Now
Dex wants to hide me. He says it’s because he needs me even more, now that he lost his best friend. My heart is broken for him. For Holly. Holly is devastated. They took her to Dawn’s place in the Black Building. It’s secure enough to keep them safe. Everyone is on lockdown.
Dex, however, decides he’s taking me to his dad’s place. He’s back to not talking, but I think he’s insistent because he needs Audra, too. Which is sweet, even if I’m not entirely sure it’s a great idea. I’m a walking target. People in my orbit are getting hurt and even dying.
Part of me wants to jump out of the car and just run away. Let the bad man have me, keep everyone else safe. Then the more rational part connects this to fear of meeting his father. The asshole who abandoned him and his mother. I already don’t like the dick, so I doubt this will go over well.
The drive there is long. Not because it’s far away, but because he’s been driving in circles and twists, making sure no one is following us. It’s given me too much time to waffle between the jumping and the staying.
It helps that Dex has tethered me. Our fingers intertwine on my lap. “On the Vista” by Blakroc plays over the radio from Dex’s phone. The melancholy beats fit the mood, perhaps even set it.
We pull up outside the sprawling ranch house in the heart of a gated community. This place is money. Dex parks behind a blue rental car on the circle drive. The driveway is long, winding its way to a three-car garage. Two motorcycles sit under fitted covers in front of one of the garage doors, but no other cars are visible.
Dex stares at the house before killing the engine. He’s holding on to me, but he feels so far away. I can’t help myself; I need to close the distance. I slide in between him and the steering wheel, straddling his lap.
“Talk to me,” I whisper in his ear.
He ignores my request and captures my lips with his.
“Dex,” I sigh. “I love you.”
I break the contact and run my fingers over his face, tracing his scar, the beauty marks, his full lips that are darkened from kisses. I want to stare at this face for the rest of my life.
My hair curtains us in. It feels like the world no longer exists. I place his hand over my heart.
“You’re in here. You have a home here. Feel free to hide here from your pain. I’ll always protect you with everything I have, but please don’t hide from me. Don’t pull away.”
“Never,” he says, pulling my face back to his and recapturing my lips. When he breaks away, he continues. “You’re my soul, Maddie. You’re everything that’s good in me. The only light I got left.”
Despite the heavy cloud of death that hangs over us, I find a smile pulling at the corners of my mouth.
“We should probably go in, though, and stop making out in front of my dad’s house. It’s a little awkward,” he says, an answering grin fighting for purchase on his face.
I nod, but make no move to get up. “Yeah, that’s probably a good idea.”
He pops the handle to his door and helps me climb out. I stare at the house and decide I’m ready. I want to meet his family. I want him to be a part of my family. He’s opening the trunk to get our bags when I walk past him to the door.
There’s a porch that spans almost the full length of the house. I step onto it, looking back to make sure Dex is coming. I poise my hand above the doorbell, but before I can push it, the door swings open.
Broad shoulders and a defined chest fill the frame. My gaze tracks up the muscular build to meet eyes filled with flecks of gold, green, and blue. The world shifts beneath me, and I’m rocked to the core.
“Laine?” that voice asks.
What we did was wrong.
You’re a dead man.
He hurt you.
It was our fault.
Flashes of the past take over all rational thought. My legs give out as darkness flecked with bright spots begin to crowd my vision. I expect to hit the ground, but instead, I’m back in familiar arms again. He catches me, pulling me into his body.
“Law?” The question leaks out of me in a breathless rasp.
Then
I don’t know how long I’d sat there, when the doorbell rang, and my body carried me on autopilot to the door. My mind was wrecked; I couldn’t think straight. I opened the door without even thinking to look at who could be there.
Law stood there, his hand rubbing the back of his neck, his eyes trained on the ground. His hair was a mess, and he’d lost the suit coat and tie. His sleeves were rolled up his forearms, exposing his colorful tattoos.
“I wanted to apologize for the way I acted, with both you and him. I’d like to talk to—” He cut off as he looked at me. His eyes went from apologetic to furious in a blink. His hand slammed into the door, and he pushed past me. “Where is he? I’m going to fucking kill him.”
“He’s not here.”
He turned back to me, and his eyes softened. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine,” I answered as he walked back to where I stood near the doorway.
“You’re not fine. He hurt you.”
He reached up toward my face, and I flinched. He grimaced and gently grasped my chin, brushing his fingertips over my uninjured cheek.
“Where is your first aid kit?”
“In the kitchen. Why?”
“I’m going to clean the blood off your face.”
“I’ve blood on my face?” I asked in disbelief as I reached up to touch my cheek. I winced at the wetness and pulled my hand back, red coating my fingertips.
“Come on,” Law said, shutting the front door. “Take me to the kitchen. Let’s get you cleaned up.”
I turned and walked into the kitchen, grabbing the first aid kit and setting it on the counter. Law’s hand covered mine before I could let go. I could feel the heat of his body behind me. He brushed my hair off my shoulder.
“I’m sorry for this. I’m feeling kind of responsible because it wouldn’t have happened if I wasn’t an ass. Seems that’s all I ever do with you is fuck up.”
“It’s not your fault,” I said, turning back to look up at him. “You were just trying to help. It just turned into a bad situation. This—” I pointed to my face. “This isn’t your fault at all.”
He gripped my hips and hoisted me up onto the counter, so we were closer to eye level with each other.
He looked away to open the first aid kit. “I shouldn’t have let you leave with him when he was obviously—”
“You didn’t let me do anything. This isn’t your problem. We’ve been out of each other’s lives longer than we were ever in them.”
He tore some paper towels off the roll on the counter and wet them. He tilted my chin back with his thumb, his fingers gently curving around the back of my neck. He started wiping my face down, working around the injured parts.
“That’s not true. We may not be physically near, but you’re always with me, Laine. I started fighting for you.” I made a face at him. He gave me a sad smile. “I was always talented in the ring, I just didn’t have the drive. But I wanted to prove myself worthy of you. Make you see me as your equal. A man, not just some punk kid that screwed around with his friends in a garage band. I thought—” He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter what I thought. It was bad enough for me to lose you, but then you went and got famous. Now there’s pictures of you in magazines and on the internet. I turn on the TV—I see a story on you. I listen to the radio—hear your songs.” His eyes darted back and forth as he searched my eyes; looking for what, I didn’t know.
“Sorry,” I said, at a loss for what else to say. I looked down at my hand to avoid his inquisitive stare.
He snorted. “Stop being sorry for things you can’t control, Laine.”
I raised one eyebrow at him. “Isn’t this how this conversation started?”
“Touché.” He smirked and that dimple I loved so much appeared. “Still, it’s not going to stop me from feeling like shit for not protecting you.”
He pulled out the hydrogen peroxide. “This might sting a bit,” he said, putting the liquid on a piece of gauze.
It won’t, I thought. But he didn’t know that. He tilted my head back again and with a featherlight touch started cleaning the cut on my cheek. It didn’t take long for the hunger to settle in his eyes.
“Fuck, stop.” I shoved his hand away, annoyed by the tenderness he was showing when I knew I didn’t deserve it.
He chuckled and blew gently on the cut, thinking that it was the pain that bothered me. He gripped my chin a little firmer. “Hold still, I just have a little bit more to clean up. Then we can move on from this.”
He touched the cut again, and I started to bitch about it, but then his mouth was on mine. My open mouth gave him instant access, and his tongue stroked against mine. I was shocked at first, but then the familiarity of his kiss washed over me. I didn’t think; I just reacted and kissed him back.
His hands dove into my hair, and as I responded, his grip on my hair tightened. It had been so long since someone had kissed me like they were suffocating, and I was the air they needed to breathe. So long since someone handled me like they were sure I wouldn’t break under a firm grip. I moaned, the shock of the sound snapping me back to reality, and I pulled away. We stared at each other, our breathing labored.
“Sorry,” he said, looking anything but. “I couldn’t think of a better way to distract you. It’s the only thing on my mind when I’m around you.”
“I—” I stopped because I couldn’t think of what to say.
He turned back to the first aid kit and grabbed a butterfly bandage, applying it to my cheek. It gave me a break from all the intensity. I knew that if I was truly honest with myself, I never stopped loving him. But this just wasn’t the time or the place for that kind of conversation. “All done.” He closed the first aid kit and returned it to the cabinet.
“Law,” I said, placing my hand on his forearm. “Thank you. For taking care of me. For coming to apologize—”
His stare was intense, looking at my left hand as it rested on his arm. “You’re not wearing his ring.”
“Um, did you fail to catch on to what happened?” I pointed at my face.
He leaned forward, resting his hands on the counter on either side of me. “What did happen, Laine?” His brows pinched and his jaw clenched, as his lips pressed into a flat line.
“I said something I shouldn’t’ve,” I said, focusing on my hands. I couldn’t tell him what started it. I really didn’t want to talk about it. Especially not with him, the source of the anger that fed into that fight. I looked up at him as he stared at me in silence, waiting for an answer. I sighed in frustration. “What do you want from me, Law?”
“Why would he get so pissed about me? Why would it escalate to this when you got home? I’ve only seen you a handful of times, and you’re not the kind that strays, but he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to act like that without reason.”
“He was here when you left. He got to watch me every day, going through the motions but not really living. He sat by for months while I…” I shook my head, not wanting to go there. “But really the biggest problem was that he heard you that day at the derby. You basically told him that I’ve a preference for rough sex and ass play.” I could feel the anger swelling up in me again. Fucking Law. “And he’s not like that. He’s not into kinky shit at all. Is that what you want to hear? He doesn’t know about the rest of it. Fucking Lord knows that would send him further into crazy town than he’s already gone.”
“That was years ago,” he said, confusion stamped on his face. “He’s been giving you shit for that this whole time? Why would you even agree to marry him?”
“No. He wasn’t like that at all. It wasn’t until he got back from this last deployment. I didn’t even know that he had heard you. But he’s changed. I know he has PTSD, and we’ve been trying to get him to get help… but the tour… none of it makes it any easier for him.”
“He’s been doing this since he got back?” His voice was low, with a deadly undertone that caused me to look up. His arm muscles were bulging with the strain of his grip on the edge of the counter. From his look, it was clear that he thought Jared had been beating me on a regular basis.
“No,” I defended. “This is the first time he’s ever laid a hand on me.”
“Then what would set him off like this, Laine?” He raised his voice, his disbelief apparent in his tone.
“I told him you were a better fuck, okay?” I yelled. “Is that what you want to hear? Does that make you happy? I rubbed it in his face that you’ll always be something more than he’ll ever be. And it doesn’t help that he had to sit by and watch me fall apart when you left. You fucking destroyed me, Law. He tried to put me back together, but he never had all the pieces.”
“I destroyed you? You broke up with me.”
“Because you wouldn’t accept that moving here was the right thing to do. It could’ve been temporary—you could’ve been here every night to fuck me in this house while he had to watch you come and go—but you chose to walk away. You didn’t even put up a fight. You just left town. You cut me off. So don’t fucking sit there and act like you were the victim.”
“Fuck, Laine. I see that clearly now, but back then I thought that you were choosing him.” He pushed back from the counter and paced the kitchen floor. “He had the means to support you, and I didn’t. I started boxing to prove to you that I could be that man. That I could take care of you and your girls. But when I came back, it was too fucking late.” His hand went to the back of his neck. “I thought I knew what love was until I met you. But you—you’re the kind that no amount of space or time will let me forget just how stupid I was.” He tipped his head back and laughed. Silence followed. Then he pinned me with his gaze. “You’re not with him anymore. You want me to fight?” He took two steps and was back in front of me.
I opened my mouth to reply, and he crashed into me, his tongue taking advantage of my open mouth. And this kiss was different. It was claiming, consuming. His hands fisted my hair, pulling my head back to the exact angle he wanted it at. My body responded to him like the puppet he trained it to be. His arm fell down to my waist, and he pulled me toward him so we were pressed together. I ground against him, and he groaned.
Common sense warred with desire in my brain. It felt so good, my willpower was slipping further away by the second.
“Stop,” I gasped in a brief second his mouth parted from mine.
He pressed himself tighter against me until I could feel his hard length against the apex of my thighs, the heat rolling off of him, the way he thrust against me—so eager he couldn’t stop the instinct to drive into me, even with clothes on.
“I’m not stopping until my cock is deep inside your pussy where it belongs,” he pulled away and said between the kisses and nips he trailed down my neck. “I’m making you mine again, Laine. So you need to use our safe word if this is too much.”
He bit down on my nipple through my dress, and my head fell back as a keening moan escaped my lips. I couldn’t bring myself to say the word. I couldn’t stop. I’d been needing this for so long. Deprived of someone who knew my body and how to give me what I needed without asking. Without choice. His hand slid up my skirt and pressed into the throbbing bundle of nerves. He pushed my panties aside, and his finger slipped into me.
“Jesus, you’re wet, Bumpkin.”
My body shivered at the name and the sensations his hand was drawing out as his fingers entered me. His mouth was back on mine while his fingers worked me toward release. It didn’t take long after being denied for so long, the pressure built up within me like a freight train barreling toward a cliff’s edge. I was powerless to stop it, and I didn’t want to.
It started in little pulses to the rhythm of his fingers pumping in and out. Tiny waves of pleasure that had me gasping out disconnected moans. Then it exploded as he pinched my clit and bit down on my nipple at the same time. A scream throttled out of me as I hit the crest of pleasure.
His fingers disappeared, and his cock slammed into me before I came down from my orgasm, each thrust drawing out the pleasure in waves. His fingertips dug into the cheeks of my ass as he pounded into me.
“You’re mine, Laine. You were made for me. We were made for each other,” he growled in my ear before he bit down on my shoulder.
I cried out in veneration. He was undoing me, dismantling every condemnation that I’d felt toward myself and what I craved by giving it to me while slaking his own thirst. He lifted me up, walking across the room until my back slammed into the door of the pantry. His rhythm was relentless. It was raw and primal. Each thrust felt like an exaltation. I felt it, too—the relief of letting go, giving in to the intrinsic urges that were inherent in who we were at our core.
I ripped open his shirt, buttons clattering to the floor. My fingernails were desperate to rake into his skin. My mind barely registered the new ink across his chest as I clawed his back. One of his hands gripped the neckline of my dress, and the sound of ripping fabric echoed in my mind as the cloth gave way and his mouth found my breasts. I bit down on his shoulder and he groaned, quickening his pace.
His thumb returned to the bundle of nerves at my center, and the fingers of his other hand teased my puckered hole.
“Come,” he breathed in my ear.
I detonated at his whispered command, submitting my pleasure to him. The orgasm barreled through my body, my brain losing control of everything. Synapses failed to communicate anything else but the overwhelming sensation of release. I screamed as my limbs convulsed, and his pace increased until he found his release. He collapsed against me, pressing me into the door.
We stayed there, still joined together, breathing heavily into the silence. He searched my eyes, his own filled with such reverence. A crooked smile tugged up the corner of his mouth and his dimple appeared.
“You okay?” he asked.
“Yeah,” I answered between ragged breaths.
Crash!
Something fragile shattered from the front of the house, followed by the front door slamming. The reality of everything came crashing back to me with that sound. Guilt flooded me. Fuck. I pushed at Law and scrambled to put myself back together as I raced for the door, Law right behind me.
I flung the front door open and ran to the end of the driveway, to the open security gate that surrounded the house. He was here. I know he was. He saw everything. I looked both ways down the road—nothing. I collapsed to the ground as sobs released from my body.
“Laine?”
“It had to be Jared. He saw us, Law. Fuck. What have we done? What was I thinking?” I said, looking down at the raw scrapes in my palms from the concrete below me. The scuff of Law’s shoes on the pavement gave away his movement toward me. “You need to leave.”
He stopped. “Laine—”
“Go!” I screamed. “Leave, now. I’ve gotta find him.”
I pulled myself up from the ground and ran back into the house.