The house looks different when we pull up. Not that I’m surprised. I’ve never driven to Gracin’s house willingly, and when he brought me here, it was the middle of the night, and I was unconscious.
I offered to drive because he's wounded, but he wasn’t hearing any of it. Blood still seeps from the bandages, and I sigh as he gets out of the car with a grunt.
He doesn’t object when I lead him to the bathroom on the first floor, which is where I’ve taken to having medical supplies stocked for just this reason.
“Sit,” I tell him, and he eases himself onto the closed lid of the toilet.
“Getting into a habit,” he says and looks up at me, his eyes partially lidded with pain and a touch of humor. He’d said something similar when I had to bandage his wounds while he was at Blackthorne.
Tenderness blooms inside me like a lone flower taking root in the cracked surface of neglected concrete. To cover it, I lower my face to help him remove his shirt, taking care to maneuver it around his shoulder. The wound doesn’t look bad. He should count himself lucky he didn’t do more damage.
After I gather my supplies, I brush my hands through his hair just because I need to touch him for my own reassurance and he leans into my palm.
“Someone has to look after you,” I say finally.
“Are you offering?” he asks.
I don’t answer because I don’t know. I’m quiet as I finish applying the new bandage, and the silence grows so overwhelming that I’m afraid to break it.
He must see it on my face because he opens his mouth to speak and then closes it when he decides better. His jaw ticks with indecision, and he gives himself a shake.
“Come to me when you figure it out,” he says and then pauses to kiss my forehead, the single most affectionate gesture he’s ever expressed, and it nearly cracks me in two.
I suppose it’s progress that he doesn’t lock me inside my room, and then I almost laugh. For a moment, I have to fight a smile. How is it that a cage with Gracin is appealing? Maybe because within these walls, I found freedom, even if it was at the hands of my captor.
I clean up the mess and stow the supplies as my mind works through my options.
Gracin isn’t a good man. He’d be the first to tell me. He’s ruthless, bloodthirsty, and lawless. He lives by no one else’s rules but his own, and he doesn’t apologize for it.
I can picture my life without him. It’s a beautiful one. I’d get a new identity, one that doesn’t have a warrant out for their arrest, and I’d eventually settle down with a man, get a house, a dog, and have a couple of kids. It was the life I wanted when I met Vic. The life I thought we’d have together.
Now . . . now I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t have Gracin in it. The lows are low, but the highs, the rush he gives me each time I see him? There is no comparison.
I spin around to find him and nearly run right into him. “I thought you were giving me space,” I say, stunned.
His hands fist at his sides, his chest is stained with blood, and his face is already darkening with bruises. “I changed my mind,” he says.
My teeth bite into the soft flesh of my cheek. “You did?”
He takes a measured step forward. “Yes.”
“And what did you decide?”
Gracin steps close enough that he can lift my chin with a finger. His expression is serious, and even though he can barely open one eye, his gaze is solemn. “I decided I was right when I locked you here so you couldn’t get away and get yourself into trouble.” I bristle a little, but he places a finger over my lips. “I wanted you here so I could make sure you were safe. Seeing you in the warehouse like that . . . it isn’t something I’ll ever forget. I realized when you came running into the room, and Danny turned the gun on you that I didn’t want to spend another day that didn’t have you in it. Letting you leave would be doing just that, so I’ll chain your ass to the bed if I must to keep you in my life.”
“And if I said I still wanted to leave, you wouldn’t let me go?”
“No,” he says with vicious finality. “No, I wouldn’t.”
He pauses to take my lips. I taste the metallic burst of blood from his split lip, but underneath . . . underneath there’s the intoxicating flavor of him and I sigh, stepping forward to press against him more completely.
“I wouldn’t let you go,” he says against my lips, “but I’d spend every day convincing you to stay.”
“How do you think you’d accomplish that?” I’m breathing more heavily now and my heart, which is still thrumming from the adrenaline of our escape, beats double time.
“How about I show you?” he says.
I shiver against him as he tugs me down the hall. He presses kisses to my jaw and ear and then curses under his breath and plasters me against the wall in the stairwell. My hands go to his waist to tug at his belt loops and pull him against me.
“You trying to distract me?” he asks as he tongues the hollow in my throat.
“Maybe. Is it working?”
He nudges his erection against me, and I suck in a breath. “You tell me,” he says.
I groan and tug him down the hallway. “I think I need some more convincing,” I say with an impish grin. “That is if you aren’t too hurt.”
We reach his door, and he presses into me from behind, the hardness of his cock nudging against the cleft of my ass. “Never. I’d be dying and I’d still be hard for you.”
He opens the door, and we tumble inside enough to slam it shut. I struggle to turn, but he keeps my back pressed to his front and arranges my hands above my head.
“Keep them there,” he growls, and I’m strung so tight I don’t have the willpower to argue.
Behind me, I hear the sound of him shucking his clothes: the clink of his belt buckle coming undone, the crash of it against the floor, the click of his zipper, the whisper of his pants hitting the floor. By the time I feel his warmth at my back again, I’m shaking.
I start to lower my hands, which earns me a nip to my shoulder in retaliation. “I thought I said to keep them there.”
“Please,” I whisper. “I want to touch you.”
“You will. Patience, little mouse.” He kisses the spot he bit and soothes it with his tongue.
I do as he asks, but only because he keeps touching me without interruption. My head falls back, and I moan to the ceiling as his hands palm my breasts, kneading through the thin material of my shirt.
“Take it off,” I beg, and he does, slipping the shirt over my head and tossing it away. “All of it.”
This time, he teases instead of listening, and it makes me shift from foot to foot and throw my hair back. His palms cup my breasts over my bra and then he’s drawing circles along the cotton. There’s enough padding that I can’t feel him, but I know his touch is just one layer away, and it drives me crazy.
When I’m mindlessly writhing against him, he tugs the cups down to bare me to his touch. Skilled fingers pay homage to my nipples, pulling deeper moans from me. He tweaks them, just enough to cause me twin edges of pain and pleasure, and then he releases the clasp and his hands travel down to the waistband of my jeans.
My breath stalls in my chest as his fingers dance along the edge.
“Please,” I whisper and this time he gives me what I want by unbuttoning my pants and diving underneath.
He uses one hand to turn my head so he can meet my lips and the other to find the wetness with the slightest brush of his fingers.
“So ready,” he says. “I think you like the idea of staying here with me. Has my little mouse turned into a cat?”
I mumble unintelligible words against his lips and feel him smile. My heart flips over in my chest, and I know there will be no surviving him. There is no recovery for what he does to me. No walking away. Even if it was an option, I don’t think I could.
His tongue invades, plunders, conquers, and I meet him stroke for stroke, eliciting a groan from deep in his throat. The hand at my throat tightens, reminding me unerringly of the first time he had me against a wall. The memory comes to life and causes me to shift against him, hips searching for an easement of the hurricane whipping around inside me.
He only presses closer, so I’m pinned between his body and the door. I tremble with the need for release, the ache to touch him and express all the things I can’t with words.
“Shh, I’ve got you,” he says as his fingers start to move against me.
All I can do is take it. He keeps up the sweet torture until the door vibrates with the result of the tension growing inside me. Just when I think he’s going to push me over the edge, he pulls back and allows my arms to drop to my sides.
I turn, and he takes me in his arms and guides me to the bed. Greedily, I take him into my arms and accept his weight on top of me. My legs wrap around his waist and pull him close.
“Wait,” he says, a smile in his voice. “Not so fast, little heathen.”
“I can’t wait,” I tell him and undulate against him. “Now.”
He tugs down my jeans with the little space I allow him to have, and then he’s back against me. “I’m going to take my time,” he says.
And he does.
It feels like some sort of penance for everything he’d ever done wrong toward me. The manipulations when he was in prison, locking me up, being responsible for my pain. He worships me with the softest touches, the most maddening caresses until I’m near tears with the power of my need. He never made any apologies for what he’s done, and I realize he doesn’t have to any more than I have to thank him for saving me.
Tears leak from the corners of my eyes and he laps them up just as he thrusts inside me. My breath catches in my throat as his piercing hits all the sensitive spots inside me and strokes them to life.
His thrusts are slow, measured, and when I open my eyes, I find him watching me.
“Stay with me,” he says right before his mouth finds mine in a soft kiss. “Tell me you’ll stay with me. I can’t lose you.”
I lift my hands to his hair and peer into his eyes. “You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried.”
My words do something to him and his thrusts quicken. His hold convulses around me and I realize maybe he needs me to soothe the broken parts of him as much as I need him to show me there’s someone who needs me in return.
As I come around him, surrounded by his arms and anchored by his weight, I know there isn’t a chance in hell I’m giving up another minute without him by my side. If he’s an addiction, I welcome the rush. Give me another hit, and another, and another, until it kills me or gives me a taste of heaven.
I lose myself in his kiss, his touch, his toxic love.