heart that it was because of us and it broke my heart that it was true at all, because I’d never met someone as alone in my whole fucking life and I’d also never met someone so deserving of help.

Of a fuckingbreak.

I nodded. “Will you promise me one thing?”

“I’d have to know what it is first,” she said.

I laughed a little, because of course she would. Lilah Abbott was no goddamned fool.

“Will you remember that the offer is there? That it’s always going to be there?” I asked.

She nodded. “I can do that.”

Our gazes were locked and I thought I might fall into her green eyes and fly away. Thought I might be happy to lose myself there and never come back.

“Will you remember that I’m always here too?” I asked. “Whatever happens?”

I was treading on dangerous ground, toeing the line of our impossible future together. But I had to say it because I knew it was true: whatever happened in the future, there would never come a day when Lilah needed me and I wouldn’t be there, even if I had to stand alone holding my heart in my fucking hands forever.

When she spoke her voice was barely above a whisper. “I’ll remember that too.”

I pulled her into my arms across the Rover’s console and breathed in the scent of her hair, the lotion she used on her skin. I almost couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t been part of our lives, and I felt the squeeze of my heart at the thought of losing her.

I pulled back to kiss her, relishing the soft give of her lips under mine, the way she clung to my jacket as her mouth opened to me. The sweep of her tongue against mine sent a bolt of heat to the tip of my cock and I slipped my hand under her sweatshirt to cup her tits over her bra.

She sighed and slid her hands into my hair, opening wider, taking my tongue deeper into the sweet heat of her mouth as I thumbed her nipples through the lace of her bra.

I’d been careful with her since the rescue in Greece, all too aware that she was living under our roof, dependent on us for shelter. It had the potential to be a fucked-up power dynamic, especially with everything that had happened between us in the past, and I never wanted her to feel like she owed us anything, especially not her body.

But now the gates of my caution had been smashed to bits, my desire for her unleashed like a flood. My cock was standing at attention and I groaned as she slid her hands down my chest and over the bulge in my jeans.

I wanted to pull her over the console and onto my lap, find a way to get her out of her jeans, drive into her in the front seat of the Rover.

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