Dangerous: Made & Broken (A British Bad Boy Romance) (18 page)

I closed my eyes and let the simple gesture calm me. Gradually, my heart rate slowed and my breathing evened out until I was once again in full control of myself.

“If there’s one thing you’re not, Mira, it’s weak.” Blaine’s voice was quiet and as dark as his gaze had been. Then he removed his hand from my cheek and I felt him take a step back, putting more space between us. “Come back in with me. Show them that they haven’t broken you.”

I gritted my teeth and nodded. As much as I wanted to curl up in a corner and cry until they’d left, I knew they would think me the weak victim they’d always thought me to be if I did. And I didn’t want that. I wanted to be strong, not for them, but for myself. If I could do this, then maybe I could finally start healing.

Blaine turned around and led the way back to the conference room. He waited for me to sit down, but instead of following suit, he leaned in over the table, resting on his knuckles.

I looked up at him in surprise, my eyes widening at the absolute, stone cold rage in his gaze as he leveled my father and brother with a murderous stare.

“Now you listen to me very,
very
carefully, Clery. There will be no more deals made between my family and yours. Not one. Any arrangements made in the past are null and void. You understand?”

My father gaped up at Blaine, his mouth working to form some form of protest no doubt, but the shock didn’t allow for any actual words to be produced. By his side, Michael had gone completely pale—Blaine’s anger was a near physical presence in the room, and terrifying beyond belief, even for me who wasn’t in its direct line of fire.

“You have twenty-four hours to get the
fuck
out of London and back to Belfast, or I swear I will gut every one of you like fish.”

“Now
you
listen, son!” my father protested, finally finding his voice as he got to his feet. “You have no authority to make such threats. We have an agreement with your father, and you can’t—”

“Did I not make myself clear?” Blaine hissed. “Get out of my city,
now.
I am a Steel, and trust me when I say that I have all the authority I need to slaughter every last member of your miserable little gang.”

“You’ve made a grave mistake today, boy,” my father growled. He grabbed Michael by the shoulder and my brother got up from his chair too, despite looking like he was about to wet himself. “And
you.”
He pointed his finger at me, and it took all I had not to shrink back from the absolute hatred in his eyes. “You’re gonna regret the day you betrayed your family, you little whore.”

Blaine slapped his palm into the table hard enough to make his abandoned folder jump an inch. “Don’t you fucking
dare
insult my wife!”

My father glared at me, the muscles in his neck working like they always had when he was about to lose his temper. But apparently, being confronted with Blaine’s palpable anger made him able to rein it in. Without another word he spun around and stormed out of the office, followed by Michael.

Once the door was closed behind them and we could no longer hear my father shouting profanities and threats as he stomped down the hall, I turned to the still-seething man by my side. My husband.

“You didn’t have to do that.”

Blaine shot me a dark look. “They harmed you. That’s exactly what I needed to do.”

* * * *

Chapter 19

Mira

Neither Blaine nor I spoke on the car ride home.

I was too wrapped up in the emotional turmoil of what had just happened, and I imagined he was still seething away with anger, at least if the dark look on his face was anything to go by.

When we got home, I went straight up the stairs and threw myself on my bed, burrowing into the duvet. As I lay there, clutching my blankets like a protective shield, my mind went over everything that had been said in that conference room. At first it took all I had not to start crying again, but the more times my thoughts looped, the more they focused on what Blaine had said rather than what my father had. What he’d done.

It was the first time in my entire life anyone had stood up for me. My mother never had the courage nor the strength to do so. She had chosen to accept the abuse instead. I remembered that once I had cried on her shoulder as a little girl over a particularly vicious beating, and she had told me I brought it on myself with my bad behavior.

But not Blaine. He hadn’t told me what was done to me was my own fault. And he hadn’t seen me as a victim, either.

Somehow, seeing his anger on my behalf and knowing he didn’t find me weak and pathetic for what I’d gone through finally gave me the strength to do the same. I had survived years of abuse and come out the other side of it. I was stronger than most people.

I was a survivor.

Tears pooled at the corners of my eyes again, but this time, they were from relief. It felt like a knot in my stomach that had been there so long I’d stopped noticing it finally came undone.

And in some weird, fucked up way, it came undone because of Blaine.

As if summoned by my thoughts, a low knocking on my door announced Blaine’s arrival. He walked in without waiting for my answer.

He’d changed out of the suit and back into his usual T-shirt-and-jeans attire, but his face was still set in the same grim lines as when we drove home.

“Hey,” I croaked.

“Hey,” he said. And then he crossed the room to my bed and climbed in behind me. His arm wrapped around my waist as his body curved around my back, shielding and supporting me.

I closed my eyes and leaned back into his embrace, too emotionally exhausted to protest the unexpected closeness. I didn’t care that I wasn’t supposed to let him touch me, that our relationship up until now certainly hadn’t paved the way for physical closeness like this. All I cared about was that being held by Blaine right now felt better than anything had before.

We lay in silence for a little while, but it was the comfortable kind. The kind that let me feel the press of his muscles against my back, hear his slow breaths in my ear, and smell the faint trace of his cologne without anything disturbing the tranquil enjoyment of the simple, sensory experience of being held this close.

“When I came to see you, I’d just found out my father got my brother locked up on purpose. As punishment. Isaac disobeyed him, refused to kill someone who had snitched on us.” Blaine spoke softly, but his mouth was pressed lightly against the side of my head just above my ear, so I heard the pain in his voice perfectly.

“He always taught us that you stick with family, no matter what. Always. Turns out, that doesn’t count if you disobey him in any way. He gave his own son over to the
police
, Mira. My
brother.
It’s… it’s the deepest betrayal. I was so angry. I waited outside my father’s house… at night. I had a gun. I…”

I put a hand on the forearm he had wrapped around my waist, offering him what comfort I could as he fought himself to finally share what had made him desperate enough to seek me out.

“I wanted to kill him,” he whispered. “I was going to kill him. I would have, if I hadn’t seen Louis and Liam through the window. They were visiting him—I didn’t know. I’ve killed before, but I’ve never
wanted
to as badly as I did that night. It scared me. It still scares me.”

“Do you still want to kill him?” I asked, giving his arm a gentle stroke to ease the roughness in his voice.

He paused for a moment, as if to mull over his answer. “I don’t know. I don’t think so. But I hate him, Mira. I hate him so much, and it’s not meant to be like that. He’s my father, and if I don’t love him, then I need to at least respect him. Trust his leadership. And I thought I did—until…”

“Until he showed you you can’t.”

Blaine inhaled deeply, his hot breath tickling my ear. “Yes.”

“There comes a time in all our lives when we have to take a step back and decide if the path we’re on is one we have freely chosen, or if we are blindly following because it is what is expected of us,” I said, twining my fingers with his. His hand was so much bigger than mine, it practically spanned the whole side of my stomach.

Blaine gave my fingers a small squeeze but didn’t move his hand from my grasp. “Is that shrink-Mira speaking, then?”

I smiled at his slightly sardonic tone. “Yeah. It is. My point is, you are experiencing this anger because everything you have been taught was right turned out not to be the One Truth. It’s an understandable reaction. You have had your entire foundation pulled from under you. Of course you’re angry. And scared. But rather than turn that anger at your father, perhaps it’s time to choose your own Truth now. Find your own path.”

“I can’t do what you did. I can’t leave my family. I love my brothers, my crew…” The way he paused made it sound like he’d stopped before finishing the sentence, but he didn’t continue.

“You don’t have to. But you can choose not to let your father have the same power over you anymore.”

He snorted, and I gave his fingers a squeeze to let him know I wasn’t done.

“I know how it goes, he’s the Big Boss. His word is law. But he can’t control your emotions if you don’t let him. And—you now see him for what he really is. That gives you a lot of power in how you choose to act on his commands.”

He was quiet for a long time, and I thought he wasn’t going to say anything else. But just as my eyes started to drift shut, he spoke again.

“You’re a pretty smart bird, aren’t you?” he hummed against my ear. His lips brushed against my lobe, raising pleasant goosebumps down the back of my neck.

I chuckled. “Sure. As long as I just need to dispense advice, rather than follow it myself.”

“I’m not so sure… I don’t know anyone who would have the strength to do what you did, Mira.”

Something in his tone made my cheeks warm. It was… admiration, unsoiled by the sarcasm I could have expected from him. When he released my fingers to press his hand against my stomach on top of my scars, my breath turned shaky and my pulse sped up.

Carefully, as if he were trying not to spook a frightened animal, he eased my top up until it rested under my breasts, and raised up on one elbow so he could trace the scars with a fingertip. “Is this why you stopped me? On the stairs? You didn’t want me to see?”

I swallowed thickly at the reminder of what had happened between us when he’d chased me up the stairs and pinned me to the floor. He was so close now, and though the gentleness with which he was touching me was in sharp contrast to that night, it was no less effective in making my body hum with mounting desire. I didn’t know how to respond, so I just looked at his handsome face as he brushed over my scars, his eyes following the movements of his finger from underneath hooded lids.

“They are battle scars, Mira. Proof of how strong you are. They just make you even more beautiful.”

When I didn’t answer, he flicked his gaze from my stomach to my face, his gray eyes locking with mine. There was unmistakable heat in them, but it seemed different this time. Less aggressive, even though the intensity still made my stomach flip and my body tingle with awareness.

Slowly, Blaine leaned down toward me. My heart picked up speed again, drumming wildly behind my ribs. Anticipation warred with anxiety over what was happening between us and how everything seemed to have changed in the span of a day. But mostly, I just wanted him to kiss me. Needed him to, though I didn’t know why. All I knew was that I might die if he didn’t.

He shifted on the bed above and behind me until his lips were inches from mine. I looked up at him, faintly aware that I was breathing heavily, and nearly came undone from the look of pure
need
in his intense gaze.

“Say you want me to,” he whispered, and his breath made electricity spark off every nerve in my body.

I reached up and tangled my fingers in his black, tousled hair. It was silky soft and so completely at odds with his hard body hovering above me.

“I do.”

Blaine kissed me, his soft lips descending on mine with urgent need.

I clenched my fingers in his hair and kissed him back with a desperation I hadn’t known I possessed. It was as if the hollow place in my chest I’d carried around for so many years was ripped wide open, and for every time our frantic lips met, it soothed the waves of loneliness and pain I’d been too scared to face. Until today. With him.

I reached for his belt with an urgency that made him chuckle against my lips. When I got to his zipper it turned to a low groan, and his own hands began grasping for my clothes.

With some maneuvering he managed to pull my top and bra off before I could get any further with his pants. I growled into his mouth with frustration, earning myself a full laugh this time.

Obliging me, Blaine sat up and shrugged out of his T-shirt.

I stared up at all that bare, tattooed skin, drawing in a sharp breath at the sight. Everything about him made me ache with need.

He was lean rather than bulgy, but the strength in his frame was unquestionable. Screw six packs—Blaine had at least a freaking eight-pack, as far as I could count in my less than math-inclined state. I reached out and let my hand slide up across his taut abdomen, enjoying the stacks of hard muscle underneath my fingers. A fine tremor went through his body when I reached the center of his chest and spread my hand out above the place his heart beat. I looked up and was caught off guard by the raw expression in his gray eyes.