by A. M. Wilson
Her voice falls. “And what about you?”
“I don’t matter.”
“You matter to me.”
I rub my right fist over the left side of my chest. “I don’t deserve you,” I tell her honestly.
“I think you do.” She answers with her own truth. “And I think you already know that.”
I track her movement as she slips off the side of the bed, not stopping until she’s directly in front of me. The tips of her toes nearly touch mine when she stops so close. I can smell the shampoo we bought for her from her hair, the flowery scent a perfect complement to the nickname I gave her what feels like decades ago.
She reaches forward and takes my hand in her surprisingly strong grasp. With a sharp tug, she walks backward toward the bed in an attempt to take me with her.
And who the fuck am I to resist?
I’ve been scary.
I’ve been mean.
I’ve abandoned her and left her with Elias. Called her out and mocked her. I’ve shown her the ugliest, darkest sides of my blackened soul, yet here she is, dragging me into her light. She’s fearless and strong; the meek woman from the past has vanished, and in her place is this warrior who gives as good as she gets.
So yeah, having her tugging my hand to pull me into a bed where I can hold her to my side and know she’s safe for the time being? I’d be an idiot to resist.
“The real question is do I deserve you?”
With my hand still in her grip, I watch as she lifts one knee and then the other onto the bed, settling on her calves near the middle. “I’m just a man,” I rasp. I reach behind my head with my free hand, fist the material at my neck, and drag my tee over my head. Shelby’s gaze drops to the colorful markings across my wide chest before she returns her eyes to mine.
“You’re so much more than that,” she whispers back.
I follow her onto my bed and settle near the middle. As soon as I’m stretched out, Shelby curls into me, chest to chest, hip to hip, her warm palm near my pec, and her chin on top of it. Her free hand absently traces the lines of my ink. I drop my free hand around her back and resume rubbing circles there. Somewhere during our discussion, the topic of going to the hospital was dropped.
“How’s your pain?”
Her shoulder lifts. “It’s waning.”
“I want you to get looked at. I know a doctor. He came and looked at you while you were unconscious those first couple of days. He might know someone with a private office or someone willing to make a house call. Even if it’s just for some painkillers, you need to be treated.”
“I don’t want painkillers. I don’t want to be on any sort of mind-altering drug.”
A tremble rocks through her body, so I pull her closer and tuck my thigh between both of hers.
Thinking back to the cravings I’ve experienced, I understand that feeling. It enrages me that she can’t even get something to help with the pain that those motherfuckers caused because they doped her in order to cause that pain, but I keep that locked down tight and to myself.
“Okay, baby,” I murmur into the top of her hair. “Sleep then, yeah? We’ll sort it tomorrow.”
She rolls her head onto my shoulder, tucked up tight, and nods. “Will you stay?”
A nonverbal squeeze is my reply as I brush the strands of hair off her face and place a kiss on the crown of her head.
Within minutes, the tension releases from her body, and her breathing evens. It isn’t much longer until my mind quiets, and I follow her into a dreamless sleep.
Chapter Fourteen
Shelby
Something is happening to me. My insides feel hot. There’s a fire raging in my blood, licking its way from my belly to my breasts. Whenever Sin’s near, it’s like I ignite for him, and I want to be touched. Ever since the night of my pain when he held me in his bed, this feeling has lingered. This desire. This desperation.
It scares me and frees me all at once.
I’m not familiar with the sensation, and I’m positive I’ve never felt it before, but this has to be normal. Feeling something that’s normal to most of the population has to mean I’m healing.
Which means I’m moving on.
Part of moving on is accepting and embracing these new feelings. I want to explore them and take them further. I want to push them to my limits and experience them for what they are. I’m nearly certain the heat I feel in my body is nothing other than arousal. Pure, simplistic, natural arousal. My body has recognized a man, and not just any man but the strong, possessive, virile man who is Alex, and it wants more. As I think back to each caress and kiss, I crave more.
I pause while folding one of Alex’s simple black tee shirts, hugging the still-warm cotton to my chest, and let the lingering scent of him invade my headspace. I can’t put my finger on why he’s different.
In the weeks I spent with Elias while Sin was being a total jerk, he made me feel safe and protected, maybe even a little cherished. He’d held me when I had a bad dream, so it can’t be simply about physical touch. Elias was a gentle man and took great care of me. I am so grateful for his tender care, but he never made me feel much of anything. I care for him—deeply—but that care stops at platonic love.
On the other hand, Alex’s touch is fire and ice, much like his personality. It can feel like the friendliest caress and turn to a heated stroke in an instant. I find myself pulled toward him whenever he’s near, whether it be sitting on the couch beside me or across the room. The fear I first felt at his quiet, frightening demeanor has melted away into understanding. So many facets make him the man he is, and it’s easy to judge him from the outside. Knowing what I now know about his life, it’s a wonder he isn’t already in prison or, worse, dead.
I shake out the black tee still clutched in my fingers and resume folding laundry. When Alex told me he was going to run errands today, I felt swift relief. The truth is I can’t tell if he feels for me what I’m feeling for him, and I’m afraid of spending more time with him and giving myself away. Rejection? Also something I’ve never experienced, and I don’t know where I’d go to quietly lick those wounds.
Before I do something stupid, like throw myself at him and beg him to let me worship his mouth, among other things, I need to figure out if my feelings are reciprocated. He’s seemed to enjoy kissing me just as much, and the time he placed my hand on his erection sure appeared to be a genuine response. That could also be my naïvety and a normal reaction for a man.
There’s no denying I want to figure this out—with him—but I’m also afraid of my reaction to being sexually touched. What if I’m not ready? What if I completely panic and turn him off me forever? Or the hardest one to imagine, what if he doesn’t want to do those things with me? I can’t imagine myself opening up to any other man.
I finish folding and load up the clothes into the basket to bring to his closet. I learned while getting a tee to sleep in that Alex doesn’t use hangers like he did at Elias’s. He has a closet lined with shelves, each one for a different item. I figured since he was out for a while, and I’ve been sleeping in a lot of his clothes, I could take care of putting away his laundry. If anything, it’s another step in my recovery. Abduction at sixteen didn’t leave me a lot of time to learn basic life skills like living on my own. Something I’ll have to figure out now that I’m free.
Just as I’m putting the empty basket back on the floor under the racks, the front door rattles. My hackles raise for a split second before I calm myself down.
“Hey, I’m back.”
“Do you think I’ll always be this jumpy?” I spin to face the doorway and find Alex leaning against the jamb. The carpeting of his living room softened his heavy footfalls.
His brow creases in concern. “Did I scare you?”
My heart leaps at his tender expression. I can’t bear having this distance between us while he looks at me like that. Crossing the space, I reach up and run my fingertips along his bearded jaw.
“A little.” I sig
h. “I knew it was you all along, but that didn’t stop my heart from pounding as soon as I heard the door rattle.”
He cups my hand against his face and smiles softly. “Give it time.”
That feeling from earlier rushes through me with a vengeance. As if a little time away from his presence made the desire that much stronger. I don’t know what I’m going to do.
“Are you okay?” His voice breaks the connection.
“Yeah,” I answer a little breathless. “I think I may be tired.”
Pulling our hands away from his face, he leads me into the other room, and we settle onto the couch in the middle. The TV remains off. After a few beats of silence, I turn to Alex with a puzzling glance.
He cocks his knee in front of him, resting on the cushions and stretches his arm still holding my hand along the back. The move forces me to turn and face him, and the look on his face stills my heart.
“What is it?”
Alex releases a sound crossed between a grunt and a huff of laughter and shakes his head. “You’re starting to read me better than Elias. That’s saying something because I like to think of myself as an unreadable man.”
“Well, when you look at me like that, it isn’t hard to tell there’s something on your mind.”
“You’re right about that. I took the liberty while I was out to make a phone call.” He launches in, not one for bullshitting around. “I spoke to Doc and found someone able to see you. A female doctor.”
Anger hits instantly. Unlike anything I’ve ever felt before, the intensity scares me. “I thought I said no.” I grit through my teeth.
“Yeah, and I gave you a week to think that through. When you didn’t talk to me about it, I made my own arrangements.”
“Gave me time?” I pull my hand from his and stand. “I thought you weren’t talking about it because it’s my decision.”
“It is, and it isn’t. I’m not going to stand by and watch you live in pain when I can do somethin’ about it. That’s not the kind of man I am.”
“So you’d rather compromise my safety and make decisions for me? Is THAT the kind of man you are?”
I swear he growls under his breath.
When he doesn’t say anything further, simply sitting infuriatingly on the couch watching me, I goad him further. The anger feels like it’s suffocating me, and like the only way to relieve myself of this fury is to let it out.
I should have taken a second.
I should have thought my words through.
I didn’t, and I regretted it immediately.
“So let me get this straight. I take a week to think over my actions, actions that could have severe consequences to my well-being, not to mention my life, and instead of talking to me about those actions, oh I don’t know, anytime in the past seven days, you decide it’s a good time to go from my sweet, helpful Alex and turn back into a controlling asshole named Sin.”
“I am Sin, and don’t you forget it!” he roars from the couch, and I know it’s cliché but god, does he roar. The sound rips from his throat in a howl that could rival the fiercest predator. His pain and anger morph into something I’ve never seen before. It frightens and burns me all at once. So yes, he goddamn roars.
“I’m not a savior. I’m the fucking devil incarnate. I take shit and ruin it.” His hands rise at his sides defeatedly, and his voice drops. “I’m not your goddamn white knight, Shel. Don’t look at me like I turned your hell into roses. Look around you. Dark walls still surround you. It’s just a different type of prison.”
Tears prick my eyes as I whisper, “That’s not true.”
“It is.”
He scrubs his hand tiredly down his face. “It fuckin’ is. This place. Hiding here with Elias or me. Your pain. All of it shackles you to this life; though different than the one you came from, you’re still not free.” Alex takes a deep breath, and mutters, “I just want you to be free.”
I can’t take seeing the pain written all over his face. It overshadows my residual anger. “I was wrong,” I choke out through the tears clogging my throat. “I shouldn’t have gotten so angry.” Crossing the space between us, I approach him. Carefully, but only for his benefit because I know he’d never hurt me even though he’s upset.
He doesn’t so much as twitch as I near, and his head remains cradled in his hand.
My body may be small, but I’m not weak. I use my shoulder and power my way into his chest. Alex lets out a grunt and falls back against the cushions as I clamor onto his lap.
“Shel …” he warns, finally pulling his hand from his face. The wariness etched around his eyes snags my heart. I did that to him.
Straddling his hips, I cage him in with a hand on either cheek, strikingly similar to a position he held me in not so long ago when he wanted to make a point. “Tell me about this doctor,” I plead.
“Doc was a friend of my father’s. He’s the one who looked you over that first day. I called him for a favor. There’s a female doctor in the town Mora, roughly an hour and a half from here. I truly believe you’ll be safe from anyone who might recognize you.”
My fingertips flex against his cheeks. “What kind of doctor is she?”
Alex grabs one of my hands and slides my palm to his lips. “Don’t be nervous,” he murmurs there. His whiskers tickle my hand. “She’s an OB/GYN.”
My eyelids flutter closed as a shot of arousal takes over me. Straddling his hips, coupled with his lips against my palm, turns my blood molten.
“Okay,” I answer breathlessly. “But on one condition.”
Maybe the sound of my voice gives me away, or maybe Alex has a radar for when a woman is turned on, but the look he gives me from beneath his lashes while still kissing my palm cranks my desire up tenfold.
“What would that be?”
“I need you to kiss me.”
His shoulders tense.
I breathe shallowly, waiting, wondering if I said the wrong thing or went too far. He wouldn’t do it just to appease me. I know that much to be true. Seconds tick past like minutes in the past hour of school on a Friday afternoon. I close my eyes and breathe.
Alex presses his lips back to my palm. “Like this?”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
His nose skates up along my inner forearm. Goose bumps appear along my skin.
“Here?” His soft lips touch my inner elbow, and I shudder in response.
“No, Alex,” I groan. “You know where.”
“Baby.” He huffs that sound again, almost a laugh that he isn’t fully committed to. I can feel the gust of breath against my skin. “Is this my penance or my reward?”
The answer sits on the tip of my tongue. Alex moves his hands, one cradling my hip and the other skidding along my spine to the base of my neck. I force it out. “Maybe it’s my reward.” I squeal as he suddenly pistons his hips, shifting both our weight into the air and maneuvering us around.
He cradles me, and my back hits the softness of the cushion, pinning his arm between myself and the couch. The turn of his lips becomes salacious. Our eyes lock, and his nearly sparkle with what I want to call desire. Without releasing my stare, Alex lowers his head fraction by fraction until his mouth is pressing directly over my pubic bone through my jeans. I’m sweltering and shivering all at once. More than anything, I’m relieved when desire edges out my fear. The image of this beast of a man, with his long strands of hair, thick beard, and a plethora of colorful tattoos, face down at the most private area of my body burns itself into my brain.
“Here,” he states huskily. Even he can’t hide the effect this is having on him. That thought produces another. I wonder if he’s hard.
“Ung. No,” I groan accidentally. My control is slipping. I’m about ready to beg him to kiss me already.
Maybe that’s what he wants?
He seems to take some pity on me as he starts moving again, first ascending from my pubic bone to the little sliver of skin at my shirt hem. There he places another tender ki
ss just above the waistband of my jeans.
I think my blood pressure is rising.
Alex glides his fingertips over my sides until they catch beneath the hem. He keeps going, exposing my stomach centimeter by centimeter until he stops near the center.
Still watching one another, he dips his head, kisses my stomach and swirls his tongue around my belly button.
I have to break eye contact as my head falls back against the couch. “Good lord,” I sigh and squirm against his hold. His fingers contract into my sides, tickling slightly.
“Hold still, blossom.”
“I don’t know if I can.”
“Then I’ll speed this up a bit.”
He lies, whether intentional or not. It feels like an eternity passes as he scales his way up my body, stopping every few inches to drop a kiss over my clothing. The barrier of thread nonexistent as his lips sear my flesh. The higher he climbs, the more of his body becomes accessible to me. Our legs touch, and his thigh slips between mine. His arm wraps more fully around me as the other supports some of his heavy weight. I can’t help but slip my palms beneath the back of his tee and glide them along the silky skin of his muscular back.
His own control wanes at the collar of my shirt. Hot lips touch my skin, and I jolt, tensing, and melting simultaneously. An incoherent growl reaches my ears at the same time his tongue dampens the hollow of my throat. The hand beneath my back moves upward into my hair, gripping and maneuvering my head to the side. Without releasing contact, his mouth moves parallel to my jaw, sucking and sampling me to the sensitive skin behind my ear.
“Alex!” I gasp, slightly panting, skin dampened with sweat. My hips undulated beneath his, seeking some sort of contact to relieve the desperate ache between my legs. He hooks my calf in his palm, pulling it out from beneath him and wrapping it around his hip. I curve it around his back, opening my legs wider, and his hips fall through. The connection is instant, and his erection presses into the spot where I desperately need him most just as he finally takes my mouth in an explosive kiss.
The sound torn from my lips is one I’m positive I’ve never made before. His tongue slips into my mouth in a long, languid stroke that sets me on fire. I press up and grind against him as we worship with our lips and tongues. Our hands clutch and pull. He slants his head to access deeper into my mouth, drinking the life from me.
