Anger it was then…
Swallowing, the feel of his hold on my neck making arousal and fury both spike in my blood, I glared back at him. “I want you to find me, Anderson.”
My answer shocked him and he blinked rapidly, his forehead creasing harshly. Sneering at me, he angled forwards a little so his nose pressed against my own. “You were never lost, not the way I thought you were. Why won’t you let me hate you?” he suddenly spat. “Why? WHY?”
I jolted back when his unprompted rage tightened his grip on my neck, his fingers pinching into my skin as my pulse strummed wildly against the palm of his hand.
“Why couldn’t I ever let you go?”
I wasn’t sure if his question was for me or himself.
“Why couldn’t you let my heart heal? Fuck you, Kloe Grant!”
His anger was tangible. I wasn’t even sure what had brought it on. I only knew that it had come from nowhere, from the depths of him that he struggled with daily.
“Talk to me,” I begged quietly, my voice still restricted by his harsh hold on me.
He laughed then, a cruel laugh that made tears burn the backs of my eyes. “Talk?” Another laugh. “You want to talk?”
Anxious but bracing myself, I nodded. “We can’t fix what…”
“Fix?” he screamed. “You still think you can fix me? Jesus Christ, have you learnt nothing?”
Swallowing, I closed my eyes and placed my hand over his, pressing his fingers even harder against my throat. “You want to hurt me, Anderson? Really hurt me? You want to make me pay for leaving, then go ahead. Hurt me. But you won’t make me leave.”
Confusion flashed behind his eyes and then fear crept in. Quickly he shook his head and released his hold. “It wasn’t supposed to be like this! Everything is changed! Wrong!” Swinging his legs round the side of the bed, he sat up with his back to me and dropped his face into his hands. “You really should go, Kloe, while you can.”
Trying a different tactic, I ignored his request and diverted. “Do you love Robbie?”
He scoffed, his head shaking slightly from side to side. “No, I don’t love Robbie.”
“Then what? Is he your friend? Lover?”
He paused and took a deep breath. He knew I wanted to talk, and as if giving in, he sighed but didn’t turn to face me. “Both.”
“And me?”
He turned, his brow creased as he stared at me. “What about you?”
“What am I to you? Friend? Prey? Lover?”
“You’re…” Shaking his head once again, he blew out a frustrated breath and shrugged. “I don’t know what you are. You were supposed to help me finish this…”
Stilling, I tipped my head to the side, confused by his unfinished sentence. “Finish what?”
Anger swirled in the depths of his eyes and across his face, and he sat upright. But then his chest sagged and the vulnerable man I had met four years ago surfaced, the fear and confusion breaking through and crumbling the hard exterior that most recently ruled him. “It’s so hard, Kloe, to have this much hatred and aggression inside, with no promise of it ever going away.” His face was as broken as his words. “It’s so fucking hard. It will never go away. The suffering will never stop. I can’t move on until it stops. For twenty-five years all I have breathed for is vengeance, to watch their faces when I come back, and for the one day when I can get an answer for the question that haunts my dreams.”
Something in the atmosphere shifted, the weight of the air pressing against my throat much like Anderson’s hand had not minutes ago. I didn’t want to know that question. Yet I knew, deep within me. I knew. And I hadn’t seen it. I hadn’t even contemplated it because it was too horrific to even seem like a probability.
I couldn’t move as I stared at him. It was so difficult to breathe, so hard to make my heart take another beat. Tears blurred my eyes and burnt my cheeks with the icy despair that rolled free with them.
And when the four-year-old little boy broke before me, I broke with him.
“Jesus Christ.” My words were whispered, choked, bound in horror and abhorrence.
His breathing was as laboured as mine, both of us struggling to hold the heaviness of the truth when his eyes finally met mine and I saw that question like it was my own.
For the first time in my career - my life - words failed me, and I could do nothing but wrap my arms around the beautiful yet destroyed man and squeeze him to me. “I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry.”
Using me, he clung to me, his devastated sobs breaking every fragment of my heart and obliterating it. All his life, even from the moment his mother had looked down on him for the very first time, he had been chewed up, spat out and trodden into hell itself. He’d been used so much he didn’t know how it felt to be treated any other way. Every person he’d ever relied on had failed him, me included.
My mother had loved me. Fair enough, my sad excuse for a father had left us when I was just a tiny baby, but my mother had more than made up for that. There hadn’t been one single day where she hadn’t told me she loved me, that I was her world. And it was the strength of her love that had carried me through the rest of my life.
Nothing had carried Anderson, only his rage.
“Shh,” I whispered into his ear as I rocked him.
Surprised that he allowed my compassion, I held him closer, the sound of his heartache destroying something within me.
“One thousand pounds they sold me for,” he sobbed. “I was only worth a fucking grand, Kloe. That’s all I was worth to my own parents. A – measly - fucking – grand!”
Shaking my head with anger, I framed his face with my hands and made him look at me. Softly kissing his lips, I brought his eyes to mine and made him see me. “You keep trying to push me away but I would pay with my soul to have you. I would give God my final breath for a single piece of your heart.”
He froze, his brow dipping as he sucked in a deep breath. “What… what are you saying?”
Swallowing away the ball of nerves that had built in my throat, I allowed him to see the undisputable love I had fought for so long. Wiping away his tears with my thumbs, I brushed my lips over his and whispered, “Let me love you, Anderson. Please. Open your heart and let me in.”
“You can’t love me, Kloe,” he whispered back, his words accompanied by a throaty groan when I slid my lips down the middle of his throat. “I don’t deserve to be loved.”
“Your heart deserves more than you think,” I murmured as I trailed my tongue delicately across his collarbone. “You think you’re unlovable, yet here I am, desperate for you to have faith in what I’m telling you.”
He groaned the lower my mouth paid homage to his amazing body. I traced the edges of each stomach muscle, the hard mass jumping under my tender touch.
“I see it in your eyes, Anderson.”
He dragged in a shuddering breath and fisted my hair when I placed a kiss to the head of his cock, his erection throbbing under my mouth.
“See… what?” he stuttered as his head fell back and he growled appreciatively.
Running my tongue along the length of his cock, I lifted my eyes to him as I dropped another adoring kiss to the end. “That you love me.”