Cade

What the fuck was I doing? I told myself I was going to ease her into opening up. I couldn’t help myself. Couldn’t stop from kissing her. Couldn’t get my finger to stop that goddamn twitch. I needed to touch her. But I went about it all wrong.

I almost touched her in the one spot a man should never touch without permission. Even as fucked up as I am, I know better than to ever think of doing something like that. Especially when my purpose is to make her understand she isn’t damaged. Christ Almighty how stupid can I get.

My heart races. Fury protecting her and fear of her state of mind drones on in my skull. Baking my brain with some godforsaken recipe I made up that’s now burning through my veins.

I could feel her splintering down the middle the second her gaze landed on me. My gift. The woman I want to sink into for the rest of my life is fighting to be free, and here I come barging in here demanding her to tell me something that could crumble the both of us to our knees.

“I, I have to get out of here. Get out, get away from me!” Terror blazes in her eyes. Those holes to her soul I can’t decide if I want to swim or drown in the minute she walked through the bathroom door. Standing there in just a damp towel. Hair wet, smooth skin, and smelling so good my cock came alive.

For one brief minute, I sunk. Nearly drowning in the strength she shields, her beauty, that gorgeous body, those lips that I know damn well have been shuttered to silence, caught me in a trance. The woman has no idea how badly I want to worship her like the gift she is.

I stayed away from her because I had no choice. I needed to pull my shit together before I came back here. Needed to figure out the right way to approach her. She’s so damned lost, so confused, and I’d be more of a heartless monster than I am if I don’t push her until she lets me fix what he’s done.

If this stupid idea to get her to crack doesn’t work, then all I can do is hope there’s a God up there looking out for her, because there sure ain’t one who gives a shit about me.

I have a few weeks to get Drew out of her head before I go after Adam. Little time after that to purge my brother from this world. That isn’t very long to strip ten years worth of abuse away from anyone.

I had every intention of waiting for her to get out of the shower and come out of my room before speaking to her. As screwed up as it sounds, I knew catching her off guard, hoping I could get her to open up a bit would be the best way to start this form of healing I strummed up in my mixed up head. Still, don’t know what the fuck I’m doing, but I’ll be damned if I let her go before she’s ready and I sure as hell won’t let anyone else carry the weight of her burden. Not when what she went through falls on my shoulders.

“I’m not going anywhere until you answer me. The man stole two gifts from me, Ivy. I want them both back the way I left them. I’m going to cut his hands off with my knife for laying them on you, and when I do, I want him to see the gift that will always be my favorite isn’t broken. That gift is you. If making you tell me what he did ends in you hating me then so be it. I’d rather you do; you should anyway. But I’ll be damned to the very bottom of hell if I don’t get you back to the strong, confident woman you were before I set you free.”

I contain my grin as she pushes against my chest, trying to get out of my grasp. She’s not going anywhere except back in time so I can find out how much damage he’s done to her.

“Don’t call me that again. Gift, my ass. I knew you were a liar. God, I want out of here. I’m not a prisoner. You have no right to keep me here. No right whatsoever to come back from the dead and demand anything from me. I don’t want to do this. I can’t. Goddamn you, I can’t.”

Right there is all the proof I need that what he’s done is more messed up than I can comprehend.

The guilt of holding her like a hostage threatens to strike. I brush that shit away. I’m keeping her safe. It’ll work like a well thought out plan if I can keep away from her.

I want her. And that want is only going to make my finger twitch worse the more I see bits and pieces of her feisty self return. It’s a tease to my cock.

A dagger straight to my beating heart.

Poison fucking Ivy.

Fuck me solid, I want to taste more of that poison on her wicked little tongue.

Frustration vibrates in my balls. The longer she stays here, the more my finger is going to twitch. I’m going to have to find something besides stroking my dick to occupy my time.

“Wrong. You are a gift, Ivy. Whether you want to believe it or not. You’ll never make me believe otherwise. I’m not letting you go. I have every right to make you understand that what he did didn’t damage you. Jesus, do you think any of this is easy for me? Do you think I wanted to see you bruised and beaten? Find out he used something that was precious to both you and me and hurt you with it. For shit’s sake, Ivy, he could have killed you with my knife. Do you know how fucked up that is? I want to kill him ten times over for hurting you. Goddamnit, let me help you.”

Ivy can yell and scream, Punch me. Kick me. Repeat until her throat is raw that she can’t tell me. The cold-hearted son of a bitch in me is not giving her a choice. I heard her choice when she accused me of thinking she was damaged. She’s been hollowed out. If this were anything other than making her feel good about herself, making her see she’s worthy of herself, I’d turn her over my knee and brighten her ass.

“If you think you're protecting me then think again. I have you, Ivy.” I center myself in her line of sight, running the pad of my thumb down her cheek. “Let me catch you. I’ll protect you from anyone, including yourself.”

The minute we drove away from Sam’s, I lost control. Lost focus on everything else but what Drew did. I’ve no doubt I’ll lose my shit when she tells me. And she will tell me everything. Right now, we're starting with my knife. The knife she gave me for my birthday.

Four and a half inch stainless steel bladed hunting knife with a leather handle wrapped around cherry wood. I had my eye on it for months. At the time, I wasn’t into knives like I was guns. For some reason though this one called out to me. Ivy talked her dad into buying it for me. I was in heaven holding that concealed weapon in my hands. Had no intentions of ever using it. Now I want it back so I can use it for what it was made for. To kill, to scalp Drew’s skin off his head.

“You're just like him. A monster out to destroy me. I can’t do this with you. Get away from me and don’t ever touch me again.”

Yeah, touching you is what I was born to do. But just like everything else my asshole of a brother stole from me, he’s stripped me of those honors too.

“I might be a monster, but when it comes to you, I’m nothing like him. Tell me, Ivy. How many times did he use my knife?”

Taking my hand off her fluttering pulse is the last thing I want to do. Feeling her pulse underneath my fingers gives me a purpose for some screwed up reason. Let’s me know she’s alive. Let’s me know he may have had her for years, but he’ll never get the best of her.

Her beating heart.

The woman has no idea how bad I want to throw her on the bed and devour her. Worship the temple between her legs. Feast on her lush tits and mouth. Make her come so many times if only to erase every filthy thing he ever did to her.

I drop my hand, and back away when tears start streaming down her face. Taking with me my tormented conscience, which up till now I didn’t know I had. Guess when it comes to her I’ve always had one, buried it deep like everything else when it came to her.

“You said you wanted to fix me. This isn’t fixing me; this is torturing me. Is that what you're trying to do, you want me to suffer because I married him? Do you want to punish me? Ruin me until there’s nothing left? H… he hurt me. How do you know about this anyway, have you talked to him?” Her gorgeous face tweaks in disgust as she crosses her arms over her chest with shaky hands, shoulders sagging in defeat. Christ, seeing her body tremor, her strength slipping away disengages me.

“Fuck no I don’t want to torture you. Do you think this is easy for me to hear? Baby, you need help. The things he did to you.” I can’t even say it anymore. Every time I do it’s carving away another piece of her beautiful soul. “I called him. I told him he’s never getting you back. He isn’t, Ivy. I’ll die before I let that happen,” I confess. I won’t lie to her about this, if I do, it’s only going to make it worse when she finds out just how dangerous of a man I am. It’s the only option I’ve got right now. “He didn’t tell me about the knife, you screamed it out the night I brought you here. You said a lot of things, Ivy. Things we need to talk about. Things you need to let out. Face them head-on. I’m not trying to hurt you. I’m trying to help you. I can’t even look at myself in the mirror knowing he hurt you with that knife.”

Every last fiber of my being is telling me I should walk away from her and give her the time she needs. I’ve walked away twice. One cost her years of cruelty. The other caused all this confusion I see beating against her head.

“He will find me. You don’t know the kind of man he turned into. He won’t stop until he gets me back. You stand here telling me you can’t look at yourself. How do you think I feel when I look at me? God, what else did I say to you?”

“Wrong. I do know the kind of man he is. You need to get one thing straight. I will stop at nothing to keep you safe. Not a thing. I don’t know what you see when you look at yourself. Obviously, not the same woman I do. That’s a woman who is carrying the weight of the devil on her shoulders. It isn’t going to be easy to talk, to forget, or to heal. You have so much strength in you, Ivy. Let me help you build it up.” I’ll do anything within my power to make her smile and live again the way she wants to. Not the way some obsessed motherfucker who can’t treat her right demands her to function.

The answers to the rest of her questions sway in the front of my mind; they’ve been there since she spoke my name in the throes of her drug-induced nightmare. Screaming my name, asking me to fuck her over and over in one breath, calling out for my brother to stop torturing, in the next. Both have gutted me until I can’t think straight.

“Nothing as important as this.” I shrug. It’s a mute point that doesn’t need to be repeated. Soon enough she isn’t ever going to have to see either one of us again.

“You asshole. You expect me to tell you things. Things I’ve blocked out when you won’t share with me. How about this. I relied on your love for me to get through my hell. A love I’m finding hard to believe you ever had.”

A smile wants to tug at my mouth because her feisty attitude is returning with a damn vengeance. I want her angry; she has every right to be. What I don’t want, what I won’t tolerate coming out of her mouth, a mouth I want to kiss again so fucking bad my tongue hurts, is for her to doubt what we had was real. It still is. I can feel it simmering in the air.

“You really believe that shit coming out of your mouth. Christ, Ivy. I’m trying real hard here not to show you the man I am. Don’t test me with childish bullshit.”

“I don’t know what to believe anymore. We could have disappeared together. My dad would have helped us. You didn’t have to run off and become a murderer.”

Fuck that stings. Another point is proven. She’s not cut out to be with me. If she can’t handle what and why I’m killing the people I know, she sure as hell can’t handle me killing people I don’t.

This hurts more than I thought it would. You think your mind is prepared for this when it’s anything but. It’s torture seeing her try and compact this on top of her abuse. It’s a sharp whip that cracks across my black heart. Scars. So many of them they will never fade.

“Yeah, and you think you’d have been better off running with me? I don’t think so. I’d still be the man I am. I’d still want my vengeance. I would have found a way, Ivy. Done told you I wouldn’t let anyone or anything stand in my way. If I do anything right in my life again, it’s to get you on track. I’m not fond of repeating myself. You staying here, letting me take care of you is more than I deserve. Don’t twist this conversation around and make it about me.”

All we do is stare at each other, drawing in one another’s breaths. Her speaking to me at all is more than I could ask for in a moment so estranged, so full of enough sexual tautness it’s going to be damn hard not to snap it in half and fuck her. There’s confusion too, and a thing called murder that stole her away from me.

Makes me seem divided thinking about the families left behind of the men I kill. Guess today is full of points being proved. If I wasn’t so sure I’d shoot myself in the head if I couldn’t snuff out a life that needs to be gone, I’d think I was human instead of the monster I am.

I reach for her when she crumbles in a heap of wild hair and long, long legs to the floor. “Don’t touch me!” She screams so loud it pierces my ears. The pain she’s holding in flies out of her as hard as the snow falling from the sky.

She cries with more violence than any sandstorm I’ve seen.

I hate seeing her cry. Hated the fact she was the only one who could draw out the man I used to be. The man whose heart is rippling and raw. The man who will go back into hiding once she’s beat these demons down. Not to hold her in my arms while she rides this out is killing me.

Point number goddamn nineteen. I’m not human after all if I can stand here and let the only woman who ever knew the real me, cry.

It’s a damn good thing Chaz went back to his place because he’d knock me on my ass for this. She isn’t rupturing quietly. She shakes and rocks before curling her legs up to her chin and cries while I stand there watching every molecule inside of her break in unison. Traumatized by what he did, devastated for allowing him to do it.

I honestly don’t know how much more denial I can take. I want her badly. I want her to be mine again. I want to crawl inside her body. Sink so deep I can’t find my way out.

Just when I think she’s done, her cries turn to wracking sobs that I can barely listen to any longer. It guts me to the core, but she needs this. She needs to let the weakness she has drip out of her before I push her more. I know this better than anyone. All it takes is one violent push from someone, and that piece of you hanging by a thread will transform into a chain so strong no one will be able to break it.

“Let it out.” I drop to my knees, scoop her in my arms as gently as I can and carry her to the bed where I tuck her shivering body under the covers.

It takes all I got left not to climb in and pull her to my chest.

The woman is a vision as her tiny frame lies curled up in a ball of emotions, her hair a disheveled mess, her eyes swollen and worn. Even in the midst of her despair, she takes my breath away.

Those lips I want to kiss again and again are quivering. Her shiny hair is irresistibly making my fingers itch to run them through it like I used to. I want to feel it. Smell it. I wish I could feel her in my arms, and take away her pain. Fill her life with nothing but happiness. The happiness she deserves. Think we both know that’s not an option no matter how much we wish it to be.

I want to make all of this better for her and for her to see me. The real me. I want to get down on my hands and knees and tell her that no matter how much time has passed, I’ve not once, not one second stopped loving her. When it comes to Ivy, I just want. Want something I’m never going to have.

There was a time when I would hold her, wipe all those tears away, and now she’s looking at me with the eyes of a stranger.

Brutally lost.

I can’t blame her for that. I’m feeling the same way; only, I know who I am. My life will always be a war. I’ll always fight some dirty battle to make someone else’s life better. It’s the way I’m programmed now.

She’s every damn thing and more than I expected her to be if I were to see her again. She’s stunning. A perfect individual who is reaching out for help without even asking. I won’t move until she answers me. I’m not giving up, not when the rest of my plan will wait until I demolish this mental hurricane spinning out of control inside of her.

“Don’t look at me like you don’t know who I am. Like you don’t know who you are. If you're going to look at me, then tell me what I want to hear.”

“Nine times. He, he used it every year on your birthday.” For fuck’s sake. That means he used it a few weeks ago while I sat here by myself, drinking and thinking about her, my dream of following my dad, and my knife. Jesus H. Christ. Can this be any more sick and twisted?

I should have expected her answer.

What I don’t expect are the silent tears that fall behind the lids of my eyes.