Austin let the wheat taste of his beer slide down his throat as he watched Sierra out on his deck while he leaned against the opening of the sliding glass doors. She stood at the railing, her hair free and blowing in the wind. The sun was just setting, and the orange and pinks in the sky reminded Austin of why he loved his home and his city.

He was surrounded by nature even though he could drive two minutes and find civilization.

Right then he wanted to clutch Sierra to his side and protect her from the world. Something had scared her today. Something so bad she’d easily given in to his orders and control. She hadn’t batted an eyelash when he took her car keys away and drove her to her place. He’d packed up her things while she told him what she wanted. He hadn’t wanted her to lift a finger.

The fact that she let him spoke volumes.

They ordered Chinese and had it delivered, though both of them only picked at their food. He didn’t want to pressure her to tell him what had spooked her since lunch, but if she didn’t start talking soon, he just might do it.

He dominated in the bedroom, not in everyday life, but when she looked so lost, so broken, he’d do what he had to in order to keep her safe.

Sierra Elder had come to mean more to him than he’d thought possible in such a short amount of time.

To hell with it.

He set his beer down on the outside table then went to her. When he pressed his front to her back, caging her in, she leaned into him. She tilted her head up, and he took her mouth in an easy kiss.

“What happened after lunch, baby?”

She turned in his arms then wrapped hers around his waist. He didn’t hesitate and hugged her close, resting his cheek on her head.

“I don’t know how to start.”

He pulled back then tugged on her hand, picked up his beer and led her to the living room. He sat down on the couch and pulled her into his lap.

“Start with right after lunch. Who bothered you?”

She blinked at him then snorted. “Oh, well, before I go into what the, shall we say, bad part, someone did come in after lunch and bothered me.”

Austin narrowed his eyes. “Who?” he growled.

“Now don’t freak out because I handled this part on my own. I just thought you should know.”

“Who?”

“Shannon.”

“That fucking bitch. What did she say to you?” Hell. He’d call the cops and get a restraining order at this point. He could take it just fine, but no one was allowed to bother Sierra. No one.

“She did her whole song and dance about how you’re hers and all that crap. It didn’t bother me other than it happened in my place of business. I handled it, Austin. I honestly think she’s just bored and will go away once she finds something new. She just needs something—or someone in this case—to do. Don’t worry about it.”

He rubbed her cheek with his thumb, pissed that his past was coming out to bother his present. “I don’t have that many exes, but it seems one I do have is trying to fuck it all up.”

“Trying, but not doing it. It’s fine. She’ll get bored when she gets ignored, and we’ll move on. On that note, do you have any other exes I should hear about?”

Austin blushed a bit. “Uh, not really. I haven’t heard from any of them. I think Maggie is in town, but it’s been years since I’ve seen her. Most of them are married, I think. I mean married now. Not that they were married when we were together. You know what I mean.”

Sierra kissed his bearded cheek. “I get it.” She let out a breath, and Austin tensed. “Now, about my ex.”

“Jason?”

She nodded. “Jason. Damn it. Okay, so you know about my past with him a bit in terms of our relationship, and you’ve seen my scars.”

She closed her eyes, and Austin held still. If he moved or breathed loudly, she might stop speaking, and he knew she needed to get this out.

Not only for him, but for herself as well.

“They’re connected.”

“Did he do this to you?” he ground out.

Sierra’s eyes opened, and she shook her head. “Not in the way you think. We were in an accident. And it was my fault. I killed him.”

Austin’s heart stopped.

“You what?” He shook his head. “Just tell me it all. Tell me about what happened and why you think you killed him. Then tell me how that relates to how I found you in your office today.”

“He had an old Harley he loved,” she said then licked her lips.

“Riding,” he muttered. “Oh damn.”

“Yeah. Damn.”

Her gaze met his, and he had to suck in a breath. The strength he saw there made him want to hold her close and never let her go. She might feel she was weak, but she was wrong. He’d do whatever was in his power to make sure she understood.

“We rode everywhere,” she started again. “We were young, in love, carefree. You know how that goes.”

Not exactly, but the burning knot of something he’d rather not delve too deeply into started to tighten. “How old were you again?”

She gave him a sad smile. “Nineteen.” When his eyes widened, she snorted. “Yeah. I know. Nineteen and in love. We were both in college going for business degrees. He was going to work for his father, and I was going to open my own boutique, and we’d have babies and ride into the sunset. Damn, those dreams were so big for teenagers, but I thought it could happen. I truly thought we could take over our part of the world and live happily ever after.”

Jason had been the center of her life back then. Sierra was a full nine years younger than he, something Jason never really thought about, but she’d been in love and lived in a way Austin would never understand.

Now that she was in his life, though, Austin was just starting to comprehend that kind of feeling, that kind of need, but this wasn’t the time to dwell on it, not when she was in the past with the man she’d loved before him.

“We worked well together. At least I thought we did.”

“What do you mean?”

“My in-laws, well, those people I thought of as my in-laws since Jason and I were only engaged and not actually married, hated me.”

He cupped her face. “How could anyone hate you?” The irony that he’d tried to hate her before he even met her didn’t escape him, but that had been his own prejudice.

She rolled her eyes. “I wasn’t good enough for their precious baby boy. They had money. Lots of it. I didn’t. I came from the middle class. My parents worked their asses off to get me money for college, and I worked on the side to pay for room and board as well. CU is expensive.”

Austin nodded. He knew that, though he’d never gone to college. All of his siblings who’d gone to school went there. He’d taken business classes at UCD, the offshoot of CU, so he could be ready for Montgomery Ink, but that was it. He’d never felt like he needed more, and honestly, he still didn’t.

“My parents were older when they had me and died about five years ago. Well, my dad did from a heart attack and my mother three months later with a brain aneurysm. So now I’m all alone, but I’ve moved off track.”

Austin cupped her face. So much loss in such a short time. “I’m sorry, baby. So fucking sorry.”

She closed her eyes and leaned into him. “I’m okay now. I know they’re together, and I had started to move on, but now I’m really off my story.” She took a deep breath. “So Jason. Him. We rode together on the weekends when I wasn’t working. He didn’t have to work since his parents took care of him. I hated it a bit at the time since he could go off and do what he wanted and I had to work my ass off serving tables, but it really didn’t bother me too much. Money didn’t matter to me other than to save it. Jason was always a little spoiled, I get that now, but he couldn’t help it. Not with the kind of parents he had.” Her mouth twisted into a wry smile.

“They hated me. God, how Marsha and Todd hated me. Still hate me. Not only did they think I wasn’t good enough for him, but right before he died, they found out about the D/s part of our relationship.”

“Shit,” he mumbled. He could only guess how they’d reacted. A lot of people didn’t understand the lifestyle. He wasn’t out in the open with it unless he trusted people because he didn’t want it to hurt his family and business.

“Yeah. Shit. They called me a whore and said I was abusing him. They said that I was some sick pervert that needed to be hit so I must have tainted their poor son and forced him to flog me. They even went to the cops and said I made Jason choke and cut me.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “I was never into breath or blood play. I’m still not, but they went to the cops with the most taboo things they could find on the Internet and tried to get me out of Jason’s life.”

“Fucking bastards.” To take something so precious between a Dom and sub and turn it out into the public like that? Fuck, he didn’t know what he’d do, but it wouldn’t be pretty.

“Pretty much. The cops couldn’t do anything, thankfully. Jason and I were open and honest with them, and we got lucky in the fact that one of the cops was also a Dom. He took care of us and kept an eye out just in case Marsha and Todd tried a different tactic.”

“Thank God for him then.”

“I know, right? So, the bad part.” She shook her head as if trying to clear the cobwebs. “We took a day off to ride up to the edge of Pike’s Peak. We didn’t like to ride all the way up because that’s freaking dangerous and cold, but we liked the drive through the Springs and such.”

“I get it.” If he kept her talking, she’d eventually get to the bad part and then to why she’d freaked out when he saw her in her office. Jesus, even with what she’d told him, it was enough to make anyone have a breakdown.

“So we were on our way back, and the sun had set so we had our lights on and our night glasses on for the wind and glare. We even had helmets on, though Jason hated his. I wouldn’t let him on the bike without it or his leathers if we were going for a long ride. I was a little mouthy back then, so I got my way.”

He didn’t mention that she still was, but he liked her that way. He didn’t want a doormat in his life; he wanted fire and ice.

“What happened, baby?”

She closed her eyes and flinched, as if she was reliving whatever had happened. He brought her closer, letting his lips rest on her brow. His hand caressed her back, letting her know he was there.

“We were on a side street on our way to the highway since we didn’t want to deal with all back roads in the dark. There were a couple of cars, but not that many since it wasn’t rush hour and it was the weekend. It had been an amazing day and ride. We’d stopped for lunch and even made love in the forest on the way up there. We almost got caught but got lucky. It was seriously the perfect day. I had just wrapped my arm around his waist and yelled that I loved him. You know how you can’t hear a thing over the wind, so I yelled. Right in his ear.”

Fuck. He didn’t want to hear the rest because that meant she’d have to tell it, but they both had to go through with it.”

“Jason turned to me and yelled it back. He shouldn’t have, but we weren’t thinking. We were just…happy.”

A lone tear slid down her cheek and he kissed it away. He didn’t want to see her cry and didn’t want to see her in pain, but he couldn’t kiss it all away.

“We didn’t see the train tracks until it was too late.”

“Fuck, did you…”

“There wasn’t a train, but the tracks were at an angle to the street. So instead of going at the ninety-degree angle you need to on his bike at our speed, we hit it awkwardly. The bike went down, and we both flew off of it. I skidded down the right side of the road and shredded my leathers. Jason ended up in oncoming traffic.”

Dear. God.

“A semi on the way to the highway hit him at full speed. He didn’t have a chance. The back tires slammed into the bike and caused an explosion. I had just turned over to see my fiancé die, hit by a truck, and then parts of the bike that were on fire slammed into my side. It was only a small part, but the burns and impact crushed three of my ribs and tore into one of my lungs. I don’t remember much after that.”

“Oh baby, oh fuck.” He gently held her close, as if she was still as broken as she’d been the day of the accident ten years ago.

She wrapped her arms around him and hung on tight, tighter than he held her. Taking that as encouragement, he gripped harder, never wanting to let her go.

Her shoulders shook as she sobbed in his arms, and he felt his own tears track down his face into his beard. She’d been so young and so fucking lucky that she’d lived through that. To have to watch her fiancé die like that…hell…he didn’t know how she survived.

“You’re so fucking strong, Sierra. You lived, and you’re still here. To do that…baby, you’re so fucking strong,” he repeated.

She pulled back, confusion in her gaze, before she kissed him softly. “Thank you for that. I don’t always feel it, and back then, I knew I was weak. That’s what I kept telling myself over and over again. That’s what Marsha, Todd, and their lawyers kept saying.”

“You were never weak.”

“Thank you,” she whispered then cleared her throat. “Jason died on impact. He was still alive when the semi came because I remember him looking up at me one last time, but he would have died quickly after that according to the doctors. I was in a medically induced coma for four days before I finally woke up.”

He ran his hand up and down her back, feeling incompetent. He didn’t know how to take her pain, but he could do his best to comfort her.

“It took months of surgeries, skin grafts, and agony before I was able to leave the hospital and not have a home nurse. By then, I had dropped out of college and moved back in with my parents.”

Sierra bit her lip then shook her head. “I eventually went back and got my degree, but it took a hell of a lot longer than I’d planned. My parents died before they could see me graduate.”

“Oh, baby.”

“I know, but they were there for me when I really needed them. Not with just the healing and PT stuff. You see it was an accident according to the cops. At first.”

She met his gaze, and Austin held back a curse.

“I told you Todd and Marsha had money. Well, they used that money to stir their grief and found a judge who looked into the case. They did all they could to find me criminally responsible for his son’s death. They even tried to sue the semi driver, though he’d done nothing wrong. He called the police and saved my life by putting pressure on my wounds, but Jason’s parents didn’t care. In fact, I think they blamed the man for saving my life.”

“You’re kidding me.”

She shook her head. “No. No I’m not. They told me flat-out to my face that I should have died in that accident and not him. They told me, and had the judge convinced, through money or idiocy, that if I hadn’t forced Jason into the lifestyle, he would have been in the right mind never to get on the death trap of the bike in the first place. They told everyone they could that I must have done something on the back of the bike—sexual or violent depending on who spoke, Marsha or Todd—to cause the accident. They went on and on, trying to get me in jail.”

“None of that would have brought back their son,” he bit out.

“I know that. The cops knew that. The other judges knew that. We never went to court, thank God. They didn’t have a case. It took years and many threats, but I was finally able to move on. By then, my parents were dead, and I had scars on my body that weren’t as deep as the ones on my heart. The cops on the scene ruled it an accident, and though it was, it took me a long time to see that myself. In fact, I still don’t believe it some days. I still feel like I’m the one who killed him.”

He cupped her face, anger running in his veins at the situation and the idea that she’d think that and blame herself for something so far out of her control; it was crazy.

“You did nothing wrong. You loved a man, and you both had an accident.”

“That’s not all,” she whispered, the darkness in her gaze forcing Austin to hold himself back.

“What?”

“I was pregnant when we went down.”

“Fuck,” he grunted then tugged her close. “Oh, baby. I’m so fucking sorry.”

“I didn’t know it at the time and lost the baby due to the trauma. When Jason’s parents found out—I’d been drugged up because of the pain and let it slip—they blamed me for that death as well. I lost my baby and Jason all in one day and yet they compounded the whole situation.”

“I’m so, so sorry, Sierra. There are no words, and yet all I want to do is hold you and try to make it better.”

“I know. And the fact that you’re here holding me makes it better in some ways. I’ve never told anyone about this, not the girls at work, not even Hailey, though she knows some of it.” She met his gaze, her shoulders squaring. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to get pregnant again, Austin. I don’t know if babies are in my future.”

He let out a shaky breath. Yeah, he wanted kids, and the more time he spent with Sierra made him think that she was the one for him, but there were other ways.

“When, and if, we come to that, we will deal with it,” he said softly. “There are other methods of having children, and I’m not going to leave you because of something that might not happen. You get me?”

“I get you,” she whispered.

“Good. Now tell me how this connects with how I found you at work today.”

She sighed then told him about the phone call and what her lawyer had said. Each new piece of information set Austin’s teeth on edge. It took all in his power not to clench his fists and end up bruising Sierra in some way because he couldn’t control himself.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me.”

“No. It’s not over, and that pisses me off.”

“Good, an angry Sierra is better than the one who thinks she can’t do anything. I like it when you’re all icy and have your chin up. You can take on the world then.”

Her eyes filled with tears, and he wished he could take those words back. Maybe he’d been too honest.

“That’s one of the nicest things you’ve said to me.” She snorted. “I know that sounds crazy, but the fact that you believe in me means so much.”

He kissed her softly then pulled back so they were eye to eye. “Of course I believe in you. You’ve been through so much, and you’ve never given up. And one thing, you’re not alone. You get that? You’ve got me and the Montgomerys on your side. We’re not letting these bastards hurt you. You’re mine, Sierra Elder, and I’m not letting go.”

He’d never said those words to another person before, and he knew one day soon he’d also tell her the other three words he’d never uttered to someone who wasn’t his family.

“I…thank you,” she whispered.

“Anything, Sierra. Know that. I’ll do anything you need me to do.” Including kill those bastards who thought they could hurt her.

She looked him straight in the eye, her chin rising. “Make me yours in truth, Austin.”

He froze. “What?”

“You’ve done so much for me, but I’ve never done anything for you.”

“Sierra, just you being you does it for me.”

She shook her head. “No, I mean I’ve never served you. I want to take our relationship to the next level. I want to care for you the way we both need. I want you to do what you need as well. I want to find that trust and work toward something more.”

No sweeter words had ever reached his ears.

There was only one thing to say.

“Kneel.”