Willa could feel herself getting in the weeds. If she detailed every Jesse moment of the years between that day and this one, she’d still be talking when the sun rose. She drained her beer. When she moved to set the empty bottle back, Rad took it and did it for her. His body leaned over her legs, and she felt the pressure on her sore knee, but it didn’t hurt. The stony firmness of his belly had distracted her from anything like pain.
“Okay, I need to sum this up. That day, he left quietly. But after that, he’d show up in weird places. Never at my dorm again, but he’d be on the quad, or at the bowling alley, or sitting in a bar. He seemed to pop up places I was at—in Austin, which is more than three hundred miles from home. He’d just stand there, or sit there, and stare. The first couple of times, I tried to go up to him, but he’d turn and leave before I got there. After that, I tried to ignore him.”
“He was stalkin’ you. Ignorin’ somebody like that won’t make him stop.”
“I know, but he didn’t seem to be doing anything but staring, and I was still afraid of…I don’t even know. Afraid I was being paranoid, or that I deserved it for breaking his heart, or I don’t know. Just afraid. God, I fucking hate how weak I was.”
A fresh bout of self-loathing and relived fear wrapped around the memories taking center stage in Willa’s head. The feeling tightened her throat, and she closed her eyes, trying to overcome the clutching horror and shame. Rad sat quietly. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was him, staring at her. Inscrutably.
She went on with her story. The really hard parts were on deck.
“I didn’t go home after graduation. I got a job at the medical center, working in the ER. I knew already that I wanted to work in Labor & Delivery, but I took the job I was offered in Austin. I wanted to stay far away from home.
“ER is hard duty. You see a lot of sad people there. A lot. Even the people who come with minor injuries or illnesses are usually there because they don’t have any other way to get care. You see a lot of violence in the ER, too. The aftermath, every day, and some days you get caught in the middle of it. Sometimes helping moms have babies is sad, too, real sad, but mostly, I’m with people on one of the best days of their life. Lots of people have their worst day in the ER. I had my worst days there.”
“He hurt you there?” Rad’s hand’s had stopped moving on her legs. Now they tightened around her shin.
“No. He put me there. I had a little apartment not far from work. When I got home one night after second shift, he was standing in the shadows at the end of the hall. I didn’t see him until he charged up as I opened the door. He forced himself in. He beat me up and raped me. Then he left. He never said a word to me. Rad—you’re hurting me.”
At once, Rad released his hands, which had become vises around her lower leg. “Sorry, baby.” Rather than meet her eyes, he turned and fixed on her door. “That’s why the locks.”
She’d noticed that he’d called her ‘baby’ instead of ‘darlin’,’ and she wondered if that was significant.
“Yeah. Once something like that’s happened in your own home, it’s hard to feel safe anywhere. I mean, I know it’s dumb. The door was open because I was trying to go into my apartment. That’s how he got in. Locks wouldn’t have helped me. But these make me feel better. Ollie is my real security. He’s trained to attack anyone who threatens me.”
Willa looked over her shoulder at her baby boy, who was lying on his bed near the fireplace. He’d heard his name and had lifted his head. She dropped her hand to the floor, and he came over and put his nose in it, then lay down where she could reach him.
Rad grinned at her dog. “I’ve seen his look. You’re right—if he’s around, you’re safe. And now I’m around, too.”
She smiled at that, though she was conflicted about what his offer might mean. “Jesse’s a biker, too, you know.”
“What?”
“Yeah. While I was in Austin. He joined up with an MC in Lubbock. The Dirty Rats.”
Rad made a face like he’d smelled something rotten. “That’s a shit club. Rats are thugs. No standards for members but violence. The Lubbock charter’s full of white-pride rednecks.”
Willa was perfectly aware. The last time she’d seen Jesse, he’d had a swastika inked on the back of his hand. Before, he’d been the kind of careless racist that was typical of people growing up in a tiny town and never meeting anybody different from them. But the Rats had made him something else. And prison. Prison had changed him, too.
“You report what he did to you?”
“Yeah. He pled to burglary and did less than two years. He didn’t do time for beating or raping me. Just pushing his way into my apartment.”
Rad laughed at that, but instead of mirth, Willa heard menace in it. “Fuckin’ law. When’d this happen?”
“1987.”
His eyebrow went up in surprise. “Eight years ago. And you’re still scared?”
No, she was not scared. He was wrong about that. She was ready; it was different. “It’s not the only thing he did. He found me again in Dallas five years ago and almost killed me that time. He did five years for assault with intent.”
“Five years, five years ago. That means…”
“He got out about three months ago. I left Texas while he was inside, and I am never going back to Duchy, not for anything. My family is sworn to secrecy about where I am. I turned my back on my friends. My grandma died, and I didn’t go home for her funeral, because I don’t want anybody in Duchy to know where I am, and I knew if I went home, something could slip. I moved to Dallas after the first time, but that wasn’t far away enough, and too many people knew. Now only my immediate family knows where I am, and they are on my side. But I know he can find me if he wants to. I didn’t change my name. It’s my name, and he doesn’t get to take it away from me. Willa was my grandma’s name, too, and I loved her. So I made my house secure, and I trained my dog to protect me. I take martial arts classes, and I work out. I have two guns in this house, and I’m ready to use them. I’m stronger and smarter and harder than I was. If he finds me again, he will regret it. I won’t be weak and afraid anymore.”
Her leg ached sharply, and Willa realized that she had sat bolt upright and even leaned forward, toward Rad. Her whole body was rigid. She had been stabbing her finger at him, it was still pointed like a pistol at his face, and he was staring at her with a look of blazing intensity—that was all she could understand of it, its heat. Whether it was rage or worry or even desire, she couldn’t say.
Dropping her hand, she blew out the rest of her sudden fury and cleared her throat. “Anyway. That’s the long, drawn-out version.”
Her grandparents’ clock on the mantel ticked. Ollie had sat up when she had, and she could feel his stalwart attention as he tried to determine if there was trouble. Rad was quiet, staring at his hands on her leg.
“Not right now, I’m not gonna make you talk more now, but soon, I’m gonna need to know all this bastard’s details.”
“It’s not your job. We just met.”
When he turned to her, his heavy brow had drawn down over his brown eyes, making them seem nearly black. “You could tell me to leave right now and never see you again, and I still wouldn’t let this go. There is a psychotic fuck out there who’s hurt you again and again. I am gonna do all I can to make sure he’s done. Even if this don’t work out between you and me, I got your back. I can’t fuckin’ stand pieces of shit who hurt women.”
“It’s more than that. I don’t want to give up my safety to somebody else. I need to be strong enough on my own. I need that. I worked hard to make it true.”
Rad’s hand left her leg and cupped her face. She hadn’t noticed until that moment how he’d leaned toward her. He was almost close enough to kiss. “I said I got your back, Willa. I don’t want to take over, I want to help. Why fight alone if you don’t gotta?”
Exhaustion rolled over Willa’s shoulders and made her sag. She let his hand take the weight of
her head. “I just want to stop thinking about him. I just want to have a life and not have him standing at the back of my head all the time.”
“Then we’ll take care of him.”
“What does that mean?”
“I don’t know yet, baby. It means what it needs to mean.”
Which was a circle of words that meant nothing and everything at once. Willa let it lie and focused elsewhere. “That’s the second time you’ve called me baby.”
He blinked, and another spasm of indecipherable emotion crossed his face. It was significant to him in some way, but all he said was, “That bother you?”
It didn’t, she liked it, so she shook her head. For another long stretch of time filled with nothing but the tick of her clock marking it, they sat on the sofa, staring at each other. Rad’s hand still cupped her face, and she still leaned into that touch. After what seemed like hours of talking, Willa had no more words to say.
She was tired and sad—and also comforted. Turning loose all those memories had been painful, but sharing them with Rad had been a relief.
“What now?” she finally asked.
With a smile, he took his hand from her face and picked her up, one arm sliding behind her back, and the other easing gently under her legs. He shifted her until she was sitting on his lap.
“Now, I’m gonna kiss you again. Then I’m gonna say good night.”
Disappointment surged into Willa’s chest, clashing with the anticipation of his kiss. After all she’d said, she felt exposed and raw. “You’re leaving? I thought we agreed we’d tell each other about ourselves.”
“We did. I think you got some idea about me tonight.”
She had to admit that she had. “But—”
“There’ll be a time for me to do some talkin’, too. What you had to say—that was some intense shit, baby. Let’s let it soak a little, okay?”
“And if I don’t want you to go?”
He watched his hand move over the bandage around her knee. To her knee and his hand, he said, “You said you weren’t up to it.”
God, she wanted to be naked with him. She wanted to feel the grainy surface of his palm move up her thigh, into her underwear, between her legs. She wanted to see his hard body, to feel it on her skin. She wanted him inside her. She wanted him to fuck her cross-eyed. She wanted him to make her feel something that would push out all the Jesse shit banging around in her brain right now and fill her up with something good.
Sadly, she couldn’t imagine a position that wouldn’t put too much stress on her leg. She only had a couple more days before she had to go back to work, and it had to be fully functional by then.
But sex wasn’t why she wanted him to stay. She wanted him to stay because of what she’d told him. Not because she was afraid; she’d set fear away. But because he knew this thing about her, this private, crucial thing, and if he left so soon after, she’d be alone while the story rattled around loose. Like last night, even more than last night, she didn’t want to be alone with her brain.
Jesus, the last twenty-four hours had been intense. Only one day since she’d been riding home from Houston, feeling relaxed and sated with family love.
“I’m not up to sex, no. That’s not why I want you to stay. I just…want you here.”
He sighed—a deep, long breath that filled his chest and came out from his pursed lips almost as a whistle. “You want me to stay here? The night?”
She looked in her head for a reservation about this trust she was giving a man she’d met a day earlier, but there was none. Telling him her story had been a greater act of trust than asking him to stay. “Yes. I want you to stay.”
Another long sigh. Willa sat on his lap, in his arms, and wondered what was in his head that needed so much air to be thought. Feeling more and more self-conscious, she was about ready to retract the invitation when he slid his fingers into her hair, his hand cupping the back of her head, and kissed her.
Rad kissed like a man who had done a great deal of it in his life. As gruff as he was, as rough as he looked, Willa had been surprised in each of their few kisses at the grace of his mouth, which moved expertly, not simply to cover hers and force her to take his tongue, but with a deft sense of the way her mouth and tongue moved, the way she reacted to him. He was in total control, and yet responsive. Like a dancer leading his partner.
She smiled a little at the metaphor as it appeared in her mind—Rad was probably not a dancer. But he was definitely a kisser.
His beard was much softer than she’d expected and brushed over her lips and cheeks so that she felt entirely consumed by every kiss. She moaned and hooked her arms around his neck, squirming against the erection that had grown hard and demanding under her ass.
He grunted and broke away. “I’ll stay,” he rasped against her cheek. “Gonna kill me not to fuck you, but I’ll stay.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rad still didn’t know what the fuck he was doing.
Willa sat on his lap, her arms wrapped around his neck. Her body was so firm and sleek on him. He felt her breasts pillowed against his chest, and even through his shirt and her dress, the soft pressure, and the little pebbles of her erect nipples, was going to make him crazy. When he’d lifted her to his lap, her dress had hiked up, and he could feel the heat of her on his thigh.
Holy hell, he was stirred up.
Her cheek brushed over his, like she was caressing herself with his beard. It was all he could do not to throw her back down on her sofa and drop on top of her.
But that leg—all black and blue and swollen, a bite of road rash over her thigh. Bruises on her arm, too, though not as bad. He would hurt her, and that wasn’t his style. Rough, yes. Brutal, no.
So, he’d what—agreed to spend the night with her? To do what? Cuddle? A woman he’d just met?
Funny thing, though—he asked himself those questions, sitting there with her on his lap, and he couldn’t find the reaction in him that would send him out the door. Instead, he wanted to hold her. The story she’d told him, this Jesse fucker, had him feeling all kinds of protective and vengeful.
The way she’d said she’d been raped—just he beat me up and raped me, with no change in her tone. The whole story, until the end, when she wasn’t telling the story anymore but reacting to it, had been delivered without affect. It might have been a story about a trip to the market. Even the words he beat me up and raped me had been uttered conversationally.
That had thrown him hard—the words she’d said, and the way she’d said them. His own reaction, occurring entirely internally, had been hot, instant anger, and it made him wonder what she was holding in. Or had the passing years worn a callus over the memory?
He looked at her door and all its locks. No. No callus. Just control.
He didn’t want to leave her locked in this house alone.
He didn’t want to go.
He’d called her baby, and he hadn’t even noticed. As an endearment, it was about as basic as they came, but Rad had only ever before used it with one woman. His wife. Ex-wife.
Jesus, he was fucked. Already, he was in deep. How the hell had that happened? Had he learned nothing from his adventures in love with Dahlia?
It didn’t matter. Willa and Dahlia were nothing alike. And he knew exactly how he’d gotten deep so fast. She needed him. She didn’t want to, but she did. Really needed him. It was like a fucking aphrodisiac for him.
Dahlia had figured that out right quick and played him like a fiddle. Willa was different. She didn’t flutter and whimper. She fought it. She was strong, she stood straight, but she still needed. Christ, that was hot.
She leaned back and narrowed her eyes at him, in that way she had, like she was trying to read his thoughts. He thought she meant to say something, but before she could, his pager went off.
“Shit,” he grumbled and snatched it off his belt. The number was a code, directing him to call the clubhouse, and it ended with ‘911,’ meaning he needed to call immediately. There wa
s some kind of trouble.
“Sorry, baby. I need your phone.” He lifted her off his lap and set her carefully back on the sofa.
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 8
