CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
SHE WAS IN the bedroom by the time Vic came back inside. She’d known he was out on the porch with Alexsei. Had known the two of them also needed to check in and get things straight the same way she and Maybe needed to.
“As predicted, I’ve been instructed to bring you over some things to eat. My mother claims if you don’t eat them it’s somehow bad for the world or whatever guilt crap they use. She wants to love you. Food is how she loves.”
“Like we didn’t just eat for like four hours?” she joked. But she smiled as she spoke because yes, it was Irena’s way of saying she loved you.
And it felt like a hug.
“How are they?” she asked.
“They’ve gone through a lot in their lives. So tonight was upsetting, but mainly because they care about you and your sister so much. To be honest, I do think it did trigger some stuff from when she was young.”
His mother had been livid. Outraged on Rachel and Maybe’s behalf. Proud that Rachel had stood up for them, protected them. Proud too, that Vic had stepped up, concerned for not just them, but Rachel.
Especially Rachel.
In his emotional reaction that night, his parents had understood what he hadn’t told them yet. He was in love with her.
His father had a different sort of respect in his tone as he’d urged Vic to get back over to Rachel instead of worrying about them. Didn’t Vic know Pavel was perfectly capable of handling his wife?
He’d winked behind Vic’s mom’s back as he’d shooed Vic out.
“My parents are fine. Tomorrow night they can ooh and aah over Cristian and Seth and we can let tonight just be a hilarious story we tell at parties. In a few years,” Vic added. “How are you?”
She sighed, climbing up onto her bed and tucking her feet under the blankets. “Before you, my greatest fears used to be simple. From ‘Will I pass this test?’ to ‘Will I escape this house of horrors alive?’ ‘Would I get the job?’ After I was held, that fear of losing control, of losing my freedom, that was my main focus.
“Getting better. Moving out here. Doing my apprenticeship time so I could start doing ink on my own. All so I could remain free. Independent. When I got here it was about settling in. Working. Doing art. Having a good life with Maybe and then Cora. And yet, until that first time you kissed me, everything in my life had felt like a reaction.”
She paused as she tried to find better words to explain herself. But it wasn’t simple. The revolution he’d brought to her life was beyond her ability to put into words to do it justice.
“And then you kissed me. You kissed me and the focus in my life changed. I’d been reacting and surviving. Building a life where I was in total control. And you came along and kissed me senseless and cooked me brunch and made me realize there was more than reacting.
“And then my life began to bloom. This art project and you and work and just so many things. Opening up. My world got larger and I wasn’t just looking at surviving anymore. I wasn’t just reacting. I was living.”
She could tell he wanted to interrupt her a few times. That he’d definitely wanted to reach out and hold her. But he held back knowing she had to speak on her own or she’d lose her nerve.
“I feel safe when you’re around. When you’re with me. I like being at your house. I don’t feel comfortable in a lot of places and yet I’ve taken naps on your couch. I like the way my skin smells after you sleep next to me all night. In short you changed everything for me.
“Tonight my fear was that your family would be hurt. That my father would hurt you all to get to me. To make me submit. My fears were so much bigger because they included the loss of this thing I didn’t know I needed and now that I have it I don’t think I could get by without it. I know I don’t want to. I’ve had Maybe most of my life. But you, Vic? You’re my family too. More? You’re my place to belong and I will fight like hell to protect it.”
A rough cry came from him as he moved close and pulled her into his arms. “My beautiful, beautiful Rachel. You continue to surprise and move me. I was just this happy-go-lucky guy and you came along and saw me as a man. A man worthy of a woman like you. I was made to be your safe space.”
She absorbed his warmth, the steady beat of his heart and the strength of the arms around her.
He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t going to walk away and leave her alone. He would get in her business and try to be bossy. He’d be infuriatingly charming as he did it too.
Underneath the charm was a will as tough as hers. A heart unlike any she’d ever known. He was patient and funny and great in bed. But he was a man. Her man and being with him was fun and satisfying, but it meant she had to be the same kind of partner to him. It would take work and commitment and drive.
Never in her life had she been more sure about something. He was it for her.
She squirmed until he loosened his hold and when he did, she moved, shifting so she could swing around and straddle his lap, facing him.
Emotion was so bare on his face it brought her to a halt for a moment. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. Softly at first, just little nips of taste until his hands settled at her hips, yanking her closer.
“Mine,” he told her.
She rolled her hips, grinding herself against him in answer.
He reached out and in two deft moves, grabbed and snapped the front of her pajama shirt open.
A gasp tore from her lips as her skin heated in anticipation of the moment when he slid his palms over her breasts to take their weight.
“I’m so glad you changed into pajamas because I wouldn’t have ripped that pretty dress you had on earlier,” he said right before he bent to brush his lips over the curve of each breast.
She was glad too.
Even more glad when he flicked his thumbs from side to side over her nipples.
Her toes had been pointed so hard she got a cramp in her calf when he nuzzled against her, taking a nipple between his teeth.
“I don’t want slow and tortuous,” she managed to say.
He pulled back with a pop that sent a shiver through her. “Is that so? What do you want then?”
Leaning in, she pressed her body to his and said in his ear, “I want you to fuck me hard and fast and right now.”
He snarled a curse and moved so quickly she was already on her back on the bed as he got out of his clothes, watching her so intently it was hard to find the coordination necessary to get the rest of hers off.
His cock was hard and fierce and it gave her a thrill to recall just how good he was with it. It should have shocked her, the depth of her greed for him. It should have scared her. It had scared her.
There he was in her bedroom so big and strong and naked and erect and tatted and pierced and all hers.
All those jagged parts inside seemed to fit against his, clicking into place.
“Don’t give me that look. You have some fucking to do,” she told him as he raked his gaze over her like he was going to eat her up. Which normally she happily endorsed. But she knew what she wanted and it was to be full of him.
“I’ll get to it. I have other plans.”
“You always say that and then you go down on me and I lose all sense. Plan to fuck me. Come on. You know you want to.”
He looked like he was prepared to put up a fight until she slid her hands all over her upper body and let one of her thighs fall open.
She wanted to laugh with joy when he snarled a curse and pretty much leaped on her.
“You’d better have condoms because I don’t know if I’ve got any in my pants.”
“I don’t know what kind of man with a big old cock doesn’t have condoms when his gal is ready to fuck all the time,” she teased him as she stretched to pull one from her side table drawer.
“Just another quality to love about you.” He waggled his brows.
“I like your priorities,” she said, the last bit ending on a bit of a squeal as he settled on his side and grabbed one of her legs, pulling her to him.
She loved that he had the strength to do that so easily. Something she thought she’d never find attractive. Apparently it just took the right big strong dude to do the trick.
With her flat on her back, he pulled her legs up over his hip and entered her that way. That angle enabled him to get deep and left her sort of delightfully helpless to do much more than get fucked.
It was exactly what she needed.
She reached up over her head, grasping the side of the mattress for purchase so she could push back at least. That and keep herself from getting thrust right off the bed.
Each time he thrust all the way in, it sent her breasts bouncing. His gaze got caught up each time it happened and it only made her love him more.
“I love to look at you this way. Stretched out, all your ink and skin there for me to see and touch as much as possible. Your muscles flexing. Long and tall and curvy in all the right places,” he murmured as he placed a flattened palm against her lower belly and pressed slightly.
That did incredible things to her clit as it also made her tighten around him. “That works,” she wheezed out.
His laugh, damn, his laugh was so dark and dirty it sent as much of a shiver through her as when he physically touched her.
“I’m here to serve,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, utterly genuinely. Some people’s boyfriends made sure they had gas in the car. Hers made her come so hard she saw stars.
And that was before he slid his hand down enough so his thumb brushed over her clit and sent every last thought skittering from her brain.
* * *
VIC WANTED TO crow with triumph when her eyes glazed over. Sex drunk. He loved to make her that way. To provide so much pleasure she went pliant. Around his cock, her body tightened around him, her inner muscles fluttering as they did when climax was near.
He hummed his satisfaction as he also focused on not coming. Not yet. No matter how good she felt, no matter how sexy and raw her demand he fuck her was. His personal rule was that her orgasm came first.
Not as if that was a chore. Especially after all the things she’d said to him earlier that night. He may have jumped the gun on his timeline for telling her he loved her, but after everything she’d told him it was clear she loved him too.
And with everything that’d happened after he’d told her, he hoped that little bit of knowledge helped her through what was obviously distressing. She’d gone into that confrontation with her father knowing he loved her. Like armor.
He liked that. His love being her protection from all the crap life might hurl her way.
She took a shaky breath as she arched her back, coming in a hot rush that was so good he felt it all the way to his toes.
This was his forever. She was his forever. That was all he thought as orgasm claimed him.