by Juno Rushdan
“Fine.” She caught his bottom lip with her teeth and bit down, none too gently either. “But nothing lovey-dovey.”
A deep sound of male satisfaction rumbled in his chest.
His mouth captured hers, possessive and hungry, almost vicious, stealing her breath. In the demanding slip of his tongue and the wet heat of the kiss, he fed her something she hadn’t realized she’d been starved for. It wasn’t sweet and tender. This was all-consuming.
He molded to her, driving into her with heartrending intensity. A reckless energy she was powerless to fight built in their rhythm, tightening her muscles. She shoved her hands in his hair and kissed the hell out of him, licking into his mouth and sucking on his tongue. He tasted of mint and longing and her.
Her breasts grew heavy and swollen. The need to have all her clothes off, for their bodies to touch everywhere without restriction, was overwhelming. Cole must’ve felt the same way. In seconds, he had her shirt and bra off. No finesse, no control. His breath fanned her throat, and he pinched her nipple, coaxing a cry from her lips.
“You okay?” The words were gentle, and he slowed, grinding his pelvis against her, but didn’t stop the inexorable drive into her. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
“Don’t hold back.” She caressed his face, running her thumb over his lovely scar. Not that scars were pretty, but everything about Cole had always been perfect. Because it was a part of him, and he’d been hers. Once. “Let it hurt.”
His grip on her tightened, his rhythm quickening, his strong thrusts growing urgent. She clenched around him as they melded into one another. This man was the only one to give her a safe space to let herself feel soft and sexy. To lose control regardless of the consequences. Free from the responsibility of her actions. To delight in the heightened sensation, the wild heat in her body, which had been numb for so long. Sex with him was hotter, better than any one-night stand.
Tension, sweet and thick as honey, gathered in her core. “Harder.”
He hooked one of her legs behind her knee with his hand, raising it to her chest, and powered deeper into her while putting his other rough hand in her hair.
“Look at me.” The banked fire in his eyes was scorching. Like he wanted to set her soul on fire too. “You’re so damned beautiful. So beautiful, it hurts.”
He made beautiful sound special, as if he saw more than a pretty face or nice body. As if everything about her was exceptional, and he was the luckiest man in the world to be with her.
His hips pistoned against her, and she drove hers up with equal fervor. The slick, fierce friction of their bodies made the need for release brutal.
He rutted on her. Hard. Fast.
And she loved the rawness of the way he took her. The untempered heat of his touch, threatening to melt her to nothing.
She gripped his shoulders, her nails scraping his back, writhing under him, struggling to take more, needing more. Arousal churned through her body, pressure deep in her belly built to a throb, her sex clamped around him and she came even harder and faster, shattering like glass.
He grunted against her neck, his body growing taut as he followed.
The sensation of him coming inside her without protection, the deeply intimate and satisfying nature of it, tempted her to forget her broken heart and how terrified she was to risk it again.
Time stood still in that moment.
Her short breaths grew shallow. The sweaty weight of his body pinned her to the carpet. He brushed his lips over her mouth and kissed her. A tender peck, as if testing for something. He licked his lips and kissed her again, softness stroking her, triggering a wash of agonizing memories.
She twisted her face away, not wanting this…blistering sweetness. Tenderness would have her losing her way, losing her common sense, or worse, her heart.
“Maddox.” A silken whisper. “Please.”
She shoved his chest. He pulled out of her, collapsing in a heap on the floor, his breath in tatters. His arms curled around her, drawing her back against his chest in a spooning position, their bodies stuck like magnets.
Loving him hurt, but the pain was a skinned knee compared to the agony of losing him.
This Band-Aid needed to be ripped off and thrown away. She couldn’t bear to drag it out and tried to pull up, but he wouldn’t let her go and kept his arm locked around her waist.
In another life, things would’ve been different, but this was their reality: ugly and mangled and ruined.
She shoved his leg and smacked the granite of his arms. Still, he held on.
“Let me go, or so help me—”
“What’ll you do?”
She threw an elbow into his side. Not hard, but the force knocked the breath from him and the sound of his groan made her reel in surprise.
His grip loosened, and she sat up.
“I’m sorry.” She brought her knees to her chest, covering herself. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, it kind of tickled,” he said in a strained voice.
Naked beside him in the spent aftermath, she was too exposed, too vulnerable. She hurried to the bathroom, raced through the fastest shower of her life, and put on the thickest pair of sweats she owned.
She stared at herself in the dresser mirror, wanting to crawl out the window instead of facing him. Part of her wanted him to stay and the other part needed him gone. She didn’t want to hurt him, but she didn’t want to get raked over the coals again either, as collateral damage in his twisted efforts to find closure.
Meat. She needed to treat him like meat to hold it together.
She strolled into the living room and took a firm stance. He sat on the sofa with the towel wrapped around his waist, met her gaze, and gave her a warm, devastating smile.
Her willpower faltered, but it didn’t break. “I want you to leave.”
He recoiled as if she’d slapped him, knocking the smile from his face. “Not like this. Let’s sit and eat. We don’t have to talk.” He raked a hand through his hair, looking off balance. “Let me hold you. We need to be close right now. To let ourselves feel this, without being afraid of it.”
He wanted her to soften in his hands, to be okay with whatever he decided when it was convenient for him. Her heart wasn’t a yo-yo he could throw away and reel in however he pleased. She had a backbone forged in fire, and there’d be ice-skating in hell before she became any man’s plaything.
“I don’t do chitchat and dinner with meat.” The words prickled her tongue. She didn’t mean it and saying it pained her, but this was about self-preservation. “It was a great fuck. Thanks.”
Hair-trigger reflexes brought him to his feet. The fierce expression on his face scared the shit out of her, leaving her a new kind of breathless.
Chapter 24
Vienna, Virginia
11:37 p.m. EDT
Did she call him meat? Like he was nothing more than sex to her?
Maddox was the essence of his soul, the reason Cole drew breath. His world only made sense when she was at the center of it, and there had been a time, impossible to disregard, when he’d been the same to her.
The disrespect she threw at him, casual as a salutation, cut him to the bone. He wasn’t going to accept her treating him like meat, in the same manner she should never accept him doing the same. It was beneath them.
She was angry and had a right to her tough-girl posturing.
For any chance of healing, though, she had to work through the anger like he had, and together, they had to wade through their mess.
If she wanted him to leave, he would, but there were things he needed to say first.
“No matter what happens between us, I’ll always be more to you than meat. A good fuck? Hell, yeah.” He gritted his teeth and got up close to her. “But so much more. I’m in there.” He put a finger to her chest. “I’m in your blood and under your skin.”<
br />
He curled his hands around her shoulders, and she flinched but didn’t pull away.
“It’s the same for me—you’re like a drug,” he whispered across her lips. “A habit I can’t seem to kick.”
Nine years without her had been worse than dying. He was hooked on her, had it bad, and he knew it now.
“And I’m a drug for you too.”
Trembling in his hands, he sensed how she struggled between giving in to him and ripping out his heart.
The fire in her gorgeous eyes was searing and ready to burn him. “You’re like poison—”
Cupping her face, he seized her mouth in a deep kiss, consuming her vicious words. No delicacy, just a wild, desperate rush to connect. She pushed at him, but fortunately in that moment, desire beat anger, and her mouth opened to him. Her tongue sought his with equal urgency, and finally, her fingers curled in his hair, holding him close.
Their colossal screwups filled the dark crevices between them like plastic explosives ready to blow apart any chance they might have at a future.
Still clutching her with one hand, he pressed the other to her cheek and tore his lips away.
“I love you, Maddox.”
Stark silence fell.
Her eyes narrowed, and she shoved at his chest. Hard. “Do you expect me to swoon and fall into your arms like some sentimental sap because you uttered those three little words?” She shoved him again. “If you love someone, you don’t let them think you’re dead. For nine years. You’ve no idea what losing you did to me, how it wrecked me.” Her chest heaved, eyes turning glassy. “All this time, I thought I’d killed you. Thought I’d destroyed our future. But every day you were alive, choosing not to be with me, you were the one killing us. You buried us!”
She slammed a fist against his chest, and he took it, keeping a hold on her.
Two days ago, she’d held back, hiding what she was capable of physically. No doubt if she wanted to kick his ass, she could. He’d take that too—a fist to the chest, an ass kicking, getting hit by a speeding semi—whatever was necessary to hash this out and see where they stood once the dust settled.
“I was a stupid girl who made a horrible, tragic mistake.” Her voice broke into a sob, fracturing his heart. “What you’ve done, for nearly a decade, letting me mourn and grieve for you, was deliberate.” A tear slipped from her eye. “While you moved on.”
He hated the time they’d spent apart and how he had hurt her by leaving. More than anything, he hated the wall separating them. He was a fighter—born and bred—and the only thing that could stop him from fighting for Maddox was death.
Even then, he’d find a way.
He needed to tear down the wall between them, beat it down brick by brick with his bare hands if necessary. “I never moved on from you, honey. After that shitstorm of violence and death, the things I had to do—the blood on my hands—changed me forever. It gutted me.”
She stilled, meeting his eyes. The fight in her was slipping, her body softening. He loosened his grip on her arms.
“I couldn’t look at myself in the mirror. The man I was died. Nikolai Reznikov, his dreams, his passions—everything died. Even my face was taken from me.” He threw a hand to his hideous scar.
In one fell swoop, his life had collapsed in on him. The only thing to survive the ashes was his love for her. He staggered away under the brutal burn in his gut that inevitably came with dwelling on the past and dropped onto the sofa, putting his head in his hands.
She sat on the floor with her back to the couch and the coffee table between them. “You don’t know what I went through after you left.”
“I know about the clinic.”
“But you don’t know why I was there.” She lowered her gaze as he braced himself. “Before you left, I found out I was pregnant.”
His thoughts derailed. He drew in a strained breath. “What? Why didn’t you tell me?”
“My mom suspected I was pregnant before I did. The smell of fish started making me sick, and I complained everything tasted like metal. She made me take a pregnancy test. I was terrified when it was positive. We were too young, not engaged—but it was yours, so I was also thrilled.”
Sharp memories swarmed him. The way she’d stopped drinking soda because she said it was like sucking on pennies. The time she’d gotten sick in a seafood restaurant. “How far along were you when I left?”
Her gaze shuttered. “Close to three months.”
His chest constricted. “Why didn’t you tell me after you found out?”
“Mom asked me not to. You would’ve dragged me to city hall and married me.”
That’s precisely what he would’ve done. Although he was only twenty-four and she not yet twenty, he wouldn’t have hesitated.
“My mother said that if I gave everything serious consideration for a couple of weeks, really thought it over, she’d be my ally in whatever decision I made. Even if it opposed my father.”
Of course she’d agreed to that. Cole knew exactly where Castle got his imposing frame, self-righteous attitude, and explosive temper. Maddox would’ve been crazy to refuse her mother’s offer.
“I wish you had told me. I get it. I do. Taking your mother’s deal was the right call, but what was there to think about?”
“Binding myself to you and your family forever. That’s what a baby would have done. Forever with you was what I wanted. But forever with Ilya?” She shook her head. “I hadn’t considered what our kids would be subjected to around him. And what if my father was right and your family didn’t pull out of organized crime? What would it mean for our children?”
Shutting his eyes, he raked his hair back with his hands. She never would’ve asked him to walk away from his blood, even if it was to start a new family with her. He’d been naive and shortsighted. He hadn’t considered the danger his family posed to creating a new one, the hazards he’d subjected her to by bringing her around them.
“I never should’ve exposed you to my family. Never should’ve put you in a position where you had to have secrets from your father.” He scrubbed a hand over his face. “Did you consider having an abortion?” He didn’t blame her. How could he?
“No. Never.” She met his gaze. “I had a miscarriage. I was six months pregnant when I lost the baby. Twenty-four weeks.”
A chill scraped his soul. At six months, women showed, felt the baby kick, rubbed their bellies, started shopping. She must’ve seen it on a sonogram, heard a heartbeat. Things he’d missed, like watching her belly grow heavy with his child.
He’d almost been a father. Oh God, he’d lost more than he ever knew.
They both had, but she’d borne the brunt without him.
He got up and sat on the floor beside her. “I’m so sorry.” Tucking hair behind her ear, he ran his thumb down the side of her face tentatively, hoping she’d let him get closer. “So far along—is that normal?”
She brought her knees up to her chest. “I’d been cramping, but the doctor said it was normal. Until it wasn’t. Castle was home on terminal leave from the navy and found me sitting in a pool of blood. He rode with me in the ambulance, held my hand in the hospital.”
The loss of their baby, her sorrow, his failure tore him to shreds. They’d almost had a child. Been a family.
Tears leaked from her eyes. He pressed his lips to her cheeks to catch them and wrapped his arms around her. She put her head on his shoulder, accepting the small comfort.
“Cervical incompetence, the doctor called it. My body couldn’t carry the baby.” Her voice thickened. “The doctor said my condition could be treated for next time, like our baby was replaceable. First, I’d failed you by opening my big mouth, then I failed you by letting our baby die. It was all too much, and it broke me.”
He ached for her. Combing a hand through her hair, he rubbed her back, slow and steady. Beneath her
tough exterior, she was fragile and bruised. The vulnerability she shared with him was precious, and he cherished it.
She’d carried this around far too long and it was time for her to shed this burden. “You didn’t let our baby die. It wasn’t your fault, honey. Stop blaming yourself.”
“Our baby weighed one and a half pounds,” she said, her face soft, voice soft. “They issued a stillbirth death certificate. I named him Kinkade Reznikov.”
Tears pricked the backs of his eyes, and his heart bled with hers. “That’s a good name.”
He wanted to erase the pain of the past, make it better somehow. Apologize for not having the strength and good sense to come back for her. But sorry couldn’t undo what had been done.
Some scars never went away.
“After I got out of the hospital, I couldn’t bear seeing a baby or a pregnant woman. I’d have panic attacks, sometimes a complete breakdown. Then I stopped leaving the house.”
Seeing young couples in love, families with small children, had been hard on him, but he couldn’t imagine how much harder it must’ve been for her, compounded by thinking he was dead. He’d been clueless, safe in his ignorance.
Fate had dealt them a shitty hand, but her worst of all.
“My father took me to the spa in Canada. When I got back, Castle gave me sneakers and a fully loaded MP3 player. Took me on a run every morning, even on weekends. Never talked to me about any of it. About anything. We just ran together until the day I started running alone.”
No wonder Castle hated him. The man’s vehemence was justified. Cole had abandoned her to deal with hell, alone.
He put his forehead to hers. “I should’ve been there for you, at your side, every step of the way.” What he wouldn’t give to have made different choices.
She pulled out of his arms and eyeballed him. “What happened to you? Where did you go?”
“Ended up in Alaska. Needed to recover. Physically. Mentally.” His soul hadn’t started healing until he saw Maddox again. “The wilderness was good. Took random jobs, some I’m not too proud of.”