We’d have to talk about it when she came to. I couldn’t force her hell to deepen. She had to make the choice. I’d help her with whatever choice she made.
Time faded. My rocking became second nature. She moaned. I knew she was awake when her breathing deepened and her heartbeat pounded.
“You want me to let you go?” I asked, assuming she was panicked because of me.
She shook her head vehemently. “No.”
I tightened my grip, holding her so tightly she had to be having as hard a time breathing as I was. “I won’t let you go, Mad. I promise I won’t.”
“I’m sorry,” she blubbered.
I shook my head. I couldn’t get upset. I had to articulate how I felt without scaring her from now on. “Don’t say that. Don’t apologize. You have nothing to apologize for.”
She climbed me, disrupting my hold on her. She straddled my lap and wrapped her body around mine like a chokehold. I rubbed her back, trying to figure out what to do. The first thing that had to happen was a bath. After a few minutes, I attempted to ease her into the idea. “Mad, we’re both covered in puke. We need to clean up. Then we can go lay down in the bed, and I can hold you until you want me to stop.”
“Never,” she whispered, breathing into the crook of my neck. “I don’t want you to leave.”
I was grasping at anything. “Take a shower. I’ll sit right here. We can switch places.”
“I don’t want to be naked. I don’t want you to leave. I can’t breathe. I’m sorry!” She lost it again.
I had to take matters into my own hands. I rose with her in my lap and then reached into the tub, kicking my boots off as I turned the shower on. When the water was hot, I stepped under the spray with her in my arms, letting the spray rain down on us.
“Lean your head back.” When she did, the hot water rained down on her face. I washed the puke from around her mouth and then took the hair tie from her hair, letting it hang so the water could wash there too. “Can I set you down?” Her panicked eyes shot to mine. “Only for a minute, Mad, please.” I was desperate. We were covered in it, and I was losing it.
She slipped to her feet. I grabbed the shower head and removed it, washing eighty-five percent of the puke off us both. It was in her shirt, but I didn’t think I could do anything about that. The entire time she watched me. I didn’t know what changed. What had made it okay to have me wrapped around her? Since when was I safer than Cat?
“Can you take your clothes off and wash the rest? I want to take a real shower when you’re done.”
She took a long time to nod. Then she started to undress. I watched in shock and concern when she pulled her shirt over her head and dropped it on the shower floor. She reached for her jeans next.
“What are you doing?”
She didn’t answer, moving robotically. She’d lost it. But I did need to clean her. There had been too much puke everywhere to hose her down. She pulled her jeans down her thighs, and then pushed them down with her feet. Then she reached around back and undid her bra, letting it fall to the floor. I looked at the shower wall above her head the moment her pale breasts were in front of me. A moment later I heard her panties hit the floor. She walked into my arms and wrapped her naked body around my clothed one.
She’d broken apart.
Parts of my heart ached for her so deeply.
Having no choice, even after waiting five minutes and asking her to clean herself—she didn’t respond or move—I grabbed the bottle of peach moisturizing shampoo I bought her. I squirted some into my palm and began washing her hair. To save her, and myself, I washed my soapy hand over her face, making it so her eyes had no choice but to close.
I left the shampoo in her hair and then used it to wash her body as best I could. The entire time I did, she trembled. Not like she was scared of me, but like she’d been too scared of him to ever stop.
I washed her arms and hands and made sure her fingers and feet were clean. I lathered her sides, my fingers trailing over her rib cage and down her hip bones. I rinsed her off with the shower head, leaving her completely clean.
“Go get dressed. I need to shower.” She tried to wrap herself around me again. I had no choice but to fend her off. I was still dirty, and she wasn’t. But she fought me, trying to get into my arms. “Madi, please.” I gently grasped her arms and turned her, so she faced the wall. “I’m getting naked. Don’t look.” She hugged herself in the corner of the shower.
I quickly took my clothes off and grabbed my soap, washing off in record time. I wrenched the towel off the hook and then the one off the floor. I wrapped that one around my waist and then wrapped the clean one around her. Spinning her around, I tied it tightly, tucking the extra piece under her armpit. I took her hand and led her out of the bathroom and into my bedroom.
She stuck close to my side as I opened my top drawer and sifted through her underwear. I handed her a pair and then slipped a pair of loose boxers on under my towel. When I turned around, she was standing there in only her panties.
Her nudity was the final sign that she’d cracked. She was so sure to keep herself covered, protected. She was completely exposed.
I picked up her towel and dried her hair from her scalp to her back. When I was done, her hair was a golden mess, but at least it was dry. The air conditioning kicked on overhead; her shivering returned.
“Let’s get you in bed.” I got her to lay down, but when I moved to get to the other side, she grabbed at my arm like I was leaving. Her eyes were dilated and fearful, far away yet in the present, stuck in the past while trying to focus on me. “I’m not going anywhere.” But she pulled me. I forwent her rules, and crawled over her body, pulling her back tightly to my chest. I brought the blanket around us and rocked. I rocked her until she was snoring, until I’d rocked myself to sleep too.
When I came to, it felt like I had a hangover. My eye ached painfully and my head matched. In my arms, Madi snored with her head on my arm. Finding I had my hand on her breast, I wrapped my arm around her stomach instead. When she came to, she was going to flip the shit out. We were practically naked in my bed. We were breaking every damn rule she’d put in place. At least my dick knew better. Or maybe I was too emotionally exhausted to realize what I had in my arms.
Outside my window, it was dark. I lay my head back on the pillow and her hair, inhaling the scent of peach shampoo. I had never felt so unsteady in my life. I typically only worried about myself. I knew what I needed. I didn’t know what she needed. I couldn’t make up her mind or decide anything on my own. Cat was no fucking help. She seemed to think I was some savior when I was nothing but the one who pushed them over the edge. The right thing probably would’ve been to let Madison go live with her … but I couldn’t.
Before, I didn’t understand what I was feeling when I thought about her leaving; I only knew I didn’t want her gone. Now, I didn’t care what I felt. I refused to let her step outside my door. If he took her from the DU campus, and she’d run into Cat when she escaped, she wasn’t far from the damage she’d been forced to endure.
Down the hall, I heard shuffling. Cat came into the room, bleary-eyed and sallow. The blankets were down around our waists, and everything from the waist up was on display for her. She blinked at our half-naked bodies. I could tell what her brain was thinking by the enraged horror in her eyes.
“Klayton!” She jabbed at me. “Are you out of your mind?”
“Are you?” I hissed. I grabbed the blankets, pulling them around Mad’s half-naked body. “She wouldn’t let me go long enough to dress her.”
Cat sank to the floor in relief. “Thank goodness.” Exhaustion hit her like a truck, weighing down her shoulders. She wore a pair of my boxers and one of my shirts. Her black hair was wayward and twisted in a ponytail.
“Not wanting to put her through that is selfish,” she murmured. She hung her head and picked at my carpet. “I didn’t want to go through the police, through reliving my trauma. That’s the choice I made for me. But
I can’t force her to do the same.”
“We have to do something,” I said, relieved to know she was struggling with the same thoughts. “But it has to be her decision. We have to be okay with whatever she chooses.”
She took a second to respond, and even then, it was a nod. I didn’t want to argue with her. I hadn’t been through what she had. Cat had a way of dealing with her past that worked for her. It may not work for Madi. People were different. Trauma hurts different parts of us, or all of us, and we don’t all heal the same way. That was something Madi deserved.
I wanted her to heal.
“Klayton, I don’t know if her staying here is good anymore.” She blinked her wet eyes at me. “You were enough for me. Just having a man who didn’t want anything from me, who let me rage, who let me be hurt without hurting me further—that was all I needed. She might need more. If she doesn’t make that choice, then what? We let her stay here until she’s too far gone to help?”
I eyed her closely. “What’re you saying?”
“I’m saying we bring her somewhere to talk to someone. Someone who can help her without involving the cops or the hospital. Someone like her family.”
The mention of her family sent my heart into my throat. Maybe because I knew they were the better option no matter how I looked at it. Or maybe because I had a feeling once she went home, she’d never come back here. She’d leave me. And that made it hard to breathe, made my empty life so much emptier. Left me with my anger and my empty drawers. I couldn’t be that selfish. I couldn’t force her to fall apart so I could keep her.
“I’ll talk to her.” The gruffness of my voice infuriated me. To staunch it, I held her body tightly, feeling mine meld with hers. “Close for the day, please? Call the guys. Let their appointments know.”
She pushed to her feet. “I’ll clean up.”
“You want help?”
She leaned over our bodies to kiss Madi’s temple and then mine. “No. Just take care of our girl.”
I stared at nothing for hours until that nothing became sleep. I rarely dreamed. I had nothing to dream for. I had imaginings, but they weren’t of any importance. They were empty and meaningless memories. This dream was almost the same as nothing, but I wasn’t alone, and we weren’t in a room. The space around me was black and empty. Madison was in my sweats and shirt, her hair down and golden. Tears poured from her eyes as I watched her walk away. She backed away from me. How could you? written all over her face. How could I what? What had I done? Worse, what hadn’t I done?
I tried to reach for her. My tattoos twisted off my arm and reached for her. The tattoo of the bird on my inner wrist cawed in the air before it fell from the sky and its wings twisted in her hair. Onyx feathers and blond strands created a dark and light chaos I understood too well. I wanted her. Needed her.
The heart I had inked on my upper arm exploded above them both, raining down blood. When the blood stopped, Mad was gone, and in her place was a single strand of blond hair and one dark feather.
The moment I reached for them, my eyes opened and the image faded. I gasped in relief. Our position hadn’t changed. We were still in bed; bodies melded together. My tattooed arm gripped her in defiance. I wondered if my dream had to do with what was right for her, and what was right for me.
“You awake?” I asked.
She didn’t answer. But her breathing was heavier than it had been when she slept. I leaned over to check, finding her eyes open and unfocused. I thought I’d give her a minute to wake and process things. An hour later she still hadn’t made a move to get up.
I tapped my fingers impatiently on her hip. “Mad?” I grabbed her shoulder and eased her on to her back. Her eyes stared at nothing. I guided her face to mine, forcing her eyes on me. The moment our gazes locked, a spark of life reentered them. “Talk to me.”
“I’m bleeding,” she whispered in a voice so quiet I thought she’d said I’m leaving.
I frowned. I hadn’t expected her to say that, of all things. Too late, I recalled her period. I lifted the blanket to find blood blossomed on her panties and between her thighs. “Go clean up.”
She rolled over against my chest.
Swallowing the lump in my throat, I kissed her bare shoulder, using the closeness to whisper in her ear. “Please, Madi.” When she didn’t move, I closed my eyes and counted to ten. She had every right to be in shock. “Can we do it together?”
Finally, she gave me a small nod. I rolled over with her in my arms and set her on her feet, ignoring how she grabbed the waistband on my boxers. Weeks ago, she ignored me, was unable to even look at me, let alone touch me. What had changed for her to trust me this completely? Whatever it was, I’d take it. I turned the bathroom light on, signs of last night all over the place. The room stunk of puke. Our clothes were still in the tub, our shoes on the floor.
As she stood with her back to the mirror, I ducked into the room to grab her a clean pair of underwear, some of my dark blue sweats, and a new clean plain black shirt I bought her with a tiny cupcake embroidered on the pocket. At the time, I’d gotten it because it was simple but somehow girlie.
It took a lot of patience, but I somehow managed to convince her to clean herself up while I did everything but look at her. I wasn’t squeamish—that wasn’t the problem. The problem was that she didn’t seem to mind that I was there. The privacy she demanded days ago was gone. She was wide open in front of me.
To give her a break, I decided to take the pressure off and dressed her. I helped her step into my sweats and tied them around her waist. I put her shirt on and then ripped a black hair tie from the pack I’d bought at the drug store off my counter and put her hair into a disgraceful ponytail.
Once she was clothed, I took a deep breath and grabbed her face between my hands. Her gray eyes looked silver and faded, barely blue at all. “Talk to me.”
She blinked slowly, and then looked down at my chest. “I’m tired.”
I didn’t mention that she’d already slept for over ten hours—I simply led her to my bed and began pulling the covers over her.
“Where are you going?” she demanded, so loud I jumped.
Our gazes locked. In hers, there was panic. In mine, there was helplessness.
“I need some painkillers, and we need to eat.” And I needed to do some research. “Go to sleep. I’ll be in the living room.”
She sat up and grabbed me, pulling me down on top of her. I was six-foot four nearing one-eighty-five, probably more after not going to the gym the past month; I wasn’t a small guy. But Madison had me down on the bed and in her arms before I could register what happened.
“What was your major,” I grunted, moving to lay on top of her with my legs on either side of hers. “Wrestling?”
She giggled. It lasted a second, maybe two, and when it was gone, I felt its absence, but it had been there. It gave me hope. She may not have much to laugh about today or even a year from now. But she could laugh. And that was a ray of hope in an otherwise hopeless situation.
“I’m on top of you,” I pointed out, highly aware of my dick pressing into her thighs.
In response, she wrapped her arms around my lower back and settled into the bed. I was lying on top of a woman who didn’t want me to touch her, let alone put his full weight on her. It made my eyes burn. The signs pointed to a complete and utter breakdown.
“I’m not supposed to touch you.”
“You can touch me,” she whispered, pressing her face into my neck.
I pushed onto my elbows and glared down at her. “Since when? Since when am I not the monster?”
She grabbed my face in her small hands and rubbed her fingertips over my growing stubble. My heart and stomach burned from her touch, and my skin wasn’t any different. The tenderness and reverence in her gaze unnerved me.
“You cried,” she whispered, leaning forward to kiss my barely open broken eye. “Monsters don’t cry or take care of me like you did, Klay.”
My brows scrunche
d together. I was incredibly weirded out and I couldn’t think around her touch or words. I didn’t know if I should keep mentioning it either. I didn’t mind our position. Her hands on me felt aggravatingly good. Her body’s openness should be a good sign. But it wasn’t. I understood her inability to trust men. I hadn’t followed the rules, but that was my weakness, not hers.
“You’re not being yourself right now.” But I let her hold me anyway because I wasn’t being me either. Don’t do it, I forbade myself. She’s not herself. She doesn’t want to kiss you. You’re just a monster, and she’s broken. I tore my gaze from her soft pink lips and focused them on her eyes instead. Where they belonged. “Let me up.”
“I feel better when you’re with me. I don’t like how I feel when I think of you leaving.” She rubbed my bare lower back, cresting the top of my ass each go around. I couldn’t breathe, all my concentration spent on keeping the blood from my groin. I didn’t have a small dick. She’d know immediately what I was feeling.
Shame crashed into me. I pulled out of her grasp and got to my feet, plucking a pair of jeans from my floor. I pulled them on as the heat of her touch burned my back. Just in time, my cock filled with heat. So fucking hard in seconds, I couldn’t think around the sight of her in my bed. In a different world, I’d fall between her legs and fuck her hard and deep. Taste her skin as she moaned into my shoulder. The rush of attraction left me lightheaded. I tried to pawn it off on the lack of food and the stress, but it didn’t work.
I ran my hand through my hair and over my face, trying to figure out what to do. We needed to talk. “I’ll be in the living room.”
“Klayton,” she said, her terror instant.
I stopped inside of my door. “Madi, please. You’re okay with me not being around. You’re used to it.”
She was beside me instantly, grabbing hold of my waist. She looped her little finger in my belt loop and looked down at her bare feet. I got the point. Nice try, dickhead. My houseguest followed me into the living room. Once in the kitchen, I guided her over to the table and sat her down, giving her a stern look that refused her disobedience.
Mad Love (Guns & Ink Book 1) Page 12
