Obsession (The Plus One Chronicles) (2 page)

“He’s doing master level Tae Kwon Do forms,” Drake said.

The beauty and power took her breath away. Sloane controlled every punch, spin, kick and twist. One moment he’d do a slow, precise action similar to switching yoga poses and the next he’d launch a spinning jump kick as high as her face.

She’d never seen this side of him. He was so extraordinary she flushed at the memories of him teaching her self-defense. Hell, sometimes just taking a simple step caused her leg to give out and she’d trip, while Sloane appeared to defy the laws of physics and gravity. Why had he agreed to waste his time teaching her?

She should leave. She’d come here to what? Yell at him because he hadn’t cared enough to talk to her? But looking at him now, it was crystal clear he was so far out of her league, humiliation at her own foolishness rolled over her face and chest. How could she have thought he wanted a real relationship with her? The kind where they turned to each other? Instead, he’d avoided and ignored her when she became inconvenient.

Leave.
Given the extreme concentration blazing across Sloane’s face, she doubted he knew she and Drake were in the room. But she couldn’t make herself turn away. Watching him execute moves so powerfully complex she couldn’t name them, her last thread of hope that he could truly love her died. But she wasn’t going to confront him about their supposed relationship. She had more pride than that no matter how much it hurt. No, she was here to try and save Sloane from making a mistake that would emotionally ruin him. Somehow, she had to make him see that he wasn’t a killer.

Kat turned to look at Drake, but he was gone. She’d been so absorbed in Sloane, she hadn’t heard him leave.

“He left a minute ago.”

Whipping around, she caught the wall for balance. “You knew we were here?”

Sloane’s chest heaved, and he shoved one hand through his sweat-dampened hair. At six-and-a-half feet, he packed well over two hundred pounds of muscle. Her hands itched to touch him, to trace the lines that reflected years and years of severe dedication. She’d always wondered what drove him to train so hard. Shifting her gaze to his tat gleaming beneath the fresh coat of sweat, she knew the answer—revenge for Sara. Another shaft of pain hit her. When Sloane did love, he loved deep and forever, like he loved the sister he’d lost at the hands of a killer.

“I always know when you’re near me.”

Oh no. “You don’t get to say things like that.” A toxic mix of fury and pain ignited. “You didn’t come.” Oh hell, she hadn’t meant to say that. But she’d sat in her bakery for hours, thinking he’d show up. That he’d care about her so much he’d do something. Anything except send a two-line text message.

Sloane dropped his hand, his harsh face softening. “Kat—”

“No!” God it hurt. “Why, Sloane? Why lie to me? Why make me think we had something real and lasting when you intended to destroy it all along?” Humiliated tears washed down her face. Kat was disgusted with herself, but her mouth listened to her heart not her brain. This wasn’t the time to talk to him, not while she was an emotional powder keg. She turned, reached for the door and was tugged off her feet.

Sloane’s huge hands circled her waist and pulled her back to his chest. “Don’t cry, baby. Please.”

His rough voice in her ear sent shudders tripping down the center of her soul, and a sob broke from her chest.

He swept her legs up, sank to the mats and held her against him. “I never meant to hurt you. I couldn’t let you go.” He drew in a ragged breath. “I know I have to now. I’ve been working out for hours trying to stay away from you.”

He didn’t want to let her go. Those words wrapped around her as tightly as his arms. Kat turned her face into his chest, his warm, wet skin a drug to her battered senses.

“You can’t do this.” She couldn’t let him. The horror of his mother’s words when she’d come into the bakery was permanently branded in her brain:

Sloane put a target on my back by testifying against that animal who killed my baby. I told him not to. He’d already done enough. The police looked at me like I was neglecting my kids when I was trying to give them a better life.

Olivia kept saying Sloane had to fix this. Kat had asked her what exactly Sloane was supposed to do to fix it, but Kat’d been completely unprepared for the answer.

“Kill Lee Foster. Then I’ll be safe and the world will know the truth.”

Sloane tugged gently on her hair, bringing her back to the present. His eyes were sad and troubled. “I have to.”

He believed that. Kat could see it in his tortured gaze. “This is what you’ve trained for. All these years.”

“Yes.”

He’d trained to kill, and yet he cradled Kat tenderly in his lap. “When are you planning to kill him? How?” She thought she knew, having surmised from some of the things his mother had said. But she wanted to hear it from him.

Sloane leaned his forehead against hers. “I’ll tell you what you want to know after I shower. I’m sweating all over you.”

“I don’t care.” She clung tighter to him, a terrible foreboding stealing her breath. If she released him, she’d lose him.

“Touching you is only making this harder.” He lifted his head. In the space of a heartbeat his eyes emptied to flat brown. Sloane stood then slid her down to her feet. “We’ll talk because you need to understand why you must keep your security until Foster’s dead.”

Cold chills broke out over her skin. She reached out to touch him and recapture the connection they’d had only seconds ago. “You can’t kill him. That’s murder.” Didn’t he understand?

He stepped back, away from her touch. “I’ve trained long and hard to make damn sure I can kill him. And I will.” He turned and walked out.

* * *

After showering, Sloane headed out on the deck. Kat sat in a glider chair, her good leg braced against the railing and pushing the chair back and forth. The sun was descending into the ocean, casting a gentle glow over her. How was it that she could wear the jeans and T-shirt she’d worked in all day and still look more beautiful to him than women dripping in evening gowns and jewels?

He knew the answer—because Kat was real and honest.

Everything in Sloane ached to pick her up and take her to his room where they could close out everything else and just be together.

No dying friend. No killer set free. No bitch of a mother stalking his woman. No memories of Sara raped and murdered. And none of the shit Kat had to deal with.

“How did you think this was going to go, Sloane? You had to know I’d find out your plan sooner or later.”

Her soft voice yanked him from his thoughts. He had to do this. After pulling the other chair close to her, he sat down. “I never thought I’d care this much about you. Or that you’d care about me.” Not his money or power.
Him.
He ran his hand through his damp hair. “This wasn’t supposed to happen. You weren’t supposed to happen.”

“And then?”

That was his girl. She didn’t let him avoid the question. “After the first night you spent here in my bed, when it all went to shit the next morning, I knew I was in trouble with you. You were touching places in me no one else ever has. Later that morning in your condo, I told myself to walk away and leave you the fuck alone. I knew I was going to hurt you. I don’t have an excuse.” He dropped his hand. “I couldn’t give you up. I knew it was all going to go to hell. I told you I’d fuck this up.”

“I trusted you. I’ve told you things I’ve told no one else. Gave you parts of me I gave no one else.”

The hurt bled through her flat voice and kicked him right in his nuts. “I know.” That’s what made him the worst kind of asshole. “I’ve done the same with you.”

“I believe you, but you still didn’t trust me with the truth. Instead I had to find out from your mother.”

Regret for letting her down, and for letting his mother get near Kat, collided with admiration. His scared little baker girl had morphed into his gorgeously fierce woman able to handle a woman like Olivia blindsiding her. He flexed his fingers to control the urge to pull her into his lap. But he’d lost the right to touch, hold and keep her. “I had Olivia removed from the penthouse suite of the Opulence hotel here in town and flown back to Florida. She won’t bother you again.”

“Is your mother really that scared of Lee Foster?”

He nodded. “Foster got to Olivia before his trial. Told her to stop me from testifying or he’d make her beg before he killed her.”

Her eyebrows drew together in confusion. “Why didn’t the police do something?”

How did he explain to a woman born into wealth what it was like to live in the gutter? He didn’t want her to know that part of him, but he owed her the truth. “No one really cared. We were nothing, dirt-poor trash. Olivia put her kids in the system to fuck a man. I’d been arrested for getting into fights. And Sara was just a throwaway kid.”

Powerless rage simmered deep in his muscles, the fuel that drove him relentlessly. Never again would he be that kid no one saw. He’d made them see him, and soon he was going to avenge Sara as she deserved. “I think they half believed Foster’s lies, that Sara was a tramp. She’d only been sixteen years old for a few hours and died with blood on her legs from being raped. That animal killed her with a chokehold then called her a tramp.” Sloane couldn’t seem to stop the words rushing out his mouth. Kat did this to him. She made him want to share himself right down to his old, festering pain and anger.

Kat laid her hand on his arm. “Sara wasn’t a tramp. She was a child who deserved to be safe and grow up.”

Her simple touch cut through the thick misery clouding his chest. He covered her hand with his. Only Kat would comfort him after he’d hurt her.

“If Foster killed Sara with a chokehold, was he a fighter?”

He wasn’t surprised at how quickly she connected the dots. “Amateur fighter in the underground clubs. I found that out later. Foster believed he was going to make it to the big time.” Kat’s hand around his was a lifeline keeping the past from sucking him in. He wanted to keep it there forever, keep Kat forever.

He couldn’t.

End it now.
He’d hurt her badly enough. “Here’s what you need to know. Foster has it in for me because my testimony put him in prison. He trained hard while inside, and now he’s out to destroy me like I destroyed him.”

She pulled her mouth into a worried line. “What about your mother? You said he threatened her. Wouldn’t he go after her?”

“No. She’s in Florida and too well guarded.” He’d baited Foster in prison for more than a decade. Sloane had a couple guards on retainer there.

Leaning back, Kat stared out at the ocean. “You’re planning to do this at the Pros vs. Amateurs SLAM event?” Her voice sound resigned.

“Yes. Foster has been chosen as an amateur.”

“But you made it known you’re not fighting that night. So what does he think is happening?”

Sloane studied her. He hated the distance swelling between them. This was one of the places he’d flat-out lied to her, and it was only going to widen the chasm further. “I’m fighting. I’ll ask John to step aside, and I’ll replace him.”

Pleading softened her features. “You don’t have to kill him. Olivia is safe, you said he can’t get to her.” She squeezed his arm. “Murder won’t bring Sara back. Violence isn’t always the answer.”

It would be so easy to abandon his sister, forget about her like everyone else had. Then he’d be exactly like Olivia, and that wasn’t happening. He couldn’t live with himself if he chose Kat over Sara. “It’s the only answer I have left.”

“It’s not.” Clinging to his hand, she sat forward. “Sometimes you have to let it go.”

He narrowed his gaze on her. “Like your family did?” Ugly, searing rage at her parents nearly choked him. “Is that what I should strive to be like? Those men beat you with a baseball bat, leaving you crippled, in pain and struggling with panic attacks. But your perfectly civilized family didn’t raise a goddamned finger to find those bastards.”

Kat snatched her hand back. “What were they supposed to do? How would it have helped to find and kill them? I’d still be crippled.”

Unfiltered anger blasted through him, but he forced himself to calm. Leaning forward, he met her eyes. “At least you’d know they cared. Know that someone loved you enough to do something. Instead they shoved you aside to embrace your ex—the fucker who got you hurt to begin with.” Sloane shook his head. This was what it was going to come down to in the end. “I’m not them. I don’t let what’s mine get hurt and not do something about it.”

“You’re not a killer.”

The desperate conviction coating her words drove him to his feet until he loomed over her. “I kill for what’s mine. Every damn time.”

“Even if you lose me?”

He could barely hear her whisper over the waves rising and falling behind him. It’d be better if he hadn’t heard her question, but he had and he owed her an answer. “Yes.”

She blanched, sorrow rising in her eyes and leeching the color from her skin.

Unable to watch what he was doing to her, he had to end it now. “Go home. Your family was right about one thing. I’m not good enough for you.” Sloane forced himself not to touch her. He’d never deserved her. She’d leave him eventually anyway. Everyone did. Better for her to go now.