She pulled her lips between her teeth, then spoke in a rush. “I have an agent and manager and assistants who take care of…” One of her hands fluttered through the air. “The business side.”
“I’m not talking about your career. I’m not going to interfere with that unless you want or need me to.” I grasped her chin. “I’m talking about us. About you.”
Her muscles relaxed and she leaned into me, but she bit her lip. “Okay.”
Her body, her voice, her easy submission to me, it made my cock rock-fucking-hard, and I wanted her tightness around me. More, I wanted her falling apart from my touch. Using my thumb, I released her lip from the hold of her teeth. “Only I get to bite these full lips, Songbird.” I leaned down to kiss her.
She turned her head. “I have to tell you some things before… before we go any further.”
Fighting not to tense my muscles, I rose to my full height and stilled. “What things?”
“You know this was all my fault,” she whispered.
“Stop it.” With a gentle hand, I held her hair under the water.
Her eyes suddenly haunted, she looked up at me. “I was the one who told Kyle that you and Vance were twins.”
“It’s over. It doesn’t matter now.” And Abernathy saw both me and Vance that night before I beat him unconscious.
“No,” she insisted. “I have to speak.”
I didn’t want to hear what she needed to get off her chest, but I also wasn’t going to deny her anything. She was alive, she was here, and I was fucking grateful. “You’re under no obligation to tell me anything.” I grabbed the shampoo, lathered some in my hands and began washing her hair. So many years wasted I could’ve been doing this exact thing.
“I want to.” Her hands held my arms tighter.
I hated the duress in her voice. “This can wait.”
“No.” Defying me with a slight shake of her head, something she wouldn’t have done a decade ago, she began to speak. “That next day, after that night, Vance took me to Leo’s office. He’d made a deal with him. He told Leo I would still fulfill my contract if Leo made Kyle go away, and I guess Leo believed him, but what neither of them knew was that I would’ve shown up anyway. I had time booked in the recording studio and they already had songs lined up for me and I wanted to sing. I was young and naïve, yes, but I knew any contract with Trinity would be my ticket out of poverty.” She looked up at me with the weight of a ten-year-old guilt. “You can understand that, can’t you?”
I grasped the side of her face. “You don’t have to justify signing that contract.” It was past time that we got all of this out, once and for all. “It wasn’t your fault that Abernathy and his assistant were opportunistic pieces of shit. Unfortunately for them, they told the wrong person their intentions. I don’t regret defending you, and I’d do it again. Without hesitation. As far as the contract, even if I’d never met Abernathy, I still would’ve been angry about it because I was, and still am, protective of you. But I would’ve gotten over it eventually. Then I would’ve asked Vance to go with you for any meetings or negotiations while I was away.” Her grandmother was already on her deathbed back then.
Her cheeks colored with embarrassment or guilt. I didn’t know which. “Vance told me you asked him to look after me while you were deployed.”
Inhaling through a wave of anger toward my brother, I nodded. “I did.” Before the fuck had taken advantage of her.
Her eyes welled. “I need to apologize, one more time, for me. Then I promise I won’t bring it up anymore.” She inhaled. “I’m so very sorry. I should’ve known it wasn’t you that night.”
I didn’t want to hold her accountable, and I didn’t want to fucking punish her anymore like I did before. I just wanted to be inside her. I wanted to claim the fuck out of her.
Except I couldn’t completely own her, not yet. She was right to bring this up. I couldn’t fully dominate her and get her complete submission until I absolved both of us of the past. “Apology accep—”
Her hand shot up and covered my lips. Dripping water, she pressed. “No. You have to hear the rest.”
Hunger surged, mixing with the last of the adrenaline still coursing through my veins, and my cock hardened to the point of pain. This woman, pressing her hand over my mouth, silencing me, this was the grown version of my Songbird, and it woke something deep.
I no longer wanted to caress every inch of her body and show her how grateful I was as I washed her hair and dried her off. I didn’t want to carry her to bed and make love to her. I wanted to grip her hair, restrain her hands, and feed my cock down her throat.
I wanted to hear what song she would sing for me when I was too deep for her to swallow.
But her hand was still pressed against my mouth, and I was perversely enjoying it.
With a nip of my teeth, I caught her wrist. “Continue.”
Inhaling sharply, her gaze cut to my mouth before coming back to my eyes. “A couple of weeks after you deployed, I was in the studio and Kyle showed up.”
Without thought, my grip on her wrist tightened. That exact scenario was one I’d wanted to protect her from even before she’d signed. She’d been a seventeen-year-old siren in a woman’s body. She was beautiful then and she was stunning now, but her innocence ten years ago was compelling.
Reading my reaction, sensing the path my thoughts were taking, she took my free hand in hers. “Nothing happened. But I made a mistake that day.”
“We both made mistakes.”
She brought my hand to her mouth and kissed my knuckles. “Please listen.”
I nodded once.
She searched my face, then she told me the rest of it. “Vance had driven me to the studio. It was raining that day, and he hadn’t enlisted yet.”
I never should’ve asked him to look out for her.
As if seeing the downturn of my thoughts, she shook her head. “Nothing more ever happened between us. I swear on my mother’s and grandmother’s graves.”
I didn’t give a fuck about her swearing or the truth of her statement, I gave a fuck about the fact that I hadn’t been there. That if we’d stayed together, I wouldn’t have been there. Not for that, not for any of the times she’d needed me, and probably not for our children. I’d planned on a career in the Marines, as far as it would take me, but the stark reality of that commitment was hitting me now.
I wouldn’t have been there.
“Vance happened to walk me in that day, and he was there when Kyle showed. I don’t know, maybe Kyle had been waiting to see him. Either way, Kyle stormed in, and he made a show of it. He said he was going to kill Vance, and he was acting crazy, and the producer called security, but before they got there, Kyle kept yelling and Vance just stood there. He had this smug look on his face like he wasn’t bothered in the least. In fact, he told him to keep it up. He said he wouldn’t see a cent of the money if he tried anything, and I realized then Leo had paid or was paying him, but still Vance wasn’t defending himself or you, and I don’t know.” She sucked in a sharp breath. “I just, I got upset. Very upset.” Her gaze dropped, and she let go of my hand. “So I told him Vance wasn’t my boyfriend. That he’d never hit him because he had the wrong brother.” She looked up at me. “I told him you were twins,” she admitted in an anguished whisper. “I said your name, and I said he’d never find you because you’d deployed. And that’s why he came after all of us.”