by Avery Flynn
Devin pulled off the highway at the sign for the Andol Nature Preserve. The road was a lot bumpier than the highway, jostling her as she fought to hold herself still so her protesting muscles wouldn’t scream as loud. They passed hikers weighed down with backpacks and reusable water bottles who were heading deeper inland. Pop-up tents in various shades of blue dotted the landscape like blueberries in a muffin.
“The preserve is a popular spot,” Devin said. “No better place to hide than in plain sight.”
“Good plan.”
“Wait, you’re not biting my head off for making an executive decision?” He shifted into a lower gear as the road hit a five percent incline. “Did that guy whack you in the head or something?”
“Very funny.” She rolled her eyes.
About five miles down the road, an outcropping of trees appeared on the right. A few miles later, one of the island’s ubiquitous rock walls ran along the left side of the road, a few yards in.
Devin pulled off and parked the Jeep behind the wall. “Figured we could hump it back to the trees to spend the night. They’re looking for a hot pink Jeep, not a small tent.”
“It’s not my idea of fun, but it’s better than dealing with the Molinas’ muscle before we get a chance to patch ourselves up.”
Before she could grab any of the supplies out of the back, Devin had gathered them. He had so many bags he looked like a pack mule walking on its hind legs.
She sidled up to him. “Give me some of that.”
“No. You’re banged up.”
“Like you’re not.” She held out her hand. “Give.”
With great reluctance, he handed over the sleeping bag and the first aid kit, keeping the tent and assorted gear for himself. Rolling her eyes, she turned and headed back toward the trees. Walking down the road as the first stars appeared wasn’t the best of options, but it sure as hell beat walking in the high grass and leaving a trail of bent greenery straight to their campsite.
Thankfully, the small pop-up tent assembled with a minimum of fuss, and within fifteen minutes, they were inside tending to their wounds.
Using the chrome camping coffee pot as a mirror, she swiped her face with a sterile wipe before dabbing antiseptic on the scrapes. The bruise looked a garish purple reflected in the funhouse mirror of the metal, but she doubted it would look any better in a real mirror.
Devin groaned behind her as he tried to pull his shirt over his head instead of unbuttoning it all the way.
“Here, let me help.” She shuffled over on her knees.
He brushed her away. “I can manage.”
He lifted his arms again and his face lost a shade or two of color.
“Not so much, Mr. Tough Guy. You can’t even get your shirt off. Now shut up and let me help.”
She undid his buttons as he sat cross legged, the light from the propane lantern glinting off her gold rope bracelet, and pushed the linen material away from his chest. Puce yellow, pea green, and a funky shade of darkest blue clashed with the tattoo panorama across his muscular midsection. She traced her fingers down his ribs. He’d promised her nothing was broken, but she wouldn’t put it past him to lie about it.
Three-fourths of the way down the gnarly bruise, he grabbed her hand. “I’m fine.”
She cracked a rapid-cold pack and held it to the bruise. “Did you get the license plate of the Mack truck that hit you?”
“You’re such a comedian.” He turned away and rubbed the back of his head, revealing a patchwork of angry red slashes across his back and rough-looking gashes where his knuckles had connected with the thugs’ hard bones. “You can have the sleeping bag, I’ll just—”
“Not so fast.” She gripped his forearm and the skin-to-skin contact sent a jolt of electricity straight to her core. “You’ve got cuts and scrapes all over you.”
She ignored his grumbling and started with his knuckles before moving on to his face, smoothing her hands over his five o’clock shadow and feeling for tenderness. His skin heated beneath her touch and the pulse in his neck jumped. By the time she was caring for the one-inch cut on his cheekbone, the ache in her hip had been replaced by one between her thighs. God, she’d make the world’s worst Florence Nightingale, if she kept getting all worked up while dotting a guy’s face with Neosporin.
Her sanity couldn’t take much more, so she started to hum an old song her mom used to sing to her whenever she’d woken up with a nightmare. Devin jerked under her touch.
“I’m sorry, did I hurt you?”
“No.” None of the light, teasing tone from earlier remained. Instead, his deep voice sounded hollow. “It’s the song.”
Something in the aching emptiness of his tone pulled at Ryder. “You know it?”
“It was my brother’s favorite when he was a little kid. He used to sing it every day just to drive me nuts.” His voice broke. “Now he can’t even remember the name of it.”
She digested that for a few moments, hurting for Devin. “What happened?” she asked softly.
“I failed at the most important job every big brother has—to protect your younger siblings. I almost killed him.” He paused. “I wonder sometimes if it wouldn’t be better if I had. James was one of those fifteen year-olds you read about who are already going to college. He was halfway through earning his BA in physics when he came home to visit.”
Devin stared out at the starry sky through the circular mesh window in the roof of the tent, but the darkness in his eyes extinguished the starlight that should have been reflected there.
“A bunch of us used to drive down to Waterburg to drag race the locals. It was a great way for stupid twenty-somethings with too much time and money on their hands to blow off steam. James had never been, so it seemed like the perfect brother-bonding time when he came home for spring break, plus it got him away from Dad, who was always pressuring him not to take a minute away from school. Most of the time, the police would break it up before we’d been there for long, but not always. When the cops arrived that night, it was too late. My cherry red BMW roadster was overturned off the side of the road, with my brother and me hanging upside down. The car I was racing against, a Mustang, had gone head-to-head with a tree and lost. Badly.”
The back of Ryder’s throat tightened and she reached for a strand of hair. But this time the smooth feel of it wrapping around her fingers as she twisted did little to alleviate the anxiety churning her insides into mush.
Devin white-knuckled the steering wheel and went on, “I crawled out of the Beemer with a few superficial scratches. The kid in the other car wasn’t as lucky. He’d gone straight through his windshield and died in the ambulance on the way to the hospital.”
Ryder actually remembered the accident. The kid who died was from their neighborhood. Richie Vivier. He’d been a few years ahead of her in school. She hadn’t known him well, but he’d been on the football team with her brother, Tony. The night of the accident, their father had come home after working the scene, hugged all of the kids, and locked himself in the den for the night. He’d played Otis Redding and gotten stone-cold drunk.
“There was an investigation, but no charges were ever filed,” Devin said, each word more painful to hear than the last. “The other driver’s family filed a civil complaint but dropped it a few months after they received an anonymous cash donation. My dad paid half a million dollars to hush the whole thing up.”
Ryder blinked. Jesus.
“One kid died, I walked away with scratches, but only a shadow version of James got out of that car.” His voice wavered on the last word but he took a deep breath and continued. “He suffered permanent brain damage and lives in a resident care facility. He had a genius level IQ and now he has no fucking clue how to work a TV remote control. I did that to him. It was my fault.”
A bone-deep ache for him wracked Ryder. She wanted to reach out, to comfort him, but Devin was clearly a man barely hanging on. She’d grown up in a family of cops, tough men who refused to admit their own
pain or wanted others acknowledging it. Touching Devin might be just the thing that would push him over the edge, so she curled her fingers around the gold blessing bracelet that matched his.
“I killed one kid and ruined another.” Devin’s voice strengthened, but beneath the volume lay an ocean of pain. “And yeah, I walked away with only a couple of bruises, but there’s not a day when I don’t pay for it. Not a single fucking day. But obviously I’m too stupid to have learned my lesson. I should have been watching out for you today. There’s no way in hell I should have let you go gladiator against two thugs. I almost got you killed today and that is not acceptable.”
…
Devin’s throat closed around a lump of blame and regret he could never fully banish. Raw and angry, he wanted to fight back against the disappointment and shame, but he couldn’t drown it in alcohol or beat it away with a punching bag. God knew he’d tried both already. The guilt always returned every time he cracked open his eyelids with the morning sun.
“Today was not your fault, Devin. You didn’t lead me into anything. It was my plan. And if you recall, I ran in front of you, not behind you. Anyway, I would have liked to have seen you try to stop me.” The pity in her dark brown eyes nearly undid him.
My fault. Again.
How many people did he have to hurt before he accepted that his father had been right? He was a dumb jock who reacted first and thought second. Sure, he’d moved up the corporate ladder, but he couldn’t ever shake the idea that the whole thing was a fluke. After college, he’d devoted five years to MMA training. Maybe he should have continued. At least then the people he hurt would have signed up for it. God knew he had. His opponents’ fists had been punishing, but never as bad as he deserved. His mission whenever he’d entered the ring had never been to win. It had been to have his opponent knock the memories from his head.
If only it had worked.
He brushed his fingers over the green bruises slashing across Ryder’s cheek, guilt burning through him. “You were hurt.”
“Yeah, that happens. I’ll be fine in a few days. I’m tougher than I look. She lifted the antiseptic cloth to the cut at the corner of his mouth. “This is gonna hurt like a mother.”
She screwed up her face, twisting her lips and flaring her nostrils like her skin was made of Silly Putty. The goofy action broke the tension and he laughed, clearing away the darkness fogging his thoughts.
How she managed to shake the ground beneath him, he couldn’t understand. But she did. And it scared him more than the biggest, baddest fighter he’d ever stared down.
“I’m tougher than I look, too,” he assured her.
She sat back and cocked her head, giving him a playful up and down appraisal. “I don’t know how that’s possible, you look like a total badass.”
“Don’t all carnival kissing booth champions?” He waggled his eyebrows, making her giggle.
The cloth stung when she pressed it to his skin, but only for a moment. Seeing the way she sucked on her bottom lip as she contemplated treating his other bruises distracted him from the pain. Ryder was beautiful and sexy, but that wasn’t why she’d haunted him since their first night together.
That night should have been a few hours of anonymous sex, a simple release between two consenting adults. But he couldn’t deny what he’d known on an instinctual level the moment he’d rolled over that morning and found her side of the bed empty.
They fit.
That explained the follow-up calls he’d made and why her rebuff had made him react like a wounded bear, snarling and swiping at her every chance he got. The epiphany crashed against his thick skull so hard he couldn’t deny it any longer. She challenged him, pushed every one of his buttons, and egged him on with her accept-no-bullshit attitude.
When he was with her, he didn’t want to be a better man.
He already was.
Her gaze caught his and in a heartbeat, the teasing look in them faded, overpowered by the hunger that must have been reflected in his own.
The cloth slipped from her grasp, a white flash in his periphery vision.
Neither of them moved. It was as if the earth stopped circling the sun and the moon let loose its hold on the tides. In one breath, anything could happen. Whether she leaned in or he moved toward her, he couldn’t tell. All he knew was that in the next second his lips were on hers. She tasted of honey lip balm, mangoes, and endless possibilities.
God, she took his breath away.
Chapter Twelve
“Fashion is all about eventually becoming naked.”
— Rene Konig
Amazed and in awe, Devin held his breath as his fingertips grazed Ryder’s silky smooth skin, soft as hummingbird’s wings. His touch slipped down her throat as she arched her head back, drawing him deeper into the kiss, surrendering and demanding at the same time as only she did. Soft and hard. Giving and taking. Everywhere and nowhere. Intoxicated on the conflicting combinations that made up Ryder, he tugged the band holding her hair in place until her long waves fell down her back. He weaved his fingers through the lush, dark- chocolate strands, letting the glossy river pour through his hands.
She pulled back, bracing a palm gently against his shoulder, concern and desire warring in her dark eyes. “Your ribs.”
“Are fine.” In truth, his ribs hurt like a bitch, but he’d dealt with more pain for a whole lot less pleasure than being with Ryder. Touching her was worth a hell of a lot more severe injuries than a few bruised ribs. Hooking his fingers into her belt loops, he tugged her down until her knees were on either side of his hips.
“But you’re—”
Devin cut off her unneeded concern by sliding his hands up her thighs, the pads of his thumbs following the seam of her pants, stopping just short of the juncture of her thighs. So fucking close to the promised land, yet so far away. Desperate to feel her, he stroked the center seam where it nestled against her heated center.
“Devin—” She sucked in a sharp breath and scraped her teeth against her cherry-stained bottom lip.
“A few aches are nothing compared to how badly I want to be inside you right now.” He trailed his lips down her throat, nipping her sensitive flesh as he slid his hands around to her ass. Squeezing the round flesh through her pants, he slid her forward until she rocked against his hard cock. Her heat seeped through the material separating them and he had to fight the caveman impulse to rip her clothes off and sink himself into her depths in one long stroke.
She hesitated, considering him with a heavy-lidded gaze as his heart hammered against his bruised ribs. Then she dropped her fingers to the tiny onyx-colored buttons on her shirt.
This time it was his breath that caught as she revealed inch after inch of olive-toned skin.
With each button she slipped open, Devin’s cock hardened, until he worried he would come in his pants just from seeing a few inches of soft skin. Anticipation vibrated up from his balls, hot, demanding, and unwilling to be denied. In the past, he’d always enjoyed a good strip tease, but if Ryder didn’t get naked soon, he wasn’t sure he’d make it without exploding.
Her eyes alight with seduction, she feathered her fingertips down the length of her open shirt, the edges of which had snagged on the hard tips of her dusky rose-colored nipples. Sucking on her bottom lip, she slid her thumb over the flimsy black fabric and circled the hard peaks while swaying against his rock hard dick. The damp heat of her pussy permeated through the layers between them, taunting him with its closeness. It was the best lap dance he’d ever gotten, and it was going to kill him if she didn’t end it soon.
“It’s not nice to tease,” he said, grinding out the words. “Take off the shirt.”
“Always so bossy.” She opened it another inch so he could see the edges of her round areolas and held it there for a moment before shrugging it off. The flimsy garment slid down her back and over his hands that were still gripping her perfect ass. Cupping her lush tits in her hands, she pinched her nipples and pulled them tau
t. “Is this what you wanted?”
“Fuck, yes.” He slid his hands upward, spanning her bare back and pulling her close as he flipped them around so she lay naked from the waist up, on the red sleeping bag. Dark purple and green bruises marred the olive skin of her side, where one of the thugs had kicked her. Another darkened the skin near her collarbone.
Rage rushed through him like a runaway train as he reached up to gently touch it. “I’m going to rip their balls off, roast them over a bonfire, and make the assholes eat them like s’mores,” he growled.
She licked her full lips and popped open the top button of her pants. “Not right now I hope.”
Lust battled with righteous fury, but as she lowered her zipper, revealing a swath ebony silk dotted with emerald-green hearts, he lost the ability to think about anything but her. “God, you’re beautiful.”
He slipped his palms from her back to curve them around her waist as she lay beneath him, open and vulnerable. He scooted down and dragged his tongue across the stretch of flat skin above her low waistband. He hooked his fingers under the elastic of her panties and tugged the center lower, delivering a kiss to the soft skin above her tight, dark curls.
She shivered underneath him. “Now who’s teasing?”
“Turnabout is fair play.” He murmured against her heated skin before sitting back and letting her panties snap back in place. “Now let’s get these pants off.”
“What about you?” Her gaze lowered to the bulge threatening his zipper and she licked her lips as she wriggled out of her pants.
He rolled back onto his heels and rose until he stood crouched over in the tent, and shucked off his slacks and cotton boxers. She sat up, her mouth even with the swollen head of his cock. Keeping her gaze fixed on his face, she wrapped her hands around his girth. His cock jumped at her touch. She grinned and stuck out the tip of her pink tongue, licking her way up the sensitive underside before swiping it across the head, wet with precum.
