by Quinn, Cari
He reared back. That warmth retreating, leaving me alone. Cold. So cold. But by then, it didn’t matter, because the tape in my mind wouldn’t stop playing.
“I was in that house three months. After a while, the time didn’t matter anymore. They stopped printing stories. He told me they’d all moved on. That my family didn’t care about me. I almost believed him.” Bitterness filled my mouth, and I swallowed, tasting blood. I’d bit my lip again. “I started keeping track of when he came and went. Then, one day he went to lunch with someone. A woman. Some sick part of me was jealous. He’d become my lifeline to the world. I tried to run, but he came back. It had all been a setup. He tested me, and I failed.”
My name sounded in my ears, over and over. It tethered me to earth. To the sand digging into my knees, to the strong, solid body at my back. He was still here. I’d pushed him back, and he hadn’t left.
“I killed him,” I whispered, rocking so hard that I wasn’t completely aware of the arms coming around me again, tighter than before. The damp lips pressed to my neck, the soft, crooning words of comfort. “There was a trial, and I was acquitted. They called it self-defense.”
“You were fighting for your life,” Tray murmured.
“No.” I shook my head, over and over. “Amelia Anderson died that day with Darren. I killed him and I killed myself.”
He didn’t say anything. Any words between us eventually burned out like the fire. Flickering, dying to embers. Leaving only ash behind.
Lifetimes passed in our silence. It pressed against my skin, a cold, brittle reminder of how transient we were. We’d been a brief moment in time, already over.
Now I needed to walk away.
I pushed to my feet, my bones creaking like an old woman. I’d aged since I’d strolled into his apartment hours ago. My body hurt almost as much as my heart. What was left of it.
“Leave it.” His voice stopped me as I reached for my bra. “You’re not going anywhere.”
Something in his tone raked over my already raw nerve endings. I’d thought I’d gone numb, but obviously not. “Excuse me?”
“You promised me a whole night.”
I turned back, slowly. “Don’t go there.”
He stood and stared at me, his jaw harder than the log we’d sat on what felt like forever ago. “You owe me several more hours.”
“Owe you?” My temper flared, rage cracking through the ice. It wasn’t fair, goddammit. None of this was fair. “That was before—”
“This is now.” He gripped my chin, his eyes glittering. “We’re going to bed.” Barbed wires of heat wrapped around the vague threat in his statement.
Either come to bed with me on your own, or I’ll make sure you do, anyway.
“I’m going home.” I reached for my bra again, getting as far as holding it to my chest. Then he spun me back, his hand roughly curving around the back of my neck.
“My fucking bed. That’s where you’re going.” Before I could argue, he hauled me up and carted me down the hall, ignoring my demands and my fists. Impervious to both.
“How dare you? I don’t want this.” I spat the words. “Don’t want you.”
He tossed me on the mattress and crawled over me, pinning me down with his naked body. Trapping me in his iron-backed warmth. “Fight me, Mia.” He clamped his fingers around my wrists, holding them in place near my shoulders.
I struggled, but I couldn’t get free. He was strong. So much stronger than I was.
“Make me bleed. Make me hurt like you.”
I didn’t understand what he was saying. What it meant. But I fought like the wild animal I was, bucking my hips and lifting my shoulders from the mattress again and again. Jerking and twisting, gyrating under him until I got my leg free and brought my knee up. Connecting with his ribs, his gut.
His surprise at the ferocity of my attack gave me the opportunity to yank my hand free and I scratched his back, his arms. Rearing up, I bit and clawed at his skin. Bruising him like I was bruised, making us the same.
He tried to hold me down, his power all the more incredible because he kept it leashed. He never struck out. Never used his fists or his teeth or his cock to injure me further, to take more than I’d consented to give.
Never frightened me, even when his body blanketed mine. And when I started to cry, he did too.
My sobs racked my chest, ripping from me with a force that I’d never known before. I couldn’t get the pain out. It was eating me up, tearing through internal organs. Carving into soft tissue until only the agony remained. For the first time, I let it consume me, scarcely aware of the body on top of me. Holding me. Crying with me.
“Let it out. I’m here. I’m here.”
His mouth found mine, clung. I tasted his tears as they smeared over my skin. Felt his heart slamming beat for beat with mine.
His fingers binding, my hips rising. Seeking. His descending, pressing close. Opening to him, him filling me. Sobbing through it, my tears slowing only as the pleasure built, a blind need that was more than thought, more than desire. Giving myself over to something beyond hurt and desperation.
And through it all, knowing I wasn’t alone. Never alone.
The release poured through me, overwhelming in its intensity. Drenching me like the surf at high tide, washing away everything that had come before and leaving behind what mattered. Him and I, together.
Me, still alive. Still fighting to be whole. Still breathing.
“I love you, Mia,” he gasped as his own release took him. “I’m not letting you go.”
I wrapped my arms around him, tighter than I’d ever held anyone, and breathed in deep as he shuddered in my arms. He was stronger than I’d ever dreamed, but somehow he was weak for me.
And this time, he’d come inside me. Not like last time when he’d gone off on my stomach. He really did trust me.
Maybe he really loved me too.
Tears drenched my eyes, but I could still make out his features in the dark. They were imprinted on my heart. “Don’t let me go. Please.”
“I won’t.” He breathed the promise against my lips. “I won’t let go.”
Thirty-Five
The fly woke me.
Buzzing near my ear, tiny wings fluttering over my cheek. I slapped at it, mumbling curses, rolling over in bed to grab the soft, warm body I’d cleaved to in the night.
She wasn’t there.
My eyes flew open and I sat up in bed, a sound leaving my throat that verged on a snarl. I was already praying like hell when I scrambled up. Nearly crashing to the floor as my foot caught in the sheet, oblivious to anything but finding her. I bumped the nightstand and my alarm clock fell, shattering into pieces. Hunk of fricking junk.
I kicked it aside and stumbled to the bathroom, pushing my way inside and pivoting around to look in every corner as if she could cram herself into spaces as tight as the fly.
Not a trace of her anywhere.
Grabbing a towel, I hitched it around my waist and lurched back into my room. Hands already fisted. The sheets hung off the bed, tangled and spattered with blood. She’d scratched welts in me that opened up again as I stalked down the hall, straining to see with my one good eye. I already knew she wouldn’t be there. My place felt empty. Like the breaths rattling from my chest as I struggled not to lose it completely were echoing in an old, abandoned tomb.
“Don’t let me go.”
I’d failed her again. Worse, I’d failed myself. I’d battled for her last night with everything I had, and I’d fallen asleep thinking I’d won. Dreamed the exhausted sleep of the victorious. As long as the road ahead was, as many cracks and potholes covered the ground, I had truly believed we’d cleared that first hurdle.
We were together. No matter what, we’d be okay.
What a fucking joke.
She’d left, anyway. Even after we’d fought and cried and loved, she’d crawled out of my bed sometime before dawn and just walked out the door.
I went to the window behind
the bar and shoved it up, climbing out onto the fire escape without even thinking about the fact that I was half naked and covered in scratches. I needed the bracing slap of cold air against my cheeks, even though it made my injured eye tear up. A salty path carved its way down my cheek, dripping into my mouth. I bent, gasping for breath as if someone was ripping at my lungs. Hacking out the ventricles of my heart.
I’d fought, and I’d lost.
Again.
I gripped the railing and yelled into the quiet pre-dawn, verbalizing my agony the only way I knew how. Shouting her name, over and over again until my throat burned like my gritty eyes.
My neighbor leaned out of his window and cursed at me in Spanish before slamming it shut. Juan was probably calling the cops. I laughed at that, imagining my father’s expression when he found out I’d been hauled in to the station nearly naked and covered in crusted blood that wasn’t entirely my own. I’d scratched her too, when I was holding her down. I hadn’t meant to hurt her, but I had.
I hadn’t meant to love her, but I’d done that too.
Pale purple light filtered from the sky when I finally went back inside. Just past sunrise. The icy air had scraped my skin raw, and the warmth from stepping back inside rushed over me like the blast from a furnace. Tearing my breath from me again until I gave in to the urge to fold myself into the nearest chair and bury my head in my arms.
It wouldn’t hurt like this forever. Eventually, I’d go back to that numbness I hadn’t realized I’d lived with for years. She thought she was the only one who put on a mask and dealt with shit because facing the whole load of crap would fucking crush you.
Like it was crushing me now.
“Tray.”
I burrowed deeper into the shelter of my arms, fisting my hands in my hair. No. Goddammit, no. I couldn’t hear her voice. She was gone. I’d begged her to stay, to give me a chance to help her—to fucking give me a chance to help myself—and she’d only given in long enough to completely fuck me over.
For all I knew, she’d already left New York. Disappeared like a goddamned thief. And I never would, on the infinitesimal chance she’d come back.
“Tray.”
That voice in my head. Taunting me. Whispering over my abraded skin, delving into the wounds she’d made. Soft hair trailing over my bare flesh, her clean, crisp smell enveloping me even as I struggled against her unyielding arms.
“I’m here. Tray. Look at me.”
I opened my eyes and she swam into focus before I closed them again and shook my head. “No.” I could barely croak out the denial. “Don’t do this to me again. You left. I have to let you go.”
“No. I made you a promise. And you made one to me.”
None of this was happening. When I opened my eyes again, I’d be in bed. Alone.
She laid her hand on my cheek and exhaled a shuddering breath. “Tray, I went to see Costas.”
That name sliced through the fog in my head. I shoved at her hold, breaking it to stalk over to the bar. I didn’t look at her, because I feared she didn’t really exist. Only the anger and misery holding my gut hostage existed. Only that was real.
“I told him I wasn’t going to fight him.”
My heart kicked hard in my chest.
Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.
“He wasn’t surprised.” A dry laugh. “He told me he’d been waiting for me to back out. That it didn’t matter, because the fight had already done its job. I don’t know what that means. He never asked me why. Just said, ‘yeah, fine’, and went back to his reps.”
Relief coursed through my veins, but I couldn’t acknowledge it yet. I still half believed I was trapped in a nightmare that looked like a dream.
“He said something else too.”
I waited. Not really caring what fucking Giovanni Costas had to say.
“He told me you were into some shady shit. Betting on fights. That you’d taken a drop the night of the bout with him.”
Swearing under my breath, I gripped the edge of the bar until my knuckles went white. “He’ll see how much I appreciate that allegation when I pound his skull in for free.”
“I found a paper in your coat. Way back at the beginning. The sheet got mixed up with some mail, so I didn’t see it at first. And then when I did, I didn’t understand what it was. Those numbers were amounts of money someone had offered you to lose.”
“Yes. They were.” I cut her a sidelong glance. “Sounds like you’ve figured everything out.”
She locked her gaze with mine. “I know you wouldn’t cheat.”
“I lied to you for weeks. If I can lie so easily, what makes you so sure I’m not a cheater too?”
“Because I know you.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t have even mentioned that crap. You’d know better. I would never believe that about you for a minute. And I’d take care of any bastard who dared to even say those words.” My grip intensified on the bar. “You know what else, Mia? I’m not glad Darren fucking Winthrop is dead, because I wish I could kill him myself. I wish I could rip his limbs from his body, one by one. I’d keep punching him until nothing remained but dust. That’s who I am. A fucking bloodthirsty maniac who’d kill for you, because I can’t do anything else to take your pain away.”
The floor creaked under her footsteps. I stiffened, but her hand pressing against my back still made me bite off an oath.
“I hurt you,” she whispered.
I didn’t know if she was referring to the welts under her palm or the much bigger hurt. That fear that would never leave me now.
The one where I woke up alone, and it stuck.
“Do you know why I insisted on fighting Fox Knox?” she questioned, as if she understood that Fox Knox and Tray Knox were two different people.
Too bad I hadn’t understood that myself for so very long.
“Fox was the best. A fight with Fox would get the most attention and the most money. I’d get out of town with Carly that much faster. But the real reason was Fox represented everything I hated. He was one of them. Rich, blond, impossibly perfect. Just like Darren.”
“Goddammit, Mia—”
“Hear me out.” Her tone gentled. “But you’re not anything like Darren. Not way down deep. The trappings might be similar—the wealth and privilege, the sense of entitlement—but inside, where it matters? You couldn’t be more different. You fought to prove you were worth something, but walking away without your supposed vengeance against Costas showed your value.” She caressed my skin. Easing the soreness from the wounds. All of them. “You lied to me to protect me. To help me feel safe. Not to try to deceive. And maybe I didn’t realize that right away last night, but I know it now. I know you, Tray.”
I swallowed over the sand in my throat. “Why did you back out of the fight with him?”
“After last night, my head was too messed up. Going in that ring tonight would’ve been a suicide mission. Just like your fight.”
I didn’t argue. The truth was evident enough.
She trembled against my back. “I used to think checking out was brave. Not anymore. I don’t want to die. I want…”
Her fingers curled against my spine, her nails offering an unintentional relief from the churning in my gut. Those miniscule slices in my skin opened up the pressure valves nothing else would.
“Tell me. Say the rest.”
“I’ve been the next best thing to dead for years. Now I want to feel again. To stop running.” She pressed her cool, velvety cheek to my shoulder. “I want to find my place. My home.” She swallowed audibly. “Maybe I already have.”
So many thoughts collided in my skull, all of them demanding to get out. But only one surfaced. “You could’ve told me you were going to talk to him.”
“I had to do it alone.”
“No, you damn well didn’t. You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.” I turned and grabbed her shoulders, shaking her both to solidify the point and to emphasize the reality of her standing in fr
ont of me. Whole. Strong. Mine.
Still mine.
“Do you have any clue what I went through, waking up without you? I thought you were gone. That you’d left me, left the city. Just packed up and taken off, like I didn’t mean a fucking thing to you. And worse, so much worse, I’d made it happen because I don’t have one goddamn iota how to do this right.”
I let her go and jammed my fists into my eyes, even the one that hurt already. The pain centered me until her tentative touch on my wrist tugged me away from the agonizing comfort.
Tipping back my head, I let the words out. Finally. I wasn’t some damn superhero. I didn’t have all the answers. Hell, I didn’t have any of them. “I don’t know how to be the man you need. No one’s ever depended on me before. I’ve lived my whole life for myself. I can’t give you anything but—”
“You.”
“What?” I met her gaze, sure I’d misheard.
“I only want you.” Her lips quivered before she firmed them and walked forward into my arms. Hers encircled my waist, holding on tight. “I don’t know what I’m doing either. But we can figure it out. We have time.”
I jerked back and gazed into her liquid brown eyes. “Do we?”
She nodded.
“Not good enough. Tell me you’ll stay. That you won’t leave, no matter what. Even if I screw up and make things worse somehow. If I harm you without knowing it. If I fucking spank you when you want me to stroke.”
The corner of her mouth lifted. “Pretty sure that will never happen.”
“Mia.” I gripped her chin. “Promise me.”
“I already did once.”
“Give me the words again. Please.”
”I promise.” She wrapped her hand around the back of my neck and tugged my head down to hers. Kissing me tenderly at first, then adding a rough slice of teeth. “I’m not leaving you.”
