Since having Maddox, Jane was used to being awoken by the slightest of noises. Her eyes flew open and she bolted up in bed. Was Maddox crying? It was still night, the moon still looming large and bright in the sky. She was confused by the feel of the sheets on her naked skin until she remembered she was in Ryder’s bed.
She had a vague recollection of Ryder tending to her. He’d carried her upstairs and placed her in a warm bath to soak her sore muscles and other areas and later rubbed some cream into her skin as she lay on the bed. And when Maddox had woken up hungry, Ryder had taken care of him and allowed her to sleep.
Which meant it was too early for Maddox to have another bottle. She waited for him to cry out again, but the monitor was silent. Sometimes he would cry and immediately fall back to sleep.
Too bad she wasn’t as lucky. Once she was up, it would take her at least fifteen minutes to relax enough to do the same.
She rested her head on the pillow and flipped on her side toward Ryder. The moon gave enough light that she could see the outline of him.
Flat on his back, he slept restlessly, his body twitching and his head turning from side to side.
She placed her hand on his chest and whispered a “shush,” just as she did with Maddox sometimes. It seemed to do the trick. On a large sigh, his body stilled.
Thanks to Ryder, yesterday’s horrible events were clear in her mind, but she was no longer a prisoner to them. Crying in Ryder’s arms had cathartically washed away the guilt she’d been holding inside. Her heart still ached for Dreama, but there was also fierce determination to punish the one or ones responsible.
But in freeing her emotions, Ryder had opened the floodgates. Her late-night revelation had thrown her for a loop. She certainly cared about him, but was it love?
They had so many hurdles to jump over before they could even talk about something permanent. He’d professed that he wanted to be a part of both hers and Maddox’s lives and earlier tonight had pronounced his ownership of her.
But what was to prevent him from changing his mind once he really got to know them? What made him different from Ciara or Ian?
Loving him would only make it that much harder when he left.
Whimpering, Ryder rolled to his side and curled into a ball. “Él es mío, no tuyo! Él es mío, no tuyo!”
Was he speaking Spanish?
There was so much she didn’t know about him.
She sat up and inched closer to his side, brushing his arm reassuringly. “Shhh.”
He thrashed around violently. “Nothing happened. It was a dream. You belong to me,” he yelled over and over.
She’d heard that you shouldn’t wake someone from a nightmare, but she couldn’t stand to watch him suffer. Kneeling over him, she gently shook him to coax him awake. “Ryder. It’s Jane. You’re having a nightmare.”
He whimpered like a wounded puppy before growing completely still. “Jane?” he asked in a voice thick with sleep.
She ran her fingers through his hair in an effort to soothe him and found him drenched with sweat. “Sorry to wake you but you were having a nightmare.”
There was such a long pause that she almost thought he’d fallen back to sleep. “Yeah. I get them sometimes,” he said quietly. “Thanks for waking me. I’m sorry I woke you. I’m fine now. Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not tired and don’t apologize for waking me. That seemed like much more than a nightmare. You were talking in your sleep. I think you even spoke some Spanish.”
He jackknifed up in bed, pulling the blankets off both of them. “I did? What did I say?”
“I don’t speak Spanish, so I’m not sure, but you kept repeating, ‘It was just a dream. Nothing happened. You belong to me.’” She waited a beat and, when he said nothing, asked, “Does that mean anything to you?”
He reached over to his nightstand and flicked on the lamp. Light flooded the room, momentarily blinding her.
“I haven’t had that nightmare in ages, but I used to,” he said, his voice sounding as if he’d swallowed sandpaper. “Every night. For years and years.” He shook his head and covered his face with his hands. “I think seeing Dreama like that after her attack might have triggered it. The blood…”
Since watching Wizard of Oz as a small child, she’d suffered recurrent nightmares about tornadoes, but each one was different. She’d never heard of having the same nightmare over and over. And to have it for years?
She stroked his back. “Sometimes they say talking about your nightmares can make them go away. Would you tell me about it?”
Body trembling, he shuddered and blew out a breath. She wanted to be there for him like he’d been there for her. But at the same time, she didn’t want to push him if he wasn’t ready.
Still, it twisted her insides to see him like this.
When he finally spoke, his voice was so quiet she almost thought it was someone else speaking. He averted his gaze, keeping it trained on the blanket in front of him. “It started when I was around five, I guess? I don’t know. I can’t remember a time when I didn’t have it, but Finn said that’s when I started climbing into bed with him because I was too scared to sleep alone.” He paused to take another deep, stuttered breath. “It’s always the same. My father is struggling with a woman who is screaming in Spanish. She says my name. There’s a loud bang and then she’s covered with blood. Keane stands over her with something in his hands. I think it’s a gun. And then she’s gone and I’m the one lying bloody on the floor.”
“Ryder, who is the woman in the nightmare?”
He raised his head and looked at her with red-rimmed eyes haunted with a child’s terror. “I think she was my mother.”
She instantly threw her arms around him and pulled him close, feeling his heart racing against her chest. No wonder he hated Keane. “Keane told me she’d died during childbirth in Mexico,” she told him. “That he’d loved her.”
But now that she’d learned about the terrible things Keane had done, did she believe him?
Ryder gritted his teeth. “I doubt he’s ever loved anyone in his life. He believes because I’m his son that automatically means I belong to him. Like I have no will of my own and my sole reason for existing is to do whatever he tells me to do. If he had his way, I’d be just like him. A murderer without a conscience.”
“He’s wrong.” She climbed onto his lap and placed her palms on his cheeks. “You could never be anything like him.”
She pressed a soft kiss to his lips, her intention only to ease the anguished look in his eyes, but the moment their mouths connected, Ryder seized control and the kiss morphed from one of tender compassion to frenzied passion. He poured his desperation into her and she accepted it. Took everything he had to give and made it hers.
Holding her tight to his chest, he propelled her onto her back and braced himself over her. “How long do we have before Maddox wakes up?”
She quickly did the math in her head. “Maybe two hours?”
“I need you,” he said hoarsely.
“You have me. Whatever you need, I’m yours.”
It didn’t matter that they hadn’t been together long. Now that he’d trusted her with his most vulnerable thoughts, his darkest fears, she could admit the truth to herself.
She was totally and irrevocably in love with him.
She’d always be there for him.
Even after he broke her heart and left.
* * *
Jane believed him.
After years of trying to convince himself that his dream was only that—a dream—he’d finally admitted the truth out loud: He’d witnessed his father killing his mother.
But Jane had been wrong. Telling her about his recurrent nightmare hadn’t helped. Each word was like a bullet that ricocheted around inside of him, leaving an eviscerated mess behind.
With her generous spirit and tender heart, Jane alone had the power to heal him. In fact, it had already begun. Before her, he’d never wanted a family. Yet she and Maddox filled a void he hadn’t known he’d been missing. And now that he had them, he would never let them go.
The way she’d trusted him in the playroom and surrendered to him so completely had done as much for him as it had for her. He’d never expected to find serenity through Domination. But in breaking down Jane’s walls earlier tonight, he’d also broken down his own, walls he hadn’t even known existed.
He’d lied to her.
Dreama’s attack hadn’t triggered the nightmare, at least not directly.
It was knowing that it could have been Jane.
He wrapped his hand around his cock and slid it up and down her slit, getting himself nice and wet. Her eyes darkened with desire and she let out a little moan as he rubbed his cockhead in circles over her clit.
There were important words for him to tell her, important words that would change their lives forever, but tonight wasn’t the right time for them. Tonight he would have to settle for showing her.
“No restraints,” he said. “No toys. Just you and me. Let me make love to you.”
He wanted to fuck her bare, feel her tight heat gripping his cock, but as greedy as he’d admitted he was for her, it was something he refused to demand. One day when they both decided they were ready, he’d take her that way, over and over, with the intention of getting her pregnant with his child. He wasn’t going to miss out on watching her body change or hearing the baby’s heart beating for the first time. Not again.
At her nod of consent, he reached over to the nightstand and grabbed the condom off of it. He ripped open the package and unrolled it down his length, then with his hands behind her thighs, placed her legs around his waist.
He took his sweet time sliding into her, memorizing all the sights and sensations of the moment. She was so hot inside, he could feel it through the rubber. Wet, too, the sound of his dick moving farther into her mingling with their panting breaths. And she was so fucking tight, it was as if he were taking her virginity all over again.
When his cock glided over a certain spot, she moaned and dug her fingernails into the skin of his back.
He smiled at her responsiveness. She held nothing back during sex. Instead, she made it so damned easy to find what pleased her the most. And pleasing her…pleased him. There was power from making someone come, and when it was Jane, it took it to a whole other level. She arched her back and bit her lip, her reactions pure and innocent. Only she wasn’t so innocent, was she? And no one else would ever know that because it was all for him. No one else would ever get to take the gift of her virginity because he’d stolen it for himself. Twice.
There was so much to teach her, so many things to do to her, with her, and he couldn’t wait to begin.
Starting now.
Vanilla sex didn’t mean boring.
He shoved his hands under her ass and tilted her pelvis up, then jerked her legs apart. “Better hold on tight to me because the ride’s about to get a bit rocky,” he warned.
She smiled up at him. “I can take it.”
He couldn’t wait to prove her wrong. “We’ll see. Keep those legs up or I won’t let you come.”
The second she opened her mouth to respond, he dragged his cock back over that spot again, over and over, faster and faster, until her eyes rolled back and closed. Her abdomen trembled underneath him as she neared her first climax. Refusing to blow until she’d come at least twice, he fought against the tingle behind his balls signaling his own impending orgasm.
He didn’t have to wait long before she was rocked by climax number one.
Her core quivered around his dick, and she burrowed her face into his neck to muffle the sound of her cries. Again and again, her walls clamped down on him, each time making it more and more difficult to hold back.
“One,” he counted smugly, causing her to open her eyes.
For the next hour, he made love to her relentlessly. On her back. Her stomach. Her knees (his personal favorite). All the while, he had to think about baseball and politics to keep himself from coming. But he was rewarded greatly for his delayed gratification. Four orgasms and counting, Jane was a writhing, moaning, sticky mess.
“No more, Ryder,” she said, whimpering. He currently had her bent over the bed and was slamming into her from behind. “I can’t come again.”
“One more time.” He reached around to pluck her clit. “We’ll go over together this time.”
Slamming into her, he finally allowed himself to let go. Only a few thrusts later, when she pounded the mattress with her fist and said, “I’m coming,” did he close his eyes and bask in the sensation of her swollen pussy gripping around him.
Low in his belly, a storm grew out of control and his balls drew up tight to his body. White-hot ecstasy shot down his spine and up through his cock as spurt after spurt of come filled the condom.
Fuck, he couldn’t remember a time he’d climaxed so hard.
Both of them were slick with sweat.
He picked her up and carried her across his room to the bathroom. “Let’s take a quick shower before Maddox gets up.”
She curled her hand around the back of his head. “I could get used to this.”
His chest was bursting with unspoken emotion.
Now was the time. He couldn’t hold back any longer.
“Jane. I—”
Her cell phone rang, the noise freezing him in his tracks.
Their eyes met as they both realized there was something wrong. It was five o’clock in the morning.
Dreama.