I shot a man.
I shot a man who defiled me for years all for some depraved, perverted reason to use me as a way to seek his revenge on a dead man.
As much as I tried, no matter how hard I squeezed my eyes to erase the images and words Cain had spoken earlier, they wouldn’t stop flipping through my mind in slow motion. As if constantly reconsidering what he said would have it make sense.
It didn’t.
And yet, even though I knew a sliver of remorse should have whispered into my conscience that what I had done was wrong—reprehensible—nothing could stop me from finding solace in the moment. I found peace in the cab of the rusted out SuperCab truck with Ryker’s hand on my thigh, humming to the rock tune filtering through the speakers.
The truck’s headlights were the only thing that illuminated the driveway as we pulled in.
I sucked in a breath, the peacefulness of the moment before was gone and replaced with a tingling in my fingers and arms.
“Why are we here?”
He eyed me warily as he pushed the shift into park. “You wanted to go home.”
I stared at the house in front of me. It had practically been my second home growing up. Liv’s home. The home I knew she never wanted to return to, and the same home she had given Ryker the keys to only days before.
For us.
He jumped out of the truck. I frowned at the house, but at the same time, my hand opened the door and I slid to the cracked pavement.
When I reached him at the front of the truck, my limbs and arms still tingling with uncertainty and nerves, I dragged my eyes to Ryker’s.
“We can’t just go inside.”
With his face angled down, I could barely see him in the darkness, but I didn’t miss the way his eyes crinkled. “It’s ours. Why not?”
“Because,” I said, my eyes flickering between him and the front door. “It’s weird.”
Ryker shrugged and pulled me up the sidewalk and to the door. The keys jingled in his hand while he found the right one. My breath hitched as he opened the door and smiled down at me.
“Should I carry you over the threshold?” A mischievous grin tilted his lips as he wiggled his eyebrows.
I shoved his shoulder with the palm of my hand and pushed him out of the way. “Don’t be stupid.”
My breath caught in my throat as I entered the dark room. I only had to run my hand down the wall to my right and the entire room was completely illuminated in brightness. And yet, it seemed so empty at the same time.
Everything from Liv’s childhood had been replaced. She had told me this when I asked her for certain if she wanted to give me the keys to her house, but she had simply said everything from her life there was gone anyway.
She wasn’t wrong.
“This is like, the ultimate man home.”
I nodded at Ryker’s slow voice that rumbled behind me.
My eyes took in everything as my body began to feel drained from the day’s events. “I know,” I said, my mouth opened wide and a large yawn escaped. I didn’t bother trying to hide it. “It’s so weird.”
“We’ll make it ours,” he said and began directing me up the flight of stairs. The warmth of his hand on my lower back singed through my T-shirt and directly into my skin. I let him push me along, my feet feeling heaving and slower with every step as I trudged up the staircase and down the hall.
I stopped when he led me directly into the master bedroom. All over the house, masculinity echoed in every corner and every wall and every furnishing. Dark browns and blacks and reds coupled with beer signs and motorcycle logos and artwork had lined the walls.
But this room… it wasn’t what I expected.
“I had Jules do this.” His breath in my ear elicited pleasured bumps along my hairline and the nape of my neck. The warm hand on my back grew hotter as he pushed me begrudgingly through the door. “I didn’t think you’d want to sleep in Bull’s old bed.”
He had that right. But still, this didn’t explain the sheer silver colored drapes over a four-poster King Size bed. It didn’t explain the pale, greyish blue pillows and decadent bedcovers. And it certainly didn’t explain the majestic mahogany furniture that sat on both sides of the bed and one large dresser on the wall.
“Do you like it?”
My jaw dropped. I was unable to speak. He had rendered me speechless with his thoughtfulness, but also with his assumption that I would live there with him.
I took a step away from him and instantly felt the loss of heat on my body. I shivered and crossed my arms as I turned to him, my head tilted to the side. “Isn’t this too soon? I mean, it’s too soon. It’s only been a week since we really started speaking again and so much has happened.”
The more I rambled, the wider Ryker’s smile grew.
“It’s too soon?” he asked as he took a step toward me. I stepped back and nodded. My fingers dug into the skin on my elbows because all I truly wanted to do was reach out, tug on his short black hair, and draw his lips to mine.
But this was crazy.
“You got Jules to do this?” I asked, ignoring his question as I took in the room. It was beautiful. Masculine and elegant at the same time. Completely romantic in all of it.
I wandered to the bed, reached out, and ran my hand down the shimmery gray stripe in one of the half dozen pillows propped on the bed. Silk. It had to have cost a fortune.
“Why would you do this?” I looked at Ryker over my shoulder. He padded toward me and sat on the edge of the bed.
His hand snaked around my waist and pulled me to him until I was standing nestled between his thighs. The rough denim abraded the soft skin on my exposed thighs as he shifted me where he wanted me.
A line appeared between his eyes. “You’re afraid of this. Why?”
I looked back at the pillows. Elegant and soft. So… not me. “I don’t know. It’s fast.”
My lip twitched, and I bit down on it. A thousand jumbled thoughts tumbled through my mind but none made enough sense to voice out loud. I couldn’t tell what they all were, just that nothing this good had ever happened to me before.
It had always been Ryker. But as he sat before me, his hands loosely holding my hips, worry and fear appeared in his furrowed brow and tightened jaw.
“It’s not that it’s not beautiful,” I told him. Because it was. I reached out with a finger and dragged it down his cheek and jaw before I stopped at his chin. Shrugging one shoulder, I let my hand fall to my side.
“Then what?”
“Everything’s happening so fast,” I admitted. His reappearance in my life less than two months ago, being taken, being beaten, held by a mob family, my mom, Cain… my life was certainly not dull.
Ryker gripped my hand in his and brought it to his lips. He pressed his lips gently against my knuckles, my palm, and then my inner wrists. He tightened his grip as I squirmed beneath his piercing, lustful gaze and the tickling warmth of his breath on my sensitive skin.
“If I could go back five years and never leave, I would.”
I nodded, a slow burn beginning in my throat. “I know.”
“I thought we’d agreed we’ve wasted enough time apart.”
“We did.”
He tugged me forward, one hand wrapped around my waist, and we fell back onto the bed, Ryker beneath me, and we shifted so we were lying side by side.
“So what’s the problem, then?” His hand ran through my hair and down the side of my body. His eyes followed his hand as he trailed my body over my clothes slowly as if he wanted to memorize every dip and curve.
My hand ran through his own silky hair as I bit my bottom lip. “I’m afraid it won’t last,” I finally admitted.
He rolled forward, capturing me beneath him and pulling me to him with an arm around my waist. I was pinned to the bed and I had been correct. The coverings were decadent and soft and incredibly comfortable. I wanted to sink into the bed with Ryker on top of me and never come out.
“I’ll have to do everything I can then, I suppose,” he began with his nose almost touching mine. His breath ghosted across my skin as his eyes stayed trained on mine. He leaned forward until our lips were touching, brushing against mine as he spoke. “To prove that you have nothing to be afraid of anymore.”
With my clothes from the day before thrown on, I padded my feet down the hallway and the stairs to the kitchen. I knew this house like it was the back of my hand, yet I still expected at some point for Cherry to pop around the corner with a warm smile on her or Liv’s dad, Bull, to be sitting in the recliner with a beer in his hand and the remote in his lap regardless of the time of day.
None of that happened though as I wandered through the house and took in the completely empty feel of the place. The house Bull had turned from a family home into a rotted out bachelor pad.
My heart ached for Liv and what she must have felt as she walked through these doors for the first time in five years only to find everything important to her, completely gone.
“Coffee?”
Ryker’s deep and husky morning voice brought my mind out of my wandering and back to the present.
“Sure, thanks.” I watched as he poured a cup of coffee. His back was to me and he was only wearing the jeans he’d worn the day before. The muscles in his back rippled with every small movement he made as he reached for a mug in the cabinet. When he turned, I looked away, somehow embarrassed I’d been checking him out in Bull and Cherry’s kitchen.
“Thanks.” I took a quick sip and looked around the kitchen. When Cherry was alive and Liv lived here, it was a bright lime green. A bright color completely at odds with the dark life she lived, but Cherry had always insisted on finding the happiness everywhere she looked. Now it was a dreary and drab gray color. “This is weird. Being here.”
With one fluid movement, he had an arm around my waist and pulled me into his lap at the kitchen table. Amazingly, not a single drop of coffee spilled from either of our mugs. He reached for my mug and set it on the table before he cupped my cheek in his hand.
“I thought we’d go do some shopping today. Get some things for the house and new furniture—whatever you want.”
I pulled my coffee to my lips and sipped. The fragrant aroma of caramel flavored coffee stung my nose. My favorite kind. I wondered for a brief moment if he knew that or if Jules or Liv played a role in procuring coffee for our new place.
His hand ran down my hair to my lower back and he hugged me tighter to him. “Are we going to talk about what happened yesterday?”
“There’s nothing to talk about.” I shook my head and ignored the questioning gaze I saw in his eyes. Why wasn’t I freaking out? Why wasn’t I upset? I assumed part of it was because I was still in shock over everything I’d learned and done. The other part simply didn’t care enough about either Cain or my mom to expend any further effort in thinking about them. They were gone, and I didn’t care where they went.
I opened my mouth to explain just that right as a blaring ring blasted from the pocket of his jeans.
His hands left mine immediately as he cursed. “I have to take this.”
In another second, I was unceremoniously plopped into an empty chair. Ryker turned his back to me and answered the phone.
“Meg?” he asked, his voice tight. I watched as he ran a hand through his hair before his shoulders tensed. “Are you okay?”
I tensed along with Ryker. Not from the concern he apparently had, but because of the way he stood, so tall and strong, and how his voice softened instantly as he exhaled. The way that, as he continued to talk to her, his voice lightened with quiet laughter, and he never once turned to me.
My focus went to my coffee mug as if it was the most important thing in the world. I wrapped my hands around the warmed ceramic, my thumbs rubbing up and down mindlessly as I tried to contain the jealous, dark tendrils that increased inside of me with each easy laugh that rolled from Ryker’s lips.
He kept his back to me, his shoulder braced on the doorframe of the kitchen that faced the four-season screened porch at the back of the house.
From his profile, I could see small laugh lines crinkle at the edges of his eyes. His lips were wide in an easy smile as he threw his head back and laughed at whatever Meg said to him.
His voice dropped further. He calmed and I watched as his entire body melted into the wood.
“Hey buddy,” his soft, deep voice rumbled into the phone. “I miss you, too.”
Something filled the air in the room as Ryker spoke. An intimacy or a pure love that was so vastly different than anything I had ever felt from him—or anyone in my entire life—I suddenly felt as if I was a voyeur, peeking in on someone’s most private moments.
It was the way Ryker tilted his head when he spoke, the way his brow pulled in as he listened to the boy I knew was Brayden as if he was the most important person in his entire life.
And I couldn’t help but feel envious of a boy I had never met and probably never would. I tilted back the ceramic mug, draining the hot liquid in a large swallow. The jealous tendrils in my veins spread until my body had been warmed from the coffee and the heat that spread through my veins.
I was jealous of a little boy.
I hated it, but it was the truth. Ryker had something with that woman and her son that I had never had. I had never had the chance to have it with him. He had a family.
Not by blood and not by marriage, but a family nonetheless.
My nose stung as I listened to Ryker soothe the clearly upset boy on the line. His calming tones were unequally matched with the wrinkles lining his forehead as he dipped his head, exhaled a breath, and shoved his hand through his hair.
“He’s not handling this well,” he snapped in a harsh tone. I watched as he swore and began pacing the four-season porch.
The room chilled to just below freezing while Ryker continued to argue with Meg. And then my world tilted on its axis as he confidently and assuredly said, “I’ll come back.”
My head dropped into my lap, and I released my harsh grip on the cold coffee mug. With one last look back at Ryker as he continued pacing the room—never once looking in my direction—I stared at the only man I’d ever loved and realized with finality that I wasn’t the only priority in his life.
It shouldn’t have stung as forcefully as it did, but my hand flew to my chest, pressing against the sharp-shooting pain lancing through me as if I had been shot.
I must have gasped, or done something, because from across the room, Ryker’s eyes flew to mine. His jaw clenched and he spoke through his teeth as he saw the twisted expression on my face.
It hurt. It made no sense.
Yet, I wanted him to be mine. All mine. And he wasn’t. Not by a long shot.
Slowly, he walked toward me, his voice soft and quiet on the phone. A deep line engraved between his eyebrows as his lips turned into a small smile. “Of course she’s coming with me. I can’t wait for you to meet her.”
He reached me, and before I could pull away, Ryker’s hand went to my cheek. He tilted my head back and bent down, placing a gentle kiss on the tip of my nose.
It changed me. The way his eyes furrowed with concern, danced between both of my eyes, and then down to my hand still on my chest. He dropped his hand from my cheek and held his hand over mine. The pain dulled to a slow throb when Ryker, still listening to Meg on the phone, mouthed, “All yours.”
My jaw dropped as if suddenly unhinged as my mind whirled. How he knew me so well to read my mind at everything I was thinking or feeling without saying a word… stunned didn’t cover the sudden change in emotion covering me.
While he quietly said his good-byes to Meg, his hand wrapped around my fingers and he pulled me to my feet until my chest was pressed against his.
“Tell Brayden we’ll see him as soon as we can get there. But have him FaceTime me later.” His eyes stayed on mine, his lips moved gently across my temple, as he spoke before he clicked the phone shut and slid it into the back of his jean’s pocket.
“You’re worried.” He stated the words so simply as his hand snaked to the back of my neck and his fingers dug into my scalp.
I pulled my bottom lip in between my teeth.
“You know, when you know you’re responsible for someone’s death, it changes you.” His eyes bore deeply into my own it felt as if he was connecting to my soul. His fingers dug into my hair. “Meg’s husband died because of my mistake on the rig one night.”
“And?”
He shook his head as if trying to dislodge the painful memory before he blinked and smiled down on me. “I promised I’d take care of them and I am.”
“They’re your family.”
“They might be,” he said, his lips lowering to my ear. His breath caressed my skin making it difficult to concentrate as he continued talking. “But you’re more important. Always will be. But it wouldn’t be right for me to leave them and never check on them again—never visit them again.”
“So you’re leaving.”
“No,” he said, as he pressed a kissed in that soft space below my ear. He laughed softly as I trembled in his comforting grip. “Is that what you thought?”
“You’re so… you seem so happy with them. More relaxed than you are with anyone else.” I swallowed the lump in my throat, forcing myself to talk around it. “Even with me.”
“And you thought I was leaving you?”
Everyone leaves. I couldn’t put a voice to the words though, too afraid he would pull away and that Ryker would see how big of a mess I still was.
“Jesus, Faith. I couldn’t leave you. For five years I tried to forget you—every day I had to fight to get you out of my mind. And now that I have you in my arms again, you think I’d do that to you?”
A shrug was the only movement I could muster before the tears spilled over. Stupid tears. Ryker made me cry more in the last few months than I’d cried in years.
“You’re a stubborn woman. You know that, right?”
Through my tears, I looked up to a smile on his lips. An easy smile as he laughed at my fears, but not at me. “I’ve been told,” I choked out right before his lips planted firmly to mine.
I breathed him in, the scent of his body wash and coffee, as his tongue pressed into my mouth and tangled with mine in a languid, fluid movement. Moaning into his mouth, I gasped for breath as my hands flew to his hips, pulling him and his hardness to me.
I wanted to ask for more—beg and plead for more—until he was so deep inside me he could erase my fears and my doubts. But when I tried, he pulled away, leaving me panting and gasping for breath.
He took my hand with a smile and tugged me down the hall. “Come on.”
My head spun back around and looked at where we had just kissed, confused and wondering where we were going. “Where?”
“I need Club ink. Maybe that’ll help prove I’m not going anywhere.”