by Stacy Gail
“I’m not the meek and cowering type who has the shit scared out of her,” she fired back, and if her voice had been a tangible thing it would have cut him. “I don’t know if any of you muscle-headed heroes noticed, but I wasn’t panicking, and I wasn’t asking for help. You know why? Because I didn’t fucking need it.”
“If you’re looking for an apology for keeping you here while I worked to lock down your world to make sure you stay safe, you’re shit outta luck, because it’s not going to happen. I refuse to apologize for looking after what’s important to me, you got that?”
Her eyes widened at that, and it almost looked like she’d swallowed her tongue. Then she let out a breath that sounded very much like a growl. “What do you mean, lock down my world? What have you done while I was confined in this place against my will?”
“Jesus.” He took a step back and ran his hands through his hair. It was either that or wring her frigging ungrateful neck. “You’ve got GPS on your car now along with a dash cam that has a live feed to our control room that someone’s monitoring twenty-four seven. The exterior and interior public spaces of your building are also under surveillance. I took your keys and got a team inside so they could set eyes on all access points in your apartment with the exception of the bedroom, so no walking around in your birthday suit.”
“I never do that anyway.”
“With me, you do.” When she didn’t answer, just continued to stare at him with that cold, infinitely unreachable gaze he took a step closer. “I downloaded an app into your phone so you can also check each room of your apartment before you enter it to make sure it’s safe. I also changed out all the locks—I wanted sturdier ones that were up to my standards. I have copies of your new keys with me.”
“I’ll take them now.”
Some inner devil poked at him to tell her no, but keeping the keys to her own place was an asshole move, so he fished them out of his pocket. She snatched them away before he had a chance to fully extend his arm.
Fuck.
“Woman, you’re a real piece of work, you know that?” When she simply continued to stare at him with those dead eyes she used to have when they were kids, he took another step toward her. “It’s not like you’re going to need those keys. I also have a copy. From this point on we’re attached at the hip, so wherever you go, I go.”
“No.”
His eyes narrowed and he waited a beat for her to voluntarily turn that shit around. “No?”
She snagged her jacket up off the sofa. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m in need of some serious alone-time, which I’m going to have as of now. Tell you what, I’ll give you a call when I’m in the mood for company, okay? See you around.”
“Wait just a goddamn minute.” In a heartbeat he caught her by the wrist as she shrugged into her jacket. “You don’t actually think I’m going to let you give me the brush-off because I wasn’t here holding your hand all day, do you? I spent the whole fucking day trying to make sure you stay safe, Sass.”
“I didn’t ask you to do that, and I sure as hell didn’t ask to be locked up and kept here against my fucking will. And yes,” she added fiercely, jerking her wrist out of his hold, “I do think I can give you the brush-off. You know why? Because I’m free. I’m free to go wherever I want, stay wherever I want, and be with whomever I want. No one gets to dictate that shit to me anymore. No one gets to hold me against my will anymore. No one gets to tell me what my li—”
He shut her up the simplest way he knew how, no longer interested in listening to what she was trying to tell him. At first her mouth tried to evade his, and when that didn’t work, remain unresponsive. But with the first sweep of his tongue against her rigidly closed lips, they softened by degrees, then melted like wax against his, opening and pressing to his in avid hunger.
When her tongue caressed his in a way that lit his body on fire, the need to conquer her swamped him. She was his. She didn’t have the luxury of brushing him off. He wouldn’t let her even think about it.
She. Was. His.
Without another thought to caution or care, he let go of his grip on sanity. He dived his hands under her slim skirt and yanked it up and over her hips. His fingers caught at the thin, silky strip of the thong she wore underneath, and with one yank it came apart, and she gasped into his mouth.
“No one will come in,” he breathed, not knowing if what he said was true, not caring if it happened. He had to be inside her. He had to prove it to her that there was no walking away.
Ever.
He fumbled between them with the fastenings of his pants, then pulled the hard thrust of his cock out rather than take the time to take his pants and boxers off. There was no time for pointless shit like that. With one arm, he lifted her off the ground. Her legs went up to wrap around his waist even as he half-fell toward the couch, sliding into her as he went.
The full impact of her hitting the couch and him on top of her seated him into her all the way to his hilt. As her searing heat surrounded him, he couldn’t stop the ragged grunt of pleasure that escaped the cage of his teeth. No one fit him as perfectly as she did, gloving him so tightly, burning him with her heat until he was so beautifully scorched he thought he’d fucking die.
One of his legs was off the couch, and he shifted up to better position himself. A small, shattered moan whispered out of her, her head pushing back into the leather couch cushion, and he realized he was exactly where he needed to be. He speared a hand into her hair and forced her gaze to meet his before he deliberately rocked his hips. A flood of lush pleasure washed over her expression, parting her lips and making her eyes flutter.
It was the sexiest goddamn thing he’d ever seen.
“Don’t you ever try to brush me off, Sass. Not ever,” he raged between each thrust, his pubic bone hitting against hers with every wild roll of his hips. And each hit resonated inside him to buzz along his lower spine, until his every muscle vibrated with a sweet, sweet torment. “Never again, you hear me? Don’t even think it. I’ll fuck you so hard you’ll never be able to stop feeling me inside you and wanting me to be there again.”
His furious thrusts were met by hers, her hands digging into his ass so hard it almost hurt. Suddenly her back arched, her eyes squeezing shut as a hoarse cry of near-anguish ripped from her, and the tight, slick depths around him convulsed so hard it ripped his last ounce of sanity from his grasp. Endlessly he plunged into her, desperate to erase the terrible weight crushing down on him.
But not even the pleasure of emptying himself into her could do it.
Chapter Twenty
Sass lay curled in bed, trying to ignore how her home didn’t feel like hers anymore. It wasn’t just that wherever she went in her apartment she knew some stranger tracked her. It wasn’t just that people she didn’t know had gone through her hard-won private haven.
For the first time since Rude had gotten back from Canada, she was alone in bed.
She shivered under the layers of sheet, blanket and thick down comforter, and stared into the darkness. When the blue-eyed dickhead, Lucien whatever-his-name-was, had taken her back to where Rude was in a meeting with Havlik, she’d been irate that Rude was being disturbed. The blue-eyed dickhead had then made like a town crier on meth and proceeded to tell everyone who would listen that she might have a stalker. That was when her irritation had morphed into a full-blown case of foot-stomping pissiness.
Only when she’d registered the controlled state of alarm in the rock-steady employees of PSI had she begun to worry.
That worry had blossomed into shock and something close to fear when she’d been shown a photo of the man who’d approached her. A man who’d apparently been staking PSI out for a while.
She could understand their concern. Every last one of the men at Private Security International had history. Massive, dangerous history. History like theirs came pre-packaged with vendettas and enemies with a propensity for violence, and everyone knew it. Naturally, since she had been the one who was appro
ached by the mysterious Mr. Hot Italian Suit, their focus shifted to Rude’s background.
While Rude had gone off with Cap to go over his life with a fine-tooth comb, Mary Jane had suggested they wait for them to finish up in what Sass had at first thought might have been some kind of unusually furnished recreational area for the guys to decompress in. It wasn’t until she heard the door lock behind them that she realized she’d been put in lockdown.
Panic and claustrophobia had slammed her with a one-two punch. She’d rounded on the door, only to confirm that she was, indeed, locked inside a place where she had no control over how to get out. Mary Jane had assured her that it was for her own safety, but it didn’t matter. Before she’d turned eighteen, she’d been a prisoner of the foster system, shuffled from one place to another without any control. After she’d been raped, she’d been sent to another kind of jail, locked up in a sterile room in a halfway house for battered women, and again she’d had no freedom to say where she went. It was there, she recalled, as she lay in a narrow, lumpy bed in absolute darkness and so lonely she’d wanted to die, that she had made herself the promise to never again let anyone dictate where she went once she reached adulthood.
Yet there she was, placed behind another locked door, with no way out.
It had scared her into a near-meltdown. A meltdown that had been bad enough that, at the time, walking away from Rude—who was part of PSI and therefore the part of why she’d been locked up—had seemed like an excellent idea.
It didn’t now, though.
She sucked. That was the one phrase that kept hammering at her, and she accepted every single hit because she deserved it. As a human being, she utterly and thoroughly sucked. All anyone had cared about today was keeping her protected. That was all. And while she’d been able to keep herself under some kind of restraint with Mary Jane, she’d unleashed with both barrels on Rude after he’d spent the whole freaking day stressing over her safety.
He hadn’t deserved that.
Added to that, he probably wasn’t all that thrilled that something from his history—no doubt from his days in the military—had sprouted up like a toxic weed in his new life in the private sector. The last thing he’d needed at that moment was a shrieking, bitchy shrew of a girlfriend. What her man had needed was support. Understanding. A little fucking gratitude.
But had she given the poor guy any of that? No. She’d been too wrapped up in her own meaningless traumas, and proceeded to make a mountain out of a fucking molehill.
He should hate her now, just as much as she hated herself. For her irrationality, her utter lack of gratitude or compassion. For wanting to run away just so she could breathe free, when all he’d done was protect her.
God, she sucked so much.
Charging on the nightstand beside the bed, her phone chirped with a text chime, startling her. With her heart feeling like a leaden, frozen lump, she reached for it, baffled at who would text her after midnight.
You awake?
Rude.
Her vision blurred until she could barely see the screen. With her heart pounding, she sat up and huddled over the keyboard, unsure what to say. Whatever she came up with couldn’t possibly be as wonderful as his text was. It might have been only two words, but Rude reaching out to her when she didn’t deserve it made those two words the most precious in her world.
“Yes. You? Wait, don’t answer. Unless you’re sleep-texting, you’re awake.”
She had to wait only a few second before he responded.
Don’t think I’ll sleep tonight.
She sucked in an audible breath as her world wobbled on the ragged edge of despair. “Please don’t let my stupidity and assholeyness rob you of a good night’s sleep. After a day like today, you need your rest so you can focus.”
There was a moment’s pause. Assholeyness?
“I don’t know how to spell what I was today. I don’t even know WHAT I was today, except unfair, and ungrateful, and a total bitch. I’m so sorry, Rude.” She hit Send, then added as an afterthought, “I’m also sorry that I can’t apologize to you face-to-face.”
Face-to-face apologies are the only apologies that count.
Her lungs stopped working. Her heart plummeted. Was he saying he didn’t accept her apology?
Her eyes closed as the answer stabbed through her.
Of course that was what he was saying.
Of course.
If she were in his shoes, she wouldn’t have accepted it, either.
Her lungs began to fill once more, but that was no longer important. Who cared about breathing when she’d ruined the greatest thing she’d ever known? She’d never forgive herself for this. Never.
The text chime brought her head up, and only then did she realize she’d fallen back into the pillows and curled up into a tight ball of pain. Half-afraid of what she’d find, she dragged the phone out from under her chin where she’d tucked it still held in her hand, and let out a shaky breath when she read the message there.
Knock, knock.
She had to blink away the hopeless, hurting wetness in her eyes so she could type. “Who’s there?”
Me. And I’m coming in because I hate being away from you.
She was still curled up on her side when she heard the door open and close behind her. Shocked that he’d been standing outside the bedroom door the entire time, she again rolled to a sitting position as a shadow moved toward the bed. “Rude?”
“It sure as hell better not be anyone else, Sassy Pants.”
His familiar voice reached through the darkness to wrap her in comfort and warmth, as soothing as an embrace. She heard clothes rustle before the mattress dipped, and she pulled back the covers to welcome him in. Her off-kilter world slid back into perfect alignment the moment his big, warm body stretched out against hers. It was as though every cell in her body sighed in relief. Then she realized he’d gotten rid of all his clothing, and her relief ballooned a hundredfold. Before he could say a word, she reached up to frame his face in her hands to look at him through the darkness.
“I’m so sorry, Rude.” She said it quickly before he could demand an apology for himself. Apologies didn’t count when you had to go begging for them. “Wait, let me turn on the light so you know I mean it—”
His arms went around her and held on tight, telling her without words that she wasn’t going anywhere. “I know you mean it, Sassy.”
“I made a bad day worse for you. I know you must be worried, and I know you’re doing everything you can to protect me. That was what I should have said, because I swear I was aware of it at the time. Something else overrode it, something stupid and selfish, and I need you to know that I’m so thankful for everything you did today.”
“Including bringing a piece of shit into your life? No.” His head bent so that his brow gently bumped hers when she opened her mouth to contradict his words, and his mouth rested against hers. “It fucking pisses me off that somewhere along the line I crossed paths with someone who’s such a coward he’d go after a woman all by herself, rather than take his issues up with me like a man who actually had a pair.”
He would look at it that way. “Not every man can be like you.”
His arms tightened, and his lips moved against hers in a lingering kiss before he backed away. “All I know is that I’m not happy with my shit coming into your life to threaten you. I’m not at all happy about that, Sass.”
She looped an arm around his waist and held on tight. “You can’t control everything that happens in the world, sweetheart. You can only do what you did today—have faith in your strength to overcome any obstacle that comes up in life, and keep moving forward. From this point on, that’s how I’m going to deal with it. I believe in your strength, and I know I’m protected. I have so much faith in you that, in all honesty, I’m not even worried about this.”
“Sassy.” He face nuzzled against hers, and she closed her eyes, reveling in the faint rasp of his five-o’clock shadow. “I needed to hear
that.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Good, because the reason I needed to hear it was because for a while today, I had the thought of getting out of your life until whatever the fuck this asshole wants gets resolved.”
She stiffened, because his confession froze her heart into a solid block of ice. “What?”
“My life can be complicated,” he said with a shrug she felt against her. “And it can be dangerous, though I’d like to think we cut down that danger to a minimum at PSI, because we’re professionals. You’ve had a lot of stress and trauma in your life—the kind that most people never experience—and being with me has brought you even more. That thought fucking kills me, Sass, I’m not going to lie. And because of that, the idea of severing ties with you to make sure the shit going on in my life doesn’t overflow into yours is seriously appealing. I wasn’t even going to come over tonight.”
Oh God, she was back to not being able to breathe. “What…what changed your mind?”
“It’s like you said—I can’t control everything that’s going on in the world. Yeah, I’ve got trouble washing up from somewhere, so what should I do? Dump you until I find the source of trouble and deal with it? If I did that, what’d be the next step? Try to get back together with you like nothing happened, when I know doing something like that would shatter your trust in me? That’s not going to fly.”
She swallowed hard against the lump of tears she refused to give in to, but even then she couldn’t answer. She couldn’t, because he was right. She’d never be able to let him in as completely as she had if something like that happened.
“Let’s take that thought a step further. What if, God forbid, more trouble washes up a month from now? A year from now? Or at any point somewhere down the road?” His arms pressed into her back, molding her more intimately to him, as if he needed to feel all of her with all of him. “Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that’s going to happen, but it’s not out of the realm of possibility. So imagine what life would be like if I let my concerns dictate my actions. I’d be constantly dumping you until the danger had passed, then forcing my way back into your life like I had every right to think you’d wait for me, and not get interested in someone who didn’t treat you like a fucking yoyo. Do you see what I’m getting at?”
