“You have to learn to trust me, and that trust has to be so strong that you know you can tell me anything. I’ll listen to you, Seychelle. I’ll hear you and we’ll talk it out. The two of us. We’ll work through the problems together and it will be all right.”
“But it won’t. I tried to tell you about those other women in the bar last night. How they couldn’t keep their eyes off you. The way they made me feel. But you just dismissed my feelings as if they didn’t count.”
He was silent for a long time, his gaze moving over her face, his fingers moving on her calf. “I shouldn’t have done that, Seychelle. In all honesty, I couldn’t have identified those women to you. I don’t know their names. They mean absolutely nothing to me. I know that makes me sound like a dick, but it’s the truth, and we have to have truth between us. The only woman who matters to me is you. I didn’t see anyone else last night. So yeah, I did dismiss what I considered unimportant. I shouldn’t have. Just because they weren’t important to me didn’t mean they weren’t important to you.”
She didn’t know what to say to that. She hadn’t expected him to admit he was wrong. Savage didn’t seem the type of man to ever say he was wrong. She liked that he had.
His palm slid up and down her leg. His touch was mesmerizing. The heat he generated slipped through her pores into her bloodstream. Even the sight of his hand on her bare leg was almost hypnotizing.
“You’re the only woman who matters to me. I don’t want another woman sexually, Seychelle. I want you. I wanted you when I left you this last time. The idea of another woman touching me was abhorrent to me. Quite frankly, it disgusted me.”
She knew he was telling the truth. She’d shared that moment with him when he’d picked her up on Doris’s porch and she felt his distaste of the woman. “I don’t understand why you went to her, Savage. You knew I would have done anything for you.”
His hand slid behind her knee, making her breath catch. “I couldn’t get you ready in time, baby. I can get you there, but it takes time. That’s something we have to talk about. Things I need. Things you have to go into our relationship knowing, with your eyes wide open. I want you to ask questions if you don’t understand something. You need to know this isn’t going to be easy, but I swear to you, I’ll never let you down. Never.”
Seychelle swallowed every question she had, her heart beating so loud it sounded like thunder booming in her ears.
“I want a full commitment from you, baby, but you have to know what being my woman means. There are rules, and those rules are always going to be there. More, you have to know what being with me is going to be like.”
Her heart thudded. There it was. She knew it was coming. Her mouth went dry, and deliberately she took another sip of water. “Rules?” She’d never been good with rules. Never. She’d grown up without them. She went her own way. Did her own thing.
“I’m fucked up. Don’t pretend you don’t know, Seychelle. You knew it the moment you made the decision to save my life. You connected with me. I felt it. You felt it. You slipped inside me and you know what’s there. It isn’t pretty, and it scares the hell out of you.”
She couldn’t deny it, but at the same time, she was drawn to him. That was one side of him, not all of him. He couldn’t hide the best part of him, that giving part, so selfless, looking out for his brethren, for her. She had seen the violence in him, but she’d also seen his tremendous need to protect those he loved. That determination to stop their pain when it was so strong they couldn’t bear it, because he had the capacity to love that much.
“There has to be truth between us at all times, because this lifestyle demands it. My sexual practices are disturbing to others, but hot as hell and arousing for me. I have to have them in order to be in any way both aroused and satisfied.”
His hand never stopped stroking those caresses up and down her leg. It felt good. It felt like possession. The things he said were terrifying, and yet at the same time, just the fact that he was willing to give that to her pulled her deeper into him.
“I went to a friend of mine, one of the brothers in my club, Absinthe. He’s the smartest man I know. I wanted him to tell me I could learn to be different if I was with a woman who truly meant something to me. I’d done my research, and everything I read said no. I was already having too many fantasies about us, so I was worried.”
His gaze touched on her breasts under her thin tank, and instantly her nipples hardened. Satisfaction gleamed in his eyes. The pads of his fingers brushed over the tops of her breasts, raising goose bumps over her skin. “I spent weeks imagining what your nipples were like. I even asked Ice to make me several different kinds of jewelry for you.”