Page 79 of The Vigilant

“Yes. Exactly.” I jutted my chin out. “Legal prey.”

“Goddammit, Sutton.” He grabbed my shoulders and hauled me upright. I could tell when it pulled on his wound, but he didn’t stop. Not until his hands moved to frame my face, holding it hostage under the heat of his stare. “They came to kill you,” hecroaked, and I felt his body tremble, all the way down to the tips of his fingers on my cheeks.

“And they almost killed you,” I charged right back, feeling my anger mirror his when I recalled those final moments. The blood. The ashen pallor of his face. I tried to turn my head away, afraid of the way all my insides wanted to barrel straight into his strength and warmth and protection. “This was never your problem. Never your fight. What do you want from me?—”

“To trust me,” he said, his voice gravelly and rough. “All I’ve done, I’ve done to help you—to protect you. Why couldn’t you trust me with the truth?” His voice broke at the end, fracturing under the weight of his torment.

Three days ago, I would’ve fought his hold. Resisted. Yanked out of his grasp. But not today.

Today, even though he was angry, even if he hated me, I never wanted him to let me go.

“Because I don’t know how,” I told him with a vulnerable kind of anger in my tone. “Because no one who should’ve been there for me—who promised to protect me—ever was. Not when I was bullied. Not when Dad died. Not when Mom lost her shit. Not when?—”

My throat seized at the last thought. Like my body’s own self-defense wouldn’t let me say the words.

Tynan pulled me closer. His massive hands seemed to swallow my face as he drew me to him. “Not when what, Sutton?” he rasped.

My lips parted, but no words came out.

“Dammit, Sutton,” he swore, the heat of his breath skating over my cheeks and lips. “I’m standing here begging you—fucking bleeding for you to trust me.”

Tynan’s face inched down toward mine. His breaths got shorter. Rougher. Or maybe those were mine. The closer hegot, the harder it was to pull away, like a different kind of gravitational force existed between him and me.

The tightness around my chest seemed to crack with each breath. “I’m sorry,” I murmured, my mouth so close to his.

Suddenly, all of the distance between us the last few days had detonated into this moment. A demand for vulnerability. A demand for intimacy.

“Tell me, Sutton. Please.” His groan made me shiver.

Tynan was angry with me, but not as much as he wanted to kiss me. And I was afraid of the weakness I had for him, but not as much as I wanted to kiss him back.

“You can trust me,” he murmured.Begged.

I could—I should.I wanted to.

“You’re bleeding,” I hissed, the dark splotch forming on his bandage catching my eye. I pulled back so quickly, I had to use the counter to steady myself. “I need to check your stitches.” My eyes flicked to the bed, charging him to move.

He stood rooted for a long second, one that made my adrenaline start to spike, but then he complied, climbing back onto the bed with a grunt.

“Lay back,” I said, not because he wasn’t already moving in that direction but because I wanted to be the one in control of the conversation.

I winced once he was reclined, seeing the saturation of the stain.

“If you popped a stitch…”

“I didn’t.”

How could he know that?

I forced out an exhale and began to peel the tape from his side. His skin was fire underneath my fingertips. Firm where it rested over his solid abdomen. The muscles I felt weren’t new muscles; they weren’t strength grown in the safety of a small room with heavy weight, but muscles split and stretched,battered and bruised, strengthened from years surviving the brutality of war. Every fiber was honed from a memory, every inch of skin a map of barely-survived danger, and soon, the scar on his side would add a fresh record to the tome of his valor.

I wasn’t sure whose exhale was deeper when the bandage finally released. Sure enough, there were no pulled stitches, just some blood oozing from the puckered edge of the seam closest to the front of his chest.

I peeled open a package of fresh gauze and dabbed it with some alcohol. He didn’t even flinch when I wiped it over his skin to clean the area before pressing new gauze to stem the bleeding.

“Sutton…” His deep voice broke my concentration.

My eyes flicked up, finding the dark storms churning in his.

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