It was beyond time to take responsibility.
“You didn’t make me do anything.” She’d brought joy to my life. I didn’t think about a future for myself before her. I was too damn busy trying to get through school and work as many hours as I could to bring in money to help Ma with the bills while Vance fucked off and chased girls. “My punch was the one that killed him. I have no regrets for hitting him. His death wasn’t intentional, but given the same situation again, I would still hit him for what he said.”
Recoiling as if I’d struck her, she stepped back. “Don’t say that.”
“Why?” I demanded. “Because then you’d have to admit I’m a murderer? Guess what, I am. Would you’ve rather been passed around Trinity Media Group and raped by men twice your age?”
“Don’t do this.” She shook her head as if she was horrified. “I knew who you were when you enlisted. I knew that man. He was honorable, and I wanted to be with him. I never stopped wanting to be with that man. But you aren’t acting like him now. Not even close. That man, my Ronan, he wouldn’t have condoned murder, accidental or not.”
She had no idea who I was. “Then you didn’t know me as well as you thought you did.” I was exactly him.
“I…” Her hand moved to her throat, and she stopped herself.
“Say it,” I ordered. “Tell me you hate me. Tell me I’m an affront to your morals. Tell me I deserve to pay for taking that man’s life.” Because that’s what this had become—I was a murderer and she was a megastar.
“You’re scaring me,” she whispered.
“Then be fucking glad you didn’t know me when I was active duty.” I was a Marine. I defended people who couldn’t defend themselves. I protected her. I protected my country. I protected every brother I served with.
“Stop this.” She shuddered. “You don’t swear.”
“Don’t I?”
She stared.
I glared.
Then something snapped.
One second I was three feet away.
The next, my mouth was crashing over hers and my hand was fisted in her hair.
Driving my tongue into her heat, my mind fucking caved, and I gave up on restraint. Dominating her with my body, I took every word of every song she’d ever sung and forced them down my throat.
Every goddamn lyric about love—I took. Every song about passion—I swallowed. I assaulted her mouth and told myself I had the right. They were mine. I owned this woman.
She was mine.
I showed her to the world.
I gave them the only goddamn thing I’d ever cared about, and now I wanted it back.
Fuck, I wanted it back.
But she needed to understand.
Sweeping through her seductive mouth, letting her hands roam all over me, I kissed her one more time before biting her full lip and gripping her wrists. Dragging her hands from my hair, I shoved her arms down and stepped back.
Putting another foot of distance between us, I left her wet taste on my lips.
Then I gambled.
“On your knees.” I said it exactly as I meant it. As an order.
She blinked. “What?”
“You heard me.”
Uncertainty bleeding into defiance, her eyebrows drew together. “Is this some kind of punishment? I know I told you to hurt me, but you just kissed me. Now you’re going to what? Make me pay for what I did all those years ago?”
I held her dark-eyed gaze, but I didn’t respond.
Misreading every single thing about me, her hands went to her hips. “That was ten years ago.”
Ten years, three months and fourteen days. I knew exactly how long it was, but I still didn’t speak. She’d heard me. She knew what I wanted. Now she had a choice.
Nervous, her eyes darted from my mouth to my shoulders, to my gun, then back to my gaze. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”
I took back one of the steps I put between us.
She flinched, but she didn’t retreat.
I closed in on her and held perfectly still.
“What are you doing?” she demanded, her accent in full bloom.
Careful not to touch her, I circled behind her and let my breath fall on her nape.
Goose bumps raced across her bare shoulders, and she went from crossing her arms to hugging herself. “I asked you a question.”
Leaning close enough to smell the desire on her skin, I lowered my voice. “Are you going to get on your knees, Sanaa?”
Her back went stiff, and she sucked in a sharp breath. Then her gaze cut to the door, and I thought she would bolt.
Before I could ask myself if I would stop her, she morphed into the woman who sold out fifty-thousand-seat arenas in one hour. Squaring her shoulders, turning to face me, she met my eyes in challenge. “Tell me why.”
“You said you knew who I was when I enlisted. You said you wanted to be with that man. You say you know what you want now.” Leaning closer, I brought my mouth to her ear. “But you don’t.” Pressing my lips to her flesh, I breathed her in. “You have no idea.”
She shivered.
Abruptly, I retreated. Then I dropped all seduction from my tone and barked out my next words as if they were a military order. “If you want to find out, get on your knees.”
For one heartbeat, the air stood thick between us.
Then her arms fell to her sides, and like a fallen angel, she hung her head and gracefully dropped to her knees.
My cock pulsed. “Hello, Songbird.”
“Hello, Songbird.”
My heart leapt, my soul sang and hope spread like an ocean breeze.
Every broken part of me mended.
Then, like a prestissimo tempo, it all came crashing down around me in broken rubble, and ten years became an obstacle I couldn’t hurdle.
“You left me,” I accused as every part of my teenage self that had yearned for this moment screamed at me to stop. “You made me like this—a woman who drops to her knees.” Submissive and fearful and unfinished. “Then you left me when you promised you wouldn’t.” He’d promised he would always come home to me. No matter what. He’d promised when he’d enlisted that he would never leave me.
The chiseled planes of his cheekbones suddenly more austere, his voice went so quiet it shook me to my core. “I made you like this.”
It wasn’t a question.
Answering would only feed the chasm between us as I sank myself deeper into this abyss that began and ended with the man in front of me, but I couldn’t stop myself. The part of me that was still that needy, desperate, hungry girl who wanted to cower, but wanted to feed the axis of her universe in the only way she knew how, she answered. “Yes.”
Because Ronan Conlon was my soul.
Everything I was revolved around the impression he’d left on my heart. “You made me submissive.” All those years ago, he’d turned me into who I was, then he didn’t so much as return a single text or phone call to let me know if he was still alive.
The tightly controlled expression he fed the world locked down, and his eyes left me. “Get up.”
My heart, my stomach, they sank as my breath crashed against fear.
I didn’t move.
I couldn’t.
Every touch he’d given me when I’d been too young to understand caressed my soul in a cruel replay of understanding. His hand on my shoulder. A softly worded command in my ear.