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Deep inside him, the simmering cocktail of need, anger, frustration, want, and longing boiled over. All thoughts erased in an avalanche of suppressed instincts, he got up and grabbed her hand. She sucked in a breath as he pulled her close, his arm wrapped around her waist.
“I don’t want to do this anymore,” he rasped.
“What?” she whispered.
“Hiding. I’m done pretending there’s nothing going on between us. I want you, all of you, and I want everyone to know.”
Her lips trembled. “What are you saying?”
“Mate with me.”
It just tumbled out of him. Too late to take it back now, he had to plow forward. Cupping her cheek with one hand, he said, “I want to make you mine. I’m already yours, love, have been for a while. I’ve been wanting to claim you, waiting for the right moment to ask, but…I’m done waiting. I can’t anymore. I know this heart of mine is a mess, but it’s yours to take.”
He took her shaking hand, laid it on his chest where his heart beat so loud, so fast, it threatened to rattle the house.
“Just say yes.” He squeezed her hand, holding her wide-eyed gaze. “Say you’ll be mine. I’ve never wanted anything in my life as much as I want you. Mate with me.”
She opened her mouth, closed it, her energy a shock of cold against his senses. But it was the look in her eyes that killed a small, soft part of him. Uncertainty. Hesitation. Resistance.
“Tallak,” she whispered hoarsely. “I—” Shaking her head, her expression tortured, she pulled her hand out of his grasp and curled it against her chest.
Right in front of him, those walls of hers he’d thought he’d helped her take down rose up again, shutting him out.
He’d botched it. He’d snapped and rushed it, and now the big question he’d dropped tore a chasm between them. He could feel her drawing away from him, and it ripped him to shreds.
He let his arm fall from her waist, his stomach feeling as if filled with hot coals. “So it’s like that, then? I’m good enough to fuck, but not good enough to stand at your side?”
Her face fell. “What?”
“I’ve lived through that before,” he said harshly, all his pent-up frustration roaring to the surface. “I spent years being the secret lover, always an afterthought, never the priority. I can’t do that again. I deserve to be someone’s first choice, and I don’t want to hide my love.”
She inhaled sharply. “That’s not what—that’s not it.”
“Then what the fuck is it?” He glared at her, his mind and heart a mess of burning hot emotions, turning his blood to acid. “We have the best fucking chemistry, we make a great team, we care about each other, but the second I ask to you make this official, you shut down. Why?”
She swallowed several times, her breathing uneven. Crossing her arms, she blurted out, “It’s just hard for me—after Robert—”
“Robert?” He gritted his teeth so hard his entire jaw hurt. “This is about him? You think I’ll be like him? That’s why you don’t want to be with me?”
The thought of her comparing him to that asshole, rejecting him because on some level, she believed he’d behave like that motherfucking bastard, it razed all reason in him.
“You don’t understand.” Hazel shook her head, her eyes desperate. “I thought I was okay, but all those years with him—”
Something inside him snapped, a red-hot haze rolling over his mind, and the words shot out of him like venom from a snake. “All those years. You could have cut them short if you’d just killed the fucker sooner. And then Basil wouldn’t have grown up with the emotional abuse of a father who hated his guts. You could have spared yourself and him if you’d have ended it all years earlier.”
Hazel jerked and gasped as if he’d physically hit her. Stumbling back from him, she caught herself on the kitchen island, her other arm curling over her stomach. Lips trembling, she stared at him with haunted eyes that were rapidly filling with tears.
Shit. Fuck.
Shitfucking fuckshit.
Instant regret the likes of which he’d never felt before knotted his stomach, settled in his chest with a heavy numbness.
“Hazel.” A helpless whisper. What have I done?
“Get out,” she ground out, the muscles in her face hard, her eyes steely despite the tears now spilling over. “Get the fuck out of my life.”
No. He reached for her, giving in to the need to touch her, to fix this, but she magically shoved him several feet away from her before his fingers ever made contact. Swaying on his feet, he steadied himself with one hand on the doorjamb.
