by Anne Calhoun
He bent his head, gritted his teeth hard enough she could hear them grind, and exhaled with a long, slow hiss. “I move, this ends. You do it.”
She squirmed, trying to figure out how to make this work. It was awkward, giving her no leverage to rise and fall on his cock. “We should move this to the bed.”
“I’ll bleed on your sheets.”
“Your bed?” She tried to lift herself a little higher, searching for the traditional feel of a woman on top.
His head jerked up. “No. Like this. Know why? Because feeling you work for it is turning me right the fuck on. Move.”
They were so very, very, very fucked up. Trying to find a way to make this work, she shimmied and writhed and wriggled, clutching his hard length, his shoulders, his hips until, frustrated, she slapped a hand against the mirror and arched into his body. The movement sent his cock gliding over the sweet spot inside her and forced a little cry from her throat.
“Shh,” he said again. Sweat dripped from his forehead to her collarbone. “Come on. Again.”
She held him close and fought for it, the combination of stretch and fight and slick friction inexorably building the searing hot coil of pleasure low in her sex. Her head dropped back to thunk against the mirror. He loomed over her, gathering her close. “Don’t, don’t,” she begged.
“Shh.” This time the sound was low and filthy, placating her in a domineering way that pushed her dial up to eleven. He pulled out and thrust into her, slow and hard.
She went rigid. “Again, again, oh please, again.”
A low laugh. Sweaty blood trickled between her breasts, but she didn’t care, because release shimmered just out of her reach. Heedless of injuries, her own precarious position, she climbed his body, clamped her knees to his hips, and rode him just as hard. Each measured stroke ended with a thud against her clit. She turned her head and stared over her shoulder. “Look. Look at us.”
It was betterhotterfiercer than she’d ever imagined, unreal and dominating her senses. The sight of his powerful hips flexing between her legs magnified the pleasure. She saw it before she felt it, the blood flush blooming on her cheeks, throat, collarbones. Then the certainty of orgasm froze her.
“There you go. There you go,” he growled.
Sharp, hot pulses clenched her sex around him. Ian never faltered, thrusting through the heart of each gripping pulse, covering her mouth with his as she came, their sweet, bruised lips sealed together as he shuddered deep inside her.
They were as close as two people could possibly be. She knew it couldn’t last.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ian had survived months of chemo and radiation that had basically killed him from the inside out. He’d been as weak as a human being could be, carrying a hundred and twenty pounds on his six foot frame, hunched over and shuffling to the bathroom, praying he got there before he threw up, or worse. He’d been weak. He’d been bald. He’d been as close to death as a person could be. He’d thought he could never be that vulnerable again.
He was wrong.
His legs were quivering more than a little jumping rope and footwork in the ring could account for. Riva’s thighs trembled against his hips and the elbow bent beside her head to support her weight shook. He slid one arm up her back, taking most of her weight. “I’ve got you,” he said.
She sat upright, her legs falling away from his hips as she did. The movement helped his cock slip from inside her. She winced a little and used both hands to boost herself off the high counter. “Thanks.”
Ian looked in the mirror. With the adrenaline rush fading, they were a wreck. His reflection told the story of who he was in this precise moment: a cancer survivor now in great physical shape who’d taken one hell of a beating, then had sex. He worked the condom off his flagging erection, dropped it in the toilet, flushed, then closed the lid.
A crooked smile danced on Riva’s mouth. “Thanks,” she said again, and sat down. Hard. Her fingers were trembling as she went to work on her bootlaces. Her panties, a pale pink bikini, were still looped around her left ankle. Her dress was beyond repair, several buttonholes torn, buttons missing almost to her waist.
“Sorry about your dress.”
“It’s fine,” she said.
He needed a shower, but his heart was still racing and his vision kept going soft around the edges. Riva had managed to get her boots off, tossing her socks and panties by the door to her bedroom. She scrubbed her hands over her face, then smoothed her wild, thick hair back, her gaze focused on some distant point outside the bathroom, maybe even outside this world.
Ian made an executive decision. “Shower,” he said.
“I’ll take one in the morning,” she said.
“I need you in there with me.”
“Why?”
“Because I’m still a little unsteady on my feet.”
Her gaze snapped into sharp focus, flicking over his face and torso. “Do I need to take you to the ER?”
“It’s not that bad. I don’t want to pass out in your shower and hit my head.”
“You’ve got sixty pounds on me. I’m not going to be able to keep you upright if you do pass out.” But the words came through her dress as she lifted it over her head.
God. This woman. All in, no matter what.
He reached out and gently squeezed the curvy muscles in her biceps and shoulders. “You look pretty strong to me,” he said.
A hint of darkness flashed in her eyes, but she just reached past him and turned on the water in the shower stall. In moments steam billowed into the air over his head. “In you go,” she said.
The glass door closed behind them, sealing them in what felt like a hidden grotto, the greens and blues of the tile sleek with water. Ian let out his breath and stepped under the showerhead, then winced as the water rushed into his cuts and all his bruises throbbed. Blood-tinged water flowed into the drain.
Leaning against the opposite wall, Riva slicked back her hair, then let the waterfall rush over her shoulders. “You okay?”
“Never better,” Ian said.
Riva gave a delicate snort. “I will never, ever understand men.”
“It’s just pain,” he said. “Pain is manageable. Controllable, even. You learn to go with it, let it be what it is. Fighting it only makes it worse.”
“Which of the philosophers said that?”
“All of the ones worth reading,” he replied. “It’s a universal truth.”
“Like death and taxes?”
“Like death and taxes.”
She didn’t say anything. She didn’t move, either, not to reach for the soap or the shampoo or her razor, sitting in the little niche where she could rest her foot and shave easily. Ian, who could outwait the most reticent of criminals, started talking.
“I’d wanted to go to one of the service academies since junior high, when a West Point graduate came back to speak to the school. My brother, Jamie, joined the navy because he wasn’t interested in college, and by twenty, he’s a SEAL. Anything Jamie can do, I can do better, so I went into the Naval Academy. I’d graduate, accept my commission, then go through BUD/S. Basic Underwater Demolition/SEAL training, be an officer and a SEAL.” He looked at her over his shoulder. “I’m competitive.”
“Driven,” she said.
“Spring of my junior year I’m a little tired, but nobody at the Naval Academy gets enough sleep. I go to the infirmary, and long story short, my white blood cell count came back off the charts. I was worried I had some kind of infection and I’d have to wait a year. Then we got the diagnosis.”
He looked at her.
“I went through treatment but graduated late and was boarded. It means I have my degree, but no commission. No career in the navy. No SEAL teams. My dad was a cop. So I joined the LPD instead. I went from having a future to being a miracle.”
He thought back to those early days, how eager and excited most of the other recruits were, how the sheer devastating fury over what he’d lost settled low in his belly. Like a
cancer, in fact.
She was watching him, face calm, seemingly unaware of her nudity, or his. “I can imagine how you felt about being a miracle.”
He glanced at her, long buried rage warring with unwilling amusement. “You don’t have to imagine it. I showed you, every night we spent in the front seat of my car. I was so goddamn angry. I had it under control, but you … you pushed my buttons. This is getting pretty close to how I felt then.”
“I’ve always been poking you.” She wiggled her fingers at him, long, slender, callused, dripping with water. “Tonight I did it with my fingers, not just my attitude.”
He kept both elbows braced on the wall and talked to the floor. “A pretty common thing that happens after a kid or young adult is diagnosed with cancer is we start doing crazy stuff. Blackout drinking. Drugs. One-night stands with strangers we only barely remember. You take a male under the age of twenty-five and give him a life-threatening prognosis, and odds are good he’s going to do some crazy shit.”
“I assume that’s where you picked up your mad dancing skills.”
“Yeah,” he said, without relish.
“Is that when you started boxing?”
The case was bringing up everything he hated and feared in his past: doubting his body, his inability to control what was happening to him. Ian knew himself too well to blow all of this off; he didn’t de-escalate situations. He met them, mastered them. He’d keep ramping up and up and up until somebody got hurt. Or arrested. Or both.
But Riva met him there, in all the ways he could lose control, and didn’t flinch. “Yeah. I needed a way to work out the anger. Jamie learned hand-to-hand combat in the navy. He started teaching me techniques that went way beyond what Dad had taught us both, but we both realized pretty fast we’d hurt each other if we kept up. So he got me started at a boxing club. He knew I needed to fight something.”
“I’d like to meet him some day.” She blushed, looked away.
“Maybe you will,” Ian said, because why not? In this shower, anything could happen. “I don’t mind being my father’s son. I don’t mind being in my brother’s shadow, just LPD to a Navy SEAL. I never have, because they never thought of it that way. But disappointing them? That was worse than the cancer. And then … then I met you.”
“Arrested me.”
“Yeah.”
“Handcuffed me to a table in an interrogation room for over an hour.”
“Yeah.”
“Gave me the choice of being an informant or going to jail.”
“You’re not going to forget that, are you?”
She wouldn’t meet his eyes. “It’s a difficult thing to forget.”
“I can’t apologize.”
“I didn’t ask you to.” For a few moments the only sound in the room was his occasional caught breath and the water pattering against the tile. “I think you do mind being just LPD to a Navy SEAL,” she said. “You don’t like failing, but no one does. You really don’t like it when things don’t go according to your plans.”
He shot her a glare.
“Do you think you’re somehow different from the rest of us? More special? Godlike in your ability to control the outcome of everything you touch? Everyone’s got disappointments. Regrets. Dreams they didn’t achieve. Welcome to being human.”
Her words stung, because they’d hit home. Hard. “I know that.”
“Intellectually, sure. In your heart? In your soul? Nope. Not even close.”
“You know, no one else talks to me like you do,” he said conversationally. “Not Jamie. Not Jo.”
She turned her face to his and grinned. “What, no one else calls you on your bullshit?” Her eyes gleamed. “Well then. You need me, and not just for this.”
A thrumming silence hung between them. He couldn’t look away. A pale flush bloomed under her freckles before she broke eye contact. He couldn’t think about what it would mean to need Riva, so instead he thought about how much he’d loved the Naval Academy, the discipline, the devotion required to become a SEAL. He let the memories of the day they’d packed up his room at the Naval Academy, how he’d held back the tears until they were in the car. How he’d sobbed, his parents in the front seat with nothing to say, bigger worries on their mind. He let himself think about what Jamie knew, did, saw, his service, his experiences, and felt a wave of anger and regret and sadness roll over him. “Yeah, all right, I fucking regret it, and I fucking hate the cancer for taking that chance from me. It’s gone, and instead I got to be a miracle.”
“Did you ever let yourself feel that regret?”
He huffed out a bitter laugh. “No. Somehow with the cancer and the chemo and the chance I might die, we kind of forgot about it.”
“You never forgot.”
“You’re fucking ruthless, you know that?”
“How do you like me now?” she said. Her tone was light, but her eyes locked on his.
“Is this payback? For before?”
“You keep saying you’re not that twenty-five-year-old kid. I’m not eighteen, either. This isn’t payback. This is just me.”
“Damn,” he said.
“You liked me better when I kept my mouth shut and did what I was told, didn’t you?”
“You never kept your mouth shut and did what you were told,” he said. “I like you now. Not better. I couldn’t let myself like you, then.”
“But you did. Let yourself like me.”
“I did,” he admitted. “But it’s a slippery slope from liking to abuse of power and authority and we were ass over elbows down it from the moment we made eye contact in the coffee shop.”
She looked at him, a nymph in the grotto, chestnut hair and shocking blue eyes, pale skin. Nipples and wet curls and pink-painted toenails. “I regret what I said, about you not knowing what it was like to have to choose between a life you didn’t want and death.”
“You didn’t know about my cancer.”
“Or that it cost you a chance at your dream.”
“Or that.”
“Still. I’m sorry for what you lost.”
He shrugged. “I think back on those nights and I remember three things. How badly I wanted you, and how sick that made me feel. How terrified you were when you thought I was going to assault you. And how scared I was for you.”
“Scared?”
“CIs die. I was sending you into a dangerous situation, over and over again. I was terrified, every single time.”
Like he was now. But not for the reason he thought he’d be frightened. He’d thought telling Riva about his cancer would make him feel vulnerable. But that didn’t feel like a risk at all. No, what frightened him the most was that they were currently cocooned in a shower at the home of a sociopath. They were on Rory’s territory, and anything could happen.
He had to get Riva out of this nightmare. Then maybe they could figure out what came next.
Exhaustion hit him like one of Trev’s punches, fast, sneaky, potent. He got clean more slowly than usual, hampered by his sore ribs and the cuts on his face. Riva was outside the shower and dry, attired in a towel wrapped around her torso, when he shut off the water. He sat down on the toilet and let her close the worst cut with a big butterfly bandage. When he followed her into her bedroom, she said, “Do you think this is a good idea?”
“We’re past good and bad. We’re into what keeps us safe. Right now I want us all but handcuffed together.”
“That’d be new,” Riva quipped, but she didn’t protest, just pulled her nightie over her head and crawled into bed. Ian tried to settle on his side without sucking in air through his clenched teeth. He failed, and fell asleep waiting for the painkillers to kick in.
* * *
The next morning he woke up with Riva burrowed into his side. The windows were still open, the spring air both damp and chilly. He was fine, but despite pulling the duvet up to her ear, Riva had apparently gotten cold overnight and turned without thinking into the nearest heat source: him.
Moving ver
y, very carefully, he turned his head to look at her. She was sound asleep, face adorably slack where it was crammed up against his shoulder, her leg hitched over his thigh, pressing her warm sex into his hip. Her hair was a tangled mess, burnished red against the white pillowcase by the rising sun pouring in through the window.
All this time she’d been the vulnerable one, under his control, afraid of what he could do to her life, her reputation, her freedom. Now it was his turn. He’d trusted her with his deepest truth, the fact of his life he told almost no one. She’d taken it with just the right balance of dispassionate acceptance. With Riva, it didn’t define him. She’d been through too much to care about remission or recurrence rates. Who are you now? she asked. What are you doing? Are you more alive?
He was, he found, fine with Riva holding that detail of his life, one he shared with so few. He didn’t just trust her with this operation. He trusted her with himself.
Swiveling his head on his neck hadn’t hurt anything, so he risked trying to shift out from underneath her. Pain shot through his ribs at the same time Riva made a snuffling noise. He froze, muscles jerking into rigidity, and waited for the pain to subside.
It did, but with a residual throbbing that told him he’d better not make any quick, abrupt movements for a couple of weeks. Gingerly he touched at his forehead and looked around. The butterfly bandage had held, the sheets still unmarked.
Staying in bed until Riva woke up sounded fantastic. Unfortunately, he’d taken enough hits in the ring to know that what sounded like the worst idea—moving—was actually the best idea. He tugged his pillow from under his head and tucked it under Riva’s. She burrowed into it as he eased off the mattress, then pulled the extra blanket off the quilt stand and tossed it over her for good measure.
In the bathroom he examined himself dispassionately. Black eye, bruised cheek, swollen lip, cut over forehead. Ribs blooming with bruises like his mother’s peonies, bright and big and colorful. No big deal. He’d felt worse. He hitch-walked to his bedroom and pulled on a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of running shorts. He wouldn’t be running, but a walk would be a good idea and would get him clear of the house to make a phone call. He peered out his bedroom window, which overlooked the garage. Rory’s car was gone. Presumably Stephanie was still asleep, with Sugar, who was in as much danger as the rest of them. Rory’s malevolence threatened everyone within reach.
