by S. R. Jones
I love him being here next to me, and tomorrow I’m going to have a talk with him. Insist he stop sleeping in the spare room.
Tristan died today.
He spent two weeks in a coma, and the doctors held out little hope of him coming around. Luka killed him, and I don’t care. As time has passed, my heart has hardened to Tristan completely. At first, I felt sad in some ways, for the loss of a friend, and a person I’d thought good, but perhaps sick. But then so much stuff came out into the open. The way he’d purposefully targeted me after the death of my cousin, setting up a friendship and luring me in. Making me think he was the best guy in the world. Love bombing, my therapist calls it.
His diaries were horrendous, the police told me. Full of ways he wanted to make me his, and then break me down. Apparently, I intrigued him because I was a challenge. Someone who didn’t easily fall in love with him, and saw him as a friend first and foremost. I think if he’d met me at some other point in my life, I’d have seen through him. Or, alternatively, I might have ended up with him, and maybe by now I’d be a total mess, abused and hurt. The thought makes me shiver.
The thing I can’t forgive him for, though, is the fact he paid those men to set about us, so he could look like a hero and keep playing this sick game he’d started with me. My therapist says it’s highly likely that my refusal to move to Durham and move in with him, after what he viewed as his masterful move, is what started his deregulation. He began to unwind and act more openly disturbed. He’d been in trouble at work, and argued with the few friends he had. I think coming to see me and finding Luka there had sent him over the edge. Hence the dog cage buying insanity he fell into.
Suddenly Luka thrashes his legs and kicks me in the shin, but it’s not hard and it doesn’t hurt. Then he starts mumbling again before sitting up in bed and staring around the room. I can see his eyes open in the bit of light coming in from the open door, and it’s spooky the way they are so wide and blank.
Keeping myself calm, I climb carefully out of bed and tiptoe to the bottom of the big wooden frame. I pull the duvet back and take hold of Luka’s big toe and pinch it hard.
Then I step back and towards the door. Luka grunts, flops back down, throws a hand over his face and then removes it and looks at me. This time I can see he’s focused and awake. Thank God. It worked!
“You were having a nightmare,” I tell him.
“Fuck.” He starts to get up, but I put a hand out.
“No. I want you to stay here. You didn’t hurt me. And I woke you up, safely. I want you to sleep with me. Please, Luka. Stay with me.” I look down to the ground for a moment. I find it hard to be vulnerable with someone. To ask for something, because I deep down still believe people are going to leave me or let me down. But if I want this to work I need to let down my barriers in the same way I’m asking Luka to.
“I need you beside me, holding me. You make me feel safe. Please.”
When I look back at him his face has softened, and he smiles at me and holds out his hand. “Come here.”
I walk to the bed and get in beside him. I’m naked and so is he, and he wraps me up in his big arms, holding me to him.
I wriggle further into his chest and kiss his pec muscle, where my head is. He sighs and strokes my hair. I love the feel of him around me, the scent of him, and his steady breathing. I love him. But I haven’t told him yet except for the one moment in the hospital, and I’m not sure if he even took that in with all that was going on.
Dare I? Can I put myself out there again and be the first to say it for real?
“I love lying here with you.” Is what I say instead.
He kisses the top of my head. “Good, because I love it, too.” He lifts my head up and kisses me on the lips and then looks into my eyes. “I love you, Cara Toulson.”
Oh, my God. My heart speeds up and I get this giddy feeling like I used to do on Christmas morning as a little girl. “I love you, too.”
He kisses me again, but this time it’s more demanding, more domineering. He pulls me up onto him and I’m sat astride him, my core coming down right over his erection.
I want him in me, filling me up, soothing all my empty places.
“Ride me, cowgirl.” Luka delivers the cheesy line with a wink, and I laugh. But I do want to ride him, and so I sit up and hold him up, before sliding down on him with a happy sigh. Skin to skin, we start to move together. At first, it’s sensual and slow, and I grind down on him as he sits up and sucks my breast into his mouth, biting the nipple and then smoothing his tongue over it.
He kisses and nibbles at my neck, and I shiver, loving how much he turns me on whenever he goes to my number one hot spot.
Without warning, he grabs my hips and starts to move me up and down on him, lifting me as if I weigh nothing. It’s probably all kinds of wrong that I love the way he manhandles me in bed, but I do.
He presses his thumb over my clit and begins to move it in circles, and I’m already close. I don’t have to close my eyes with Luka, or imagine other people, or think of the latest steamy sex scene on Netflix. For the first time in my life, I can be in the here and now and still get off.
I look at Luka and he’s looking right back at me. I don’t need to close my eyes, to hide. Instead, I keep staring into his eyes as I feel the wave of pleasure crest and break over me.
“Oh, my God.” I dig my nails into his arms as the sensations rush over me.
He’s right there with me, thrusting up into me and stilling as he spills hot inside me.
He pulls me under him, turning us over, somehow staying inside me, and kisses me hard. It’s all tongues and teeth, and it is glorious. He moves inside me still, lazy now he’s come.
When he pulls out of me, he slides one hand up my thigh and moves his fingers through my folds. “I think you can come again.” His smile is dirty, devastating.
I shake my head because no way, but he only smiles some more.
He strokes my clit, gently at first, and runs his fingers down to my entrance where he pushes inside for a moment before moving back to my clit. After a few minutes of this torture, I can feel myself climbing towards another orgasm, and I can’t believe it.
Luka stops, and I give a small gasp of dismay, but he swallows it with a kiss, and then he’s pushing into me again. This time it’s slow and gentle. He holds my hands down on the bed, and kisses and kisses me as if I’m his oxygen and without his mouth on mine he can’t breathe.
We’re so close, our bodies pressed together, hands squeezing tight, stealing one another’s breath, and I realize this isn’t mere sex. Luka is making love to me, and it’s so beautiful I want to cry.
“Oh, fuck.” He gives a surprised curse and starts to come in me.
His losing control turns me on some much I join him, and my walls grip him as a deep orgasm rips through me.
“I love you.” He’s kissing my cheek and then down my chin and jaw to my neck. “I’m going to take care of you from now on, Cara. You’re not alone anymore, and neither am I.”
Not alone anymore.
The words are perfect. We’ll be one another’s family.
I kiss him and wrap my limbs around him, trying to get as close as possible.
My eyes are heavy, so I close them.
I’m peaceful and happy.
I’ve found my family in this man.
Epilogue
Luka
I watch as Cara hands Isla a glass of wine. Ethan and Isla are here for a meal and it’s a warm spring day, so we decided to come sit outside for a while.
My ring sparkles on Cara’s finger as she picks up a bottle of beer to pass to Ethan. It’s a stupidly big rock but I wanted to get it for her as soon as I saw it. And since I became a full partner with Liam, Ethan, and Reece, I’ve had the money.
Cara doesn’t generally like flashy things. She’s not the sort of woman to spoil with clothes and make-up. She still wears those long dowdy skirts, and I don’t care because it’s her. Her style. And I k
now what lies underneath those swathes of black and navy-blue cotton.
She’s not teaching anymore, but a student herself now. She’s taking a horticulture course. After thinking long and hard about what she wanted to do with her life, she decided on gardening. It seemed a bit out of the blue to me, and to be honest, I’m not sure if this will prove to be her lifelong dream, but I don’t give a fuck. I’ll support her through as many dreams as she needs to try until she finds the perfect fit.
She might say I saved her, but truthfully, she saved me. I hardly ever have night terrors, and the odd time I do, she stops them with a few murmured words and soft kisses. She makes me smile daily, and it’s something I’ve not had in a long time.
Cara has her own nightmares sometimes, and she says they aren’t about Tristan but about her cousin killing himself. She still sees her therapist regularly, too. I stopped seeing mine when she felt we’d done enough work together. It’s not a lengthy process like some forms of counselling can be. The therapy was challenging work at times, but it has helped me to find a kind of peace about what happened to those girls that hot, dusty day. I’ll never be free of the guilt completely, but it’s at a level I can live with.
“So, how’s the course going, Green Fingers?” Isla asks Cara, and I smile and lean back as Cara chats away about how she’s learning all about different types of soil.
We’ve some other news to share later, and when I open my eyes and glance at Cara, I see her place her hand protectively over her stomach. I smile, and she lifts her gaze to mine at that moment.
We were planning on getting married soon, but now this little fella has come along, Cara wants to wait. Not because she doesn’t want to walk down the aisle with a bump, but because she wants to focus on the joy of the baby, and have the wedding as something to look forward to after.
Personally, I want to make her mine as soon as I can, but I’ll wait if it’s what she prefers. And she’s carrying my baby now, which makes her as much mine as a wedding I suppose. A boy, the technician told us at the scan.
I can’t wait to see her all rounded and glowing as the months go by. She’s going to be the best mother.
Isla and Ethan can’t have kids, but Ethan told me one night over some beers that they’re cool with it. He’s happy with Isla, and she loves their menagerie of pets. So I’m not worried about telling them.
My phone beeps and I look at the text. It will be only me and Ethan in the office the next couple of weeks as Liam and Reece are off to the U.S. They’ve been called in by a guy we worked with on some missions, an ex-Delta Force member. Best of the fucking best, and that’s coming from me.
The guy set up a firm doing high end, off the books spy shit for organizations, and he’s got a case he wants help with. His team is small, only three of them, and he wants some extra man power. I got offered the chance, but I said no. I need to be here for Cara.
Liam and Cara have become friends, which is weird as shit, because Liam is as hard as they come. Love the man, but he’s not got a soft bone in him.
She’s trying to persuade him to grow out his buzz cut. Says it will help him get more women if he doesn’t look as severe. I don’t like to burst her bubble by telling her Liam doesn’t do women. Not that he’s gay. He simply doesn’t seem to do intimacy. Guy lives alone, like a fucking monk. Visits his elderly parents now and again, sees his few friends, and that’s it. Doesn’t even have a cat or something.
Cara laughs, and I tune into their conversation.
“So, this way, we can run all our electricity from the solar panels,” she’s telling Isla.
She’s still the idealistic girl I met and eventually fell for, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.
“You could get them on your farmhouse,” she says to Ethan.
He nods, but I can tell he won’t. Won’t want to ruin the look of the place, I imagine.
“How’s the new puppy coming along?” She recognizes his lack of interest and changes the subject.
“Oh, he’s a dream!” Isla exclaims. “Such a gorgeous little boy. I can’t believe anyone could abandon him in a river like that.”
Although they’ve already got more animals than I can keep track of, the pair of them recently adopted a puppy found half drowned, and out of all their animals, Isla seems to love him the most. Probably because he’s a scared little thing, and she’s got a heart of gold.
She and Cara talk about various things, and then Cara starts to tell Isla about this Fairtrade clothing company she’s discovered, who sell ethical and green clothing. I smile to myself, loving how much she cares instead of being irritated by it, as I used to be in the early days of knowing her.
Already, she’s talking about me selling the BMW and buying some sort of bullshit electric car. I might have to put my foot down on that score. I do have my limits. She keeps saying we’ve got to think about the world we’re creating for the next generations. And I suppose now, I do have to think about those things. Because I’m going to be a father. And it scares the crap out of me, and yet it fills me with so much hope I could burst.
Life’s good at long last. Filled with love where before it was empty and grey.
I get out of my chair and go to grab another beer for Ethan and myself.
It’s a day for celebrating.
Thanks for reading!
Read on for a super sneak peek at the next book in the Raw Heroes series.
This will be Liam’s story and it will be available in March.
Read on for the first chapter of Fast: Raw Heroes book three.
Fast
Raw Heroes
Chapter One
Liam
The woman on the screen in front of me sighs and pouts in the mirror. She’s a hooker, and I’ve been watching this dick bang her for ages. I think he might have a problem because he’s been at it for the longest time and seems almost bored. The hooker is more bored.
I hate jobs like this. Sitting around watching people for hours on end, but it pays good, and this is partly a favour. A friend of mine has asked me to do this to help him out. He’s an ex-serviceman. U.S special forces and we did a few missions together. Rick runs a small team of high-end problem solvers here in America. He’s asked me to lend a hand on this particular case, when he needed to pull some of his team off for another job, and I obliged.
Now, with my lower back aching from sitting in this chair, and the un-sexiest live porn show ever witnessed by man, happening in front of me. I’m wishing I’d said no.
Reece should have taken this shift, but he ate something bad and he’s out of action.
“This guy is fucked up.” The other man in the room with me, Don Raines, informs me.
Don works for Rick and he’s a pain. Always eating, farting, and belching.
We’re in a tiny room, for fucks sake, and as if I don’t have enough to contend with what with the eye strain from watching fuck-face on the monitors. I have to smell Don’s bodily functions, too.
“Can’t believe the dude’s such an idiot he’s ripping off an organization as big and powerful as SincoTech and he’s not even once checked his apartment for bugs.” Don laughs and follows it up with a belch.
“Probably a narcissistic fucker who thinks he’s one step ahead of everyone else.”
Don looks at me. “You’re not wrong there. You’ve not seen the best bit of this little show yet.”
Oh, God. Don’t tell me there’s more to come. “I can’t wait.”
“It’s so fucked up, but kind of hot. Mainly because his wife is fucking stupendous.”
“Wait.” I turn to Don finally giving him my attention. “You mean his wife is going to get in on this?”
Fuck me. I’ve only seen her photo, and she’s beautiful, in that upper class, untouchable way of someone born into money. Not someone who looks like she’d be into a threesome with a prostitute.
She’s not rich, though. I know as much because I looked into her at the same time I read all about her hubby, Nick, th
e idiot with the marathon sex session kink and stupid penchant for ripping off the organisations he works for. And the kicker is, the guy is loaded anyway. Inherited a shit ton of money, so why he’s doing what he allegedly is...beyond me.
His wife, Abigail-the-stunner, comes from a very poor background in the U.K. She married Mr. Moneybags and lived happily ever after. Or not, as it seems from the action on the screen.
“He treats her like shit,” Don says. And there’s a weird spark of excitement in his eyes at this news. “But this is the most fucked up part of what he does. This is the only day she gets to go out, and he does this every time she returns. I’m thinking she wants to get away from him so bad, she goes out even though she knows this is what she’ll come home to.”
She’s at the spa today, and other than going locally for a coffee once or twice a week, it’s the only time she gets to go out without her husband. I glance at Don, intrigued now despite myself. “You mean to tell me, this whole thing is about him wanting her to come home and catch him at it? What’s he do? Get off on the wife losing her shit or something?”
“Or something. Watch and learn. Here we go.” Don points to one of the other monitors and the apartment door opens.
Abigail Madison walks in and closes the door softly. She stops and leans back against the wall for a moment. Eyes closed. When she opens them, there’s a world of pain lurking in their deep blue depths.
I feel like a stalker suddenly for a moment because instead of watching her with the usual professional disinterest I have on these jobs, I’m interested. In her. Her reaction. The utter desolation in her gaze.
She’s way more beautiful than her photos would have led me to believe. The pictures I have on file are mostly of her at expensive gatherings, charity balls, that kind of thing. She’s always got perfectly styled hair, a bit full, a bit overly done for my tastes. Her make-up is classy, and her clothes always simple but expensive looking. She reminds me of a Hitchcock blonde, but with darker honeyed hair instead of the icy look.
