Page 52 of Entwined With You

But that stops now.

We’ll have to come up with a plan, of course. I’ll talk to Lambert and the senior agents like Jorge. I’ll lay it all out, and they’ll have to see the truth. We can even top it off with a polygraph. But in the end, they’ll bring Brax in, too, and we’ll finally be together, just like we should have been so long ago.

Or we could just quit and move to a desert island together. Frankly, I’d be fine with that, too. Or a zillion other options. All I want is to be back in his arms, because the only thing I’m certain of is that now that I have him back, I won’t survive if I lose him again.

His fingers stroke my arm as his lips brush the curve of my ear.

“What are you thinking?”

I laugh. “That I never want you to stop.”

He chuckles. “Never’s a long time. But we can give it a try.” He shifts his position, then bends his head again and kisses my navel. Then he trails kisses lower, his lips teasing my lower belly, then going even further as I spread my legs and close my eyes, already half-swept away by the pleasure building inside me.

I’m waxed, and his lips feel glorious against the soft skin of my pubis as he moves lower still, until—

The scar. Oh, god, the scar.

My entire body goes cold, and I start to roll over. But his hands are tight on my hips now, and it’s not a sensual touch anymore. My chest tightens, and I want to cry.

I know what this means.

And more than anything in the world, I wish that could press rewind and have a do-over of the last fifteen years.

The scar.

His fingers brushed over it, and at first he didn’t realize what it was. Then he heard her gasp and felt the way her body tensed.

And that’s when he knew.

That’s when he understood.

She wasn’t Samantha. She wasn’t even a twin.

She was Sabrina.

She was the woman he’d loved. The woman he’d mourned.

And now he knew she was the woman who betrayed him.

He sat up, then reached for his sweats and tugged them on. Then he stood up, turned around just long enough to give her one long, cold glare, and left the bedroom, pulling the door shut behind him.

The moment he sat on the couch, though, the tension left his body. He wanted to cry like a baby.

All this time…

All this time, he’d believed she was dead. Instead, she’d lied to him. She was alive—vibrantly alive. And yet she’d hidden from him. Kept her distance because she believed—she actually fucking believed—that he had something to do with that goddamn bomb.

Fuck.

He shouldn’t have touched her. He should never have let himself fall for “Samantha.” For the fiction Sabrina had spun. And why the hell had she let herself get so close. He’d been right there when the thug had attacked her all those years ago. The knife slicing through the thin cotton of her dress and her tender flesh so fast that Brax hadn’t even had time to react.

She’d been so young, and so perfect. And the prick had got away, because Brax couldn’t leave her. On the contrary, he’d flagged down a cop—and that was risky enough—who’d taken them to the nearest emergency room. She’d gotten stitched up, and while the cop was waiting for the triage team to finish so he could talk to her, they’d slipped out through a connecting room, waited it out in a supply closet, then finally disappeared back into the night.

It had taken over a month before he could touch her again, and when the red of the scar finally faded, she called it her badge of honor. Points toward starting her own street gang.

He’d been so proud of her for owning it, and he wondered how the hell she could have forgotten about it.

Except he didn’t. Not really. He’d been lost in the moment, too. And he didn’t doubt at all that her desire was real.