Free Embraced by Lora Leigh Page A

hotel.
    He tilted his head questioningly. “If you
walk out of here now, we’ll never know what could have been, Marey. Is that
what you really want?”
    Was it? No, she didn’t want that, but
neither did she want to see Sax pay for her mistakes.
    She drew in a harsh breath. “After they
catch Vince—”
    He was shaking his head before the words
were out of her mouth.
    “I don’t want a woman who can’t trust me to
protect her.” He crossed his arms over his chest, staring down at her somberly.
There was no anger, no fury, just pure male stubbornness.
    Marey stared back at him, bemused. He
should be furious, not calm. In hindsight, she realized she had more or less
given the impression she didn’t trust him to protect her. She hadn’t meant to.
She had never felt that way. But his male pride should have at least been
pricked. There should have been anger, a snarl, snapping sarcasm. Something
besides somber intensity, steadiness.
    Her hands clenched in the material of the
T-shirt as she fought to come to grips with this new brand of male species. Who
knew they could be so damned hard to figure out?
    “I trust you to protect me,” she finally
answered, clearing her throat nervously. “It has nothing to do with that. I’m
used to protecting myself, Sax.”
    She had been doing it for a long time. She
might have messed up a time or two, but for the most part, she thought she’d
done a fairly good job.
    “And Vince is determined to hurt you, no
matter the cost to himself,” he told her quietly. “You know you can’t fight
him, Marey, you’ve seen that. He tried to kill you.”
    “I don’t need you to stand in front of me.”
She turned away from him, furious herself now as she paced to the sliding glass
doors that led to the deck. “Dammit, Sax, why do you think I’ve stayed away
from you? Why do you think I’ve lived like a nun in that damned fortress Father
built, and forgot I was woman all these years? He’s crazy. He could try to kill
someone.”
    “Yes, he could,” he snapped, but not in
anger, more in frustration. “And that someone could be you. Because he knows
you’re not strong enough to fight back. Until the sheriff apprehends him and
the courts put him away for good, you need to stay safe. I can keep you safe.”
    He said the last sentence as he moved behind
her, pulling her against his much taller body, his strong, warm body, as she
fought the weakness that filled hers. He made her weak, made her want to lean
on him, trust him. How insane was that? She knew better than to trust anyone.
    “If you walk away now, Marey, it’s
forever.” He lowered his head, pressing a kiss to her hair as his eyes met hers
in the glass. “Now, are you going to the office with me, or do you want me to
take you to that hotel?”
    She stared back at him, their gazes locked
in the glass of the sliding doors, and frowned fiercely.
    “You are going to piss me off,” she finally
snapped.
    Surprise flared in his eyes. Surprise and
arousal.
    “Baby, that’s a given,” he chuckled. “Now,
make up your mind and let’s get out of here. I have work waiting.”

Chapter Eight
     
    Sax watched from beneath his lashes as
Marey lounged on the couch on the other side of the room, calmly flipping
through a magazine as he worked on the reports he needed to finish up for the
day.
    She was driving him crazy. She was as calm
and placid as a mountain lake right now, waiting on him, as though it was
nothing unusual to have little or nothing to fill her day. He knew she was an
editor for a small publishing company, one that published extremely erotic
content. She hadn’t been the one to reveal the information though, it had been
Ella who had dropped that little bomb months before.
    Was that how she had learned to sit so
silently, immersing herself in whatever she was reading? Or had she learned
patience and silence while caring for her ill parents so many years ago?
    There was so much about her that he needed
to know. So