“What?” Hurt flashed in her eyes. “Why?”
“Because it would ruin us both.” I found my shirt and pulled it on, not caring that it was inside out.
“That’s not true. You want me. It’s pretty damned obvious.” She looked at my cock, then looked again, her eyes widening.
“It’s not about wanting. It’s about making sure we both survive this…marriage.” I ripped my hands over my hair. “Now, please, for both our sakes, walk away.”
“I don’t want to walk away. I want you.”
She sat up completely, her perfect breasts swaying with the motion.
I groaned but managed to back up farther toward the ice. “I have never asked you for anything, Persephone, but I’m asking you this. Don’t push me. Have mercy on us both and walk up those stairs.”
I turned abruptly and skated onto the ice, grabbing my stick as I went. I slammed at least twenty pucks into the net before I found the willpower to turn around.
Thank God, she was gone.
But I could still taste her.
8
Persephone
“And then I told the officer that I would be pressing charges.” Angela finished her tale by lifting her glass of white wine to the table and taking a sip.
I didn’t lift my glass—the only one at this miserable table who didn’t.
“You’d think you’d have a little more compassion,” I said, then blinked as every set of eyes landed on me. I shrugged. “You don’t know the woman’s backstory or situation. Perhaps she truly was asking for help.”
Michael patted my shoulder from where he sat on my right, and I subtly shifted away from under his touch. “That’s our Sephie,” he said to the luncheon. “Always using her heart instead of her head.”
I bit down on my response, exhaustion settling over me. These lunches had become more taxing in recent months. Since I returned from college and started my own career. Since my socialite friends had become colder and more crass and more…well, snobby. The tale Angela had recanted—a homeless woman approaching her on the street corner and asking for money to feed her child—had spurned a sadness in me. It most certainly wasn’t a story to laugh about, and the woman hadn’t deserved to have the cops called on her either.
“Not everyone is born with money,” I snapped, glaring at Michael in the special southern way I’d learned from my mother—the look was equal parts sugar and salt.
“How is Cannon?” Michael asked.
I swallowed hard. Flashes of our moments near his personal rink, on that bench, raced through my mind. The way his mouth had claimed mine. The way he’d touched me, stroked me into a wild mess of tangled tension. The way he’d effortlessly brought me to that edge and made me shatter for him. The man drove me crazy in the best of ways, and I wanted so much more. But I would never force him, never push him beyond his limits. He’d asked me to walk away, and I did. But it had been one of the hardest things to do in my life.
It’d been a week, and he hadn’t touched me in that way since. Sure, we spent our nights reading together in bed, our bodies almost touching but never quite. Sometimes he’d graze my hand as we lost ourselves in conversations—like the one where he admitted how badly he’d wanted a dog as a child, but out of all the foster homes he’d went into, they never had one. Or the time he’d told me about Lillian’s boy band phase and how he’d worked as a busboy after school to save up to buy her the new albums when they dropped. Or the small pieces he’d given me about his time with his mother—the way she’d been trapped in an abusive marriage and when she’d finally gotten the courage to leave, it had been too late. She’d had no resources, no money, no family, nothing to cling to. Nothing to help her take care of her children. Glimpses—he’d given me mere pieces of the life he’d lived.
The memories brought a sad smile to my lips. He’d let me in a little—his story inspiring my current charitable focus, one I would be discussing with Mr. Silas in a little over two hours.
“OMG,” Angela said, drawing my thoughts back to the luncheon. “Yes! How is that tall drink of badass?”
“Please give us all the details!” Brittany chimed in from Angela’s left. You wouldn’t know she’d been in a slap-fight with my sister mere weeks ago. No, everything about her was a concocted mask of perfection, an outward pretty package for every passerby to admire. I wondered what she’d said to my sister to set her off, but Anne had never told me. She claimed it was because she was too drunk, but I gathered there was more to it than that.
Michael groaned into his wine, rolling his eyes.
“He’s at a pickup game,” I answered. “And he’s incredible,” I answered honestly. The man had enchanted me, not only with his lips but with his words, his soul. The way he could see straight to the heart of me, the way he could slip his way into places I hadn’t let anyone in—my mom’s illness being one of them. I could talk to him about it for hours and afterward feel all the better for it. Because he listened.
Outsiders took in his rough exterior and his stoic silence and deemed him dangerous or uninviting, but the truth was Cannon was an observer. More perceptive than anyone I’d ever met. He could read a room, a person, a group, and know the mood. Know how to navigate out of it if need be. And he used that same skill set to hone in on my needs these past weeks, satisfying them and beyond, even if that was merely a hot bath and a quiet night.
Not that he’d take the hot bath with me.
No, that I was still working on.
Because while I wouldn’t push him, I wanted to prove to him that my intentions were real—I wanted him on every level. I had to earn his trust first. Had to show him nothing about it was a passing whim, a fantasy I wanted to play out. Cannon—though he’d never admit it—craved depth and truth and unflinching loyalty. I would prove to him that it wasn’t his perfect body or his bad-boy exterior that I hungered for, but him. The man he was and the happiness he brought to my life—for however long I was allowed to keep him.
Chatter continued around me, aimless and this side of haughty. I wondered how I’d ever managed these luncheons before, but figured it was mostly for Father’s benefit. He’d always urged me to maintain close relations with club members. Though, just because some of his best friends originated from here didn’t mean mine had to.
No, I had found myself friends with a much different group of people—people who laughed freely and loved deeply. People who were fiercely loyal and equally as kind.
My Reaper family. And after two years of being surrounded by that family, I was quickly realizing they were the ones I found myself needing to be around more and more.
An hour later, I happily walked to the parking lot, ready to drive to my meeting with Mr. Silas—partly because of my excitement to discuss a new venture and partly because I knew Cannon would be there.
Sweaty.
In hockey gear.
Sliding across the ice like a lightning strike.
“Sephie!”
I jolted at the sound of my name, so lost in my thoughts I hadn’t heard Michael behind me.