“I’m not knocking anything. You know I owe you.”
Maybe I was surprised to hear the sincerity behind his admission. I guessed I shouldn’t have been. Not with the way he clutched Frankie to him.
Guarding her.
Protecting her.
“We should get her home,” I offered. Again, I glanced at his precious child. Her chubby cheek was pressed so perfectly to his chest and her fist was wound in the fabric of his shirt, as if the steady beat of his heart had lulled her into peace.
Rex lifted his chin to Kale. “Thanks, man. Honestly . . . don’t think you know how much I appreciate you being there for her like this.”
Waving him off, Kale let his gaze slide to the sweet child. “Anything for Sweet Pea Frankie Leigh. That’s my godbaby, you know.”
He looked at me when he said the last, and a smile was pulling through the exhaustion that threatened to drag me under. “No way.”
Kale was all dimples as he raised his arms to the sides. “Don’t let all these awesome good looks fool you. I’m totally capable of raising a kid.” He threw a playful punch into Rex’s shoulder. “Almost as good as this guy.”
My smile grew as my eyes volleyed between the two of them, totally taken aback by the closeness Rex shared with Kale. But in a pleasant way. Maybe he didn’t need any more friends, after all.
I looked back at him, and my stomach twisted.
But that didn’t mean he didn’t need something.
Someone to fill that glaring void that was so obviously radiating within him.
And with every layer that was exposed, more and more I wanted to be that person.
* * *
“I’ve got her,” he grumbled barely above his breath when I attempted to help him get her out of the backseat of my car.
A calm stillness held fast to the cool air, daybreak just a hint of a blaze that lifted from the horizon. Glittering rays chased away the night and lit the sky in pinks and oranges and a welcoming blue.
The day brand new.
Bursting with possibilities.
“At least let me get the door open for you.” I said it with zero frustration when I wrenched free the keys he had clutched in his hand and quietly climbed the porch steps.
Somehow, I’d come to understand this man felt he needed to do things on his own.
Or maybe he’d just been forced into that role, and he knew nothing else.
Behind me, I could feel them, this buzz of energy that emanated from their skin. It made me feel as if I stood at the very edge of something magnificent, a stranger peering in to witness something pure and absolute. Alive and profound. A thriving force that threatened to suck me into its depths.
Sliding the key into the lock, I turned the lever and opened the door, standing aside as he headed straight through, his long legs eating up the floor as he disappeared down the hallway.
I wavered there, my mind flashing back to two nights ago when he’d had me pinned just inside. The memory spun around me, that fury that had been so blatantly evident.
Almost as acute as the brokenness that had seeped from his flesh and poured into mine.
Nearly as intense as the desire that had lashed between us.
I didn’t even know him, and the man was so mesmerizingly conflicted that he had me overwhelmed with the need to step closer. To dip my fingers in to explore and discover.
But it was more than that. There was something about him that made me ache. Something that made my chest and my spirit and my stomach revolt at the thought of walking away.
Sucking in a breath, I came to a quick decision. Stepping inside, I closed the door behind me and crept down the hall, unable or maybe unwilling to stop myself from peering through the doorway into Frankie’s room.
My insides trembled as I watched them.
Rex carefully laid her in her bed. Gently, he brushed the chaotic tangle of hair from her forehead. His gaze was so tender when he stared down at her trusting face, his spirit so soft when he edged forward and brushed a kiss to one of her rosy, plump cheeks.
My throat thickened, and I clung to the jamb.
Enthralled and transfixed.
God.
This. Man.
He was undoing something inside me.
Uncovering something I’d never even realized I wanted.
Slowly, he stood. His body seemed so big in the emerging day, the raw strength of him wrapping me in chains. When he shifted, those eyes locked on me, his shadowy figure moving my direction.
I struggled to find air. Reason.
I fumbled a step back into the hallway, fortifying myself, never sure where his anger might take us or where this attraction might lead us.
He stopped in the doorway. His breaths short and heavy.
That same awareness flickered to life. Only this time, it seemed as if it’d gained power from the rising sun.
“Thank you.” The words landed on me like a rough caress.
“Of course. When I told you I thought you might need a friend, I meant it. That means if you need me . . . I’m here.”
He nodded, though it seemed reluctant. As if he were crossing an invisible line by agreeing. “Okay.”
I nodded back, shocked that he’d yielded. “Okay. I’ll . . . talk to you later. Just”—I fisted a hand over my heart—“please let me know if you or Frankie need anything at all. I’d really like to know how she’s doing. I know I’ll be thinking about her all day.”
With that, I turned and headed for the door. I needed to get out of there.
Clear my head of the foolish ideas that had begun to spin. This foolish impulse to jump into torrid waters when I couldn’t see the bottom. To sate the churning need that prodded at my consciousness.
Most of all, I wanted to respect him. The space he so clearly needed.
But I had no idea how that was going to work when it was starting to hurt when I walked away.
12
Rex
I watched her escaping down the hallway.
At least, that was what it felt like. Like she was fleeing. Putting as much space between us as possible.
She should.
Maybe she was smart enough to run from whatever steadily built in the atmosphere whenever we shared the same space.
Ominous and powerful and unrelenting.
Her footsteps were swift, that silky mound of chestnut a complete disaster where she had it twisted high on top of her head. It left the creamy, delicate flesh of her neck exposed.
I itched, fighting against every single emotion I couldn’t allow myself to feel.
Fuck.
I needed her out.
Gone.
Away.
Where she couldn’t confuse, corrupt, and confound.
Where she couldn’t riddle my mind and tempt my hand.
Where she didn’t hold the power to squeeze between the cracks she continually chipped and etched into my spirit, like the exterior I’d built didn’t even exist. The girl eased into those spaces that were meant to remain closed off and shut down.
Not that it seemed to matter.
The tension only amplified the farther she got. Her footsteps grew fainter, but the space between them ignited a new kind of gravity.
Everything grew taut and tight and rigid. The air. My chest. My thoughts.
Drawing me in a direction I knew I shouldn’t go.
But standing there? I had no power. Because her scent still lingered around me, clouding my senses.
My mouth watered. Cherry and sugar. So goddamned sweet.
I was suddenly inundated with the way she’d felt against me two nights ago.
Her warmth and her comfort and that fucking insane body that made me lose my mind.
It’d been in that foolish moment when I’d given in to temptation when I should have been chasing her away. A single brush of her body had heated every inch of me. My cock harder than it’d ever been, desperate for a different kind of taste from the one she’d been offering. Fuck. How
badly had I wanted to get lost in the slick heat of her tight body?
Every perfect curve seduction.
Every defined inch sin.
But it was the way she’d looked at Frankie when we’d rushed through the emergency room doors that had tipped me to uneven ground.
The floor crumbling from under me.
Logic shot. My feet were moving without my brain ever giving me time to calculate the consequences.
But right then?
I didn’t fucking care.
Didn’t care what this would cost.
I stalked down the hall and through the living room.
The air sparked with every determined step.
She was already down the porch steps by the time I caught her by the wrist, and she gasped one of those throaty, sexy sounds that shot straight to my dick.
Fuck it all, if that simple contact point didn’t ignite to an all-out boil. Heat streaked through my veins, eclipsing everything. Reason and sanity and judgment.
I whirled her around. In a second flat, I had her back pressed against the front of my truck where no one could see us. My fingers tangled in that mess of unruly hair, our faces a breadth apart. My heart stuttered when those innocent eyes latched on to mine, so wide and confused when she realized I had her pinned.
Just like me.
I crushed my mouth to hers, because I had no fuckin’ time for hesitation. I just needed to feel something different from the constant turmoil that raged inside. For just a moment, touch on something that felt like hope.
Even when I knew it was so fucking wrong.
On a sigh, she opened for me. Her lips so damned soft when they began to move with mine.
Sweetly.
Tentatively.
I coaxed and prodded, needing more. My lips tugged and nipped at the soft plumpness, my mouth growing hungrier with each desperate pass. Begging for the kind of reprieve I was terrified only she could give.
She gave. Her breaths turned ragged when I swept my tongue into the well of her mouth for a taste.
God. I was right.
So damned sweet.
I deepened the kiss. Taking more with each lick of my tongue. Or maybe it was Rynna who was stealing bits of me with each nip and tug of those full, full lips.
Lust.
It consumed me.
Blinding.
Constricting my cells and straining my muscles.
I pressed every rigid, hard line of my body into all her soft curves. Overwhelmed. Aching in a way I hadn’t in years. Like maybe if I got close enough things might not hurt so bad.
“Rex.” It was all a whimper when she sank her fingers into my shoulders, and her touch became just as desperate as mine.
Her kiss just as mad.
Her hands coasted from my shoulders down my arms, hitting my biceps where we were skin on skin. The contact burned in the most blissful kind of way, and I sucked in a shattered breath when she was pushing up under the sleeves of my T-shirt, fingertips tracing across the tattoo etched on my arm.
I groaned.
In pleasure.
In agony.
I didn’t know.
“Rynna,” I grated at her mouth. I cupped that bewitching face in my hands before I glided my palms down her neck and tipped back her head. “I don’t even fucking know you. How is it possible you have this kind of hold on me?”
The words were a jumble of incoherency. I moved my mouth down over her jaw. I was sure I was getting drunk on her breaths, getting lost in the crash of her heart that hammered with the thready beat of mine.
My hands trailed down that body. That body that had taunted me since the moment I’d seen her come barreling out of her grandmother’s door. I traced her shoulders, moving across the hollow of her throat, trailing down her chest.
Maybe I’d known it then. That this girl would wreck me. Because I could feel myself coming apart. Piece by piece.
She sighed a barely audible, “Yes.”
Fuck.
What was I doing?
But my dick was so on board, and all the reasons this was the damned worst idea I’d had in years went galloping into the distance.
I palmed one of those gorgeous tits, her nipple firm beneath the thin fabric of her tank.
She gasped and pushed harder into my touch.
“Shit,” I muttered. Maybe it was that very second that insanity took me over, because I didn’t care that we were outside. That someone might hear us.
Instead, I edged back to look at her where she writhed against the grill of my truck, her chest arching with her need for me, her lips swollen and sweet.
Everything shook around me.
An earthquake.
Trembling and cracking and crumbling.
I yanked down the collar of her tank and exposed her.
She was braless. Her tits just shy of a handful, skin so smooth, nipples a dusky pink and pebbled tight.
“Gorgeous,” I rumbled before I ducked down to lap at the peak, drawing her rosy nipple between my teeth.
She drove her fingers in my hair. Pulling. Begging. “Rex. Oh my God . . . please.”
I growled, my mouth moving upward through the valley of her chest, my nose nudging beneath her chin to grant me access to the snowy skin of her neck.
Her pulse beat an erratic, unsteady thrum.
I latched on to it. Sucking her flesh into my mouth as I slipped my hand down her side, over her hip, and down to her knee. I hooked her leg around my waist, all too quick to press my eager dick to the overwhelming heat that blazed from her pussy.
Barely a hint of her through her sleep pants and underwear, but I nearly came right there.
It’d been so long. So fuckin’ long, and I was losing my grip, sanity just slipping out of my reach.
I kept rocking my cock covered by my jeans against her clit, loving the way she moaned and whimpered my name, the girl struggling to stay quiet so her moans weren’t carried on the wind.
Shit.
It was so sexy, the girl in the spotlight of the breaking day.
I wanted to tear every scrap of clothes from our bodies and sink all the way in.
Disappear in that tight heat of her body.
I bit down on her collarbone as I thrust against her like some teenaged kid who’d never gotten his dick wet.
But that was what it felt like.
Like I was coming up on something great.
Something bigger than I understood.
Every muscle in Rynna went tight, and she sucked a sharp breath into her lungs before she started quaking all around me.
She did her best to stifle a deep moan while she came right there against my truck.
Her knees went weak while I continued to work myself against her hot body, wondering just how far I was going to let this madness go.
It only took the weak cry floating from Frankie’s room for me to find that answer.
For me to come tumbling back down to reality.
To the truth of who I was. To my responsibilities.
I edged back, fighting the dread that spiked like barbs at the base of my throat.
“Shit.” I shook my head, trying to orient myself. To rip myself from her body. I stepped back, my body still raging, barely able to look at her after the shit I’d just pulled.
Rynna reached for me with a trembling hand. “Rex . . .”
How was it possible that I saw understanding flash through her expression?
“I’m so fucking sorry, Rynna. God, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”
Rynna resituated her clothing, stepping back out onto the walkway, all lit up in the new day laying siege to the summer sky. For a moment, she just stared back at me. That energy flickered in the air. The softest smile rimmed her mouth. “You don’t have to be.”
Then she turned and crossed the street while I stood there like a fool, staring at the spot she’d just left vacant.
I guessed maybe that was what I’d always been.
A fool.
Shaking myself off, I rushed back up the steps and inside.
“Daddy.” The tiny cry filtered down the hall, and I reined in all the emotions and locked them there where they belonged.
Because just like I’d told Kale, I only needed one girl in my life.
And right then?
My girl needed me.
* * *
The doorbell rang. The words to the book I’d been reading Frankie trailed off. Instantly, my breaths turned shallow, my heart skyrocketing with a boom.
God. I really had lost it, my mind and body still reeling from whatever the fuck it was I’d thought I was doing earlier this morning when I’d had Rynna up against my truck.
I’d resisted for years.
And it was the girl next door who’d become irresistible.
Guilt welled in the deepest parts of me. In those sacred places I’d just desecrated.
I shifted where I was propped up on the headboard of Frankie’s bed with the book lifted out in front of us. My daughter was sprawled halfway across my chest, her head twisted to the side so she could see the pictures.
I’d basically been there all day, alternating between reading her stories, checking her temperature, and watching her sleep.
“Who’s that?” she whispered. Those brown eyes lit with a flash of excitement, promising me whatever sickness she’d been suffering from had finally begun to run its course.
“Not sure. You expecting a party or something?” I teased, tapping my index finger against her button nose, trying to pretend like the mere idea of Rynna standing on the other side of the door didn’t have me in knots.
She scrunched that nose with the cutest grin. “People aren’t suppose to gets a party just for feelin’ better, silly.”
“No?” I feigned ignorance.
“No way! Only prize people gets for feelin’ better is having to go backs to work.”
Laughter shot from my mouth in the same second affection stabbed me in the chest, so deep I thought it might cut me in two. But that was the thing about loving Frankie Leigh.
I loved her so much it physically hurt.
I ruffled a playful hand through her hair. “Sounds to me like you’ve been spending too much time with your grammy.”
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 10
