Page 38 of Pursued

“I…can’t.”

I glared down at her. “I. Want. Their. Names.”

She heaved a breath. “I don’t know their names. Or if I did, it was just first names.”

“Gods.” Fury rose up in me—at Mila, for running and making herself vulnerable, and at myself for allowing it.

I was grasping her hair too tightly. I forced my fingers to release their grip. “So that’s why you took those self-defense courses.”

Her breath sucked in. “Were you spying on me the whole fucking time?”

“Not the whole time. I just checked on you now and then.” Setting her on the sand, I wrapped a towel around her shivering form. “But I should’ve been, if this was the sort of shit you had to put up with. Did you think I wouldn’t worry about you? I wasn’t even sure if you’d been kidnapped.”

Her gaze slid from mine. “I left a note.”

“Yeah, you did,” I said evenly. “A goddamn note after thirteen months together. You said you loved me, and you didn’t even have the balls to say goodbye to my face.”

She chewed her lip, gave a small shrug. “I hate goodbyes.”

“Don’t give me that.” I gripped her shoulders. “You owed me more than that.” The hurt she’d dealt me made me snarl in her face. “Was the idea of accepting my blood bond that bad? You had to run from me like I’m some kind of monster?”

She seemed to wilt in my arms. Then she lifted her chin and pulled the striped towel more tightly around her.

“You know I don’t think that. Ineverthought that. I may wish you’d been born someone else—someone normal—but I never thought you were a monster.”

“No? Then why did you leave?”

She shook her head. Her soft lower lip trembled.

I swore. “Don’t you fucking cry. I swear, I’ll turn you over my knee if you pull the tear-thing on me.”

Her chin jutted. “I’m not,” she snapped as a fat tear rolled down her cheek…her too-thin cheek. She gave another hard shiver.

I let out a few choice words and pulled her into my arms, towel and all.

Gods, I was an ass. Not for having it out with her, but for doing it now, when she was clearly not up to it. “Take it easy,” I muttered. “It’s all right.”

She burrowed her head into my shoulder. “No,” she said, so low I barely heard her. “It’s not all right.”

I tipped her chin up and rubbed my lips over hers. “Then tell me, Mila. Tell me what’s wrong so I can make it right.”

She pressed her lips together and shook her head.

My insides twisted. Why wouldn’t she trust me?

“Have it your way, then.” I went to pull away, but she released the towel to grab me.

We were both damp and sticky from the salt water. She wrapped her hands around my shoulders and pressed up against me. The bra and boyshorts were so wet, she might as well have been naked. I felt every curve and line of her.

My cock swelled even more. I gripped her round little bottom, pulled her closer. The towel fell the rest of the way to the sand.

“Please,” she whispered.

I dragged off my cap and dropped it on the sand, followed by my sunglasses. “Please, what?” I gazed down at her, unsmiling.

She raised on her toes to set her lips to my ear. “Please fuck me.” A husky murmur. “That’s what I want. You. Right here, right now.”

Heat balled at the base of my spine. I slid a hand into her wet boyshorts, palming and squeezing her ass.