Chapter Six

Suede came to slowly, groggy and weak, her cheek against a massive heartbeat that called to her with its strong, steady rhythm. The intoxicating scent beneath her nose was too luscious to pull away from. She didn’t want to, even if she could. This man smelled as if he’d captured the wind and the sun, rolled them together with a sprig of peppermint, and tucked the combination under the covers with her.

Nuzzling closer, she swallowed a gulp of masculine warmth. Her nose rubbed along a stretch of cotton that gave way to crisp, manly chest hairs. Mhmmm. A woman could get used to waking up like this. It beat all the priciest hotels for bodily comfort, and she wanted to stay here. For the first time that she could recall, the hole in her psyche, the one that had ached most of her life, seemed full of something other than anxiety for being worthless. Her nervous stomach didn’t pinch or cramp with unfulfilled expectations. She felt as if she belonged where she was.

I must be on my deathbed.

But waking came with a migraine that radiated down her spine to her toes. Even the simple act of stretching her neck brought aches and pains to vicious life in her body, ending with an exclamation point in the form of a jolting burn up one leg. She stilled to calm the agony, content to be alive and breathing.

A tiny nugget of the nearly dissolved cough drop had stuck to the roof of her mouth during the night, and a drink would be nice, but she was alive, and yes, grateful. At long last, her wayward, argumentative spirit had nothing rude or catty to throw at the world. She, Suede Tennyson, was simply—humbly—content to draw in one breath after another.

Lying there with a melting shard of menthol bliss in her mouth, she was frightened, but she was also suddenly rich enough. She didn’t need anything but the warm body beneath her tender fingertips. Breathing without fire in her lungs was good enough. Yes, her throat was sore and her stomach muscles ached, but every last one of her pains also reminded her that a very hard lesson had finally been learned. Life wasn’t meant to be squandered in the press. They didn’t care about the media darlings they created, then tormented until the day they died anyway. No one did.

Life wasn’t meant to be wasted on the riotous living that had left her soul bankrupt and sad at the end of every day, either. Nor spent on foolish thrill rides that rivaled the crass lifestyles spewing out of Hollywood on a daily, if not hourly, basis. Look where her previous decisions had gotten her. Thrown off a cliff like a half-eaten apple tossed from a speeding car on I-5. Not how Suede wanted her life to end.

It had been a long time since she’d entertained thoughts of changing, but waking up like this, enfolded against this mountain of a man who held her as carefully as if she were a baby, mattered. This guy might not like her, but at that moment he was giving her something she’d never had before. Himself. His body heat. His strength. To a mixed-up girl who’d nearly drowned, those few things were suddenly—enough.

Humility shivered over her warm shoulders. I should be dead. On the heels of that came, I would be dead if this stranger hadn’t saved me. Chance could’ve walked away. He probably had better things to do last night, like getting out of the cold. Keeping warm. He could’ve minded his own business. God knows everyone else would have.

Instead, he’d risked everything. He’d given his life to her, his very breath, when he hadn’t had to. He’d brought her into his home and he’d stitched her leg. How does anyone begin to repay unwarranted kindness like that?

Suede lifted her arm and pressed two bandaged fingers to the back of her neck, massaging the knotted muscles to get the blood supply moving to her brain.

“You’re awake,” Chance murmured to the top of her head. “How are you feeling?”

Better, she meant to tell him, but the answer died in her tender throat. In stretching to reach her neck, she’d rubbed her sensitive breasts against his chest, not that it did anything for her. Her body was too sore to be excited by that sensual contact, but men were men. She dropped her arm, plastered one hand against his chest as a barrier, and prepared to be groped.

Oddly, he didn’t make a move.

“Alive,” she corrected with a growly voice. I think for the first time in my life, I’m really alive, but you’d better keep your hands to yourself. Then, because no fingers strayed under her shirt to pinch her nipples, and because that simple inaction made him seem too honorable to be real, she asked, “We’re sleeping together? When the fuck did that happen?”

His arms tightened like a muscular steel band over the blanket around her. “Yes, ma’am, but only until you’re warm. You aren’t dying on my watch.”

Her silly heart fluttered at the certainty in his deep baritone. Who did this guy think he was, Sir Lancelot come to save the faint at heart Lady Guinevere? “Am I warm enough?” she dared ask.

“You tell me.”

The sexy rumble in his voice was enough to curl her cold toes. “No,” she whispered when his hands still hadn’t moved from their original position. “I’m still cold.” On the inside. Where I’ve never been warm.

It was easy to hear his heart rate quicken at her reply with her ear pressed to his chest like it was. Suede drew in as deep a breath of Chance Sinclair as she could muster without coughing. He smelled good enough to eat. The scent of wind, sun, and a hint of clean masculine sweat came to her nostrils. It soothed and it warmed. She nuzzled. This was one of those once-in-a-lifetime moments she didn’t want to end. She would know. There’d been so few.

After the wreck she’d made of her life, now—while she wasn’t full of anger— would’ve been the perfect time to die. Nothing could get better than this unique sensation of being cared for. It was better than an orgasm. Would probably last as long as one, too.

“So tell me what happened up there?” he asked quietly, his lips at the top of her head. “Why’d York push you? What were you guys doing up there in the first place?”

A note of despair crept out of her mouth. “I thought he loved me.” I should’ve known better. The Lion only loves himself.

“Answer me.” Command rippled in Chance’s tone. “Why were you up there in this storm?”

She steeled her emotions. “Because…” Don’t let him see you cry. “Because Lionel bet I wouldn’t last one night camping. He dared me to tag along on a sports photo shoot with him and his guys, only there was no photographer waiting like he said there’d be. Only a big steel trailer he expected to spend the night in.” Just him and his guys though. Not me.

“And?” Chance pushed for more.

Suede never thought of sassing him, but obedience? That was what he’d just extracted from her, and it was weird that she’d responded civilly. She stalled, caught off balance and genuinely distracted by the power this male held over her. “And my throat hurts. Got another one of those cough drops?”

Releasing her, he stretched an arm to somewhere over her head, and she was back in heaven, tracing her palm over a thick pec, loving the ripple of muscles at her fingertips and the flat disc of the manly nipple beneath his shirt. It took him a second to unwrap the menthol drop, and to ease it between her lips. She didn’t mean to lick his fingertip, but once she did, she wished she’d sucked that finger into her mouth instead of the cough drop.

When he hissed at the contact, she knew she’d gotten to him. That should’ve made her crow. Inciting this response in a true alpha male would put another notch on her bedpost, so to speak, but Suede took no pleasure in arousing Chance. For once in her worthless life, she had something unique and rare within reach, and she didn’t want to spoil it by being herself.

He’d physically pushed life back into her. How could she defile a noble gift like that? Time needed to stop right here and now, so she wouldn’t go back to who or what she used to be.

Chance gave her seconds to moisten the cough drop in her mouth, then repeated his question, his arms once more warm around her shoulders like a security blanket. “Why’d he push you, Suede?”

“Because he’s Lion.” Just talking about the pompous ass squeezed her throat closed all over again. “He’s got a temper. Everyone knows that.”

“And?” Man, this guy was a bulldog. Chance wouldn’t give up.

“I called him out for lying to me,” Suede admitted. Definitely not my wisest decision. “I should’ve known better. Why would a tennis player need a sports shoot in the mountains? We were breaking up anyway, but the real reason I went up there with him was because he said he had a diamond ring, only I had to earn it to keep it and accompanying him on the photo shoot was the deal. Only once he gave it to me, he wanted it back.”

“Why? Was he buying you off?”

“No,” she croaked. Well, maybe. “But I didn’t care if he was. Once he gave it to me, I thought that I… that I…”

“You honestly thought marriage would change an ass like Lionel York?” Disbelief and accusation shadowed Chance’s question.

“N-no.” Not exactly. Swallowing past the lump in her tender throat, Suede admitted, “I always knew he didn’t really care about me, but once I had that ring, I could’ve disappeared, so his men couldn’t find me.”

Chance’s fingertips tapped at her shoulder blades. “You were going to sell it?”

Suede nodded. Blinking furiously, she worked that cough drop between her tongue and the roof of her mouth to keep her mind off how desperate she had been for Lionel’s attention, hell, for anyone’s attention, from the beginning of their tempestuous relationship. He’d gotten her to do wild and crazy things she never would’ve dreamed up on her own. And this was where it had gotten her.

But at first, he’d been her ticket to good times, independence, and fun, like a joyride through the tunnel of love that had too quickly plummeted into a house of horrors. A smarter woman would’ve known better, but Suede had only been sixteen when he’d come into her life, seventeen when she moved in with him. Yes, she’d been star struck. What kid could’ve rejected the attentions of a celebrity at a time like that?

She’d just declared to the world she could make it without her parents, that she didn’t need them. Pride had pushed her into his arms, and she’d gone skipping into the sunset. Yet, from the beginning, the signs were everywhere: his temper tantrums on and off the court, his vulgar tirades with reporters and sportscasters, and his very loud, very vocal disdain for anyone he considered beneath him. Like the rest of the world.

Suede shivered at the desperation that had driven her into Lionel York’s circle of influence. She’d been in such a low place back then, not that things had improved much since. But even now, she wondered what she’d done to catch the eye of a dangerous man like Lionel York. She never could handle him, but he’d certainly handled her.

Chance must’ve taken that shiver as his cue to warm her up. His broad palms moved sure and firm down her back, nearly to the swell of her ass. But there he stopped, even as his heart rate kicked up. Interesting...

“I’m a mess,” she told him honestly. “I’ve fucked up my—”

“Stop with the bad language, Suede. I’m a SEAL. I’ve heard it all.” His fingers tapped the small of her back where they’d landed. “You don’t need to impress me.”

No one had ever told her to stop swearing before. She opened her mouth to tell him to go to hell, but instead, she murmured a hesitant, “Umm… well, okay. Umm…”

Does that mean that I impress you? Now? In this condition?

“I just meant that I’ve chosen poorly, and I… I…” Her excuses stalled out.

I what? Want this stranger to understand how much I hate my life? That I pushed Lionel’s temper to the limit, and I don’t know why? “Never mind. I’m really tired and…” I don’t want to talk about it.

Chance shrugged out from under her, like she hadn’t seen that brush-off coming. Men hated needy women. Lifting to his feet, he pulled the blankets nearly over her face and walked away.

Loser!

Burrowing her nose into the warmth he left behind, Suede let the tears come. All her life she’d been the odd one out, the unwanted child of an upwardly mobile couple who’d had higher aspirations than parenthood on their minds. Her parents didn’t want her. Why should they? They had better things to do, more important things.

Her father planned to be president. Her mother was the nation’s poster girl for feminine rights, not for the entire feminine gender though, only for the ones who believed like she did, that traditional motherhood was dead. Children were inconvenient and hindered a woman’s social standing. That women’s rights preceded everything and everyone else.

How Suede had hated living with them, being the child they’d never wanted, and listening to their steady pro-abortion arguments as to how much better off they would’ve been without her. So why had they kept their love child, if she’d ever, in her wildest dreams, been that? She’d never know.

At seventeen, she’d sued for emancipation, but they’d glossed it over when the press got hold of the story. Said it was all a misunderstanding. Like hell it was. Suede wanted nothing to do with two lawyers who could lie to each other as quickly as to the world and her. Only now…

A sob hiccupped out of her. Now I’m sick and I’m hurt and I’m still alone. What else is new? Her heart broke yet again. It was pretty bad when the Good Samaritan who’d saved her life didn’t want anything to do with her either. Right now, Chance was probably washing his mouth out with extra-strength Listerine because he’d given her mouth-to-mouth, but why she cared what he was doing galled Suede. She was tougher than this!

The warm palm settling on her shoulder ended her hysterical internal rant. “Hey. Move it over. I’m back.”

How embarrassing. Slowly, Suede turned her back on Chance, wiping the tears as she dragged her hurting legs along with her temper tantrum away from him.

The mattress flexed as he joined her. That big warm hand clutched her shoulder again. “Where do you think you’re going? You’re still cold. Get back here.”

“Leave me the fuck alone,” she ordered, her hackles up now. People thought she was a bitch and this was why. She hadn’t a friend in the world, and she sure as fuck didn’t need one now. Every time she’d put herself out there, every time she’d left herself vulnerable, this happened. Every time! She found herself spurned, used, or tossed aside. Fucking enough!

“You’re sick,” he reminded her, his tone as patient as if he were talking with a child.

“Guess again, asshole. I don’t need you or your place, and I don’t need your help either.” She shrugged her shoulder to dislodge his grip, making up lies as she went. “So keep your fuckin’ hands off me. I can sue you for assault. Don’t think I won’t.”

He all but forced her back around to face him. “You’re swearing again. What’s wrong?”

“Don’t your ears work? I said I don’t need you,” she spat, not brave enough to meet his gaze. “I don’t fuckin’ need” —a hiccup wrenched out of her raw throat— “anyone!” She meant to scream that last line to get him to back off, but she ended up coughing in his face, making her argument sound weak and petty. Like her.

Suede found her body tugged forward until her cheek mashed against a warm masculine chest. One manly palm cupped her head and held her fast. Jesus, for not needing anyone, she sure couldn’t hold her own in this fight. Chance had a good hold on her, but his fingers were splayed and flexed as if he were holding someone who mattered instead of copping a feel.

The dumbass! She wriggled, too tired to fight but giving it all she had left. Her wimpy efforts didn’t seem to matter. That massive hand at the back of her head didn’t budge, and she was too weak to act upon her vicious words. “Let me go,” whimpered out of her instead of another audacious lie she couldn’t back up with action.

“You poor thing,” Chance whispered into the cap on her head. “You’ve been fighting the world for a long time, haven’t you? It’s over, Suede. Let it go.”

“Shut the fuck up,” she hissed, her eyes squeezed tight against the tsunami of loneliness about to swallow her whole. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t need you telling me what to do. I d-d-don’t need—”

“Anyone or anything,” he murmured. “I get that, baby. That’s why you resort to foul language when you feel threatened. You don’t need anyone, and you can’t trust anyone, either, but you’re here now, and you’re safe with me. York can’t get to you. Breathe, Suede. Stop trying to be someone you’re not and just relax. Breathe.” His chest expanded as if he needed to show her how it was done. “That’s all you have to do right now, let your body heal. Know you can do that, Suede. Believe in yourself for a change. Trust me to have your back while you rest.”

Listening to the intake and output of his lungs under her ear almost made her believe what he said was possible. It sounded doable, all that believe-in-yourself, warm-fuzzy crap. His hands and fingers weren’t roaming her body for a cheap thrill. This damned guy was simply holding onto her like he meant to hold her together until she could handle living. He’d called her baby, but it felt like an endearment instead of the come-on she’d heard a million other times.

“You don’t understand,” eked out of her. “You have to let me go.” Or I’ll fall apart. I’ll shatter. The pain of a lifetime still towered over her in one giant wave that could crush her if she ever let it go. Who’d pick up the pieces then, huh?

“Why should I?” If his voice dipped any lower, she’d melt right here in his arms.

“You already know,” she told him honestly. She was so damned fucked up, and he was just some guy, and men always let her down, even the nice ones. They’d used and abused her, every last one of them. What good were they?

His answer for that came in a brush of warm peppermint and another soft kiss on her forehead. “You’re tired and you’re sick, that’s what I know.”

Suede didn’t understand Chance. He had to be gay for not taking advantage of her. She’d certainly given him enough opportunities. “Liar. You’ve seen the videos. The headlines. I’m no fucking good.”

A soft growl rumbled beneath her ear. “Then it’s time to prove the world wrong. Everyone makes mistakes, Suede. Stop looking back. Get over yourself and move on.”

Why didn’t he get it? Why’d he continually look for something in her that wasn’t there? Like goodness? Better question, why’d he see things in her worth saving when she knew damned well she had no redeeming qualities. Just ask Mom and Dad.

Wow, that came out of nowhere. Aching down to her toes, she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “I am tired.” Which she was, but that wasn’t the whole truth. “And I’m sorry I’ve inconvenienced you,” she added to prove she’d meant what she’d said. “I’ll leave as soon as I can walk out of here.”

“Trust me. You’re no inconvenience and you’re welcome to stay as long as you want. Do you need the restroom? It’s only a few feet away. I’ll help you.”

That was why he’d left? Because Nature called? “No, I’m fine,” she whispered, daring to hope for the first time in a long time that she and Chance could be friends. She’d never had a gay guyfriend before. It would be such a relief not to have to be sexually involved with a man for a change. Suede lifted her lashes to meet her savior.

“No, you’re not fine,” he whispered. “If you don’t need the restroom, you’re still dehydrated and I’m not doing my job. I need to make sure you drink more water.”

The light was dim, but she could make out the gentlest eyes peering down at her. This…this is Chance? This shaggy-haired god? There were no words in the entire dictionary to define the handsome man who’d just tucked her under his arm like she belonged there. Her fingertips fluttered over a massive pec, and her heart flipped a backward somersault right before it climbed handstands up her sore throat.

“Ch-Chance?” she asked like a hoarse-voiced fool. Who else could he be?

Thick, ebony lashes blinked down at her, pulling her deeper into their depths. She wanted to know the color of his eyes. Rugged masculine brows joined in a gentle crease as his index finger steadied her shaking head. “Yes, ma’am?” A hint of warm peppermint drifted over her cheeks as he tugged her body into alignment with his side. His ribs. His hips. What had to be his—cock.

Oh my, my, my, Chance is definitely not gay, not if he’s this happy to see me.

“It’s n-n-nice to m-m-meet you,” stuttered off her tongue.

His lips quirked into a half-smile as he arched his back, distancing that single piece of male anatomy as if he hadn’t meant to make contact with his horny welcome wagon. “It’s my pleasure to serve, Miss Tennyson.”

Suede closed her eyes again. She had to be dreaming. None of this was real. It couldn’t be. When she woke up, she’d be dead and drowned in that pond at the bottom of, what’d he call it, Mother’s Day Falls? Stupid name.

The warmth of a massive male hand cupped the back of her head even as his lips landed on the middle of her forehead again. “Rest easy, Suede. Keep warm. I’ll fix breakfast the next time you wake up.”

No, you won’t. You’ll disappear, because none of this is real. It can’t be.