That was my sole purpose now.
To guard her, watch over her, protect her from everything...including me.
I shuddered as I cut through the rear of the house, padding barefoot past the laundry and surveillance room. What happened in the garden returned to haunt me. How incredible it’d been to sink inside her while pinning her against the wall. How she’d kissed me back. How she’d reacted to my touch, my tongue, my everything.
She’d made me feel wanted.
Real.
I remembered now.
I remembered who I’d been when I’d had a family to care for.
I remembered how nothing was more important than their welfare.
She’d shown me how good it could be between us. How right it felt to have her in my arms, willing and smiling, panting and squirming. How I could finally have someone to call my own after a decade of nothing.
She’d welcomed me.
All of me, and God, I wanted that.
But you can’t have it.
It didn’t matter she’d consumed me body and soul. When she was in my arms and my body was deep within hers, I lost the ability to keep my walls up.
I slammed to another stop, recalling the sensation of having no barrier between my present and past. There’d been no labyrinth to hide in. No fortress in which to block certain things.
My mind had been open.
My memories stark and ready to swarm.
For the first time in my life, I’d had the urge to give words to the sickness inside me.
And that would not have ended well for her.
A noise wrenched my head up.
My ears pricked as ice slid down my spine.
A voice.
A masculine voice.
Fuck!
I bolted.
I grabbed the walls and hurled myself through Fables, chasing the man’s voice, panic overflowing that they’d hurt her. Touched her. Trapped her.
Gem!
A male laughter echoed through Fables.
Flickers of Storymaker and Levin and all the other men who’d hurt me swamped my mind.
My gut twisted as I bolted through the foyer and skidded into the library.
I slammed to a stop.
Gemma.
She sat cross-legged on the floor with a bunch of rope, metal, and climbing gear before her. Her head was bowed, and a sound, half a laugh, half a cry, spilled from her lips. With her back to me, I couldn’t see what she held in her hands, but the voice came again.
A stranger.
A male I didn’t know.
An enemy I needed to protect her from.
Stalking forward, I jerked as Gem’s head suddenly swung to face me, her eyes flaring wide, her hands latching around something black and large. “Kas. Crap, you scared me.” Her shoulders rolled with relief, a tentative smile on her face. Her gaze slid over my naked chest, lingering on the waistband of my jeans. Heat sparked in her eyes as her cheeks pinked. “Where the hell did you come from? What are you doing up? Did I wake you? I’m sorry if I—”
The voice came again.
“Who the hell is that?” My legs moved on their own accord, shooting forward. I almost kicked her over as I stumbled to a halt and dropped to my haunches, my attention locking onto the video playing in her hands.
There, on a tiny screen, was Gemma dressed in a yellow skirt and white T-shirt. Her golden hair glimmered in the sun, and her radiant smile lit up from within.
And she was in some asshole’s arms.
An asshole who whirled her around and threatened to throw her to the ground, only to toss her over his shoulder instead.
My temper soared, breaking through my barriers, ensuring I was seconds away from snapping. “Who the fuck is touching you?”
She flinched, studying me instead of the video. Whatever she saw on my face made her slip to her knees and angle herself toward the sharp letter opener resting on the desk above her.
My heart panged that she was unsettled enough to reach for a weapon, but my fury fired through me, uncontrolled. “Tell me who the hell is holding you.” My knuckles cracked as I flexed my hands, activating pain from cuts and bruises I didn’t remember how I earned.
She licked her lips, her voice breathy and wary. “It’s my brother. Joshua. He, eh...he likes to throw me around. To prove that even though I can bench press more than him in the gym, he can still toss me like a soccer ball.”
“He’s your brother?” I snatched the device from her, drinking in the sight of a shaggy lawn, a purple-painted house, and a laughing, carefree Gemma in the arms of another man.
I didn’t fucking care if they were related.
It wasn’t about that.
It was about her happiness.
How she glowed with it, burst with it. Her laughter clear and unafraid. Her face tipped up to the sun as Joshua lowered her carefully to the ground, then tickled her waist before snapping upright and running. Gemma shot to her feet and chased him, threatening to kick his ass all while absolute affection beamed on her face.
Whoever was recording chuckled and turned the camera on themselves, revealing an older woman who Gemma would resemble in forty years’ time. Wrinkles around her heavy, saddened eyes, and lips a bit too pink with lipstick. Sunshine twinkled on her graying gold hair, granting her beauty even if her grief tried to steal it. “Children.” The woman rolled her brown eyes. “Who would have ’em?” She sighed heavily, her sadness so obvious after witnessing Gemma’s squeals of joy before Joshua spun back into the frame and ripped the recorder from the woman’s hands.
Angling it up at himself, he winked and ran a hand through his dark blond hair.
I could see the family resemblance. He and Gemma could’ve been twins.
“My dear ole mother is only complaining because Gem is such a bad cook. She burned the cupcakes she was baking for us.” He ducked suddenly as Gemma reappeared, snatching the camera and angling it on herself. “Lies! He deliberately picked me up, dragged me out of my house, and proceeded to demand a cash allowance for being a jerk.” She sniffed and bolted around the garden, still holding the camera as Joshua chased her, filling up the view behind. “You ruined those cupcakes, Joshykins, not me!”
“Grrrr. Come back here, sparkly Gemstone. I deserve payment for being your sibling, and you owe me for that ridiculous nickname. Who else puts up with you and your midnight texts about you going off on some boulder hunt, huh? Piss me off, and you have no one!”
“Oh, you love it,” she yelled back. “Admit it. You have no one else to bother you at midnight ’cause you suck at women!”
“I do not.”
“Do too!”
“Argh, you wait!” He sped up and launched himself on her. The camera went flying, sending the video spinning before it crashed into the grass and filmed the two squabbling siblings sideways in the dirt.
“Pay me a million dollars, or else I’ll...I’ll post online that you’d rather kiss a frog than go out with anyone who shows a tiny amount of interest in you!”
Gemma squirmed and pinched him hard in the side. “Excuse me if I have standards and don’t just hump anyone who smiles at me.” She giggled—a sound I’d never heard, never earned—and added, “Not that you succeed in even doing that. Like I said, totally pathetic in love.”
“Now, now.” Their mother walked toward the camera, plucking it from the grass and zooming in on the two demented siblings as they rolled onto their backs, kicking each other like toddlers. “Don’t kill each other over cupcakes. And Gem, don’t pick on your brother. He’s not pathetic in love.”