If I spent more time around Dana Zellinger and Viktoriya Chambers and all of the other WAGs who’d been through traumatic events in their past, I knew I’d find the same. They might appear to be coping well on the surface, but peeling back a layer at a time was bound to produce an unsightly, battered core, just like mine.
So I was right—I’d never be free of Hayes. And my core might just be the foulest, most abused of them all. I would never be whole again, and I couldn’t allow myself to believe otherwise. I’d only be setting myself up for a greater disappointment than I’d ever known. Expecting the worst was the only safe way for me to go through life from here on out.
But London was still glaring at me and wielding a butcher’s knife.
“Sorry,” I mumbled. I reached for a carrot and a vegetable peeler so I could help her out and so I’d have something to do with my hands. “I didn’t mean for anyone to worry about me.” For that matter, I hadn’t realized how many people really would worry about me. Hayes had kept me in his bubble for so long that I hadn’t had friends in the outside world for close to a decade. I still wasn’t used to it.
And maybe I shouldn’t get used to it, either. Because then I’d only be setting myself up for more disappointments in the future.
“Well, what the hell did you think we’d do?” London shot back. “People care about you, you know. A lot of people. You’re not alone, even if you feel like you are sometimes. And it isn’t just us. Bear’s going nuts.”
“Good,” I said before I could think better of it.
London stopped chopping long enough to raise her brow in question.
I shrugged. “Maybe he needs to go nuts for a while. Maybe it’ll help him realize what’s more important.”
“So what’s more important?”
I stopped myself from saying, “Me,” just in the nick of time. Believing I was important—to Ethan or anyone else—would only serve to set myself up for more heartache. Instead, I shrugged.
London’s glare could melt stone. “That’s not going to cut it with me, missy. What’s more important than making sure you’re safe?”
“There’s no such thing as safe. No one can promise me that.”
She scowled. “Someone’s been watching too much Game of Thrones. You’re not Sansa Stark. And she’s done a pretty damned good job of making sure she stays safe, now that she’s old enough and wise enough to figure out who to trust, anyway. And you’re plenty old enough and wise enough to see that, too.”
“This is real life,” I said. “We’re not in some TV show. Things don’t work out for the best in the real world.”
“Sometimes they do,” London countered.
I chose not to argue with her over that. Arguing was exhausting, and it seemed to be London’s favorite pastime.
“So what, then?” she demanded. “Make sure that asshole and his friends can’t hurt you anymore?”
“No one can make sure of that!” I said. “That’s not possible. He’ll always be able to hurt me.”
“Sure he can. If you let him…and you practically sent him an open invitation. Flashing neon lights. Dancing bears in pink tutus. Fireworks and a concert band blaring out into the night. Welcome mat under his feet. All that jazz.”
“I’m not talking about that. Physical pain is nothing. Not compared to this. I’m talking about inside.” With those words, suddenly all the tears that wouldn’t come earlier started forcing their way to the forefront.
London scowled. Something told me she wasn’t comfortable with tears. “So am I, dummy,” she said.
I laughed despite myself. She was right. I was a dummy.
She set down her knife and veggies, then wheeled around to the other side of the kitchen island, and before I knew what was happening, she’d pulled me in for a hug and I was blubbering on her shoulder.
I cried so hard for so long that I almost didn’t notice it when strong arms came around me from behind and lifted me away from London.
Ethan’s arms.
And even though I’d thought I wanted him to stay away, I found myself curling in toward the safety and comfort he presented. Façade or not, it was a nice fantasy to escape into, if only for a little while.
“I thought I told you she didn’t want you,” London grumbled threateningly.
“I’m not scared of Dima,” he replied.
“It’s me you should be scared of, not Dima.”
But Ethan didn’t pay her any attention, instead carrying me into the living room and drawing me onto his lap on the couch.
Despite my better intentions, I melted against him. His heat was intoxicating. His strength was a comfort. His nearness was everything.
“You scared the shit out of me,” he said after a long silence.
I tried to shrug him off, because I wasn’t particularly in the mood to hear about his fears. He could have prevented his own fears from becoming an issue if he would just forget about his desire for Hayes’s comeuppance. But Ethan didn’t seem to be in the mood to let me push his fears aside.
He tipped my chin up until I finally met his eyes. “I know I screwed up. I know we need to talk about this—all of it—but we can’t do that if you run off.”
“You also can’t do it if you act like an overbearing, authoritarian moron,” London called out from the kitchen.
“Trying to rectify that,” Ethan grumbled.
“Try harder,” she shot back. “You need to grovel.”
“Grovel?”
“Grovel. Beg. Plead. Admit you’re an idiot and you’re going to try not to be an idiot anymore, but you’re probably going to do some more stupid things again at some point in the future, so you’re begging for her forgiveness. For this time. And for the next time. And for all the times after that. If you’re anything like my husband, you’re going to have to get really good at this whole groveling thing, so you might as well start now.”
But that wasn’t what I wanted. Maybe I didn’t know exactly what I wanted, but it wasn’t this. “You don’t have to—”
“I was an idiot,” he said, cutting me off, and I was so stunned that I couldn’t stop him.
London wheeled around the corner, a kitchen towel draped over her lap with the butcher knife resting on top of it. “An overbearing one. You thought you knew best, and you tried to make Natalie go along with what you wanted, whether Natalie thought it was best for her or not.”
But Ethan didn’t even bother looking over at her. His attention was solely on me. “I didn’t listen. I thought I knew what was best for everyone—both of us—and I made a decision and expected you to go along with it, whether it was best for you or not. That’s one of my biggest issues—you can ask Carter’s mom. It’s one of the reasons we couldn’t make things work out. But I’m trying, Nat. And I need you to try, too. When I’m an idiot, I need you to stand your ground and tell me I’m being an idiot instead of running away. It’s the only way I’ll learn. And it’s the only way we can make this work.”
“And it’s the only way we can all be sure that asshat and his dipshit buddies aren’t going to do something to you that we can’t undo,” London interjected.
I was about to tell her off and ask her to leave so Ethan and I could have a private conversation, but Ethan beat me to it.
“Would you give us some privacy so I can explain to Natalie that the biggest reason I’m an idiot when it comes to her is because I love her?”
It seemed as if the entire world switched to slow motion at that moment. Dima came in and lifted London out of her chair, tossing her over his shoulder in a fireman carry and carrying her out of the room despite her vocal protests. Erik followed them, cackling with glee at the sight of his mother pounding on his father’s shoulders while cursing up a storm. Ethan dragged a hand over his face, and a pained sound seemed to come from his chest.
But I couldn’t process any of it. “You love me?” I murmured.
“I love you,” he croaked. “And the last thing in the world I would ever want to do
is hurt you in any way. But apparently I can’t even try to protect you from all the shit going on in our world without hurting you in the process. And then putting you in more danger, too.”
“You didn’t put me in danger.”
“Might as well have. I ran you off. I didn’t stop you from going.”
“But that was my choice. It was my turn to be stupid.”
“How about we both stop being stupid for a while? Can we make a pact about that?”
My stomach clenched. “If I come home with you again, I need to be with you. To truly be with you, no matter what it means for the case or how Hayes and his lawyers might try to spin things. Can you give me that? Because if you can’t, if that isn’t going to work for you, I need to figure out where else I can go. I’ll have to start figuring out how to move on with my life without you.”
He stared down at our joined hands in my lap for a long time—so long I feared he would tell me no.
“I don’t think I’m strong enough to let you go,” he finally said. “Whatever you want, whatever you need from me, it’s yours.” He kissed my cheek, and his lips came away wet from my tears. “I’m yours.”
“I’m yours, too.”
“So does this mean I don’t get to cut off his balls?” London called out impatiently from the other room. “I really, really want to cut off his balls. My knife is ready. I’ve been itching to try it out on someone.”
“Crazy woman,” Dima grumbled. “Why you’re obsessed with his balls?”
“You don’t want me to cut off your balls, instead, do you? Because I will.”
“Good thing you can’t walk,” he replied, and he came back into the living room without her, plopping down into her wheelchair and rolling his eyes dramatically. Erik followed him and climbed onto his lap.
“I can still get around without my chair, you know,” London shouted from the kitchen. “Might take me longer, but I’m coming for you.”
Ethan and I both laughed. It felt good to laugh.
I LOVED NATALIE.
That was something I couldn’t lie about, not even if she’d be better off not knowing. If she didn’t know, then she couldn’t accidentally say something to a police officer or a lawyer, she couldn’t accidentally bring it up in court if it came to that. But I couldn’t keep it to myself any longer, and so now it was out there.
With any luck, it wouldn’t come back to bite us both in the ass.
We were back at my place after I finally convinced London that I wasn’t anywhere close to finished with all the groveling I needed to do.
And now I needed to set about showing Natalie how much I loved her. This time, I couldn’t hold back. Words weren’t enough. Especially not since some of my actions proved my words to be true while others made me out to be a liar.
Maybe it was the middle of the day, but I didn’t care. As soon as we were back in my house, I took Natalie straight to my bed and kicked Snoopy out of the room, ignoring his whine of protest.
She was already reaching for me before I made it back to the bed, using her other hand to fumble with the latches on her brace.
“Let me,” I said, because it would be quicker. I unhooked all the clasps as fast as I could and carefully took it off her leg.
But there was nothing careful about the way Natalie was reaching for me. She had one hand digging into my hair and the other making a fist in my shirt, tugging me until I almost toppled onto her.
And then everything was a blur of need. Clothes flying everywhere. Tongues and teeth and hands on every bit of bare flesh we could find. Skin, sweat, salt… My mind went blank to anything other than the woman beneath me. She tasted like heaven.
With surprisingly strong and determined hands, she pulled me closer.
“Slow down, baby,” I said, dusting her collarbone with my lips.
“I can’t. I can’t slow down. I need you.”
But she already had me, in more ways than she could possibly understand. I’d meant it when I told her I was hers. She owned me in every way that mattered.
I slid a hand between our bodies. Slick heat welcomed my touch. She felt so good I couldn’t stop my groan as I pumped my fingers into her core a few times, imagining how that same heat would feel around my dick.
“Please,” she said, her voice soft and shaking as she dug her fingers into my shoulders.
I rolled the pad of my thumb over her clit, spreading her wetness and making her writhe beneath me.
“I want you inside me,” Natalie ground out, her entire body shaking with the need for release. She bit her lower lip and tried to glare at me, but she was too close to orgasm for that to really work out.
“Not yet.”
She whimpered in frustration.
“I want to watch you come first,” I explained.
Then I put all my focus on her—watching the way her eyes shifted focus when I altered the way I teased her clit, listening for the slight change in her breathing when I picked up the pace, noticing the gradual shift as her skin turned from pale pink to a dusky rose.
Her orgasm was so quiet I would have missed it if not for the way her mouth fell open and her eyes scrunched closed.
“You’re so fucking perfect,” I said as I lowered my head for a kiss. She tasted like apples and rain. I wanted to drown in her, and she seemed willing to open up and let me do exactly that.
Shifting my weight off of her, I reached for a condom in my nightstand and shucked it free from the wrapper. I’d barely rolled it on before Natalie was trying to drag me back on top of her.
She shifted her hips and raised her knees, her body becoming a welcoming cocoon. I sank to my knees and buried myself in her in a single stroke.
Her heat was so intense I almost melted. It’d been too long for me—much too long since I’d experienced the pleasure of a woman’s body, and even longer since I’d been with a woman I loved. I tried to hold my weight off her—the thought of hurting her was more than I could bear—but she wrapped her arms and legs around me, clinging to me, and it was all I could do not to lose control.
It was all happening too fast. I wanted to last, but every time I tried to slow down, she angled her hips in a new way or slid her hands across my ass, grabbing hold of my flesh and dragging me back to her.
“You’re holding back,” she said, panting. “Don’t do that. I need you.”
“I’m not. And I already told you—you have me.”
She took my face between both of her hands, forcing me to look deep into her eyes. “You’re holding back,” she repeated.
“I don’t want to hurt you.”
Natalie kissed me hard, her tongue working against mine the way she’d used it on my cock before. Her teeth nipped my lip—just hard enough to make me suck in a breath of air—before she released me. “You won’t hurt me,” she said adamantly. “That’s not who you are.”
She had a lot more faith in me than I did where that was concerned. I’d already hurt her enough that she’d felt the need to leave.
But Natalie seemed uninclined to give an inch on this. She fisted a hand in my hair, kissing me with tongue and teeth and fervent hunger. Wrapping her legs around my waist and fusing our bodies together with a power in her thighs I didn’t know she possessed, she drew me deeper than ever.
After a few more blind thrusts, her pussy clenched and quivered around me, which was all it took to send me over the edge. I buried my face in a pillow next to her head and shouted with my release.
When I rolled off her, I drew her over with me until she was halfway draped across my body. Her limbs were warm and lax. Warm breath feathered across the slick skin of my chest.
She tipped her face up toward mine and stared into my eyes, her fingertips dancing gently over my chest.
“If you keep touching me like that, I’ll be ready for round two in about twenty seconds,” I said, trying to laugh it off even though I was entirely serious.
A soft chuckle fell through her lips, followed by her tongue darting out t
o wet them again. “Ethan?” she said, suddenly tentative and uncertain, when moments before she’d been demanding and in control.
My gut clenched at the return of her timidity. “Hmm?” I replied, hoping I hadn’t gone and fucked up again already.
“I think I love you, too,” she said.
Her eyes fluttered closed, and within moments, her breathing evened out. She was asleep before I could question her. She thinks she loves me? Did that mean she wasn’t sure, or did she not know how to be certain? Or maybe she was just scared to admit the truth.
Whatever it was, I wouldn’t be getting any sleep for a long time to come. My chest felt full and heavy, like my heart was too big to fit and my lungs were over capacity.
Natalie loved me. Maybe she wasn’t sure about it yet, but I was. She was choosing to trust me with her heart—her broken, battered, bruised heart.
The weight of responsibility that came with her love was easily as heavy as what I felt when it came to raising Carter.
I couldn’t fuck this up.
“GOOD NEWS,” DETECTIVE Andrews said over the phone about a week later.
Ethan and I had been getting along better than ever, both of us doing everything in our power to make this work. He wasn’t making decisions for me anymore, and I was talking to him openly and honestly whenever anything came up. So far, so good.
But our fledgling relationship wasn’t the only thing on our minds. In fact, there were much more pressing matters weighing on us—namely Hayes and his friends, and what was happening in the case.
Of late, there hadn’t been much, and that had us both on edge.
“Good news?” I pressed the button to put him on speakerphone so Ethan could hear everything the detective had to say, too.
Ethan raised a brow in question, but he kept quiet.
“The prosecutors have offered Barnes and Lipscomb a deal if they cooperate, and they’ve agreed to it.”
Rain Dance (Tulsa Thunderbirds Book 5) Page 18
