Better When He's Brave

by Jay Crownover

  He was a brutal-looking man. I recognized him right away with his bald head and tightly trimmed goatee. He smiled at me when I screamed and I saw the knife flash out, and it caught me across the fleshy part of my arm before I realized I should be fighting back. Only I was in the bathroom, in my pajamas and completely unarmed. I was as helpless as I had ever been in my life. It wasn’t a fair fight by any stretch of the imagination, and just as I realized I should make noise or try and run he lashed out with a closed fist and punched me in the face. It was a hard enough blow that I fell immediately to my knees.

  He put a hand in my hair and jerked my head closer to his crotch as he brought his knife down and touched the tip to my cheek. “No wonder Conner has such a hard-on for you. You’re even better up close and personal.”

  The sting of the blade and his crude words were like a slap across the face. I had no clue how he had gotten inside the condo, but I knew only one of us was walking out the front door.

  “Conner is a lunatic. He’s ruining lives because of a man that was a sociopath, a man that didn’t claim him as his own until he needed him!” I didn’t think, I just threw my head forward until my forehead connected solidly with the vulnerable parts of his body hidden behind his zipper. It was enough of a shock that he doubled over, giving me enough room to move around him. I scrambled on my hands and knees out the bathroom door, leaving a sizable chunk of my hair in Zero’s fist. He swore and dove for me, but I was faster, and as soon as I cleared the bathroom I got to my feet and made a mad dash for the stairs.

  The Glock was still in my purse. No one had seen Booker and I wasn’t ready to admit to anyone else that I had it, and right in that moment I was so glad I hadn’t gotten rid of the weapon.

  When I was halfway down the stairs I was hit from behind hard enough to pick me up off my feet and send me flying through the air. I didn’t hit any more stairs and crashed to the ground floor with all of Zero’s weight on top of me. My teeth tore into my bottom lip, my chin cracked into the hardwood with enough force to make me black out for a second, and my palms and knees lost the first layer of skin as I hurriedly tried to find any kind of traction on the floor to get away from the oppressive weight on my back.

  He swore at me, called me filthy names, and flipped me over so that he was straddling my waist. The knife glided across my chest as I swung wildly at him with my fists and tried to claw at him with my fingernails. He just laughed at my struggles and used the blade to cut the strap of my tank off of one of my shoulders. I screamed at him as he told me all the disgusting things he was going to do to me as the knife dug into my chest. I screamed until I had no air left but that just seemed to egg him on as he leaned down and bit the exposed slope of my breast where the fabric of my shirt had been torn away. He swatted my hands away and used his free hand to wrap around my throat.

  All I could taste was panic and blood and he applied pressure and continued to nick at my skin with the blade. I kicked my legs uselessly under him as he went on and on about how hot Conner told him I was in bed, about all the obscene and awful things he’d been doing to himself while watching me for the last few months. It was gross and far more violating than the way he was sitting on me and the way he was choking me.

  I was starting to see spots around the edge of my vision. I needed air, but no matter how much I pried at his hard fingers he didn’t loosen them an inch. I heard my phone ring from somewhere in my purse. It made him laugh as he moved his lips over my own where I was gasping like a landlocked fish for any kind of breath.

  “Is that the cop? Imagine how fun it will be for him to find you like this. Broken, ripped apart. Covered in filth and another man. I only wish I could be around to see his face. Conner will love that.”

  I had to do something, and since fighting wasn’t getting me anywhere, I decided to stop. I let my arms fall to the floor next to his legs. I stopped kicking and jerking my legs and hips. I went stone still and lay under him like I was already a corpse. I saw triumph flash in his beady eyes and he pushed his grotesque mouth to my own again.

  “I like it better when you fight, but this works too.” I forced myself not to move a single muscle as he loosened his hold around my throat and started to rub the edge of the blade along where I was sure my pulse was hammering. Before I could change my mind or evaluate the risk involved, I lifted my head up off the floor just a little bit like I was going to kiss him back and sank my teeth into his lip. I felt flesh rip, felt blood surge, but it was enough to once again throw him off balance so that I could wiggle out from underneath his bulk. The knife raked across my skin with a stinging burn as I got myself free, but I couldn’t stop to think about how bad the cut might be. Instead I ran for my purse and almost started crying on the spot when my fingers touched the chilly metal of the gun.

  He was close again. I could feel him. So I released the safety and turned around already pulling the trigger without aiming. I fired and fired, each shot louder than the previous one. I fired until the clip was empty and my shoulder felt like it was dislocated from the recoil. The entire loft smelled like blood and gunpowder as Zero slumped over in a heap on the floor at my feet. I hadn’t hit him with all the rounds, but enough had made contact that he wasn’t a threat anymore. The knife now sat useless and covered in crimson on the floor next to his lax form.

  I called 911 only to be informed that units were already on the way to my location due to reports of shots fired. I told the dispatcher there was a dead body on the scene and then Race and Brysen were suddenly there hustling me out of the apartment and asking me a million questions. No one heard me screaming, but they sure as hell heard the gun go off. Before I could even start to process what they were asking or the fact that I was bleeding and probably going into shock, the cranky detective was all in my face asking more questions, and all I could tell anyone was that I wanted Titus.

  I just wanted my cop.

  Speaking of, the bathroom door swung open and his big frame was suddenly filling the space. “Are you okay in here?”

  Without my noticing it, the water had gone cold, and I was just sitting in the tub crying. I lifted my hands to rub at my cheeks and went to stand up.

  “Yeah. I just needed a minute.” I was always fighting. Fighting someone, something, fighting myself. I wasn’t used to being the victim, to being weak and out of control.

  I never got to my feet. Before I could stand up, his strong arms were around me and under me and he was cradling me to his chest. Soaking himself and the bathroom floor in the process. I didn’t argue. I just wrapped an arm around his thick neck and let him take me to his bed still dripping wet and teary-eyed.

  He had obviously spent the time I was soaking cleaning up his bedroom. There wasn’t a stray shirt or sock in sight and the bed was made with obviously clean sheets and blankets. I rubbed my sore cheek against his pec and sighed against his heartbeat.

  “I can’t believe how messy you are. I never would have guessed.”

  He grunted and shifted me a little so he could pull the top blanket back and put me in the center of the bed. He stared down at me for a long moment before he started pulling his clothes off. That was a show that would make me millions if I charged other woman to watch it. Too bad I was greedy and wanted the flex and bend of all that hard muscle and tawny skin to be forever for my eyes only.

  “The only person that ever sees it is me, so I guess I never really bothered to take very good care of the inside of the place. I’m not here a lot.”

  Again it reminded me of the man himself. The only one who ever saw into the darkness where his heart actually lived was Titus. The beast was lonely, and I was the only one he had ever let inside the cage. It needed me. I just hoped he could still see that after I told him the last of my dirty secrets.

  Once he was as naked as I was, he reached over, turned off the lights, and climbed into the bed next to me; even though it was early morning and the rest of the world was just starting to wake up, we were going to bed.

 
; He curled an arm around me and drew me tightly to his chest. “It’s tomorrow.”

  I knew he wanted to talk, but I wasn’t ready for it yet. “It’ll still be tomorrow when we wake up. Let’s just rest for a minute.” I needed it. Oblivion had never sounded so nice.

  I felt his lips brush across the top of my head and his palm skimmed over the battered and raw surface of the arm I wrapped around him.

  “Okay. We can rest. By the way, I’m proud of you. You’re one hell of a fighter, Reeve.”

  I could only pray he felt that way when I opened my eyes and told him my tale. Between my own emotions being drained and stripped to nothing and his warmth and the security of finally being in his arms after my nightmare, I couldn’t keep my eyelids open anymore. Sleep and a tiny reprieve was one thing I wasn’t going to fight against.

  I WAS HAVING THE most amazing dream. It was full of questing hands. Tender kisses. The brush of soft hair against my skin. My name was whispered between lips that I loved and I had never been in a more secure or happy place.

  But then it changed and I was being chased. I was running for my life and I woke up with a scream stuck in my throat and tears silently running down my face. I sat up in the bed and looked down at Titus. Bright blue eyes were watching me carefully, full of sympathy and rage. I pushed my hair out of my face and put a hand to my racing heart. He lifted his hand up and brushed his knuckle across my damp cheek. It was an achingly tender gesture and it was so unlike him that it started me shaking all over. Titus had looked at me with a lot of different emotions since I burst back into his life, but I refused to have pity be one of them. I understood the risks . . . all of them . . . and he needed to know that.

  I leaned over and gave him a stinging kiss on his frowning mouth. “I’m fine. At least I will be.”

  I saw his eyes skim over the cut on my neck and the tender and bruised skin around my eye. “You are not fine.” He sounded like a cop, and not the very naked and very sexy man that could so easily replace all the bad memories with much better ones.

  It might not make sense but I wanted his hands on me. I wanted my heart thundering and chasing itself around my chest for him and not because I was scared and shaken up. Everything that was bad, everything that was tragic and senseless, Titus was there to give meaning to. He was the good and I needed all of that in me.

  “I will be. Make me fine, Titus.”

  He scowled at me in the early morning light but he could never hide the way his eyes shifted, and since we were both naked, there was no missing the way his body reacted. I kissed him again and this time he curled his hand around the back of my neck.

  “I’m not sure that’s a very good idea. You had a rough night.”

  “You and I together is always a good idea. I need this.” I knew he would never deny me when I told him I needed him. He was too giving to say no.

  With a sigh he kissed the battered side of my face. His lips touched the side of my neck where my pulse thudded heavily in a mixture of anxiety and desire. His scruffy face brushed across my tender skin as he moved steadily downward across my bare chest and along my quivering tummy.

  My skin was humming with tantalizing pleasure and my heart was sprinting to catch up to the way my body moved against the one that was pressing it down into the soft mattress under my back. I was caught in the middle of a cloud, floating on love and sex. It really was the best cure for any kind of bad dream or awful memory ever, and as cold air hit that hypersensitive place between my legs and the covers shifted away from the tangle of naked limbs, I was ready and aching for a kiss that was far more intimate and far more serious.

  “Titus . . .” Just saying his name made me feel better, stronger.

  He chuckled against my most sensitive place and it brought my hips up off the bed. I tugged on his hair to let him know he was headed in the right direction and he squeezed my ass in return.

  His head disappeared between my splayed legs and I gasped as he used his clever tongue to distract me. His fingers tickled the back of my knee as he started to devote his attention to all the slippery and needy flesh in front of his face. He licked. He sucked. He bit. He chuckled again the more anxious I got and the harder my hands grasped his hair. He used his hands and mouth in tandem until I couldn’t see straight, and when I was a quivering mass of nothing but pleasure and completion under him, he started all over again.

  After the second orgasm I was sure I would never move again. Titus let my legs slide back to the bed and then stopped to kiss his way along every scrape, every cut, every bruise, every mark or imperfection that hadn’t been there before I tangled with Conner’s man. The sweetness of the gesture got me all choked up, and once he was braced over me, his biceps straining as he held his considerable weight over me, I couldn’t stop from wrapping my arms around him and pulling him down so that he covered me like a sexy security blanket.

  He kissed my chin and my black eye. He kissed his way across the angry red mark the knife had left at my throat. He nuzzled his nose into my ear and whispered, “I’m so sorry I wasn’t there.”

  I could feel the remorse in his massive body. I could feel the way his regret and anger made his muscles tight. But honestly, I cared more about whether he’d stay once I revealed what I’d been planning for that Glock than I did that he wasn’t there to protect me from Zero. I rubbed my cheek against the roughness of his, held him close to me so that our hearts jumped and leaped to touch one another through our chests, and told him, “I can take care of myself and take care of you, Titus. No one should underestimate me.”

  He sighed into my ear and it made my hair flutter. He curled his arms underneath my shoulders and shifted so that his lean hips settled into the cradle of my own. We were touching as much as two people could touch. I had never felt so much a part of another human being in my life. It seemed like I would die if he were ever to be torn away from me. So much of Titus was now woven into the fabric of who I was and who I knew I deserved to be.

  He lifted his hips and let them drop back down, rubbing his erection between my swollen and sensitive folds. It was a breathlessly sexy tease that had me pulling my legs up along his sides and lifting my own hips to follow his movements.

  “I never underestimated you. I overestimated myself. I thought I could play this game, let you risk everything for the end goal, but I was wrong. You are more than more to me, Reeve. You are everything right now.”

  If his light caresses and reverent touches hadn’t been enough to make the tears spill over again, those words and the way they were growled at me out of the man and the beast’s mouth were. They were both staking their claim and I couldn’t have been happier.

  “I’m embarrassed to admit how long you’ve been everything for me, Titus. Any risk was worth it to end me up right where I am with you right now.” And God willing it was enough to keep us together like this after the truth came out.

  He slid along the crevice again. Making sure the tip of his cock hit my clit with each thrust and retreat. It was enough to have me tugging at him impatiently to just get inside. Sex with Titus had always been a full-contact sport, and while I liked the soft and sexy stimulation, I was needy and really wanted that sense of fullness and being owned that came with him entering into my ready heat. He was making an effort to be nice and thoughtful, considering what I had been through the night before, but I didn’t want the reminder. I didn’t want any of that to ever have a place here between us, so I locked my legs around his lower back, dug my ankles into the rock-hard globes of his ass, and impaled myself on his turgid cock.

  The way my body devoured him made us both gasp. I clawed at him with my fingernails and threw my head back so that I could look up at him. His eyes were luminous with silver heat, and a high red flush decorated his cheeks.

  “You already made it all better and kissed all my boo-boos. It was sweet, but now I need you to fuck me like you normally do, please.” I batted my eyelashes at him and nudged him again with my ankles, hoping he would get
the hint.

  His eyebrows dipped over his glowing eyes and white flashed on his face as he grinned at me. “Did you just ask me to please fuck you?”

  “Yes. Now, will you move?” I wiggled my hips impatiently, which made his dick twitch inside of me. I squeezed it back and he muttered a dirty word.

  “Well, since you were so polite about it . . .” He shifted his leg just a little so that my hips tilted upward and then began to ride me the way I was practically begging for. Our hips ground together. My breasts were flattened against his chest. Our breath mingled as we breathed each other in and out instead of kissing. His hands pulled on my shoulders, which would hurt after the tumble I took earlier, but I loved it. I needed it. I craved this sort of wild and unhinged kind of give-and-take with him. It was mine. I was the only one he gave it to, so there was no way I was going to let him hold it back from me.

  He growled some more, pushed my legs up even higher along his ribs, and grabbed a pillow that was next to my head. He shoved it under my backside, forcing my hips to lift up even more off the bed and then got to his knees as he continued to pound into me. He watched me from his elevated position. His eyes locked on mine and he drove us both closer and closer to the edge of orgasm. I loved the way he started to sweat, started to glimmer like a polished statue all hard and strong. It was an unbelievable turn-on, so I couldn’t help but rake my hands over my nipples. I stopped to play for a second, which made him move even faster and his eyes shine even brighter. When I felt his fingers dig deeper into the skin of my hips, I knew he was close.

  Since I was still reeling from the gifts he bestowed earlier with his mouth, I was further behind. I brushed the tips of my fingers over my abdomen, stopped to circle my belly button, loving the way he watched me the entire time. It felt nice to touch myself but it felt even better to know that when I did it, it made Titus lose his mind. He was breathing like he was running a marathon and his steady rhythm had turned slightly desperate and frantic. I paused at the apex where we were joined, let him brush against the tips of my fingers as he thrust in and out.