Beautifully Damaged (Beautifully Damaged series) by L.A. Fiore (15)

Rolling Acres was aptly named, since the place was situated among acres and acres of rolling green hills in Westchester. Trace pulled his motorcycle up to a gated parking lot as the attendant stepped out of his booth to greet us.

“Mr. Montgomery, welcome.”

“Hello, Sam.”

“Please pull right in.” Sam hit a button that was discreetly concealed against the wall of the booth, causing the gates to swing quietly open. The long, tree-lined drive brought us to a sprawling stone building that was surrounded by gardens, which I imagined would be filled with color come spring. As Trace parked, I couldn’t help but notice that the cars in the lot were all foreign and very expensive.

Trace waited for me to climb off before he followed, taking my helmet and placing it on his bike. He looked down at me nervously, almost awkwardly, and then he said, “Chelsea will just be finishing lunch and after she usually likes to walk to the pond to feed the ducks.”

“I like feeding ducks.”

He smiled then and the warmth of that smile caused a long, slow pull on my heart. He lowered his head before he whispered, “I like you.”

We started into the building and as soon as my eyes adjusted, I was impressed with how elegant yet comfortable the place appeared. The little touches of fresh flowers and potted plants made the place feel more like a home rather than a hospital. Trace led me down the hall to room 114 before he knocked. When the door was pulled open, we were greeted by a beautiful woman with a big smile on her face.

“Trace.” She threw her arms around her brother as his came around her. I stepped back to give the two a moment. When Chelsea pulled away from her brother, her gray eyes turned to me and her smile, I noticed, never faltered.

“Chelsea, this is my friend, Ember. I told you about her.”

My heart leaped at his words. Even though he hadn’t been ready to share her with me, he’d shared me with her.

“She’s pretty, just like you said.”

And then she held her hand out to me.

“I’m Chelsea. Nice to meet you, Ember.”

I took her hand into my own.

“It is my very great honor to meet you, Chelsea.”

“I like her, Trace. Can we feed the ducks now?”

He reached for her hand. “Absolutely.”

As we walked along, I couldn’t suppress the smile because Trace was right; she really was very childlike. She ran around us, skipping at times, telling us stories about making chocolate-chip cookies, watching movies, playing with her friends. She was, I suspected, a few years older than me, but she had the mannerisms of a carefree and happy eight-year-old girl.

I could see in Trace’s beautiful eyes that when he looked at his sister he felt responsible, he felt guilt, and that wasn’t fair because he had only been a kid himself when he begged for help and had been denied it. He had been only a child of fifteen left to his own devices to seek out that help.

We reached the pond, a beautiful sapphire pool that reflected the sun like thousands of little diamonds resting upon the surface. The mallard ducks swam a bit of a distance away. The vibrant green of the male duck heads met our eyes before the all-over brown of the females, but as soon as the bread pieces touched the glistening water, all of the ducks beelined for Chelsea. She squealed in delight.

“Aren’t they so pretty? The girls should have the pretty colors though, don’t you think, Ember?”

“I do, Chelsea.”

Trace reached for my hand and, for the next hour, we watched her joy as she fed the ducks.

Later, Trace took me to that same bistro and once our order had been taken, he reached across the table for my hand. The gesture was so much like the one that I witnessed with him and Chelsea that it caused a small tug at my heart.

He said, “Thank you for coming with me. I know that Chelsea really enjoyed meeting you.”

“She’s lovely, Trace.”

He turned silent for a minute; his thoughts were his own. “In a few months, she’ll turn twenty-six. She should be dating, maybe married with a child of her own, and instead she’s perpetually an eight-year-old.”

“Did you ever consider that if you and Chelsea had not left your house that night, you two would have died too?”

In response to my words he just sat there, stock-still. I squeezed his hand before I added, “Perpetually eight is far better than being perpetually dead. You saved her, and in more ways than one.”

Trace brought me back to Kyle’s and parked his motorcycle at the curb before he walked me to my door. I hesitated to go in because I wasn’t ready to leave him, but at the same time the past two days had been so emotional that I needed some time to process it all.

His eyes held mine as he reached up and ran his finger along my jaw. “Could I see you tomorrow?”

Oh, to hell with needing time to process, I needed Trace more. “I would really like that.”

“I’ll pick you up around noon?”

“I’ll be waiting.”

He leaned into me and brushed his lips over mine.

“Good night, Ember.”

I leaned against the door and practically sighed, “Night.”

When I entered the apartment, Kyle was waiting for me with a glass of wine. He didn’t even wait for me to drop my keys on the table before he asked, “Do you want to talk about it?”

I walked over to the sofa and settled next to him, reaching for my glass as I did.

“You know me so well.”

“How did it go?”

“It was wonderful. His sister is beautiful and sweet.”

Kyle settled back on the sofa and grinned. “Start from the beginning.”

Midday the next day, I was finishing getting dressed when the doorbell rang. I walked out into the living room just as Kyle opened the door for Trace. The tension between the men could have been cut with a knife as we left, but I understood because Kyle was the one to help me pick up the pieces after Trace broke my heart. Kyle had been a good friend.

Moments later we were driving down the street and I tightened my hold on Trace, resting my cheek against his back. I felt the shudder that went through him in response. We drove for a while before reaching our destination and when I saw that we were at Nathan’s, love burned through me.

“One hot dog with everything on it,” Trace said to me before he leaned back to kiss me. My heart stuttered in response because I had shared with him my love of hot dogs during one of our countless phone conversations and he hadn’t forgotten.

“You remembered!”

In the week that followed, I spent every day and most evenings with Trace, but he always brought me home at the end of the date, leaving me at the door with a good-night kiss. One night he took me back to his apartment, where we ate popcorn and watched Christian Bale as Batman. Another night, we just strolled through the Village, talking.

I knew what he was doing: trying to reconnect, trying to bring us back to where we had been before he pushed me away. The thing was, I didn’t need any of it. As much as I loved every second that I spent with him, I understood why he’d acted as he did. I loved him, never stopped, and more, I wanted him to hold me, to touch me, to love me.

Time for some drastic measures. We were at dinner, a small Greek place, and were just finishing our main courses when I reached across the table for Trace’s hand.

“Trace?”

“Yes, love?”

I leaned closer to him so no one else would overhear. “If you don’t make love to me, I think I might go insane.” His body practically started to hum with want.

“Are you sure?”

“God, yes.”

“Check, please!”

We barely made it outside of the restaurant before Trace pulled me to him and kissed me so carnally that my stomach flip-flopped with desire. We broke several traffic laws to make it back to his apartment in under ten minutes.

As we entered his apartment, he closed the door behind us and I turned to find him leaning against the door watching me. The look in his eyes burned desire through my body. I knew he wouldn’t make a move; he wanted to, but was following my lead. I wanted him to touch me, I wanted to touch him, so I held his gaze before I whispered, “Make love to me.”

That was all it took. He walked across the floor and pulled me into his arms. His mouth fused to mine as his hands sought the hem of my shirt, pulling from me only long enough to rid me of it and my bra. My hands were eager for the feel of the hard smoothness of his skin as I ran my fingers over his heated back, causing those muscles to bunch and cord in response. He lifted me into his arms and started walking down the hallway to his room. I pressed my mouth to his neck, sucking the blood to just under the surface of his skin before I bit him. He growled in response. He tossed me on his bed as he stripped and then he pounced, caging me with his aroused, hard body.

“I can’t wait. I need to be inside you.” His hands lifted my skirt and pulled my panties off. He touched me and found me ready before he settled himself between my thighs and slowly joined us. I wanted it hard, but loved that he took it so painfully slow.

“Oh God, you feel so good,” he growled as he started to move, each stroke causing the delicious tension to build until I felt as if I was being torn apart from the pleasure that ached to the point of pain. I gripped his excellent ass as I urged him to go deeper, harder, faster and when he did, I came apart, screaming out his name. I felt him tense and with two more thrusts, he closed his eyes, threw his head back and roared with release.

When he collapsed on top of me, I thought I’d never move again until he started to roll my pebbled nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Just like that the tension started to grow.

“Trace, we couldn’t possibly.”

“No?” He rolled away from me and settled back against the pillows. He eyed me, staring a moment longer at my breasts and between my legs before he said, “I could go all night.”

I started to throb.

“But if you’re sure…” His hand moved from over his head and came to rest on his chest. There was a twinkle in his eyes just before he slid his hand lower down his body. I pulled my greedy gaze from his hand to his face. He looked positively naughty. I looked back to his hand; it was just reaching his abs before it stopped.

Lust made me almost yell, “Don’t stop there.”

“Do you want to watch?”

“Oh my God, yes.”

His hand closed over his erection and his legs spread slightly wider. He moved with deliberate slowness, down the shaft and up. He moaned deep in his throat as he slowly increased his pace. His eyes closed as pleasure moved across his features. His hips started rocking slightly back and forth while his other hand joined the first. He reached for the heavy sacs between his legs and started to squeeze. It was the hottest thing I had ever seen in my life. I wanted to watch him bring himself to orgasm, but I wanted to ride him there more. I crawled over to him and straddled his lap. His hands immediately fell away, but his eyes never opened. “Took you long enough.”

I moved with the same deliberateness he had as I slowly sank down onto him.

“Fucking sweet.” His hand moved to my hips as I started to move. He leaned forward and sucked my breast into his mouth. I cradled his head in my hands to hold his mouth there as my hips moved wildly against him. His hand found its way between my legs and touched me in just the right spot. I felt the start of the orgasm just as Trace tensed and when we came, we came together.

That night, despite happy exhaustion, I had trouble sleeping so I lay there for a while watching the gentle rise and fall of Trace’s chest. His dreams seemed to be untouched by the horrors of his childhood. After an hour of sleeplessness, I decided to make myself some warm milk, so I climbed from bed, pulled on Trace’s T-shirt, and padded down the hall. As soon as I entered the kitchen, I saw a bottle of wine on the counter and opted to have a glass of that instead.

I took my glass into the living room and settled on the sofa, pulling my legs under me before looking out the window as thoughts fired randomly in my brain.

Trace and his sister were sexually abused as children and the thought of those two precious souls having been violated enraged me in a way that I’d never felt before. Tears filled my eyes thinking of him—both of them—as young, helpless children in a situation that they had no control over. In Trace’s case, it explained his behavior as an adult: the plethora of single-dated women, the sex, the fighting. Everything that he did in his adult life, he controlled. Never was the control taken from his hands.

His father got off lightly. He should have been made to suffer the pain and helplessness that he had inflicted on his children. And his mother, what the fuck was her problem? How the hell could a woman bear children and then sit back and allow harm to come to them?

What was his uncle’s involvement? More now than ever I understood Trace’s reaction to him—and to think I was voluntarily working at the man’s campaign headquarters! I might need to have my head examined. I was thankful that Trace finally was able to share his hell. The fact that it was with me touched me and made me feel a connection to him that no one ever had. Maybe, having spoken of it and facing it, he really would begin to heal.

I was so lost in my thoughts I didn’t realize that Trace had joined me until he was standing right in front of me. Thankfully, he had pulled on his boxer-briefs, though actually it was a bit more of a tease than if he had been standing there naked.

“I could look at you all day,” I said.

He hunched down just in front of me and reached for my glass to place on the coffee table before he rested his hands on my legs. “I like that you’re looking.”

He ran his hands up my legs and under his shirt that I was wearing before lifting it slightly so his fingers could trace the tattoo on my hip. His eyes followed his movements and then locked onto mine. His voice was hoarse when he said, “You have no idea what this does to me: to know that you marked yourself for me.”

“Trace.”

I reached for his hand and pulled him up to join me on the sofa as I shifted to curl myself into his lap.

“We need to look into your parents’ deaths.”

“I know.”

“Uncle Josh is very discreet.”

He ran his fingers through my hair and the feel of those strong fingers caressing my scalp almost had me purring.

“I’ll call your dad tomorrow. I need to speak to him anyway.”

I looked up at that. “Why?”

His grin was positively wicked before he pressed a kiss on my nose. “That’s for me to know and for you to find out.”

“Really, there are ways to make you talk.”

His eyebrow lifted ever so slightly. “How?”

My fingers dug into his side as I attempted to tickle him to no avail. Then he lifted me from his lap and dropped me on my back as a devilish gleam lit his eyes.

“Oh, love, you shouldn’t have done that.”

He was a Jedi Master in tickling. When he finally relented and stilled those wicked fingers, I had tears running down my cheeks from laughing so hard. He looked down at me with a combination of humor and desire.

“You’re all flushed.” He reached for the hem of my shirt and started to lift it as his hungry eyes devoured each inch of bare skin he exposed.

“You’re flushed everywhere. I’d like to see how far down the blush goes.”

And then he was lifting me into his arms and carrying me down the hall.

I ran my hand over the muscles of his arm. “My, what big muscles you have.”

He looked me right in the eyes when he replied, “That’s a very appropriate reference, my dearest Ember, since I fully intend to eat you.”

My jaw dropped. Again? His lips brushed over my cheek to my ear before he added, “Until you shatter.”

The only words that my sexually hazed brain could form were, “Hell, yeah.”