by Zoey Parker
I reclaimed myself. I had never belonged to anyone else for someone to be trying to reclaim me. Axel never owned me. I never belonged to him. I hadn’t sold myself to anyone, certainly not Blade. I had given myself to him in passion and through a deep feeling of safety and comfort.
These thoughts helped recharge me. They helped me feel confident in my skin again. I needed the self-encouragement. I needed the time to reconnect with myself.
I set the washcloth aside and started to drain the water. The faucet in his tub was high enough for me to wash my hair under it the way I would have in the sink. As the water drained, I cranked the hot water and dipped my head under it. I grabbed his shampoo and washed my hair, laughing to myself because I was going to get out of the tub smelling like Blade, not like myself.
Once I was finished, I got up and grabbed the towels he’d left me on the counter. He was so good to me. I didn’t even have to ask for a separate towel for my hair. He knew to do it already. I wrapped one towel around my chest and the other around my hair after drying off.
I opened the door to the bathroom and found Blade lying on the bed in just his boxers, his feet on top of the covers. He lay on his back with his hands folded on his stomach. He looked so peaceful and serene I didn’t want to say anything.
I contemplated going to his closet myself to grab some clothes, but I didn’t know how he would react, so I walked over to the bed. I put a hand on his and squeezed his fingers, hoping my touch would wake him.
He took a deep breath and moved his arms, reaching above his head into a stretch. He opened his eyes and looked sleepily at me. “Finally done?” he asked with a goofy, sleepy grin on his face.
“I am, but I need some clothes to wear.”
He squinted at me. “No, you don’t,” he laughed, waving a hand to dismiss the notion.
“I guess I could sleep naked, but I’ve been naked a lot today,” I told him.
“Yeah, yeah. Clothes.” He slid out of bed and put a caring hand on my shoulder as he walked around me and to his closet. “How about a t-shirt?” he called from the depths of his wardrobe.
“Sounds good to me. Sounds comfortable,” I told him.
“Good, because that’s what you’re getting.” He walked out of the closet with an old faded black t-shirt in his hand. He stopped in the doorway to the closet, wearing just his black silk boxers.
His body was a work of art. His muscles rippled down his arms and down across his stomach. Underneath his broad, protective shoulders, his chest invited me to lay my head on him. His legs were toned and fit, too. Every inch of him had been perfectly sculpted, and in the dim light of his bedroom, he looked a painting come to life.
I dropped my towel as he walked over to me, sharing my newfound confidence with him. I was offering myself to him, but not sexually, and he seemed to get that. He handed me his shirt and wrapped his arms around my waist. He kissed my lips lightly and moved aside to let pull the soft cotton over my head and down onto my shoulders. The gentle fabric conformed to my body perfectly, making me even more confident in my shape and my power.
He climbed into bed and pulled me with him. I slid down underneath the covers next to his strong, firm body. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close to him. It was a comfortable, possessive embrace.
I was his. Yes, I was his. There was no doubt about that. I was giving myself willingly to this man. Mind, heart, body, and soul.
Chapter 34
Blade
“There’s something else I need to tell you,” Maggie said in the silence of my room after we’d finally settled into bed.
“There’s more?” I asked, chuckling to play off how tired and ready for sleep I was. I was happy with having her next to me. I didn’t really need more from her after the night we’d had. Having her at my side, in my arms, was enough.
“Yeah, and it’s a pretty big deal,” she added.
I pulled back and looked down into her face. I dreaded to ask what it was. Was she going to tell me she’d slept with her ex? Was there some horrible secret between her and Axel that she’d been keeping from me the whole time?
“It’s about what happened at the safehouse and how I ended up at the auction house again,” she said, and I could see she was upset by what she was about to tell me.
“What happened?” I said the words slowly, bracing myself for whatever she was about to tell me.
“It goes back to helping Axel,” she said. Her tone already told me she was sorry for what she was about to confess.
“What did you have to do?” I asked, holding her tighter so she knew I wasn’t going to be angry with her, no matter what she told me. I knew I wasn’t going to be happy about it. I could tell that already, but I wasn’t going to allow myself to be angry with her. She’d apologized for her involvement with him enough.
“After you left, I snuck down to the kitchen and let in the guy who was wearing all black tonight,” she started.
I closed my eyes and sighed. She didn’t have to tell me what had happened next. From my experience with the guy at the warehouse, I knew Axel had only sent him for one reason. He had been the shooter. He was the guy who went in and took everyone out. If he’d left no trace, he would have been called the cleaner, but I was sure there were still bodies waiting to be found in the safehouse. My phone had probably been blowing up all night with messages about it, because it wasn’t likely to have gone unnoticed that long.
“I’m sorry, Blade.” Her hands rubbed my chest in an effort to comfort me.
“Who all did he get?” I asked without opening my eyes.
“Everybody. Danny, Lights, Lydia. I don’t know if he got anyone after Danny because of the chloroform.” Her fingers balled up against me.
I chuckled humorlessly. “Yeah, he liked his chloroform, didn’t he? Well, he’s lying in the warehouse next to Beefcake and Vlad, and God knows who else they murdered there before we were brought in.”
“I’m so sorry.”
I breathed slowly. It would have been easy to lash out at her, but we had all done things out of fear or desperation that we wouldn’t normally have done. I certainly had in my time. Everyone did. And it was like I had told her: if he had been forced to do things differently instead of using her, everything probably would have turned out a lot worse.
A nagging voice inside my head insisted there was also a possibility that things might have turned out better if she hadn’t helped. Maybe if she had come to me instead of going along with his requests, we might have been able to do something to stop it all. I knew listening to that voice was going to drive me insane, so I stood by my conviction that he would have found a worse way to carry out his plans.
“I should have told you what was going on,” Maggie apologized again.
“No, it’s okay,” I insisted. “I can’t say you didn’t do anything wrong, but you really didn’t have much of a choice.” I rested my lips in her damp hair. I breathed in the smell of my shampoo. It didn’t smell the same on her as it did on me.
She snuggled up against me underneath my soft, smooth blankets. My bed welcomed us and held us together in the safety and warmth of my bedroom. She wasn’t outdoors. She was never going to sleep outdoors again. She wasn’t sleeping in a strange room somewhere. I held Maggie in my arms, where she was safe from men like Vlad and Axel, men who would use or sell her, or abuse her. I stroked her hair and wondered when the last time she’d been allowed to be herself had been.
I didn’t know a whole lot about her history, but I was sure I was going to learn about it over the coming weeks. I did know that she had an edge to her because of her past experiences. Her wit and her attitude had sharp points meant to defend her and ward off people who weren’t worthy of her time. I had made it past those points, but I had also stumbled upon her in a vulnerable position.
“Is there anything else I need to know before I go to sleep?” I asked, smiling. I wanted to laugh in the nervous anticipation I felt over what her answer could have been.
“No, I think that’s everything,” she said in a thoughtful tone. “I want to thank you for not giving up on me tonight.”
“That wasn’t an option,” I told her. “Even if things had been the way everyone was saying they were, I would have fought to protect you. Even if it meant having to part ways with you once it was all said and done, I still would have done what I did tonight.”
“But why? Surely someone who stabbed you in the back and set you up the way I did doesn’t deserve the kind of protection you’ve given me,” she countered.
“Everybody deserves to be safe, until they don’t. If you had tried to murder me yourself, that would have been different. If you had been the one to pull the trigger on Vlad, that would have been different. But even though you played a part in your ex-boyfriend’s plans, in the grand scheme of things, you were still a victim. You were being played the whole time, the same as the rest of us,” I assured her. “You deserved my protection.”
“I’m glad you didn’t leave me,” she said as she nuzzled up against me.
She underestimated my protective instincts. I had just allowed a man to go free who had taken part in our captivity and her abuse, a man who had been present when another was shot and did nothing to stop it. I had allowed him to go even after pointing a gun at the head of the woman I was trying to protect.
I closed my eyes but couldn’t make myself go to sleep. My phone had died while we were out running all over downtown trying to kill each other. It sat on my nightstand, plugged in and charging. I stared at it, tempted to check it. I knew better than to open that door. I picked it up to make sure it was still powered down. I would be available in the morning for the rest of the world, but for the rest of the night, I had other duties to tend to. There was a beautiful redhead in my arms who needed to know she was safe.
“Go to sleep,” she whispered into my chest.
“How did you know I was still awake?” I asked her.
“I can feel you thinking,” she replied. “In the way you breathe, your heartrate, how tense your body is. You don’t think with your mind alone, Blade. You think with your whole body.” She didn’t look up while she spoke.
I felt her warm breath on my chest. I looked down at her and smiled while she talked. “I’ve never noticed,” I told her. “Am I really that tense?”
“You are,” she answered. Her breath brushed against me softly.
“I guess I should do something about that.” A wide grin spread across my face and even made its way into my voice.
“What do you have in mind?” She looked up at me with those beautiful eyes of hers. They pulled me in. I got lost in them every time I looked at her. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen.
“I don’t know, but I think this is a good start, here with you in my warm bed.” I held her close.
“I can be good with that,” she agreed. She turned over and pressed her back against me, lying closer to me than she had been. She pulled my arm around her waist and held my hand over her stomach. Our fingers intertwined.
I kissed the back of her head.
“Go to sleep this time, Blade,” she commanded.
Morning had to be close. The night only lasted for so many hours, and we had spent many of those dealing with Axel. There had been a lot of death, and it was starting to weigh heavily on my mind. I didn’t see sleep in my future, so I just lay there with her, snuggling with her, holding her close to keep her safe while my mind continued to work.
When the morning came, I was going to have to explain to Senior and the rest of the senior members of the Marauders what had happened and why it had happened the way it had. I knew there were going to be consequences for my involvement with Vlad and my involvement with a woman who had worked with someone trying to take us down. We didn’t condone anything like the sex slave auctions. We supported safehouses, the children’s home, and a few shelters around town. We worked to keep our streets as clean as possible.
The good news was that the auctions were off. That was the way I saw it. If nothing else, the events of the previous evening had shut everything down. Unfortunately, the Marauders weren’t able to take credit for it.
Maggie sighed in her sleep and adjusted herself against me, reminding me it was time to go to bed before the next day began without the chance to get any rest. I had what I wanted. I had Maggie next to me, safe, warm. Why couldn’t I sleep?
I looked up at my window. Outside, in the cold night, light had begun to shine ahead of the rising sun. The window was no longer pitch black. It was beginning to turn a light shade of blue. I had missed my opportunity to sleep next to this beautiful woman. Another cold winter day was beginning, and it promised to be another long, grueling day.
There was much cleaning to do across the entire city. There were families to call and arrangements to be made. There were admissions that needed to be made, too. In the light of day, I expected the losses to look much worse.
Maggie shifted in her sleep again and ran a hand along my arm, disrupting my thoughts and bringing me back to her. I closed my eyes and leaned my head into her. I smelled her scent mingling with the shampoo she’d used in my bathroom. I felt her body against mine.
I focused on these things. I focused on her and not on all the drama and all the stress that faced us. Her body heaved as she breathed deeply and rhythmically in her sleep. Soon my own breathing worked to mimic hers. My body began to relax under her touch. My shoulders stretched out and unknotted. My back loosened. My legs relaxed against her body.
I felt sleep coming to take me away into the early morning behind my eyelids. It was Maggie, pulling me with her as she made her way from wakefulness.
Her voice came to me as I approached slumber. She said, “It’s okay now. You can go to sleep. Just let go and drift off.”
I let out a relaxed sigh. My body blended with the woman I loved, lying next to me.
Epilogue
Maggie
“All the rooms are upstairs. Drag the mattresses up there, and leave one in each room. Shouldn’t the bed frames go up first?” Blade – excuse me, Robert – furrowed his brow and held his hand out to the delivery crew as if to say to them they should have understood what he wanted them to do. As they walked off, he signed the shipment forms for the beds being delivered.
He smiled as I walked up to him. He hugged me and kissed my forehead. Then, he rubbed a hand gently on my stomach. I blushed and pushed his hand away. I hadn’t started showing yet, and I wasn’t ready for him to tell everyone.
“Baby, I’m only three months,” I whispered. “Let’s enjoy being normal adults as long as we can.”
He laughed and took me into his arms. “I’m just so excited,” he said, kissing the top of my head. “Just think, in a couple short weeks, we’ll have our new shelter up and running. And we’ve got the little one on the way, too? Things are really looking up for us.”
“I told you things were going to get better one day.” I smiled up at him.
“I know. A year ago, I never would have imagined this day.” His voice trailed off as he got lost in thought.
I knew he was thinking back over the last year as he watched the workers hurry in and out of the building he’d renovated for the new shelter. It had been a rough time for us. After the night Vlad and Axel had died, the Marauders found out about Robert’s involvement in the sex slave auctions. Since he had lied to his president on several occasions regarding his relationship to Vlad, he had been removed from the MC. The ceremony had been private, and he’d never told me what happened. From what I read online and what I saw in movies and on TV, it wasn’t pleasant.
I turned around and pulled his arms around in front of me, squeezing myself tight with them. I kissed his muscles. There was one point where I had thought I was going to lose him. It wasn’t pretty watching him come back from being kicked out of the MC, but in the end, it didn’t change who he was.
If anything, it had made him stronger.
“So, today th
ey are bringing in the beds. Once everything is in, I’m going upstairs to make sure it’s all right, the way I want it. We’ve got a few more things to do, some stuff to make sure we have stocked and ready to go, and then, we open.” He swayed with me as he talked.
“You and your safehouses,” I teased.
“Don’t make me take you on a tour again.” His face lit up like a child’s face on Christmas morning every time he talked about it. Speaking of Christmas, he couldn’t have chosen a better time to open the shelter. It was far too cold for people to be sleeping out on the street.
While we stood there watching the beds getting delivered, a familiar face appeared in the doorway. A tall man with broad shoulders and warm smile walked in. He sidestepped the delivery crew to reach Robert.
