Caine couldn’t remember ever laughing so much. At the movies themselves, which ranged from funny to stupid to terrible. At how much the movies made Emma laugh. At how passionate she was in defending their humorous qualities.
All day, she’d kept things light and playful between them as they laid on a big makeshift bed of blankets and pillows on her living room floor. They’d never stopped touching and kissing, some part of their bodies always tangled up in the other. He’d been half hard for hours but hadn’t acted on it because this kind of closeness wasn’t something he’d ever had before, either.
To say nothing of how much he’d eaten.
Emma had just filled him up, heart, mind, and fucking soul.
And after the way he’d almost shattered this morning, he’d needed every bit of her lightness. Between the connection and the sex and the gift, he’d already been overwhelmed. And then she’d shared her tradition of giving to charities. All charities for kids in need. It made sense, of course. She was a kindergarten teacher. But then she’d pulled up that website for the LGBTQ shelter and it’d been one emotional brick more than his badly crumbling inner walls could support.
He’d looked for places like that when he’d gone on the run as a fourteen-year-old. And again before he’d found ways to use his body for food and shelter as a fifteen-year-old. And again when a pimp had tried—and failed—to pressure him with intimidation and ply him with drugs to work for him as a seventeen-year-old. But places like that shelter hadn’t existed fifteen years ago, at least not where he’d grown up in small-town Ohio. And once the wrong people knew you’d shown interest in someone of the same sex, or even if there were just rumors, they’d make sure your life was a living hell if you showed up at the shelters that did exist. Beds were scarce, after all, and not everyone who wanted one got one. They made sure you learned not to even show up. So Caine had run and hitched and done whatever he needed to survive.
“What are you thinking about so hard?” Emma asked, tilting her head against his shoulder to peer up at him.
He was so relaxed—for once—that he was able to just let himself talk. “Your present was the first one I ever got that was meant just for me,” he said, knowing he wasn’t explaining himself well. “When I was a kid in the group home, the house parents got all of us the same exact thing—one year, it was a package of socks, a Pez dispenser with a couple packets of those little rectangular candies, and a new flannel shirt for the boys. And if someplace like a church sent a donation, we’d all get the same stuffed animal or the same set of dominos or the same deck of cards.” He twisted a length of blond around his fingers, still blown away that he could just touch her like this. “You actually thought of our time together and came up with a gift that you knew would mean something to me, personally.”
She burrowed in tighter against him. “Can I ask why you lived in a home?”
Caine sighed. “You can ask me anything, Emma. I mean that. I’m just warning you that I’m gonna suck at answering. And shit’s gonna catch me off guard like…like it did this morning.”
“I want to know you, Caine, however you are.” She threaded her fingers between his and pulled his hand to her mouth for a kiss.
“How are you so fucking perfect?” The question spilled out of his mouth, but in truth it’d been playing on a loop in his head for hours.
“I’m not perfect, Caine. And I think you need to take me off of the pedestal I fear you’re putting me on. I haven’t done a great job of building any kind of community around myself since my grandmother died three years ago, and I’m lonely a lot. I have two really good girlfriends, but they’re both married, and one has a young son. There’s only so much I can lean on them.” She kissed his knuckles again. “I started a graduate degree in teaching four years ago that I haven’t finished because all those evening classes were part of the reason why I didn’t realize my grandmother was as sick as she was. And I could’ve been spending those hours with her. After she died, I couldn’t force myself to go back, so it’s like I doubly wasted that time, because in the end I didn’t have her or the degree. So I’m not perfect. As best I can figure, we’re all just trying.”
The words sank into his skin, as if they were looking for places they might stay within him forever. He wished they would. “Fair enough,” he said. “My mother died of a heroin overdose and my father decided taking care of a five-year-old was a pain in the ass. So I ended up in the system.”
Sadness hung on her pretty features, and he hated that he’d put it there. “Same age as my kids,” she said. “That breaks my heart. No wonder you’re so strong.”
Stunned, he shook his head. Half the time he felt entirely out of control. Half the time he threw up walls out of fear. And half the time he opted out of life before anyone had the chance to discard him. No matter that the math didn’t add up, it was just how he felt. “Eventually, I fell in with a man who wasn’t just willing to give me a job, but also to teach me and take me in. Jerry Tiller. I wouldn’t be whatever I am today without him.” Of course, he’d just skipped over all the most crucial years, but he couldn’t…not yet…
She searched his face, and her expression was so open to everything he was telling her. But she still didn’t know the worst of him, and all these hours of falling were going to hurt like hell when he woke up face-down on the concrete.
In the meantime, she kept surprising him. “And was Jerry your boyfriend?”
He blinked. Well. Okay, then. He supposed he should’ve expected that given the way he’d reacted to helping that shelter, except very few people he’d ever met were willing to confront the truth the way Emma did. And always in a way that made it safe to give that honesty right back.
“No,” he said, pressing a kiss against Emma’s soft hair. His heart suddenly hammered, because his next words weren’t ones he usually voiced. Or, like, ever. “I’ve been with men, Em, but I’ve never had a boyfriend. Mostly, I was just…” He shook his head, struggling to figure out how to explain his bisexuality to someone else for the first time. Hell, to explain it to himself, too. “My whole life, I’ve just looked for connection wherever I could find it. Does that…does that bother you?”
She brought her face closer to his, and Caine nearly held his breath. “I’ve had lovers before you, Caine. Does that bother you?”
He frowned. “The idea of someone else touching you right now makes me want to smash things with my head, but I don’t resent that you had a life before.”
“Then why would I resent the same for you?” she asked, expression totally sincere.
Could she really be so okay with this? He gave a bewildered little shrug. “I don’t know,” he said in a low voice. Then, stronger, “Jerry wasn’t a boyfriend. He was the first adult in my whole life who actually took care of me. No strings attached. I bought my first bike with money I earned at his shop, and when he died and his son sold off the business, I hit the road on my own and found the Ravens. That was a decade ago.”
With every new thing he shared, he felt like a thin filament stretched between them, anchoring them together. The connection between them was growing, strengthening. He could feel it like he’d never felt anything before.
Caine was getting attached. To that feeling. To Emma herself.
It was what he’d always wanted. It was the thing he feared the most.
But right now, he had it. He had her. And he wanted her…
“Stand up, Emma.” The questions in her gaze quickly shifted to understanding, and she rose above him. His hands went to her waistband and quickly bared her. Caine pulled her until she stood with her feet on either side of him where he sat leaning against the front of the couch. “I want my mouth on you again.”
The moan that spilled out of her at the first swipe of his tongue went right to his cock. He unzipped his jeans and shoved them down his thighs. Then he held her open with his thumbs so that her clit was right where he wanted it to be. He sucked and flicked and nipped until she was thrusting against his face. He groaned his approval. Her hips became more frantic. “Caine,” she cried hoarsely, her knees going out such that she nearly collapsed into his lap, still shaking.
He took advantage and kissed her, wanting some part of him inside of her while her orgasm wrung every second of pleasure out of her.
“Jesus, your mouth should be illegal,” she said, chuffing out a breathless laugh.
“You say the nicest things,” he said, the playful words probably masking just how much he lapped up her praise. “Will you take me in you?”
She didn’t hesitate—she shifted to her knees. They both shucked their shirts. He pulled his last condom from his wallet and rolled it on.
She impaled herself on him, inch by soul-stealing inch. “You fill me up so good,” she said.
The echo of his earlier thought stretched a new filament of connection between them. “Ride me, Emma. Show me how you like it.”
Her fingers dug into his shoulders and she shifted so that she crouched on her feet instead of kneeling, allowing her to bounce faster, harder, deeper.
She pressed their faces together, her pants ghosting over his skin. “The way you took me this morning, Caine, that’s how I’ve always wanted it. But I’d never been able to find it before. That intensity is all you.”
Sensation squeezed his balls. “You telling me you like it rough, Em?”
“Yes,” she cried, her thrusts taking on a more frantic edge again.
“Fuck,” he gritted out. Grasping her hips, he forced her down harder.
She unleashed a high-pitched moan and tossed her head back, giving him a beautiful, orgasm-inducing view of her breasts bouncing with every thrust.
“How rough?” he asked, reaching between them to squeeze the base of his cock—hard. Just voicing the question had given him a shove toward the edge.
Those summery blues were so filled with arousal, and like the greedy motherfucker he was, he wanted more of it. “I don’t know. But I want to find out.”
He wound a sudden tight fist into her hair and dragged her against him, then tugged on her to slam her down on his cock. “Like this?”
The moan was its own answer, but still he loved hearing “Yes.”
He wrapped his other hand around the base of her throat and squeezed enough to apply pressure but no more, but the real beauty was the way his two-handed leverage allowed him not just to slam her down but to thrust up. “This?”
Her eyes rolled back in her head and her mouth dropped open. “Caine,” she rasped. “Don’t stop.”
“Not a chance,” he said, memorizing what she looked like moving above him, giving herself over to him. “You’re going to take me just like this, aren’t you?”
“Please.”
“Yeah.”
“How about this?” he asked, releasing her throat and landing a smack against her ass. Then another.
“Oh, God,” she moaned, falling against him so that her front was tight to his.
“Somebody likes having her ass played with, does she?” he asked, remembering the way his touch against her rear opening had beckoned her orgasm. “You can tell me.”
“I do. I like it,” she babbled, her hips frantic again. She ground herself against him, her clit rocking against the muscle of his lower belly.
“Get me really wet.” He held two fingers to her mouth. “Suck.”
On a moan, she bathed his fingers with her tongue and took his fingertips to the back of her throat. “Yes, sweet girl, that’s right. Nice and wet for your asshole.”
“Caine,” she groaned as he pulled her hair to still her and hold her tight against him, opening her rear for his touch.
He swirled his wet fingertips against the tight opening, and that by itself made her whole body jerk against him. “So fucking sensitive, Emma. Anybody ever taken you here?”
A quick shake of her head. “Nooo.” The reply was a moan as he slowly slipped his middle finger in to the first knuckle, then the second. “Oh God.”
The finger fucking he gave her was gentle—until she started working herself back against his penetration. “Wanna try two?”
Her forehead rested against his. “Anything. Everything.”
Jesus, this woman. He reached to her core where he was still deep inside her and swiped at more slick wetness. He stacked his fingertips, narrowing the invasion, letting her get used to it before he was finally finger-fucking her again. And she was right there with him, trying to move with his movements. He released her hair. “Fuck both my fingers and my cock, Emma. Ride me ‘til you come.”
Her nails dug into his shoulders then, and she was absolutely uninhibited as she ground and slammed against him. He clenched his jaw so hard that his teeth hurt, but he didn’t want to shoot before she got there. It was just that his fingers made her even tighter, and her cum was already spilling out onto his balls, and her sounds were like the dirtiest fucking soundtrack he’d ever heard.
Suddenly she was gasping for breath, then holding it, then screaming his name as she jerked against him, her whole body spasming, her orgasm nearly pushing his cock out of her. And then he couldn’t hold back another second. He eased his fingers out and cradled her as he took her down to the ground beneath him, and then he went at her like he was trying to crawl inside her and never come out.
His orgasm roared down his spine and nailed him in the ass, shoving him deep as his cock kicked again and again. He was panting and sweaty, and so was she, but he’d never seen anyone more beautiful than Emma Kerry in that moment—laying beneath him, thoroughly fucked, hair a sexed-up mess, lips swollen and red, eyes glazed over with the sexual satisfaction he’d given her.
“That was amazing, Caine,” she said. “Yes to all that.”
She was entirely serious, but the deadpan delivery still made him grin.
Then she chuckled.
And Chewy eyeballed and sniffed them because they were on the floor. Again. Caine laughed as hard as Emma did.
Which was the moment Caine first questioned if the intense pressure inside his chest could be love.
* * * *
Caine spent that night. Then the next night and the night after that. Until nearly a week had passed and so, along with it, had all but the last day of the old year.
Emma only had today and tomorrow left in her winter break, and then classes would resume and she and Caine would have to leave the secluded retreat they’d built around themselves.
She’d put off her friends, promising Alison that she’d finally tell her everything that was going on, and he’d put off his brothers in the club unless it was something that might offer the slightest clue about her stalker.
Though the sheriff was interviewing the handful of people she could remotely think of, there was only one really good lead, in Caine’s opinion. And that had apparently come from some ex-military friend in Baltimore who was a computer genius willing to bend a few rules to hack into traffic cameras. Particularly, one camera which offered a view of the street down which you had to exit when pulling out of the elementary school driveway. Apparently, he’d assumed that the vandalism had occurred at night, and following that thinking, he’d scanned that camera’s feed during the overnight hours each day of the weekend when the damage occurred.
That had produced a list of seventeen vehicles. It seemed like a lot to narrow down to Emma, but Caine had thought it was their first big break. Now all they could do was wait.
It was wearing on Caine.
Especially since nothing else had happened around her house. Or if it had, they had fewer ways to tell. By Thursday, the temperatures had rebounded into the low fifties, and by Friday all but the bigger snow piles had melted.
So their retreat was nearly over, school was about to begin, and—
“We’re no fucking closer to identifying this asshole than we were a week ago,” Caine grumbled as he paced in her small kitchen and scrubbed at his hair.
He had a habit of doing that when he got worked up about something, and it gave him a look like he’d just rolled out of bed after having sex with her. And that pretty much made Emma want to drag him back to bed to make that come true.
Because, good God, Caine was giving her the best sex of her life. On the floor, the couch, her bed (of course), and on the steps when they hadn’t been able to make it up to her bed. In the shower and bent over the kitchen counter. For six days they hadn’t held back once from indulging in each other. And even though she was exhausted and sore, Emma didn’t want it to end.
Not ever.
Not ever. Her heart panged. Because apparently, it only took six days of non-stop sex with the man willing to risk himself to protect her to make Emma fall in love.
“We will be when your friend finishes his analysis of the traffic camera, though, right?”
He growled and stalked out of the kitchen. Each of the past two days, Caine’s frustration had grown. And since she knew it was born of misplaced guilt and concern for her, she didn’t hold it against him. In truth, she was frustrated, too. Because she had no idea how she was supposed to go about her normal routine knowing she had a stalker.
“What should I make for breakfast?” she called.
“Whatever you want. I’m not hungry,” came his reply.
She stepped into the doorway that led to the dining room and found him peering out the front windows. Grinning, she shimmied her panties down and stepped out of them, leaving herself naked beneath her long sleepshirt. “How about me for breakfast then?”
When he peered at her, she twirled the lacey scrap of fabric on her finger and gave him her best sexy look.
His expression softened. “You’re too fucking sexy for your own good.”
She made her way to the living room. “Right back at you, biker man.” She gave him a pointed once over in that Under Armour shirt. Never intending to stay the night, let alone a week, he’d been in the same outfit, alternating between wearing the black long-sleeve and the white short-sleeve and washing the lot of it every other day. But as far as she was concerned, he could wear that black base layer for the rest of his life and she’d never get tired of seeing the way it clung to the shape of him.
Suddenly, he came at her. “Have you thought about what that really means yet?” he asked, his voice harsher than she’d heard in more than a week.
“What?” she asked, bewildered.
“That I’m a biker. A Raven Rider. And that sometimes we cross lines when we have to.” He nailed her with a stare.
“Uh, okay. I mean, your friend is illegally hacking into a government camera system. For me. So how judgmental can I be about—”
“I got shot,” he said, cutting her off as he held up his hand, the one with all the scars stretching down over the wrist. She’d asked about it one day, but it was one of those questions he hadn’t answered. “A lowlife from a gang in Baltimore drove by Dare’s house and shot it up while a bunch of us were there. Haven and her friend, Cora, were both shot, too, and ended up in surgery fighting for their lives. One of my brother’s little boys, too.”
She gasped. “Oh, my God.”
“Ask me what happened to the shooter.” He arched a brow over eyes so suddenly cold that she could hardly meet his gaze.
“Why are you do—”
“Ask me,” he said, getting up in her space.
“Stop it,” she said, not because she didn’t want to know, but because what he was doing here wasn’t informational.
“We don’t hide from the truth, right, Em?” The hint of a mocking tone was more than she could take.
“Right, which is why I have to say that you’re being a dick.” Now she was the one arching a brow. “You have things you want to talk about, Caine. I’m always happy to talk or to listen. But don’t you dare do this.”
Something flashed behind his eyes. Regret? Fear? Resolve? She wasn’t sure, because then it was gone again and this…meanness was back. “I’ll tell you what happened to him. A couple of us went after him and the guy who told him where we were, and we caught them. And then, knowing that one man had repeatedly done things to hurt and endanger our members, and the other had just shot four of our people and would just keep coming for us if we let him go—”
“Caine, stop. Stop!” Emma yelled, already knowing what he was going to say.
But he said it anyway. “—we killed them both.”
“Oh,” she moaned, her head spinning. Or maybe the floor was tilting. She wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure of anything anymore. Not when the man she loved was revealing his past to her as if it were a weapon and landing such shocking blows.
“That’s not all you ought to know about me, though,” he said, his voice sounding like it came from a stranger. “Hell, no, there’s more.”
Emma pressed her hands to her ears. She knew it was childish, but she could hardly breathe for the massive weight sitting on her chest. She needed time to process. To calm down. For him to calm down.
It didn’t stop him and he didn’t calm. “Let’s see, I’ve taken money, food, and shelter before in exchange for sex. But, I mean, it can’t surprise you that much that I’m a dirty slut given the way I fuck. And most of the time these days I only fuck strangers, even couples, I meet online. Until you.”
Why was he taking the amazing connection they’d shared and trying to twist it into an ugly thing? Her stomach rolled. She refused to bite, just absolutely refused to allow him to make her question it, too. Even though, damn him, the pain just left of center in her chest proved that his barbs were hitting true.
“You’re trying to hurt me, Caine McKannon. You’re trying to hurt us. And I’m not going to stand here and take it.” She made for the steps.
He grasped her by the arm and hauled her back against his chest. “I’m just coming clean with you, Em. Finally. And you have to hear this one more gem about me. It’s the best one yet, I promise.”
“Let me go,” she rasped, losing against the sting of threatening tears. She really didn’t want to cry in front of him.
“It’s about a sweet, innocent little angel named Grace. Just six years old. Same as your kids. Looked up to me like I could protect her from anything.” His voice cracked, and her brain latched onto that one little show of an emotion other than rage. Latched onto it hard even though it probably meant nothing.
But she turned, and the shift made them both stumble until he was pinning her against the wall at the foot of the stairs. “How old are you in this story?” she managed.
He ignored her. “Except, as sweet, innocent angels do, she misjudged me. Believed in me when she shouldn’t have. And then there was a fire.”
Oh, God. She couldn’t believe this was how she was going to find out what he’d been through. “How old, Caine?” she asked again, the first tear falling.
“House parents both smoked in bed. One lost his life to it.” He shrugged. “Deserved it, too. But he wasn’t the only one. You see, the flames engulfed that whole side of the connected duplex where the girls’ room was. And Grace, she hadn’t escaped because she was hiding a cat in her closet. A cat I knew about and helped her hide.”
Grace…oh, Grace. The tattoo on his chest. The pressure from the tears that needed to fall almost choked her, but still she asked, “How old?”
He shook her. “That doesn’t matter. All that matters is that I told her I’d save her, but the flames blocked the stairs. And the only other way out was the fire escape that had been broken for a long time because our so-called fucking caregivers were abusive cheapskates who only spent money when social services was coming for an evaluation. It took me forever to convince Grace to climb out because she refused to leave the cat behind, but finally the stray crawled out the window on its own. By then the room was filling with smoke and flames. The fire moved so fast. So fast, Em. We couldn’t breathe. I picked her up and made her hold on tight to my neck, and then I climbed out the window. I knew where to step. Where the old iron was weak and where it was solid.”
He gasped in a breath, and the words turned into a scary, hollow monotone that broke Emma’s heart more than anything else she’d heard.
“T-there was this weird moan from inside the house, and then suddenly fire shot out through the windows. My shirt and hair caught fire. Grace screamed that her arm and leg…” He choked on the words. “I misstepped.” The sound that came out of him was unlike anything she’d ever heard from another human. “The grating gave way. We…we fell. Two stories. I was supposed to protect her. I told her I would. She…she l-landed under me. B-beautiful little Grace…”
Emma threw her arms around him, her face wet with tears she could no longer fight. “Listen to me, there’s no age at which that would’ve been your fault, Caine. Someone else’s carelessness set the fire. Someone else’s negligence failed to fix the fire escape.”
A fast shake of his head as he pulled free of her embrace. “You don’t understand.”
She wouldn’t let him loose. “I do. You loved Grace.”
“It should’ve been me. That’s what the other monster said when she came to my hospital room. It should’ve been me.”
Pain lanced through Emma’s chest. “What a horrible, unforgiveable thing to say. You were a child,” she said, putting the truth out there whether he wanted to admit it or not.
He pounded his fist into the wall beside her. “I should’ve saved her! I gave my word!”
Emma flinched, but she wasn’t giving up. “You tried—”
“Stop it!” he yelled, his voice breaking. “How can you even stand me?”
She bit back a sob. “Were you fifteen? Fourteen? Thirteen?”
“I told you it doesn’t fucking matter,” he rasped, his voice hoarse and shattered, his face a twisted mask of horror and grief.
“Were you twelve, Caine?” He shook his head, those pale eyes so, so bleak. “Eleven?” she said, her belly in utter knots. “Ten?” came out at a whisper.
“Stop,” he cried, nearly collapsing against her. “I’m sorry.”
Oh, God. Oh, God. Ten!
His hands fisted in her shirt. “I’m so sorry.”
They went limp and slid down the wall in a pile of sweaty bodies and tangled limbs. If Emma felt gutted and empty and raw, she could only imagine what Caine felt. A shudder wracked through his whole body.
“It’s okay,” she rasped. “It’s okay.” She pulled his head against her chest and stroked his hair, whispering those words again and again, like someone should’ve done for him twenty damn years ago. Her stomach hurt so bad she feared she’d throw up, and a headache bloomed behind her eyes. None of which compared to his pain. Pain he’d shouldered nearly his whole life.
He’d warned her. He’d warned her he wasn’t normal and that there were big things she didn’t know. Of course, she didn’t hold Grace’s death against him. He’d tried to save her. What’d happened to the both of them had been a tragedy. And no way would she ever criticize him for the things that had kept him alive long enough to find her.
She swallowed hard.
But the shooting…
A chill crawled over her skin.
She didn’t know what to make of that. And certainly not with the way her head spun and throbbed.
Of course that was the moment Caine’s cell phone rang. He made no move to answer it, and after four rings, the tone cut off.
Then started again.
Stopped, then started again.
“Could be important,” Emma whispered, trying to fish it from his jeans pocket.
“I-I got it,” he said, his hands so gentle as he took it from her. He accepted the call and pressed it to his ear. “What do you want, Dare? This isn’t a good time.”