Page 107 of The Vigilant

I stopped and gaped. Was he being purposely obtuse? Was he purposely trying to screw with me? But the longer I stared, the more I realized he wasn’t.

“I mean that it’s not your fucking fault my dad decided to play hero. It’s who he was—who he’d always been.” My head tipped. For a man who’d, without question, known Jon Brant far better than me, I couldn’t fathom why he was looking at me like this was new news. “I mean, you obviously can continue to blame yourself if you want, but I don’t. And I definitely won’t stick around to be your path to salvation.”

A dark cloud started to form over Tynan’s face, and like before, he seemed to move with inhuman speed as he stepped toward me and locked a hand around the side of my neck, my ragged pulse confessing my anticipation to the meat of his palm.

“What did you just say?” His thumb pushed under my chin, forcing my head higher.

My breath caught, and the air in the entire room seemed to shift.

“I said I’m not here to be your penance. You want to guilt yourself over the death of a man who couldn’t control his hero complex? That’s your decision. But I’m not going to stick around and be the checkmate in your redemption plan.”

He stared at me, his pupils blown out, his nostrils flared, but it was the twitch of his tight mouth that made me feel like I’d just poked the beast.

“Is that what you think?” he demanded low, his stare piercing the very depths of my soul. “That everything I’ve done…everything I offered…everything I want…is out of guilt?”

“I’m not a child,” I snapped back, hating the emotion that bubbled into my voice. I wanted to fight him. Rage at him. Makehim hurt like I hurt. But he’d opened up something inside me that I hadn’t quite managed to close. So instead, all I could muster was the edge of bitterness to my tone. “I didn’t need it spelled out for me in the car that you blame yourself for my dad’s death and everything that happened after. And now, you just want me here—want to take care of me as some kind of attempt to ease your conscience?—”

I cried out as he spun us, his grip like a guiding vise around my neck, hauling me toward the bed and then pulling me down over his lap.

As much as I wanted to focus on what was happening to me—my body suddenly prone over his thighs in a position that only promised one thing—all I could focus on was him.

The deep, audible breaths that sounded torn from his lungs. The subtle vibration of even the smallest muscles in his fingers where they held the back of my neck and his other hand rested on my lower back. The steel of his thighs supporting my chest and hips. And the length of his cock, growing thicker and longer against my ribcage.

“Let me go.”

He ignored me. “You think I want to take care of you…out of guilt?”

Why did he sound so offended by the idea? So enraged? He was the one who said he blamed himself. He was the one who looked so fucking remorseful—so fucking broken—I’d almost been tempted to sacrifice myself on the altar of his retribution.

And that was what I hated most.

That in such a short amount of time, he’d made me feel so much…made me want so much with him, that I’d considered becoming his prey.

“You’re the one who said it?—”

Smack.

The first slap on my ass was so fucking shocking and so fucking hard, I screamed and then gasped for air.No.I felt the pressure welling in my chest. The pain, his control, the safety of his body—it started the freight train of submission rolling through me. Heavy, powerful, and picking up speed.

I gathered the surge and tried to redirect it toward anger rather than ache. Rather than anticipation.

“What the hell?—”

Smack.

I stiffened and let out a yelp this time.

“You think wanting you…the way I do…eases my guilt?” he said in a low, ragged tone, his palm rubbing a slow circle on my burning skin.

But it was his question that stung me. His question that oozed doubt into my veins like a solvent against my surety.

“You think wanting to spank his daughter until she screams and then fuck her until she cries is the way to ease a conscience?”

Oh. God.

Smack.

I’d been so struck by the pain on his face—so sure that the pain when he looked at me was because I was his guilt’s last resort, and now, I saw it for what it was.

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