Dare’s thoughts didn’t get more settled as they watched movies together the rest of the night, the rain still constant, the thunder occasionally rumbling. Haven was just easy to be with, a quiet, soft comfort to a man who’d had very little solace in his life. She was a great listener, and she had a knack for honing in on the most important questions. The sound of her laughter tempted his smile every damn time. And she took pleasure in absolutely everything. Dare had to admire that.
Finally, he made a deal with himself—enjoy her while you have her. Which started with tonight. After that, he could spend time sitting and spinning on all the bullshit in his head.
Which was why he’d already decided: “You’re sleeping with me,” he said to Haven at bedtime. She looked up from where she reclined against his chest on the couch. “Upstairs to the left. Use whatever you need in the bathroom.”
“Okay,” she said, turning against his body and stretching to kiss him. “I’m not a very good sleeper, though.”
“Don’t you worry about it,” he said, tucking a light brown wave behind her ear. “I’ll lock up and be right there.”
She stretched, revealing the soft skin of her stomach—and bringing his cock to life for possibly the thousandth time today. Not that he minded.
As she made for the steps, Dare hauled his ass off the couch, turned off the lights, and checked the doors. Her sounds echoed from upstairs—footsteps on the floorboards, the bathroom door shutting, the water running at the sink. The noises of someone else in his space were so unusual it was like his house was new to him all over again. He liked it. Too much.
He was on her the second she walked out of the bathroom door. Pressing her against the wall and kissing her deeply. Just because he could. She tasted like his mouthwash, and there was something really nice about that. And the smile she gave him when he released her? It lit him up inside like he hadn’t ever felt before.
When he finally made it to his room, he found her sitting stiffly on the edge of the bed. And that wasn’t going to do at all.
Walking toward the bed, he shed his shirt and unbuttoned his jeans. Haven’s eyes on him were like fire in his blood. When he reached her, he tugged her shirt over her head. Because there was no way he could put her in his bed and not bury himself inside her. “I’m gonna reach for you, Haven. All night long.” He tossed a handful of condoms on the bed.
She lifted her hips and let him pull off the borrowed boxers. “Good,” she said around the edge of a kiss. “I hope you do.”
Dare stepped out of his jeans until they were both nude. He didn’t know what tomorrow might bring, so he wanted nothing between them tonight. His fingers dipped between her legs. “Aw, you’re always so ready for me, aren’t you?”
“Yes,” she rasped, thrusting against his hand.
“I’m laying you out this time,” he said, pushing her back onto the dark gray covers. He helped her scoot up the bed until his body hovered over hers. “Nice and slow,” he said, staring into her eyes as he rolled on a condom, settled his weight on top of her, and pushed his cock into her pussy. “Nice and fucking deep.”
As he penetrated her inch by hot inch, he could’ve come from the expression on her face alone. Rapt, almost anguished, and with something that looked a whole helluva lot like affection in her beautiful eyes. Forehead to forehead, his fingers knotted in her hair while hers dug into his shoulders like he was the anchor in her storm. Fuck, he wanted to be that, too. Like he hadn’t wanted anything in a long time. Maybe ever.
His hips snapped against her, driving his cock hard and deep on a series of demanding, punctuated thrusts. She gasped and moaned his name on each stroke, her eyes falling closed and her mouth falling open so that they breathed each other’s air.
“Look at me,” he said, sucking her bottom lip into his mouth. “Look at me while I take you.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “You make me feel . . . oh God . . . better than I’ve ever felt in my whole life.”
Which made him realize he felt the same way.
It was, without question, the first time that fucking became laden with emotion for him. Despite all his lays, fucking had always been about the physical release, and maybe an hour or two of companionship, too. Not about emotion. Never about emotion. Maybe that wasn’t surprising, given the way he’d lost his virginity a million years ago, but a part of him had figured his wiring had just gotten crossed somewhere along the way. And he was fine with that. More than, actually. Because emotions were nothing if not messy. Losing his mother and brother had taught him that.
Haven’s hands grasped at his back, her movements becoming desperate, needy. He could feel her core tightening around him, clamping down. He ground himself against her clit, moving faster, harder, needing her to come.
“Oh, oh, God, Dare,” she cried as the orgasm rocked through her.
The minute it did, Dare let himself off the leash. He grasped her arms, pushed them against the mattress next to her head, and held her down as his hips swung hard and fast and rough against her, their skin slapping, the bed groaning, the wetness from her orgasm slicking his way. He worried he was holding her too tight but couldn’t let go, couldn’t back off, until finally he was coming inside her, coming hard, seeing fucking stars.
Seeing fucking everything.
HAVEN LEARNED WHAT peace was that night. She found it in Dare Kenyon’s arms. It quieted her mind, eased her worries, and gave her some of the best sleep she’d had in years—despite the fact that Dare made good on his promise to want her, and take her, again and again. Or maybe even because of it.
Her body was sore and her muscles were tired and her skin felt a little tender from his hands and his mouth and his hips and the burn of his stubble. And she would cherish the feeling for the rest of her life.
Because she couldn’t imagine finding someone like Dare again. Someone who she could trust without question, someone who she could reveal her darkest parts and deepest desires to, someone who made her feel beautiful for wanting things. And who gave those things to her with such incredible generosity and passion.
Not to mention someone who’d grown up in some of the same hell she had. Maybe even more. She’d been absolutely blown away by what he’d shared with her as they’d talked yesterday, and everything he’d gone through only made her respect and admire him more. And care, too.
Oh God, who was she kidding? She was falling in love with him.
Maybe had already fallen in love with him.
No doubt she’d been beyond naïve to think she could open herself up this way to a man and just keep it about the physical experience—an item or ten she checked off her life to-do list.
His arm around her stomach, a big hand cupping her bare breast, Dare stirred behind her. The clock on the nightstand read five-fifteen as the dim light of morning spilled through the window next to his big bed. It had stopped raining a few hours ago. “Why are you awake?” he said with a voice full of gravel. A really sexy voice, especially accompanied as it was by the erection growing against her butt.
“Just thinking,” she said, her voice quiet.
“’Bout what?”
“How did you get by after you ran away from home? Before you got here? How did you make it on your own like that?” He’d glossed over that part of the story, only saying that times had been hard, hard enough that they’d forced him to seek help in a place he’d been told he’d never find it.
He heaved a deep breath behind her. “I lived in a cave for a week, waiting for Kyle to come like he’d promised he would. I’d heard the gunshots, but I was just a stupid kid. And I’d held out hope.”
Haven moved to turn in his arms, but his grip tightened, holding her right where she was.
Dare cleared his throat. “When I finally faced facts, I started hitchhiking. I had about seventy dollars to my name, and I made it last as long as I could. In New Mexico, I found a restaurant that would save me their evening leftovers, so I stayed there for a while. But that was too close to home to settle. So I kept moving. Going nowhere in particular. Stealing when I had to. Sleeping on park benches. And then I got picked up by this middle-aged couple, Lisa and her husband, Brant. They had an RV, and they were just traveling, going nowhere in particular, too. They were nice. It seemed good. It was better than being dirty and homeless and hungry, for sure.”
She could hear the but hanging on the end of his words, and her heart kicked up in her chest. She linked her fingers between his where he still palmed her breast.
“After being with them for a while, one night they gave me an ultimatum. If I wanted to keep traveling with them and sharing their food, Lisa wanted to have sex with me. And Brant wanted to watch.”
Haven couldn’t hold in the gasp. He was fifteen. Fifteen! “Did they know how old you were?”
“From the first day,” he said.
Oh, God. Her belly squeezed with dread and sadness. Especially because she knew what it was for people to push you for things you didn’t want to give. Despite having been “spoiled” by Zach—her father’s word—her dad made it clear to the men who hung around that Haven wasn’t on the menu unless he put her there. He never did. Not officially at least.
But the guys took liberties when they thought they could get away with it. Pawing her butt and breasts. Grabbing her face and stealing a kiss. Forcing her hand against their erections—one guy had gone so far as to push her hand into his pants and use it to jerk off. Her arm had been bruised for days after. It had only taken one time for someone to drunkenly come into her room at night and molest her while she slept before she started bracing her desk chair against the back of the door. Of course, the lewd comments, innuendos, and threats were par for the course.
And there were never not a bunch of guys around her father’s house.
As for her father? He looked the other way every time, and punished her for causing the trouble in the first place sometimes. One time he even beat her with his belt for fighting back and managing to give the guy a black eye. She knew that had been about proving who was boss, but it had taught her a lesson, too. Don’t draw attention. Stick to the shadows whenever possible. Hide the parts of her they all seemed so desperate to claim.
Finally, Dare continued. “We were in the middle of nowhere Nevada during a brutal heat wave. Miles from the next town. I think they planned it that way. Knew I couldn’t walk anywhere from there. Not safely.” Haven felt him shrug. “So I agreed.”
Part of her wanted to pour out all the words of sympathy and outrage she felt welling up inside her, but Haven’s gut told her he wouldn’t want that, wouldn’t appreciate it, and might even stop talking if she did. So she forced herself to be still and quiet until he started talking again.
“Brant watched. Jerked himself off to me screwing his wife. It became a thing after that, and it became more and more tied to paying my way. I hated it, but I didn’t have many options. I was already making an exit plan when they announced one night that Brant wanted his turn with me. I had to fight him off. And I ran that night.”
Haven swallowed, the sound thick to her own ears. “How long were you with them?”
“All told? About six months. After that, it took me most of another year before I made it here.”
In her horror over his situation, something absolutely sickening occurred to Haven, and she whipped around to face him. “Oh, God. Is that what I’m doing? Using you?” That he might think so made her so nauseous that she had to wrap her arms around her stomach.
“No,” he said, the word loud and fierce, a scowl darkening his whole face. He pressed her back into the bed, hovering over her, his hair casting shadows over his harsh features. “Fuck, no, Haven. I’ve wanted every second I’ve had with you. What happened back then—that was exploitation and survival. What’s happening now, right here, between us—”
She hung on the edge of a cliff, desperate to know how he’d characterize it. He dragged his fingertips down her cheek.
“It’s the first real connection I’ve had in my whole goddamned life.”
No one had ever said something so beautiful to her, all the more so because she felt the exact same way.
“I hate them for hurting you,” she said, anger mixing with her affection for him to create a dangerous, restless cocktail in her blood.
His gaze dropped from hers as his eyes followed his fingers down her throat to her collarbone. “Yeah, well, ancient history.”
Haven didn’t call him on it, but the restrained emotion in his voice belied his words. She knew enough to know that there was a difference between moving past something and forgetting it altogether, between not letting something control you and being able to excise it from being a part of you at all. Some things cut too deep.
Her thoughts tangled, her little slice of hell mixing with his, until she was angrier than she’d probably ever been—probably ever let herself feel—in her life. Her body felt like she might explode with it, like she couldn’t possibly hold it in without detonating and taking everything around her down, too. Suddenly, tears pooled and leaked from the corners of her eyes. She tried to turn her head away, to hide them.
“Aw, Haven, don’t be sad. Not for me,” he said, swiping at the wetness with his thumb.
“I’m not,” she said, her voice raw with emotion. “Well, I am, a little. But I’m more . . . I’m pissed off for you.” She turned her head back to him, adrenaline sending a shiver through her. “I could kill someone I’m so mad. Why are there so many people who think they can just take what they want from you? Or think you exist to do something for them? It’s so . . . so . . . so fucking unfair,” she said, the words coming faster, spilling out of her. The cuss word she’d never once said before Dare coaxed it out of her yesterday feeling like the only thing that could really capture the scope of her rage. “That’s why what you do is so important, Dare. You stand against all that for people who can’t do it for themselves. Somebody has to, because, because—”
He kissed her. So hard and so deep that she couldn’t breathe, but with so much passion that it momentarily made oxygen seem completely unimportant. The kiss shot heat through her blood, and his erection against her thigh was proof that she wasn’t the only one affected. “I just want to be with you,” Dare said around the edge of the kiss. “I just want to touch you and talk with you and lay with you. Just like this.”
As aroused as she was, she was so moved by his words that her heart pounded out a hard beat against her chest. She pulled him down beside her, and they lay completely entangled with one another. Their foreheads close enough to kiss, their arms embracing, their legs entwined.
He stroked his hand against her hair, his fingers softly combing against her scalp. “I can’t seem to get enough of you, Haven.”
“I hope you don’t,” she whispered, absolutely melting at his words. Skin against skin, body against body, it was the most intimate moment of her whole life, not just because they were naked, but because they were so exposed. “I know I won’t ever have enough of you.” She closed her eyes to keep him from seeing her sadness. But, God, she never wanted this to end. This crazy, impossible thing she had with him.
He kissed her forehead, and his thumb stroked her cheek. “Pretty girl,” he whispered, everything about the moment feeling like the life and connection he’d talked about before.
She felt it, too.
But now morning was here and the storm was over. Which meant he’d take her back to the clubhouse and continue making plans to send her and Cora away. She knew he had to. She did. But that didn’t mean everything inside her wasn’t screaming to stay, for this quiet, peaceful, perfect moment to last forever.
And then his cell phone rang, bringing them back to reality even faster than she’d feared.