Possession (The Plus One Chronicles) (12 page)

“You’re not acting rational.”

“You do that to me. Live with it.”

“You’re scaring me, Sloane.”

“No, I’m not. You are never scared of me. Ever. You should have been scared last night. I pinned you to the bed in a damned nightmare. You should have been scared then.”

“I was. A little.”

“Not enough to give me space when you should have. Nope, you came trotting out there, wearing my shirt. My goddamned shirt.”

“You’re acting crazy.”

“Fully aware of that, baker girl. Because you make me crazy. I could give you the world. Cars. Boats. Jewelry. Hell, I could buy you houses. You want Sugar Dancer to be a success? Baby, I can make it happen.”

She was so confused, angry, almost sick with the idea of it. “I don’t want those things from you.” Not like Paloma and the others. As they pulled into the Sugar Dancer parking lot, she felt a sense of propriety and pride. She wanted to build her business herself.

“It’d be better if you did. Then we’d have a deal.”

“We have a deal.” Didn’t they?

“That deal?” He parked the car and turned his head. “You blew that deal all to shit last night.”

Wait. Pain clawed at her lungs, making her gasp. “You’re breaking up with me because I wore your shirt?”

“Kat, no. Jesus Christ.” He sucked in a breath. “No. I can’t let you go. It would be best if I did. Best for you. But I can’t. You came to me wearing my shirt. You cried for my sister.”

“Sloane…”

“You let me hold you and I’m not letting go. Knowing you’re protected is the only way I can get on my plane tomorrow and go do what I have to do.”

Something was wrong with her heart. The way it was slamming around, cutting off her air, getting too damned big, couldn’t be right.

“I’m not interfering in your life. I just want to know you’re safe. I can’t breathe unless I know there’s someone looking out for you when I’m not there. John and Ethan. You need help, you call one of them. Call Diego or Kellen too. I don’t care, that’s your decision. Just promise me you’ll call John or Ethan at the first sign that there might be trouble.”

“I… Okay.” He made it sound so reasonable. And insane. And terrifying. “But we need to stick to our deal. Plus-one. I’m just your plus-one.” Her skin prickled beneath his heavy regard.

“That what it felt like to you in my arms?”

No, more like falling in love. Staring down at his hand holding hers, his longer, thicker fingers gentle around hers, she couldn’t lie. “No.” The whisper hurt because her heart was just so damned swollen.

“Me either.”

“I’m scared. This can’t be real.”

“I’ve never had anything that felt this real. Ever. “

She jerked her head up, their stares colliding. Felt the impact right to her bones. Powerful awareness stretched between them, and Kat actually felt herself pulling back against it, trying to fight the magnetic pull of Sloane. “So what do we do?”

“I go to South America. You film your commercial-grade trailer. We talk on the phone, and I bet we both convince ourselves this isn’t real.”

A bubble of relief popped, giving her room to take a breath. Right. Things had gotten emotional when Sloane shared what happened to Sara. They’d separate for five days or a week and get perspective. “This thing will fade. We just got a little too intense.” Kat opened her door and eased out. Once she tested her weight on her leg, she looked up.

Sloane stood there, six-and-a-half feet of some serious beefcake spilling out of that tank top and shorts.

“You’re going to the gym now?” It was early and he’d barely slept.

Settling his hands on her shoulders, he touched the pads of his thumbs to the bared skin over her collarbone. “Changing the subject?”

“Yes.”

He grinned at her. “A run then the gym.”

“Drake says you train like a demon.”

“I retired from competitive fighting, not the discipline. I like training. It keeps me sharp.”

Totally plausible, but she dug deeper. “You really don’t want to do that pay-per-view fight thing that Ronnie T. Devonshire talked about? Caged Vengeance?” Did he miss it the way the other retired fighters seemed to?

He eased one finger over her brow. “That really bothered you?”

What could she say? It made her stomach turn and twist. Made her chest hurt. “It’s too dangerous.”

“You don’t know how good I am. Maybe it’s time I showed you. I have DVDs of my fights. Or you can come watch me spar.”

She shuddered. “I don’t want to see you bloodied and hurt. No matter how good you are, there’s always someone who could get a lucky shot, or who might be better. You’re the one that said part of the reason you quit is you’d been lucky not to sustain a serious injury but your luck could run out.” She looked up to the sky breaking with the lightest edge of pink dawn. “Sometimes the sounds of hitting triggers something.”

“Flashbacks?”

Lowering her chin to face him, she nodded. “Yeah. Flashbacks.” Not only was she tired of her issues, she didn’t have the right to tell Sloane what to do. “I need to go to work.”

He tucked his hand around her nape, leaned in close and kissed her.

Kat melted into it until he groaned and lifted his head. His eyes blazed. “We stop now, or I’m not going to just walk you to the door, I’m coming in.”

* * *

Sloane glanced at the text message confirming that his plane was ready and had the necessary clearances as he headed into his kitchen at the butt crack of dawn Monday morning.

“You’re still going through with this.”

Drake sat at the massive granite island. The pendant lighting didn’t soften the way cancer ravaged the man, making him look closer to seventy than his mid-fifties. The former UFC championship fighter had once carried two hundred plus pounds of powerful muscle. But the man on the barstool was so thin, his bones likely rattled against each other when he walked. His skin had a sickly cast to it. Only his eyes hadn’t changed. They were still hard and determined. Drake had been the one constant in Sloane’s life since he was fifteen years old.

Now Drake was dying.

Sloane took down a mug and shoved it beneath the coffee machine. He functioned normally, but inside he could barely breathe as his guts twisted and writhed with black fury and helpless rage at the disease killing Drake. It was easier to focus on what he could do—kill the bastard who’d raped and murdered Sara. “The plan is set. Lee Foster will be one of the amateurs chosen for the Caged Thunder Pros vs. Amateurs Event.”

Drake shook his head. “It’s not going to work.”

“The hell it won’t.” Sloane had left nothing to chance. Including his rear naked chokehold that he’d use to kill Foster. He trained with a man renowned to be the best in a specific version of that chokehold three or four times a year in Brazil. He made sure he had business there as well to cover his tracks. “Foster is going to pay for what he did to Sara.”

Drake’s eyes shadowed. “It won’t change anything but you. You’ll still carry the memory of finding her, still feel like you failed her, only then you’ll know you’re a murderer too. And that changes a man.”

Sloane tipped his head back and stared at the ceiling. “I’m not you.”

“No. You’re better than me.”

Sloane dropped his chin. Surprise jerked him straight. “What the hell are you talking about?” Drake had begun Fighters to Mentors and ultimately had saved dozens of kids no one gave two shits about.

Drake’s thin shoulders sagged. “You stopped. I didn’t. That day when you caught Foster running out of the house and started on him, you stopped.”

Sloane couldn’t get his head around this. “You pulled me off him.” If Sara hadn’t invited Drake to have cake with them as a surprise for Sloane, nothing would have prevented him from killing Foster. A flash of pain branded his chest at the memory of Sara doing that for him, even though he’d have scoffed and acted like it was stupid.

Drake leaned his arms on the counter. “Evie begged me to stop. I can still hear her screams. But after what her father had done to her…” Drake cut his eyes away, looking into his past. “He broke her hand and I lost it. Didn’t care that she was screaming. She never forgave me.” Regret dragged at the dry, loose skin of the older man’s face.

Sloane rubbed at the spot where his nose had been broken a couple times. “You don’t regret it for the man you killed, but for his daughter.”

“I took away her father. Yeah, he was a brutal asshole when he drank, but he was still Evie’s father. I lost the woman I loved that day.” Drake turned back to him. “Just like you’ll lose Kat if you do this.”

That slammed him like a roundhouse kick to the chest. Kat had had enough violence. Just the thought of watching his old fights upset her. His baker girl had a soft heart. Not only that, she touched him where no other woman had. The way she’d come to him, wearing only his shirt, and coaxed him into talking about Sara.

Jesus. How did a man resist a woman who saw him the way Kat did? He fisted his hands in an involuntary gesture—an instinct to hold on to Kat. Would this thing between the two of them burn out? How many times had his mother sworn she’d found true love with her latest Prince Fucking Charming—so sure she would even toss her own kids aside for it—only to have the whole relationship crash and burn in weeks or months?

He had a few weeks left until the fight. Which gave him time to find a way to…what? Hide it from her?

Don’t lie to me. Just don’t lie. I can deal with this as long as you tell me the truth.

Kat’s words echoed in his head.

Sara’s murder haunted him.

Sloane shook it off. There was only one choice. He’d spent years planning, and now the plan was in motion. There was no going back.

Foster had to die.

Chapter Nine

Wednesday afternoon Kat wiped sweat from her face and chest, then chugged the rest of her water bottle. Catching her breath, she couldn’t find the energy to grumble that Sherry Moreno didn’t have the decency to look as wiped as Kat felt. Glancing at the wall-mounted clock, she was surprised it had been an hour-and-a-half session. “I’m pretty sure I’m going to hate you when I get out of bed in the morning.”

The other woman shoved her towel into her bag, then rose to her full height about an inch shorter than Kat. “Did you hate me Monday?”

She winced, remembering Sunday’s late-afternoon sparring session. Sherry took her martial arts seriously. “I plotted your murder.” Kat tossed her empty water bottle in the trash. The private training room in Sloane’s gym was starting to feel as familiar as her bakery, except Kat wasn’t hiding here as she once had in Sugar Dancer’s kitchen. No, here Kat trained to live not hide. Her aches and pains were welcome reminders that she was getting stronger. “But I was in too much pain to carry it out.”

Sherry raised her brows. “I don’t think so. You gave as good as you got. I showed John the bruise on my thigh from your knee-strike kick. He was impressed.”

He wrinkled her nose. “Sorry about that.”

“Don’t be. I underestimated you on Sunday. I don’t make the same mistake twice.” Scooping up her bag, the blonde shook her head. “That’s when I knew you were committed to learning.”

“I am.” After grabbing her bag, she followed Sherry out of the room. “So I was wondering, once this thing between Sloane and me ends, he won’t be able to work with me any longer. Can I hire you?”

Sherry snorted and swung around in the hall. Music pumped from hidden speakers, but the hallway was empty. “You’d pay me.”

“Of course.” She should be paying her now, but when Kat mentioned it at their first training session on Sunday, Sherry said Sloane had that covered. “Listen, I don’t like Sloane paying you at all. That’s kind of gross.”

“It is, isn’t it?” She beamed cheerfully.

Kat leaned back against the wall. “How much do you charge an hour? I’ll pay you and I’ll tell Sloane. He won’t care.” A total lie. He would blow a vein or something, but he’d have to find a way to live with it.

“Can I be there when you tell him? I’ll teach you for free just to see you stand up to him.”

She lifted a brow. Sherry had an all-American girl look; no makeup, skin flushed from exertion and set against her blonde shoulder-length hair. Probably made all men with a pulse want to protect her, never realizing she could kick their ass and laugh while doing it. “Sloane doesn’t scare you.”