Page 83 of Dangerous Command
And she was mine.
CHAPTER 24
Maddie
For a moment, I forgot everything. Every ache ripped through me. Everything I feared. I forgot that I didn’t deserve this. That I didn’t deserve Derek. I let myself forget all of that because I had finally done it. I had finally killed the one person who had terrorized me since I was a child.
So I finally let myself be with Derek. The metal taste of blood from the trauma to both of our mouths, our tongues swollen and sore, but still so greedy for each other. For every last touch. For the desperate realization that we were both alive. That we needed each other now. An overwhelming urge that bordered on insanity.
But that nagging inner voice interrupted everything, making me go still.
“Stop, stop, stop,” I said, breaking apart from him. He glared at me, taking offense, his eyes saying,How dare you stop kissing me?“You shouldn’t trust me.”
He leaned against the wall, his dark eyes staring into mine.
“A life for a life,” he said. “My father is dead. So is yours.”
But that didn’t seem like enough. Derek wasn’t about being fair. He made that clear to me. “I was wrong,” I said. “Really, Derek. You shouldn’t trust me.” I staggered toward the door. “I have to go. I need to. You don’t need me here.”
“Don’t leave,” he commanded.
And those words haunted me as much as they had months ago, standing in the kitchen of the Adler House, wondering if I should finally give in to my desires to be with him. But this time, those words carried so much more weight. It wasn’t about the flirtation floating between us, but about what we had built. A foundation of something real—we both knew that it was impossible to explain, but it wasus.
Don’t leave.
I held the doorknob. This house gave me the chills. I needed to leave. I had too many ghosts that haunted me here.
But hearing him say that he didn’t want me to leave made the ghosts evaporate into thin air. The demons that lived inside of me could finally rest.
“Don’t keep anything from me again,” Derek said, a low warning in his voice on the edge of threatening me. “Promise me that,” he bellowed, “and I’ll call us even.”
Even?
My arms and knees went weak; all of the pain that my brain had been holding back suddenly crashed into my system. I had to gonowbefore I passed out.
“This isn’t like you,” I said, breathlessly. He walked toward me. “You don’t forgive when it comes to people who wronged your family.”
“Things change,” he said, putting an arm on my lower back. “People change.”
I knew that he meant that he had changed too. I knew I had. I could feel it in my body, even if I couldn’t explain it.
“You had your past, but now it’s gone,” he said softly. “Don’t let it control you anymore.”
I sank into his arms then, sobbing harder than I ever had. Wailing out, I let my whole body convulse. In pain. In relief. Because this was more than I could handle. More than I deserved. This forgiveness.
He pushed the hair out of my face so gently that I barely felt his fingertips there. He kissed my cheeks, my lips, my forehead. Then I closed my eyes and kissed him back, even if it hurt, even if we were covered in blood. Because all I needed, all I wanted in this world, was him.
At first, he held me against the wall, but both of us were in pain, and eventually, we settled onto the ground, lying there. Our tongues wrestled with each other, slow, uneven movements, trying to figure out how to communicate our need without putting the other in any more pain.
But some pain was worth it. Pain like this.
The rumble of a car engine woke us out of the haze. We both straightened, turning toward the noise.
“No fucking way,” Derek muttered. Both of us held our breath, bracing ourselves for whoever was coming to defend Muro. We grabbed our guns, crouching in the shadows.
A car door slammed. Then a familiar voice filled the air.
“Come out with your hands up, you bastard!” Wil shouted.
