Carried from the boardroom after her breakdown, Eve had no idea where she’d landed. Didn’t matter. She was with the only person she wanted to be near, and he knew everything now.
How Bryan had drugged her. Handcuffed her to the rail in the cell beneath the manor’s garage. Adam knew about the masturbation ritual, the initials scratched into the bed frame, and the fights she’d provoked to get to the knife.
Voice shaking, she told him about the judge, the murdered women, and the daring rescue by Yolande and Carlos. She even told him about the failed plan to take her own life and the bossy voice in her head telling her to drive north.
He didn’t interrupt, scoff, or scold. He’d listened with care and attention, asking a question or two for clarification and murmuring words of encouragement when she faltered. He’d become the rock she clung to as the storm unleashed and the beach she washed up on bruised and battered but still alive.
Alive.
Body and brain slowly coming back online, guilt ate at her. Why had she survived when so many others had suffered and died? There had to be a reason. A greater purpose. She was meant to stop the abductions and murders, meant to find the other women, she believed it deep down in her soul, but she couldn’t do it alone. She recognized the reality of her situation now.
She needed help. The kind of help only one type of man could provide.
Whether a higher power, a twist of fate, or chance had delivered her to Adam, it didn’t matter. He’d promised to keep her safe. But the vow of protection wasn’t the one she needed to call him on. She didn’t want safe. She wanted justice.
“Remember when you said you’d give me whatever I want, all I have to do is ask?”
With gentle fingers, he lifted her chin and waited until she looked him in the eyes. “You don’t need to remind me, Eve. I’ll never forget, and I’ll never break my word. You can ask me for anything, and if it’s mine to give to you, I will.”
About to test his limits, she nodded, swallowed the lump in her throat, and shifted her weight. “I’d like to hire you and your team to help me take down the Matthews and find the missing women. I have some money saved, and if I need more, I can sell my practice.”
He caressed his thumb over her cheek. “We don’t need your money, honey, and my men were all in before you and I left the boardroom.”
She had figured as much. She’d only seen a face or two through watery eyes as Adam scooped her up, but it had been enough. His men were soldiers, conditioned to respond when everyone else’s instincts screamed at them to run in the opposite direction.
Just one problem, or rather, one large militant meddler to overcome. Adam wasn’t going to like it, but she needed to be a part of the group that went to Los Angeles. Finding the murdered women and reuniting them with their families was her responsibility.
Eve had to be the one to bring them home, or she’d never get over the survivor’s guilt plaguing her. She fidgeted again, her mind whirring over the best way to approach the issue.
With a dip of his head, Adam beat her to the punch, and following a soft press of his lips to hers, he murmured, “Out with it, princess.”
God! She loved when he called her princess. Loved how he eased the bite of his command with a kiss. Loved that he could read her so well he knew what she needed and when.
She was falling for him. Tumbling headfirst into a crevice so deep, if she wasn’t careful, there’d be no escaping her feelings when she no longer needed his protection, and he moved on to the next woman who needed saving.
Her time with Adam had an expiry date. Nothing had changed in that regard. Sure, she needed his help to bring the Matthews to justice, but that didn’t make her his, and she wouldn’t always be a princess in need of rescue.
Besides, she’d been a badass bitch before Bryan abducted her, and she was a badass bitch now. Time she started acting like one.
“Even if you don’t take my money, I still have a condition,” she said, expecting resistance and sitting up straighter to face the challenge. “I want to be there, in LA, when you confront the Matthews.” She felt the slight hardening of muscles beneath her, but to his credit, he didn’t say no to her outright. “I promise I’ll do whatever you tell me before we leave and after we get there, but I’m going with you, or I’m finding someone else to take the job.”
Unimpressed by her threat, the slight lift of a single brow expressed his opinion louder than angry words could have. Clearly, he didn’t like ultimatums, and he most certainly didn’t like hers, because from one heartbeat to the next she no longer sat in his lap but straddled it.
Fuck.For as long as he lived, Adam never wanted to see Eve so heartbroken again. Her pain-filled reaction to the murders of Yolande and Carlos had ripped through his guts. But hearing of her abduction, imprisonment, and abuse at the hand of a man she considered to be her brother had very nearly destroyed him.
He would do anything she asked of him to right the wrongs she had suffered. Anything but let her walk away and deal with this on her own. “Remember when I said intimacy between us changed things?”
“Yes, but—”
“No buts.” He swept her hair away from her face and kept his hands cupped around the back of her head to keep her from dropping her chin to avoid his gaze. “You and me. We figure out our next move together. No more threats.”
Her blue eyes sparked to life, and the relief he felt at the return of her fire was immense. “You threaten me all the time!”
“I threaten to move your ass where I want it. Not the same thing as you threatening to leave.”
“Well, my ass can’t always be where you want it, Adam. At some point you’re going to have to let it go.”
“I have no intention of letting it go anytime soon. So you might as well get used to it being in my lap.” His hands dropped to the possession in question, and he snugged her in tighter, thankful the comfortable leather chair in the corner of the bedroom meant for his father held them both.
