Hammond held her gaze as he stepped forward, gave her shoulder a squeeze, and kissed her forehead—ever the big brother, and the only one other than her father she’d allow to pull that shit. “I’m going to tell her, Kit, but”—he exhaled loudly and Kit just knew Hammond was formulating some fucking idiotic thought— “I’m not getting back together with her.”
“I never questioned whether Autumn would take you back, Hammond,” she told him with solemn and quiet surety. “She’s loved you forever, and Autumn is the most forgiving person of any of us. My sister, your wife, is good down to her toes—”
“I didn’t protect Summer,” Hammond blurted.
“Ham,” Lee said as though he’d just realized something, but then Hammond was falling to his knees, his bawling cries ripping a new wound into Kit when she saw Lee pull him in for a tight hug, his hand to the back of his brother’s head.
Kit almost said something, but Lee shook his head. And she knew then.
So used to leading, she’d forgotten that Hammond had once felt that way toward her, a protector.
Hammond didn’t need to protect Kit, no. But he’d always felt he hadn’t protected the Summer she’d been. Jesus Christ.
She kneeled next to them and rubbed Hammond’s back.
He was one of the strongest and most courageous men she’d ever known, but it’d take a lot more healing for him to realize that truth. And Kit couldn’t protect Hammond from his feelings, from his own heartbreak.
That feeling of helplessness when you were supposed to be a protector was the worst, and that was when it really hit her how he’d felt that night, the night he’d taken her body when he’d always played big brother with her.
“Fuck!” Hammond yelled, sitting back. And then he just shook his head.
There was nothing she could say that would make this all better. There wasn’t any psychologist-written script that would change the outcome of those thirty hours nor the days, weeks, and years of pain afterward.
For Kit, healing had been a slow burn in her gut that she’d avoided for so long because she’d felt the guilt of that night more than she’d felt the need for peace, and she knew at least in part, this was true for Hammond as well. So focused on his guilt in regards to Summer and Autumn, he couldn’t move past this to truly heal. And in the missions he still took outside of military jurisdiction and in separating himself from Autumn, he was punishing himself in the same way Kit had for so long as well.
Except Kit hadn’t been able to fully let go of her sisters or Lee or the need for redemption, no matter how much she’d wanted to keep herself separate.
Hammond stood slowly, and Kit and Lee followed his movements, cautiously.
Except this time, Lee pulled her in close and let his hand sit at her hip. She felt that touch from the tips of her fingers to her toes. She smiled up at Lee, unable to hold it back. With that small amount of touch, her breath caught and she suddenly dreamed…imagined…hoped…
A quick second. That was all she’d taken before she refocused and looked back at Hammond. No matter what she wished for herself, her time at war had forever changed her and she would always protect first. Her smile slipped at the sight of his mask of pain. “What’re you thinking, Hammond?”
He met Kit’s assessing gaze. “I wanted to protect Autumn, too—”
“She’s a partner, Hammond, not a little sister,” Kit couldn’t help but add.
Lee grip tightened a bit on her hip in warning, but she understood maybe even more than Lee what Hammond was going through.
“But she’s Autumn,” Hammond pleaded, and that tone said what they all knew. Autumn truly was the kindest woman, honest and open and so full of spirit and love that she lit up a room.
“Yes,” Kit replied, being sure to insert as much quiet understanding she could muster, “but again, Hammond. She’s a partner. You have to tell her, Ham. You have to.” She tried to put into her eyes how much she got where he was coming from. “I get it, Hammond. I get those awful feelings of guilt digging at your gut right now, and maybe you feel that guilt even more than I did be—” Her fist clenched at her side, but Lee’s comforting presence helped steady her nerves. “Because of what happened,” she finished. “But it’s not your fault any more than it was mine or Rena’s, Ham.” Kit looked at Lee then too and his deep blue eyes had a sheen to them that she’d probably rib him for in any other moment. “It’s not your fault.” She repeated the phrase again and Lee nodded at her.
It wasn’t her fault.
It wasn’t Hammond’s fault.
Kit looked back to Hammond. “You need to tell her, Hammond, or I’ll have to. This is the end of it. I won’t let anyone else make me feel powerless and I won’t carry this guilt around any longer—not with Lee and not with Autumn either.”
Hammond shook his head. “No, she’s my wife.” He paused. “This is my doing. My responsibility.”
Kit nodded, but in his words she still felt his guilt and she knew she wasn’t the one to help him through that. But maybe Autumn could.
Hammond walked toward the storm door, but before he closed it, he spoke. He didn’t meet Kit’s eyes; instead, he kept his gaze fixed toward the wall. “You want us to work it out. You want me to assure you that Autumn will be whole after this. You want me to protect her and to fix this.” His eyes, so much like Lee’s deep dark blue, finally met hers. “I already let Summer down. It’s going to kill me to let Kit down too.”
“You won’t, Ham—”
“I will,” he said tipping his head toward her as his hulking frame exited. “I will, because Autumn is stronger than you think, but I’m not. I won’t go back to her. I won’t be a reminder of pain for you, Lee and her—”
“Ham—”
But Hammond ignored Lee too. “I’m gone after this, Kit.”
She could do nothing else.
So, she did what she could for him, for her brother.
She nodded.
“Tell Eagle for me, will ya’?” he asked.
She nodded again and Lee relaxed at her side. What an odd fucking thing, to be relaxed right then. She searched his gaze, but instead of seeing pain or pleading, she saw a confident surety.
The door banged closed and Lee looked at it for a moment further before his bright blue eyes met hers once more.
“He’ll be back—”
“He seemed pretty fucking sure, Lee—”
Lee shook his head and interrupted the moment by pulling her close, so their bodies touched—front to front. His leg slid between hers, and she felt the warmth of his thigh there, where it’d been so long since she’d had any man, let alone Lee.
Her brain halted and she backed up.
“I can’t,” she said on an exhale, a foot away from the only man she’d ever loved. A tear fell and she brushed it away and stood on her own two feet, her chin raised, her voice a whisper. “I can’t, Lee.”
His serious gaze met hers and he nodded.
It was midnight, but she saw his eyes light with understanding—the one type of understanding they’d had for the past two years.
She let a small smile play over her lips before she raced to her room to throw on her leather jacket. She grabbed her boots, locked the front door, stuck her keys in the zipper pocket of her leather jacket, and sat on the fire escape to put on her socks and boots.
Lee was already outside, waiting on his bike, his back to her. She knew he’d be waiting.
Always the giver.
But when she was ready, Kit Markham would return all of that giving by giving all of herself as well.
Soon.
She hopped on the back of his bike, feeling the rumbling comfort of an open road that always waited as well.
“It’s no Harley,” she whispered against his ear, wrapping herself around him, not wanting one inch between them tonight, “but it’ll do.”
She’d said the same thing when she’d gone for her first ride with him at the age of sixteen. She’d known nothing of bikes at the t
ime, but damn if she hadn’t in fact known better. Her Harley was the shit.
She’d also said the same when they’d gone on their first ride just over two years earlier and they’d reached their silent understanding.
He turned his head sideways and his smile was heart-stopping in the way those fucking cheesy romance novels Autumn and Spring always spoke of. Jesus, she was getting soft.
“Well, darlin’,” he drawled, his Cajun accent that rarely made itself known being one of the things she’d first fallen in love with, “Harley’s are great, but I’m a Cajun boy, and Triumphs are built for a good rough and tumble. You keep that Harley, Kit Markham.”
And then he put his Triumph into gear, hitting the first corner with her holding tightly to him as she leaned into the turn and felt something greater than freedom.
The rain of a summer night might not actually be falling, but still she felt it. Felt that cleansing from her head to her toes as the last of her worries slid away on the open roads of a Pennsylvania highway.
Summer Markham might not exist any longer, but summer did still happen, and when it did, it was important to grab it and hold on for as long as you could.
So, she held on tighter to Lee and sunk into the bliss of a summer’s dream where once there had only been nightmares.
What lies beneath
The summer sun was a beautiful thing. Bright and hanging on with all its strength even at four in the afternoon.
They sat on Haversham Bluff, a popular spot when they’d been kids to park and make out, but which was now adjoined to property Lee and Hammond had purchased with Eagle, Rover, and Stealth the year before. It was to be a rehab center for veterans and other individuals with PTSD, but Lee knew what Eagle wanted. Eagle wanted Kit to help with the center. Even if just as a counselor. Lee also knew what Eagle knew: she’d be a strange choice. She’d made it clear she hated the way the psychologists she’d worked with only seemed to see one side of an issue, and that she’d in some ways had to find outlets elsewhere.
But Eagle had claimed this was what would make her a good fit. And in the past few days, Lee had realized the same. Hell, he thought he might have known it all along. Not broken. Bent. A few kinks here or there, but that was what would make her one of their essential team members when it came down to it.
Kit might not have shared much of her life with Lee, but others had shared bits over the years, and he’d always listened to those scraps of intel like they were a lifeline. Eagle had told him Kit had confided that for five years, she’d been slowly working toward a doctorate in Psychology and Counseling, but the thesis had held her back. Lee hoped, as she worked through her guilt and healed, that she’d be able to finish it now.
Her knees were curled against her body, her back to his front while they both gazed at the horizon. His legs relaxed to either side of her, one arm wrapped around her, occasionally touching her hand as they talked and other times, that sneaky sonofabitch hand got a little more clever and grazed just the outer edge of her breast. Maybe testing the waters. Maybe just because Kit Markham was more beautiful than ever and he’d be an idiot not to touch her in any way he was allowed.
And still, even as they sat and talked on the thick Mexican-made blanket Renegade and Rover’s ma had made for Lee a few years back, he could sense the coming tide.
For the past four days, he and Kit had woken up before the rising sun, gone to work—him at the bar or the bike shop and her at the family business—and then met afterwards. They’d hit the road and then sit on the bluff and just talk and touch and be, as the sun hung steadily in the summer sky even as they themselves ended another day.
He hadn’t been so at peace in a good ten years, and a part of him bled for the fact that he only felt this with Kit, that they might have had this all along. Then again, it was the same for her, knowing she’d held things back from him and her family. That wasn’t where that feeling in his gut was coming from, though. He knew they’d move past the last ten years, and hell, they might be stronger for it. They’d been through the darkness. They could find the light now.
But that tide...that storm…that FUBAR, shitstorm of a situation was right in his peripheral and his gut beat in a tattoo of fearful anxiety.
Her soothing voice, which had become stronger since their youth, more commanding, touched that strained tattoo and seemed to give him permission to breathe, to not worry.
The blackmailer had tagged her, but she would come out stronger, just as she always had.
They had a meet with the crew and Eagle after Stealth and Rover closed up the bike shop and after Beast and Danger had the bar calmed down.
And so, Lee had this at least.
A couple more hours until they’d meet at the clubhouse to plan and discuss and look at leads.
Another summer afternoon with Kit.
“Don’t be an ass when I say this, Devereux,” she quietly whispered as though the wind was listening in on all the secrets they’d told in the hours they’d spent up there, “Jesus…” She rubbed one eye and kept her gaze forward. “But it’s always been you for me.” She glanced back at him briefly and then played with the edge of her leather jacket as though she needed a form of grounding. “Even after…” Her ragged exhale was the release of a thousand moments of pain, and he felt one of her hands close tightly around the arm wrapped around her middle. “Even after I lost myself… Even after what happened… Even…” She paused and smiled up at him, not brilliantly, not in one of those ways that are life changing, and yet it was...life changing. “Well, even after, you were always the one, Lee Devereux.”
Her face lifted to his and he met her halfway, letting that first moment of touch in ten years—real touch from Kit—take hold of his soul and ravage and wreck whatever semblance of control he’d pretended to have left these past ten years.
He turned her in his arms, and instead of taking it a step further, he just kissed her. Tongues and lips and hands and little bites along her neck, something she’d always loved. His hands played at the edges of her breasts, along the smooth and tattooed skin of her inner forearms, down along her ribs, across her lower back, landing occasionally on her hips to roll little circles there.
But Kit, for all her rumblings that she was no longer Summer, still had the temperament he’d fallen in love with. Strong, capable, smart, sure, but Kit was also a hair’s breadth from pissed off at any given moment, passionate, good with the one liners, and when she wanted something, she went for it.
Her hands hit his chest, pushing him backwards onto the blanket.
Her heavy breaths as she looked down at him were all he heard.
Her pale skin browned just a bit by the summer sun, the exasperated look she gave him, and her chest, sans bra because she hadn’t worn one, were all he saw.
For the first time in ten years, she was all he tasted.
All he felt.
All he saw.
All he heard.
All he’d ever wanted.
“It’s only ever been you for me too,” he whispered, sitting up, his lower back to the ground, his forearms lifting him just slightly. He tucked a strand of her blonde hair behind her ear. “I mean, I’m not a saint,” he continued, “but you were the only woman I ever loved.”
Her gaze narrowed.
“Devereux, you’re about to get laid. Don’t fuck it up by mentioning other bitches.”
He used one hand to bracket himself into a sitting position again, and took her other hand to his heart – all seriousness, even if he was smirking at Kit’s jealousy. Fuck, but he’d had her this whole time. She’d loved him this whole time. Even when she hadn’t been able to love anyone.
“And you’re about to get fucked in the best way, Kit, so sheath those claws and let me love you back.”
She turned her head to the rising sun, and her profile was so unreadable, he started to feel anxious again, not because of the blackmailers. No, this time because he knew what she’d been through now. How could he—
&nbs
p; “We don’t have to, Kit,” he started. “If you’re not read—”
She pushed him onto his back just as quickly as before only this time she didn’t let him come up for air. Her body and hands moved down, down, down, and he felt all the blood in his body rush to his dick as she slowly unbuttoned his belt buckle and blue jeans. He closed his eyes and groaned as she got the zipper down and just as slowly lowered his boxers and pulled him out.
Her hot breath was a pleasant fire against his balls. He felt that breath and then her tongue as it licked and then sucked before taking first one sack and then the other into her mouth. His whole body was a fucking live wire of sensations, and fucking Kit just kept sucking and licking and taking.
But if she didn’t move that goddamned beautiful mouth to his dick and soon, he was going to have to reconsider ever letting her take the lead again.
He opened his dark blue eyes and the morning sun caused him to squint as he met her almost golden brown gaze, those flecks of green drawing him in. Her smile was guileless as she continued sucking his balls, sometimes licking slow and brief at the base of his cock, sometimes taking both balls into her hand and mouth, but also alternating between them. With one hand on his abs and another playing with him, he could barely keep his eyes opened, but Jesus, was she a sight.
“Kit,” he groaned, loving the feel of her mouth but needing more. “Please, babe.”
Her smile became broader as she slowly pulled away, her hands still in position at his abs and his balls.
“You asked before if I was ready, Lee.” She moved her hands to her top, and although he wanted his dick in her mouth, a close second was seeing her tits for the first time in ten years.
The top went quickly, and he almost missed what she was saying, because fuck...he was sitting up again, his hands touching those ripe tips as she threw her head back and moaned out, “I’m ready, Lee.” She repeated it again. “I’m ready…” Her breaths became more labored and when he got his mouth on those tits and started licking and biting and exploring every fucking inch of those beautiful breasts, she screamed out, “So fucking ready,” before reaching for the button of her shorts.
A Terrible Beauty Page 6
