HER WORDS IN MY head, her trust in me unwarranted, I took her inside my quarters.
I was not going to make her mine tonight, I would not do that to her, but I wanted her in my arms more than any woman I had ever encountered. I wanted her skin against mine. I wanted to hear her heartbeat. I wanted to feel her pulse under my lips, and I wanted to watch her fall asleep.
I had not known loneliness until I had laid eyes on her and her pretty smile at a gas station. And I had not known yearning until she stepped onto the porch of her mother’s and stepfather’s house. I more than wanted her in my quarters. I wanted to be in her heart.
I turned on the one light. “It is small.” I was not apologizing for how I lived, so I did not know why the words left my lips.
She looked around with curiosity like she had at the land. “It’s cozy.”
A bed, a chair, a shelf, a small table I had made, and a miniature refrigerator I added five months ago. It was functional. “The bathroom is there.” I tipped my chin toward the small washroom. “The shower is outside, around back.”
“It’s outside, like in the open?” She looked up at me the way she had that first day, the way she still did, with wonder and curiosity, with innocence.
Except now some of the innocence was gone, and I blamed myself. “It is enclosed by fencing to afford some privacy.” I fingered a lock of her soft, thick hair. “Are you hungry? Thirsty?”
She bit her lip and shook her head.
I gently pulled her lip free with my thumb. “Do not be nervous. I am going to shower, then we are going to sleep. Just sleep.” I pressed my lips to her forehead then set her bag on the large bed I had purchased months ago to replace the small one I had used since receiving my own quarters. Grabbing my towel from the hook on the wall, I nodded at her for reassurance then went to the shower.
Ignoring the desire pounding in my veins, I quickly showered and returned. When I opened the door, her clothes were neatly folded on the one shelf next to mine and she was sitting on the edge of the bed in the hooded sweater and matching soft pants.
When she looked up and saw me shirtless, heat hit her cheeks before her gaze cut to my chest. “You have a tattoo.”
“I am guessing you have none.” I had seen most of her flesh behind the cargo container.
Releasing the lip she was biting, she smiled shyly. “Um… no, I mean none.” Her gaze dropped to my waist to the towel I had wrapped around me, before she quickly looked away.
The corner of my mouth tipped up as I took a pair of boxers from the shelf and stepped into the washroom. Dumping my dirty clothes in the hamper, I pulled up the boxers over my strained desire. Without comment, I walked back into the room, hung my towel, then scooped her up off the bed.
A surprised gasp escaped, and she locked her arms around my neck. “What are you doing?”
“Picking you up.”
“Callan.” Her breathy laugh touched my cheek. “I realize that, but why?”
The name on my birth certificate, even said by her, still sounded foreign to my ears. “I was not always called Callan,” I admitted, settling on the bed with her in my arms.
She twisted in my lap to look at me. “Your name isn’t Callan Anders?”
“That is what my birth certificate says.”
She frowned. “I don’t understand.”
“I was not called that growing up. Everyone on the compound had given names, all of Greek descent.”
With her beautiful brown eyes, she stared at me in wonderment. “What was yours?”
My chest rose and fell once. Then, because I had not completely let go of my past, I told her. “Hero.”
Shock made her look like a doe in spring. “Hero,” she whispered, saying my name with reverence.
My eyes closed, and my nostrils flared with a telling inhale.
“Hero,” she said again, softer, needier, her hands landing on my chest.
My eyes opened, I gripped two handfuls of her hair, and I kissed her. Hard, desperate, selfish, I stroked my tongue into her mouth and took the past back. I kissed her as the man who carried the name Hero for twenty-seven turns around the sun would kiss a woman.
My tongue tangled with hers, her trust in my arms, I did not want to be a completely new man. The sum of my experiences, I wanted to be her hero.
Fighting to keep from pushing her to her bruised back, I stroked into her mouth deep like I wanted to stroke into her body.
She moaned, and I swallowed her desire. She could have Hero. She could have all of me. But not right now.
With effort, I pulled back. “I am Hero. To you. Only you.” The world could have Callan Anders.
Her bottom lip still wet from my kiss, she touched the soft flesh, but she said nothing.
“Speak,” I demanded.
She cast her gaze down and inhaled sharply. “I would like that.”
I sensed her reticence. “But?”
“She called you that,” she barely whispered.
I grasped her chin and brought her face up. When her eyes met mine, I gave her the truth. “I was not her hero.” Not in any sense of the word.
“But you’re mine?”
I searched her face, looking for misplaced gratitude, but she was not asking about Mexico. “If you will let me.” I was under no illusion it would be any other way.
Pulling out of my grasp, she looked down as she hesitantly touched the Latin words I’d had permanently inked on my chest five months ago. “What does it say?” she asked quietly.
I gave her the words in Latin. Then I covered her hand with mine and said them in English. “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”
Her throat moved with a swallow. “It’s beautiful.”
“You are beautiful.” I reached for the zipper on her sweater. “I want to see how badly you are injured.”
She pulled back, and nervous words tumbled out of her mouth. “I’m okay. I’m fine.”
“I am not going to force myself on you.” I traced the discoloration on her jaw. “I will never take what is not freely given.”
“I know,” she offered as a response, but the words were said too quickly.
“Are you afraid of me?”
“No, no, I’m not.” Her head was shaking no, but she made no eye contact. “I know you wouldn’t… I mean, I know I’m….” She inhaled. “I know I’m safe.”
“Do you?” I would never let anything happen to her again.
She brought her gaze back to mine. “Yes.”
“Then why can I not see you?”
She pushed off my lap and moved to the edge of the bed. Her feet hit the floor, but she did not flinch. She moved two paces to a darkened window and looked out. “I don’t have a body like yours.” Her words were barely audible, even in the small space.
“I am glad.”
She turned to face me. “You don’t understand.”
I understood perfectly. She thought she should look like the women in the fancy hotels on the beach who lay in chairs by the pool.
I stood and took one step, closing the distance she had put between us. “I am going to show you.” I fingered the zipper, but I did not pull it down. “You have nothing to fear. Do you trust me?”
She nodded. “Yes.”
I stepped back. “Undress.”
Her head dropped, her chest rose and fell and she stood perfectly still.
I waited.
Slow, like a winter chill, her hand rose and she took the zipper.
My heart sped up.
Inch by inch, the sound of the metal clasp releasing its teeth filled my quarters as she brought the zipper all the way down.
Her sweater parted, revealing the sides of her bare, full breasts. The nipples hardened under the soft material, and she paused.
My gaze intent, my sex more than ready for her, I said nothing. I waited.
Inhaling, my strong, beautiful angel pushed the sweater off her shoulders and let it fall to the floor.
My heart pounded, the blood in my veins heated, and my mouth watered. No undergarments, her full, heavy breasts gave way to her small, feminine waist, then her womanly figure swelled again into the perfect curve of her hips.
“Pants,” I demanded, my voice rough with desire.
With shaking hands, she slipped her thumbs under the waistband and pushed it down over her hips. The material pooled at her feet. Despite her skinned knees, she stepped out of her pants with grace.
I throbbed.
She had the face of an angel, but the body of a woman. I had never seen a more beautiful female.
Ignoring my own needs, I moved behind her. Her long hair fell down her back in waves of rich brown, and I brushed the locks off one shoulder. My breath fell on her neck and gooseflesh rose across her skin.
I touched my lips to the top of her shoulder. “Do you know what I see?” I did not wait for an answer. “Proud, strong shoulders.”
She shivered.
“Do you know what these bruises say?” I sifted my hand through her soft hair and traced the edge of the bruise on her back, over her ribs. “They say you are a survivor.”
“I talked back,” she whispered the confession. “I shouldn’t have, but they had taken children.”
I ran my hand over the small of her back and gently pressed the ribs under the marred flesh, feeling for broken bones. “I am proud of you for fighting.”
“He was going to….” Her breath hitched. “He was going to rape me.”
My jaw clenched, and I closed my eyes. I did not want to hear the words again. I did not want this moment clouded by rage for her abductors, but I would not deny her need to speak the words and release them.
Stepping against her back, I gave her the truth. “I would have killed him twice.” I took her hips in my hands. “I will never let anything happen to you again.”
“Hero,” she whispered.
I brushed my palms over her full hips and skimmed down her thighs. I wanted her to forget about the dead sex trafficker. I wanted her to think of me touching her body, and no one else. “Every curve of your body entices me.” I pressed my hips into the small of her back. “Do you feel what the sight of you does to me?”
“Yes,” she breathed.
I dragged my palms up and over the soft rise of her stomach. “I want to swell your body with my seed.”
Hopefulness colored her tone. “You want children?”
I stepped in front of her so I could see her face. “I do with you.”
“You don’t know me.”
“I know you are strong.” I traced the edge of the bruising on her ribs. “I know you are kind and love your family. I know you took care of a child that was not yours like he was your own.” I ran my hand down her arm and took her wrist. “I know how you make me feel.” I placed her hand on my arousal.
She sucked in a sharp breath, but her small fingers grasped at my hard length. “I’ve never done this,” she whispered.
“I know.” Pulsing in her hand, wanting nothing between us, I cupped her cheek and tilted her face up to meet mine. I kissed her once. “I am not taking you tonight.”
“What if I wanted you to?” She licked her bottom lip. “What if I asked?”
Brave angel. A dozen ways to take her raced through my mind, making me harder. The scent of her desire, her shampoo, the soap she had used, it filled my head and my body with a yearning I had never known. “I would say no and make you feel good in other ways.”
She squeezed me harder and whispered, “How?”
I took her face in both hands and kissed her.
I kissed the carefree girl in the gas station. I kissed the female who had fought an abductor, and I kissed the woman who’d come home with me. I stroked through her mouth as if she were already mine and I was hers.