“On your back. Pillows beneath your shoulder.”

Elle tilted her head. Sure, he couldn’t be gentle. Except he never forgot her injuries for a second. “First time and all, we’ll do it your way.”

Another grunt. Since she was about to get every inch of that glorious cock inside her—even if she still didn’t quite know the full logistics of that yet—she wasn’t going to ask for more.

Once she’d obliged him, he grabbed another pillow and shoved it under her ass. Her eyebrow raised at that one. She was pretty much a freak between the sheets, but even she didn’t go for backdoor sex on the first night.

When one wasn’t enough, he slipped another under her back, so that she was fully propped up against the headboard. This would still hurt her arm. She understood that and accepted it. Still riding high on the endorphins of really good orgasms, she’d take the risk.

Even if he was standing beside the bed, stroking his length and staring at her as if he intended to eat her whole.

Whoops, he already had.

He pulled a condom out of his wallet, rolling it on with the efficiency of someone who’d had plenty of practice. She didn’t like thinking about that, especially now, but she preferred to think he’d had lots of training.

Except for eating pussy. Which holy shit, if that was him without much repetition…

“Only one time before,” she said thoughtfully, idly toying with her nipple while she took in his priming routine. Not that he needed any. Good Lord, she was already wincing at the idea of walking tomorrow. “You sure about that?”

“Very.”

“So what did you think?”

“I think I’m going to love making you cream on my dick like you did my mouth. Now quiet.”

She might not have obeyed if he hadn’t planted a foot on the bed. Oh no, he wasn’t going to roll on and start with some easy missionary.

He’d warned her.

She sucked in a breath as he loomed over her, drawing up to his full height. Christ, he was massive in all ways. “You know, maybe we should start slow—”

He grabbed her hip and flipped her on her belly, managing to do it so she landed mostly on her good side. There was a pinch of pain, but it was swiftly dwarfed by the feel of him squeezing her ass. One cheek then the other, before giving each a sharp slap. She was already hot from before, and the smacks to her skin just revved her engine more. She rose up on her knees, offering him more, tossing him a glance over her shoulder to let him know she was right there with him.

“Like that, do you?” He did it again, harder this time, using one hand to wrap her hair around his hand as he drew her up.

It was then that she realized the glass of the framed bucolic winter scene over the bed offered quite the nice reflective surface—just enough for her to see him crouched over her, manhandling her in a way that set her body on fire.

“Like watching yourself too, huh?” His mouth was at her ear and his other hand was on her ass, sculpting it before giving her a few more taps. Then he delved between her cheeks, slipping down to stroke her soaked pussy, his groan revealing exactly how wet she was.

As if she couldn’t feel it on her thighs.

Two fingers pushed inside her. Not carefully this time. It was all rough, hard thrusts, preparation for what she knew was to come. His hand in her hair grew more brutal, tugging her head back as he pushed her down, skimming her diamond-hard nipples over the nubby fabric of the pillowcases.

“Let’s see how fast you can come now, little Ricki.”

She didn’t have time to process his usage of that full nickname before he was replacing his fingers with his dick. Not slowly either. The broad head of his cock teased her slippery flesh. Circling once, twice, before he shoved his way in, making her pussy accede to him as if there was simply no other option. She cried out, and when she couldn’t reach the pillow because of his hold on her hair, bit her own arm. The damaged nerves higher up sparked to life, but she could barely feel the pain. There was just him inside her, taking over. Opening her up for him in a way she wasn’t sure she’d ever been fucked before. It wasn’t just the mechanics. She’d been done doggy-style in the past. It was the way he…conquered her. Mastered her.

Owned her from the first fucking stroke.

As much as she liked watching their shadowy, dirty figures in the glass, she couldn’t stay upright on her knees. He wanted her down anyway. He was poised behind her, hammering into her like a guy would oh, a few months in. Not the first time. The first night when everything was so new and perilous.

But Mal didn’t do anything like any other man she’d ever known.

She pressed her face into the pillows, turning her head to gasp for breath. She might’ve begged for mercy, if she’d truly wanted any. She didn’t. This was exactly what she’d needed. Not to be treated as if she was fragile glass. To be fucked as if she could withstand anything, hell, exalt in it, because she was so unimaginably strong.

Right here and now with him, she was.

She could be unbreakable, and he knew it. Was honoring it without giving her pretty words she wouldn’t believe.

The first climax slammed through her, shaking her to her foundations. Her knees went out from beneath her, but he didn’t stop. He shifted, he changed the angle, but he didn’t pause. He used her for his own pleasure and made it hers. Took hers and made it his.

When he turned her over and grappled for the pillows, pushing them under her ass again, raising her hips to him, she flailed out her arm, reaching for—

He grabbed her hand and brought it to his mouth. That abrupt kiss on her knuckles pulled her out of the moment and dropped her back down, leaving her reeling. He let her go and loomed above her again, drawing her legs up as he reached above him for the arched naked canopy of the bed frame. She couldn’t even gasp as he came down again, finding her and sinking inside with a groan that was part torture and part victory. He used the bed frame for leverage, somehow rocking into her again and again from that higher-than-normal angle, making each pass so deliciously long and deep. Her legs coiled around him and he drew her up, up, putting more pressure on her shoulders than she should be. She would be so sore tomorrow. Head to toe.

But she wasn’t numb. She could feel everything. Every incredible inch as he spread her open and made room for himself as if she’d been empty all this time.

One of his big hands moved down to cup her breast. He pinched her nipples, shifting between them, before applying that focused attention on her clit. She was so past the point of sensitivity that just a flick made her shudder. She couldn’t come again. It wasn’t physically possible. But his cock was hitting that spot inside her he’d sought with his fingers, and his bulging, tattooed arms were swimming in her vision. She wanted to watch him fuck her, touch her, possess her, but her lids were too heavy and the endless thrusts of his cock inside her too devastating. Holding on was more than she could manage.

And if she let go, he would catch her. She had no doubt.

“Eyes on me. Fucking now.”

She whimpered, half from his onslaught and half because she didn’t think she had the strength to comply. But it was worth it, because that intense darkness enveloped her as their gazes clashed and clung. His head was scraped and raw, and she’d done that to him. This big, powerful man, she’d marked just as he was marking her. Imprinting her from the inside out.

“Malachi.” His name felt good on her tongue, even if it took her last breath to say it. Watching his pupils flare and his jaw lock as he grew almost imperceptibly inside her, the final warning that he was right there too.

This time, they’d go over together.

She waited for his demand, but he didn’t give one. So she did.

“Come for me,” she whispered, squeezing him so tightly he couldn’t ever leave. A fantasy, for sure, but a beautiful one.

Beautiful nightmare.

The recognition slammed into her even as the orgasm did, quaking through her body even as her mind whirled. She couldn’t process, couldn’t even breathe. Because he was right behind her, his big shoulders shuddering as he drew back and sank home one last time, holding, holding, until he exploded inside her and brought her along one more time.

“Ricki.” Her name was a chant.

A blessing.

A memory she’d never lose again.

In the aftermath, the world seemed to go still. Not her. She was quaking inside and out. Her heart most of all.

For a second, he didn’t move. He still gripped one of the overhead arches, and she wondered how it hadn’t splintered from the force of his thrusts. His huge arms were visibly tensed as his body trembled. He was trying to hold himself motionless and failing.

And she couldn’t wait another second.

“It was you,” she breathed, and his beautiful eyes popped open. “Beautiful nightmare.”

His jaw, so slack a moment before, clenched again. He didn’t respond.

“I k-kissed you. Years ago. Before the band, before any of it. It was you.”

He went down on his knees, and it was like watching a redwood crumple. He just folded in on himself, still partially inside her, and drew her up into his arms. She wanted to be mad. To demand answers.

But she just wrapped herself around him—damn the pain—and held on.

After a minute or five, he took care of the condom and disposed of it, then came back to the bed and pulled her close.

“You remember.” He cupped the back of her head and brought it to his shoulder. “You remember.”

She nodded, pressing her face into his hot, damp skin. She sucked in a breath of the peppermint body wash from the rental house that he’d claimed to hate yet had brought with him to Teagan’s. Now that smell was on her too. He was all over her, all around her.

The sob rolled through her and she pushed away from him so she didn’t choke. He held her fast, keeping her close, tipping his head against hers as if he could take some of her pain away.

He didn’t even understand why she was crying. How could he, when she wasn’t sure herself?

“You never forgot. All this time, you k-knew.”

He nodded, his eyes bleaker than she’d ever seen them. “I knew. I never forgot. Not for a second.”

“I was fucking high.” She pushed away from him, harder now, so ashamed of herself that she didn’t know how he could stand to look at her, never mind touch her. “How much of my life have I lost because I don’t remember? Because I just didn’t know? No wonder you h-hated me.”

“I never hated you.”

She let out a laugh that ended in more tears. Of course, she was crying. She might feel strong for a few minutes, but reality always came crashing down.

“You thought I was hot, I guess? That made up for me needing your rescuing even then. Dumb, high little Ricki, never able to save herself. How did you stumble on me anyway? Coincidence? Bad luck? Our twisted fate?” She laughed and this time it was too bitter to bring on more tears. Her face was a mess of them anyway.

He turned his head, and her heart squeezed. “How, Malachi?” she asked sharply.

He didn’t answer for so long she was sure he wouldn’t. Another part of saving her from herself meant keeping the truth from her. All kinds of truths that she wasn’t strong enough to handle.

No one believed she could be strong. Not even herself.

Especially herself.

“Lila sent me to find you,” he said, and his voice was hollow.

As hollow as her chest.

“Lila,” she repeated. “Why?”

“Because you’re Nick’s,” he said simply, and that almost was enough to ease the pain just waiting to hijack her completely. She’d kept it at bay these weeks, but now here was the perfect excuse to break.

Unless maybe it was just family. Lila had worried about her, and she’d asked Mal to help.

Except Mal hated her. From the role she’d played in his parents’ breakup, or was there more?

She gripped his chin and made him look at her. The more was all over his face.

“She made you do it,” she said quietly. “You didn’t want to. Why would you? You didn’t know me. I was just some anonymous druggie.”

“You were never that to me. Not for one fucking minute. From the very first, I was—”

“What?” When that didn’t make him answer, she shook him. Hard. He barely flinched. “What was I to you? A payday? A way to get Lila off your back?”

“Both of those things. I didn’t know you. You said it yourself. And she’s always known what buttons to push and wheels to turn to get her way. You wanted to know why I had my issues with dear, sweet Lila? Now you have another answer. She’s a game player just like Lewis. Oh, they might have good reasons to do it, but they’re schemers nonetheless.”

Elle shoved at his massive shoulders, but he didn’t move. “I need space.”

“Yeah, well, you’re not getting it right now. You want me to be honest, you’re going to sit here and listen, not run off half-cocked before I’ve gotten it all out.”

“Why is everything some big secret? First, I find out Nicky had to make some big agreement with her to take my spot in the band if I fucked up—not if, when. Now this.” Elle wiped at her damp cheeks. “She sent you after me specifically, why? Because she had leverage?”

“Yes. And because she could trust me, even if she didn’t like me much more than I ever liked her. And because I’m a big motherfucker.”

She snorted. Since his still half hard dick was wedged against her belly, she had to concur. He was big in all ways.

“What leverage did she have on you?”

She expected him to argue. Or just not answer. Not to reply as if he’d been waiting for this day all this time.

“My garage was in trouble. It needed some money to keep going, and I didn’t want my men to suffer just because my career had hit the skids and I was too stubborn to touch much of my father’s money.”

“You mentioned a garage in the car. Where you store the Stingray. You own it?”

“Yeah.”

“So you worked on cars too?”

“Some.”

“Your career. Racing, you mean. Why did it end?”

He rubbed the side of his face, looking anywhere but at her. “I got involved with a fan and she OD’d. The press implicated me, that I had contributed to her decline. Her family was wealthy and powerful.”

The words spun through her head, turning her stomach and making her dizzy. Overdosed. Of course.

Another parallel. But she wasn’t going to press that point because it was a miracle he was even answering her questions at all.

“So’s yours.”

“I shunned my father’s help. If I didn’t want anything to do with him otherwise, didn’t seem right to have him bury the story, now did it?”

“And your mother? You’d sided with her once against Lila. For obvious reasons.”

“Yeah, until she got married three times more and made a mockery of everything I’d ever thought about her. They belonged together.” He shook his head in disgust. “I got lucky in that I found my grandparents when I was a teenager. I have my brother. As for the rest, I didn’t need them then and I don’t need them now.”

Hearing that made her immeasurably sad. She would’ve given anything to have her family back, and his was alive and he was renouncing them. Not that she didn’t understand, but God, your family was your family.

And sometimes you had to make your own.

“Lila held money over your head to help me. What else?” Elle asked after a couple minutes.

“She made the story go away. Got the press off my back.”

“How?”

“How do they do any of the shit they pull off, her and Donovan? Grease the right palms, call in the right favors. It’s still out there if you dig, but it became sixth page news instead of first thanks to her influence.”

“The girl who overdosed. The fan. You cared for her?”

He nodded, and she swallowed the rush of envy toward some tragic faceless woman she didn’t even know. Being jealous of someone who had been around long before her made no sense.

But he’d acknowledged that he’d been involved with her. Elle still didn’t know if their involvement would last beyond this trip.

Elle brushed her hair out of her face. Now that the adrenaline was backing off, her aches and pains were returning in full force. “That explains why you shun fan contact and can’t stand the press.”

“I never liked the whole fan culture. Not the fans themselves. Just the environment that’s conducive to making strangers think they own a piece of you. It’s dangerous.”

“As you found out.”

“I’m hardly the first. The fanbase was less rabid in racing, but it was a definite factor there too.”

“So that’s why you didn’t want to join the band.” Elle rubbed her hand under her nose. At least she’d stopped crying. “And because I was there.”

“Lila wanted me to join, but I didn’t know you were already a contender too. I initially agreed, then I backed out.”

“She let you?”

“Yes, because you were safe. For what it’s worth, I think she really just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

“At your expense.”

He didn’t reply.

“That night at Vinnie’s, I don’t remember much. But you told me to run. You helped me out a window—” She paused, struggling to bring the hazy details in her head into sharper focus. “The bathroom. And you had a hat. Hair.” She touched his head and he shifted toward her, leaning into her palm. “Dark, like Michael’s. It was almost long.”

“No. It just wasn’t short.”

The correction was so like Mal she had to laugh. Her eyes grew damp again and he shook his head, reaching down to lace his fingers with hers.

“Don’t. Just don’t. You’re thinking that I had no choices, that it’s your fault I was there.”

“It was. You keep having to step between me and whatever the latest threat is, and now I’m here in bed with you and it feels like—”

He moved away from her before she could finish, climbing off the bed and stalking away. She almost thought he’d walk through the door and keep going, but he didn’t. He gripped the back of his neck before shifting to face her again. “It feels like you’re grateful to me.” His voice was gritty and low. “That this is just some misplaced sense of gratitude.”

“No. God, no. You think I screw everyone who does something kind for me?” She didn’t expect an answer and she didn’t get one. “If you think I’m crazy for regretting you never really had a choice before getting sucked into my melodrama, I think you’re crazy for believing I’d ever do this just to say thanks for pushing me out of the way. Twice.” She took a breath. “Fucking twice now, Malachi. What’s next?”

“You might be keeping score, but I’m not.”

She buried her head in her hands. “You know what I’m feeling right now?”

“If you say regret—”

“Christ, no. Who regrets the best sex they’ve ever had? Like times fifty-eight-thousand?” She glanced up as he sat on the edge of the bed.

The suckiest part of this whole conversation? She hadn’t even been able to properly appreciate his fine specimen of a naked body.

“The only thing I’m regretting is I didn’t get my afterglow. That’s a requirement. Instead I had to take a stroll down memory lane.”

“Long overdue one.”

She couldn’t argue that point.

He reclined against the pillow, stretching out his big body and giving her basically no choice but to ogle him. She deserved the ogle, dammit. It wasn’t fair she hadn’t gotten her post-sex cuddles either.

Though with Mal, those seemed highly unlikely.

“I like being held after being boned brainless.”

He lifted a brow and held out an arm. “Then why are you so far away?”

She curled up against his side and pressed her cheek to his chest. His rampaging heartbeat would always be his tell. The one way she knew for certain he wasn’t unaffected, no matter how he might seem.

His fingers drifted through her hair, untangling the snarled strands. He played with it so long that she almost fell asleep, lulled by his now slowing heartbeat.

“Best sex ever, huh?”

She opened an eye. “Took you long enough to preen.”

“Was still pissed at you gratitude-fucking me.”

“Which I did not do.” She turned her head and met his gaze. “You know I didn’t. It couldn’t have been like that if I had.”

His thumb traced her cheekbone. “I’m supposed to drive back and meet some investigators tomorrow in the city.”

Just like that, her newly attained sense of calm split in two. She knew it had been a false one, since she hadn’t fully unpacked the Lila, Vinnie, and Mal situation. But it had been enough of one to allow her to nearly fall asleep.

So much for that.

She sat up and rubbed her shoulder. Hello, pins and needles, right on time. “What?”

He looked up at the ceiling. “That’s what I wasn’t telling you. That they’re looking into the accident and want to talk to me about it. You too.”

“Looking into it how? What do you mean?” She bit her lip. “They think it wasn’t an accident?”

“They’re investigating.”

“Yeah, I got that part. And what, you were just going to tell them I was too emotionally unstable to talk to them?” She slugged him hard in the gut. “Seriously, dude, you are getting on my last nerve.”

He caught her fist and held it against his rock-hard stomach. He probably hadn’t even felt her damn punch. “I told you now,” he said evenly.

“Only because I just melted down.”

“No, because if I believe you’re strong—and I do, or I wouldn’t be here right now—I need to treat you that way.”

“Sure about that? Sure you’re not saving me to make up for the one you couldn’t save?”

She nearly groaned aloud. God, she hadn’t meant to say that. Hell, to even think it. He’d cared about that woman, and losing her had to have been difficult. To throw his kindness back in his face—again—was unconscionable.

“I didn’t even try,” he said quietly. “I decided she was too much trouble and I cut her loose.”

“Addicts are trouble. They’re bad bets, and a smart person has to understand that. There are no guarantees.” She swallowed hard, knowing full well that she might end up driving him away.

But she owed him honesty. Unvarnished and uncensored.

If she couldn’t give him anything else, she could offer him that.

“I’m trying, God, I’m trying so fucking hard, but I slipped once already. Twice if you count the alcohol separately, and you should because I never had a problem with drink. But I didn’t care what I got in me. It hasn’t even been two weeks, and I’ve slipped twice. That’s what addicts do. We manage to make it for a while, and then something happens, life happens,” she swiped at the tears that had started again, “and we slip. We fall. And sometimes we don’t get up again.”

“Tell me someone who doesn’t use something to get through every day and I’ll tell you they’re a liar.” He leaned forward and cupped her jaw. “So-called healthy addictions are addictions too.”

“What, you think someone who likes to jog too much is the same?” She shook her head, but she couldn’t quite bring herself to move his hand from her face.

She loved him touching her far too much.

“In a way, it is. We all need something to make it through the night. Someone.” He dragged in a breath. “It isn’t what the textbooks recommend, but fuck them. Fuck everyone who says they know what’s the right way to handle this shit.”

“What are you saying?” she asked shakily.

“Until you can do this all the way on your own, let me help.”

“How?”

“Let me be your addiction for a while.” His gaze stayed steady, never wavering. “As long as it takes.”