His gaze pinned her down. “In a few moments I will be happy to remind you just what rights you promised to me some time ago.”
“Why are you here, Andrew?” Her voice broke. “Haven’t you played with me enough?”
He smiled at her softly. His Whitney. He’d feared she’d break if he left. He’d had nightmares of coming home to find her, frail and shattered. No. His girl was made of sterner stuff. Had survived worse stuff. Her character had been through fire, and now she was made of steel.
Good for you, my darling. But I still need to remind you, you belong to me . . .
He was still claiming her. He was reclaiming his life, and he was reclaiming the woman he loved beyond the point of sanity. Beyond anything . . .
She’d changed. He could see a new challenge in her stare, a resilience in her, an attitude.
He was amazed how much he liked it. How much it turned him the hell on.
He’d left a budding young girl behind and had come back to a full-grown woman. And the man inside of him, the man he’d become—harder, tougher, and a little angrier, ached to claim this new version of Whitney Donahue with such intensity, his muscles were drawn to the point of bursting.
He would reach her heart again, and the path to its tender center would be through her body. The pleasure only he, and he alone, could give Whitney would be overpowering. And it was going to bind them both.
She wanted to know why he was here?
Had he not been clear with the few letters he’d managed to send, promising her he’d come back home? Come back to her? Had he not been clear tonight, paying a million dollars for something that was already his right to take?
“Isn’t it obvious, Whitney?” He lifted his glass in a quiet toast, meeting her lovely gaze with his, his chest heavy with emotion. “I’m here for you.”
*****
Whitney hovered dangerously between screams and tears. She didn’t know what to think. What to do. What to say to him.
This felt surreal, like one of her dreams where Andrew came back for her. But he was tanner, more muscled, more . . . powerful. And she was scared out of her mind with the pull she felt toward him.
Andrew was here, in Chicago, and if she owed him a kiss, then he at least owed her an explanation. He owed her something that would give her closure even if she ended up having to move on.
Her heart was an open wound inside her chest as she stared at a dark lock of hair that had fallen across his forehead, hating how badly she ached to brush it aside. The shadows of the passing city lights flickered across his face, and her lungs just weren’t working right. God. His mouth, his skin, his beautiful face. It was all man, every inch of him. He’d always been a man. Her man.
The tattoos on her wrists almost burned with that knowledge, and her pussy watered wondering if he still wore those marks, the same as hers, on his thick wrists, which were now covered by his suit jacket and shirt. No matter how angry she was, her body loved his, and she couldn’t help but respond to his presence. To his gaze. His scent.
His eyes—the radiating energy of his entire being simmered inside them. Dark as sin. Dark as the nights when she had belonged to him. He was unsmiling, intense, his pulsing, restrained power whirling around him. A magnetic force to her. An irresistible force.
Her fingers ached at her sides, her breasts, her core. He’d been her one and only love. He’d been her safe haven. He’d freed her from hell and taken her to heaven, and then he’d left her for three years.
She’d believed that the aching need she felt with him had been mutual. That he would protect her from everything, always, always be with her. He’d done things for her no other human being had ever done. He’d stepped up for her when no one else had. This is why she still couldn’t believe, couldn’t comprehend, that he’d leave her for so long. He’d sent her letters, beautiful, loving letters, and then he’d sent nothing. Nothing, until now. Did he still wear her marks on his wrists? If he didn’t, then why did he still look at her with those polished onyx eyes like she was his very own soul?
With him here, before her, it felt like he’d hardly left at all. But she remembered all those letters, she’d read them a thousand times. The last one beginning with that heartbreaking: I’m afraid this could be my last letter . . .
“Won’t you sit next to me, Whitney?” He spoke softly, tenderly, as he stretched a hand out to her, palm up.
She trembled with the urge it took to refrain, to keep from shifting to the opposite side of the limousine and feel his skin beneath her fingers, his breath on her face.
She’d been broken when Andrew found her. Raped and physically abused by her uncle in her teens. She’d grown beyond her years and her spirit had dwindled so badly, she’d felt like she was only a shell. But when he’d seen her, he’d seen more. He talked to her, questioned her, reading through all her bullshit lies that could not justify the purple bruises on her body, and when he told her she was strong, she’d believed him.
When he told her it was going to be all right, he’d moved heaven and earth to make it so. For her. Just for her.
Had he stopped loving her?
Had her need of him driven him away?
“Whitney, won’t you feel more comfortable on my lap?” he asked.
He patted his lap, his voice deceptively calm considering the rabid thirst with which he gazed at her. Those eyes pulled her into his depths, making it hard, so hard, not to squirm restlessly in her seat with the physical urge to go up onto his lap, a place she’d always believed belonged to her.
“I’m fine right here.”
His voice gentled even more. “I’d love to stop arguing. Is that possible?”
“No. It’s the most impossible thing I’ve ever been asked.”
He leaned back in his seat with deceptive relaxation, but his eyes continued watching her like a predator. “All right then. Talk to me while we argue.”
“Talk to you? What do you want me to say?”
“How are you, darling?”
She gazed outside, hurting all over again, hating his gentleness, his questions. “Now you pretend to care,” she scoffed.
“You’re the only thing I care about.”
Outrage bubbled up in her chest. “Save your breath, Andrew. You won’t be able to seduce me, and you’ll never have my heart again, this I promise you.”
He smiled. “A challenge. I can always count on you to make it fun for me, can’t I, darling?”