My eyes narrowed, scrutinizing his every move.
I didn’t have a direct view of the door since it was on the side of the house, only the deck where the douchebag stood fully in my line of sight. He pounded on her door with the back of his fist.
There was movement. I couldn’t actually see her door, but somehow, I knew she’d cracked it open. It was a shift in the atmosphere. I knew she opened it just as assuredly as I knew that she tried to force it closed.
Then the piece of shit was trying to shove it open. He reeled back, lifted a foot, and kicked it in.
Rynna.
Rynna.
Every fear I’d ever had tumbled free and lit my veins.
Gasoline and flames.
My soul screamed.
I wouldn’t fucking let this happen.
Not again. I flew out my door, down the steps, and across the street before I was barreling up hers.
My heart was in my fucking throat, stomach twisted in a single knot of dread. Dread that raged. A steely demand that I protect her.
Save her. Defend her. Keep her. It chanted through that hollow space.
Would have run out to protect anyone. I knew I would. Still, there was no questioning the driving force was completely different when I came up behind the bastard and saw Rynna sobbing on the ground.
Fear consumed her, her expression full of horror and pleas as she scooted back across the floor.
He loomed over her, encroaching, filled with that rage I’d sworn I’d witnessed from the window. He was spewing a verbal attack I knew was mere seconds from becoming physical. “You fucking bitch. You ruined my life.”
He was so consumed with debasing her that he hadn’t noticed I was there. That I was inching forward, trying to quiet my breaths that were jolting from my lungs in spastic quakes.
A chill climbed to the air. Freezing. Clotting the tension. Every second stretched out. Dense and dark and deep.
A whimper from the ground, and my heart nearly fucking left my chest when those java eyes flashed my direction.
It only lasted for one of those extended seconds, but there was more communication in that brief exchange than in any conversation I’d ever had in my life.
Relief.
Deliverance.
Trust.
She poured it into me. Filling me full.
And this girl . . . this girl looked right back at him, continuing to beg like I wasn’t even there.
So fucking smart and aware.
It would make taking out this piece of shit a whole ton easier than it would have been if he knew I was coming.
He didn’t.
I rushed, and from behind, I hooked my arm around his neck. I cinched down against his throat, my other hand held around my wrist to keep my hold locked tight, my mouth at his ear. “Hey, fucker, remember me? Warned you last time if you didn’t leave the girl alone, you wouldn’t be able to walk away. You think I was joking?”
For a blink, he went slack, a huge breath sucked into his lungs at his surprise, his own awareness seeping through his rage and into his consciousness. That was all it took for every muscle in his body to tighten before the bastard started fighting back. His fingers sank into the flesh of my forearm, nails digging in like a bitch, the pussy battling to break free.
I tightened my hold, teeth gritted as I struggled to keep him restrained. “Rynna, call the police so we can send this dick where he belongs.”
She was already on her knees, pushing to stand, her limbs shaking uncontrollably as she tried to find balance. Her eyes darted to the spot behind me where I remembered she’d stowed her purse the night I’d shown up here with Frankie.
No doubt, that was where her cell phone was.
I met those eyes again, not needing to say a word.
Go. I’ve got you. I won’t let anything happen to you.
She bolted that direction.
The bastard thrashed, throwing an elbow into my ribs at the same time as he threw back his head. His skull cracking against my nose almost sent me to my knees. Pain exploded across my face. Blinding. Splitting. Enough that I momentarily lost my hold.
It gave him enough time to kick out a leg, tripping Rynna as she was rushing around us to make it to her purse.
She flew forward, slamming her head against the corner of the entryway table that was set against the wall next to the door as she fell face-first to the ground.
Rage.
This time it was my own.
“You asshole. You think I’m gonna stand here and let you hurt her?”
Never.
Fuck.
Never.
Once again, he was going her direction. I lunged for him, plowing into his side and catching him off guard. He stumbled and lost his footing. The two of us toppled to the floor where we were a tangle of limbs and punches and splattering blood.
His.
Mine.
I straddled his chest. Pounding my fist into his face. Blow after blow.
But the fucker fought. Fought and fought and fought.
Clipping me on the chin, he sent me sailing back, and he scrambled to get on top of me. He was on me, pinning me down. He smashed his elbow into my cheek.
“You piece of shit . . . is that all you got? Only way you can get a woman is by forcing her? Huh? Is that how the game is played by pussies with nonexistent dicks? Or is it just so small no one knows it’s there?”
I knew I was taunting him. Enraging him more. Inciting him to keep pounding on me.
But that was just fine.
Only thing I was doing was buying time.
Because the girl had already dialed 9-1-1, shouted out her address, had given the vile piece of shit’s name.
She’d be safe.
That was all that fucking mattered.
I tried not to wince when I saw him cock back his fist, his knuckles going straight for my temple. This shit was gonna hurt. Probably knock me out flat.
She was worth it. She was worth it. She was worth it.
Sirens whirled in the distance, coming closer and closer.
She would be safe. She would be safe.
But that fist never met its mark. The asshole howled in agony. He flew off me, catching air, tumbling across the floor before he was bent over on his knees, clutching the side of his head. Blood poured out from between his fingers and dripped to the carpet.
I squinted, wondering if I was having some kind of hallucination. The perfect kind. The one where the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen was standing above me. That chestnut hair matted, mangled with blood. Chest heaving. A huge glass vase gripped in both her hands, an enormous crack zigzagging down the middle of it, and a river of fractures splintering out.
Outside, engines roared. By the sound of it, at least three cruisers came to a screeching stop in front of Rynna’s house. Feet pounded and voices shouted.
Seconds later, they were piling into her house, shouting for everyone to freeze.
Rynna dropped the vase. It finally gave up its fight with the impact, shattering into a thousand pieces when it hit the floor. Just as Rynna was doing the same. Dropping to her knees and hitting the floor.
Sobs wracked her body when she realized it was over.
That she was safe.
Right then? It was the absolute only thing that mattered.
21
Rynna
“Thanks again, man,” Rex said to Seth, the last officer at my house. He was a guy Rex had apparently known since high school, someone Rex considered a friend.
“Just, stay safe,” Seth said, glancing between the two of us before he ambled down my porch steps and slipped into the driver’s seat of his Ford sedan and pulled away.
Timothy Roth had been fired this afternoon. Apparently, my complaint of sexual harassment hadn’t been the first he’d received. Apparently, when his wife found out the reason for his termination, she’d kicked him out.
His wife.
I trembled at the thought of it, at the arrogance and stu
pidity of the man and how much worse it could have been.
The taillights of Seth’s patrol car splashed another dose of red into the blaze of reds and oranges and purpled blues that twisted into the sunset as he accelerated down the narrow neighborhood road.
Then it was as if the dial had been turned up on the silence.
So loud it was profound.
As loud as Rex Gunner’s presence that eclipsed all.
A thunder.
A thriving, living being.
His gruff voice cut into the tension. “Don’t like that you refused treatment. You sure you don’t want me to give Kale a call?”
I chanced looking over at him where he stood behind me on the far side of the deck.
My savage savior.
Streaks of blood were dried on his face, and a small gash oozed from the corner of his eye. His clothes were tattered, soiled with sweat and blood, his hair a mess, body still bristling with remnants of pent-up rage.
My lungs inflated at the mesmerizing sight of him. Every part of me expanded. Reaching toward him.
“You’re worried about me?” I managed. “You’re the one who came to my rescue. The one who put himself on the line. Again. I can’t . . . what if . . .”
His head angled and his shoulders rolled back, and the man took a powerful step forward.
The energy spiked.
“You think I’m not worried about you?” It almost sounded like an accusation. He took another step forward, the man a raging tower of protection. “You think I wouldn’t do it all over again? You think I would have let him hurt you?”
He was suddenly in front of me. My breath gone when he stood over me.
An imposing, conquering shadow.
Eclipsing the fear that had taken me hostage. If it weren’t for Rex, today would have ended in an entirely different way.
He lifted his fingers and brushed back a chunk of hair stuck to my cheek. His words rumbled like a threat. “I wanted to kill him, Rynna. He was going to hurt you, and I wanted to kill him. I would have. Second I saw you were in trouble, my heart was screaming out to protect you. To protect what belonged to me. To shelter what was mine.”
Mine.
The word trembled around us.
“Thank you,” I whispered. A tear slipped free, and my body began to shake with the aftermath. With the reality of it all.
A gasp ripped from my chest when I was suddenly swept off my feet and into the strength and security of Rex’s arms. He had one arm under my back and the other beneath my knees, my body held possessively against the strength of his chest.
“Won’t let anyone hurt you,” he murmured against my forehead. Carrying me, he angled through the door. “I’m gonna take care of you.”
“Rex.” It was a whimper.
“Shh. I know, baby. I know.”
I clung to his neck as he carried me upstairs. At the landing, he took a left and headed into my bedroom, pushing right past my unmade bed and through the cutout arch that led to the bathroom.
As if this man already knew the way.
He set me on unsteady feet and turned me to face the counter. My eyes met his in the mirror. A low growl climbed his throat, and he leaned around me to turn on the faucet.
The air constricted.
Charged.
I swore, our slowed, measured movements attracted every molecule within five miles. He wrapped his arms around me from behind, taking my hands in his and placing them beneath the fall of warm water. He gently rubbed our hands together, the basin filling with pink-tinged water as he scrubbed the blood free from our dirtied hands.
“Two weeks, Rynna. Two weeks I’ve been dying, hating the way I left things between us. Hating that I hurt you.”
His words brushed my cheek, and his presence filled my senses.
Overwhelming.
He squirted soap onto our hands, continuing to wash away this afternoon, as if he wanted to erase the possibility of what could have happened.
Carefully.
Meticulously.
His voice was a soft scrape at the shell of my ear, sending shivers down my neck, turning my heart into a thundering orb at the center of my chest. “All that time, I was wishing with every part of me I could change my circumstances. That I could be right for you. Then this, Rynna. Then this happened and I don’t fucking care, anymore. Don’t fucking care that this is wrong.”
His eyes captured mine through the mirror. They flashed with a warning. An omen. A prediction.
“I’m not afraid,” I whispered, my promise striking the throbbing air. He gathered my hair in his hand, shifting it all to one side, exposing my neck. He pressed his lips there in the barest kiss. “That’s funny, because I’m fucking terrified of you.” His nose ran up to the back of my ear. “Terrified of this.”
A shiver rolled down my spine, and Rex eased back a fraction, taking the hem of my shirt and drawing it slowly up my body.
That shiver shifted. An avalanche of chills. He peeled it over my head before he did the same to his own, scrubbing at his face before he tossed his shirt to his feet.
My gaze traced him through the mirror, and I swallowed around the emotion that grew thick at the base of my throat.
This complicated, amazing man drove me crazy with desire. Crazy with need. Crazy with this want that had become its own entity inside of me.
He reached up and let his fingertips flutter across my exposed shoulder and down my arm. Tingles spread in a slow slide. All the fear I’d felt earlier transformed into this emotion I wasn’t sure I’d ever felt before.
Something so real it staggered my senses.
He reached back and unfastened my bra, drawing the straps down my arms.
My nipples pebbled as my breasts were exposed, and his chest heaved with a grunt. “So beautiful. So goddamned beautiful,” he murmured.
His fingers pressed under the waistband of my shorts.
“You want this, Rynna? You want me?” There was a tremor in his words. That same warning that flamed in his eyes. “Because I’m done running from you.”
“I want you so badly it hurts.”
He heaved a breath before he dipped down and kissed a path down my spine as he dragged my shorts and underwear down my legs.
“Oh God,” I whimpered, hit by an onslaught of sensations.
Need and want and desire.
But it was that emotion that pulsed in the depths of me that nearly sent me to my knees. Wave after wave. Seeping and saturating. Trembling in my throat and tightening in my stomach.
“Rynna.” It was a groan as he kissed down the cleft of my bottom and unwound my clothing from my feet, the sound so guttural it rumbled against the walls.
Then I was back in his arms and he was carrying me to my bed, lying me in the middle.
He stood with his chest heaving. So much stunning strength. The man so gorgeous and darkly appealing my mouth went dry.
Every thought and reservation fled from my mind. Every pep talk I’d given myself over the last two weeks about forgetting him and moving on scattered in the wind.
Because when it was just him and me?
There was nothing but the beat of our hearts.
Nothing but the call of our spirits. It was something louder than all the questions. Something bigger than his past. Something higher than our obstacles.
Something fierce rippled as he looked down at me completely naked on my bed.
“Are you sure?” he grated.
My hands fisted in my sheets, my body arching toward him. Needing him in a way I’d never needed anyone before. “I already told you I’m not afraid. You, Rex Gunner, are a chance I’m willing to take.”
“You shouldn’t be real.” It was rough. Just like the man.
I bit my bottom lip, loving when he let me glimpse under all that hardness. “Yet, here I am.”
“And what happens when you’re gone?” There was something so sorrowful in it, a stab right to the center of my chest.
Slowly, I climbe
d up onto my knees and stretched out my hand. I brushed my fingertips down the side of his rugged face. “And what happens if I stay?”
For a beat, his eyes dropped closed, and he leaned into my touch before he snatched me by the wrist and pressed my palm to his mouth. “And what if I don’t let you leave?”
God, this man. He pushed and pulled. Taunted and tugged.
Slowly he edged back, eying me with those mesmerizing eyes as he kicked off his boots. Without freeing me of his gaze, he unfastened his belt. His abdomen flexed and bowed as he tugged on his fly and lowered the zipper.
Desire swept through my body.
A battering storm.
Anticipation and need.
He nudged the jeans down his legs and took his underwear with them.
He stood there in the shadows that fell into my room.
Completely naked.
Bare.
So beautiful a downpour of desire soaked me through.
I hadn’t been lying to Macy. This man was what gods were made of. Sleek and defined. Carved in hard, indestructible perfection.
All except for the broken pieces I knew he tried to keep concealed, buried deep inside. I saw them so clearly. Held in the depths of those eyes. Those eyes that were looking at me as if maybe I should run if I didn’t want to be devoured.
But I did.
I so desperately did.
He edged forward an inch, big hand splayed across my chest, nudging me down onto the mattress. I was spread across its width, the man towering over me from the side.
I writhed, hips jutting into the air, not caring for a second that I was desperate.
That I needed him.
His touch and his body and that spirit that had already taken me whole. He ran a fingertip down the inside of my thigh. “Last two times I touched you nearly ruined me. Seeing you like this? Don’t think I’m ever going to be the same. Stealing my sleep. Stealing my breath. Stealing my sanity. Little thief.”
Chills flew. A chaos of sensation.
His hands were on my knees, pulling them apart.
I’d never felt so exposed, and I gasped out a shocked breath when he leaned down and gave one long lick up my slit.
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 16
