Avenged

by Jay Crownover

  I went to pull my fingers away from where his pulse was strong and steady under my touch, but he trapped my fingers in his and I sucked in a breath as he brought them to his lips. He brushed a kiss across the tip of each digit before letting my hand fall so that it was resting on the spot in his chest where his heart was beating.

  “How much of that am I not supposed to know?” The words whispered out and disappeared into the darkness.

  “All of it.” There was humor in his tone. “But I’ve never been very good at following the rules. If you want to sell me out to the highest bidder you can find, more power to you. As it turns out, I’m pretty fucking hard to take down. I’ve got more lives than a cat.” I’d already wasted more than one of those lives and I wasn’t about to squander any more.

  I curled my fingers into the warm skin and lulling beat they were resting on. I wanted to hold his heart. I wanted reassurance that it was as strong as it seemed to be.

  “I’m lucky I never ended up in jail. I’m even luckier I didn’t end up like my best friend. I have a habit for drifting toward things that aren’t good for me and a lot of those things could have gone much worse than they did.”

  He turned his head to look at me and even in the mellow darkness I could make out the sharp edge of his nearly silver gaze. “How long have you been clean?”

  I barked out a laugh that had no humor in it. Of course he would be able to spot an ex-addict when she was in bed with him. From the sounds of things, he used to be the reason people like me could feed that kind of habit.

  “Almost a year. When Halloran, my friend that got killed, hooked up with her last boyfriend and started making choices that were really dangerous for her kid, it was a wakeup call. That little boy needed someone he could rely on and that someone was me. Plus, my sister moved out of my parents’ house finally and in with me. I needed to get my act together for her as well, but in both cases, it was too late. I lost them both while I was sober, so there was no hiding how bad that hurt or drowning out every regret and mistake I made along the way.” I had been tempted…so tempted to go back to my old ways. I could numb everything eating me up inside with a single hit, but then I’d need another and another. It was an endless cycle and I knew the only way to deal with the pain was to confront it head-on. I couldn’t be afraid of it; I had to face it.

  He rolled over onto his side and stretched an arm out so that it was resting across my middle. His fingers curled around the side of my hip and dug into the gentle swell of flesh. My hand ended up curled around his ribs, trapped by his weight and the mattress underneath.

  “Tell me about your sister. Tell me why you think it was your job to save her and avenge her. Tell me why you would risk everything for her.”

  I tilted my head on the pillow so we were looking at each other. I exhaled and he parted his lips and breathed the sound in. It was probably the most intimate act I’d ever been a part of.

  “She was my little sister. Isn’t that enough?” I’d always done my best to take care of her even when I wasn’t taking care of myself.

  “It’s enough…for most people. But for you to feel like you had to come all this way on the limited information you had when you are clearly a smart and capable woman, I’m sure there is more to it than familial obligation.”

  He thought I was smart and capable.

  If I could have moved, I would have rolled toward him and crawled all over that big body, leaving no inch of taut, toned skin untouched. He had no idea how much those words meant to me. How hard I had worked to be that woman.

  “Xanthe was always a little different; hell, we all were. Horatio was born to find peace and harmony in everything, Xanthe was born to make everyone smile, and I was created to bring chaos and disruption. My brother and sister were always easy kids. Warm, loving, kind. I was none of those things and my parents never let me forget it. As my brother and sister got older, Horatio came into his own, found a balance between his ideals and the real world, but Xanthe didn’t. She lived in a fantasy world where everyone was as nice as she was, where no one would ever hurt anyone else. It made her a target.”

  Without realizing it, my whole body tightened and tensed.

  “Men took advantage of her because she was pretty and sweet. She didn’t understand boundaries and that what she was giving away, she wouldn’t get back. She handed her heart over to whoever smiled at her and was crushed when she figured out they weren’t interested in forever. She went from as high as anyone could be, to the lowest of the low in the blink of an eye. Once I got my head out of my ass and focused on what was happening around me, I started looking into what could cause those kind of mood swings. She’d always been delicate, fragile, but my parents wrote it off as nothing more than her being temperamental.” I inhaled a sharp breath through my nose and dug my fingers into his side as memories rose up and threatened to choke me.

  “She cut herself. All through high school, she took razor blades to her skin. She bounced from activity to activity and tended to be even more promiscuous than I was. I’m pretty sure if we had taken her to a doctor, if my parents hadn’t been so willing to turn a blind eye to how dangerous her behavior was, she would have been diagnosed as bipolar. She needed more help than I could give her. When she moved in with me, I thought I could convince her to go, but just like me, she spent her childhood hearing she was one thing and that’s what she believed. She wasn’t sick; she was special.”

  “How did she end up in the path of one of the MacKenzies?” His voice was low and soothing. It settled some of my jangling nerves.

  “She worked at one of the coffee shops at the airport. She came home one day and told me she’d met the man of her dreams. Granted, she said that a lot, so initially I ignored her. If I had been paying attention, I would have noticed she was becoming manic, focused, obsessed in a scary way. She didn’t even know the guy’s first name, but he smiled at her and she was convinced he was in the airport so often just to see her. She had a wedding dress picked out and names for the kids ready to go.” I sighed and wiggled my hand free from his weight so I could push on my tired eyes. “She followed him one day to his gate and came home so she could start researching everything about Surrender. It sounds so crazy when I talk about it. I should have been able to stop it.”

  He offered up a grunt in response that gave no indication as to what he was thinking.

  “He came back through the airport after missing a few months and he was wearing a wedding ring. God, Xanthe was inconsolable after that. She was crushed. She cried for weeks, stopped going to work, quit eating and bathing. I tried to talk to her, tried to convince her to let me help, but she totally shut down. My parents told me to ride it out, that it was just a phase, but I knew better. She was off, she was going down, she was slipping off the edge, and I wasn’t fast enough or strong enough to catch her. I should have forced her to get help, but I was scared she would resent me, hate me, the way my parents always have. I didn’t want to lose her; she was the only one that never let me get totally lost. I always had to find my way back to take care of her. But I lost her anyway. I came home from work one day and found her in the bathtub. She took a handful of sleeping pills and drifted away.”

  I had to wipe tears away and clear my throat before I could go on.

  “I just wanted to tell the guy, the one she was so stuck on, that hearts really can break and when they do, there is no fixing them. I have no clue if he could even pick Xanthe out of a lineup, but he mattered so much to her. You’re right. I didn’t think it through when I headed up here. I wanted some kind of closure but it isn’t going to come from a stranger that probably doesn’t even know who my sister is.”

  My hair moved as he moved closer to me, curling an arm above my head and wrapping his warmth around me. “If you didn’t have a busted wing, I would snuggle up on you, Pop-Tart.”

  I let out a surprised laugh and smiled into the darkness. “If it didn’t hurt to move, I would let you.” I wanted to rub against that broad
chest and press into all the places where he was hard to my soft. For a dangerous man, he made me feel safer than I ever had before.

  “For what it’s worth, when those MacKenzies fall, they fall hard. Love didn’t come easy for them, so they tend be a pretty fierce lot when they get their hands on it. I doubt whichever one it was intentionally did anything to lead your sister on. It was just luck of the draw.”

  My cheek pressed into his fuzzy chin and I sighed as I was surrounded in the sweet scent of honey. “How do you know so much about them if you’re new in town and isolated all the way out here?”

  He shrugged and it moved his arm up higher so that my breast was pressing into the inflexible hardness of his bicep. I wasn’t nearly as tired as I had been a moment before. My nipples pulled tight and suddenly it was an ache between my legs that was distracting me instead of the one in my shoulder.

  “I told you it’s a small town and they rule the roost. They’re kind of legends around here, so everyone talks. Plus, the feds filled me in. I think they were worried I might accidentally try and score with one of the wives and if I did that, there wouldn’t be a surgeon in the country that could save me.” He let out a yawn and blinked his eyes at me. On the last blink, they stayed shut and he yawned again.

  I was all hot and bothered and he was ready to pass out. It was probably for the best. I was already out of my depths with this guy; if I got any deeper, I would drown. “Goodnight, Ben.”

  There was no response other than a little breath. I reached up and touched his scar again. He was wrong about not deserving another chance and I was wrong about some people, him included, not being worthy of being saved.

  Chapter 6

  Ben

  I woke up wrapped up in the scent of warm woman with my hands buried in what felt like an endless amount of silky hair. There were curls for days and they were the softest thing I had ever felt. I had a hard-on that was so rigid and stiff it hurt to breathe and at some point in the night, I’d moved so that every inch of my uncovered skin was pressed against hers. One of my legs had wedged between hers, taking the only thing covering her up with it. I could feel the softness of her skin and the gentle heat radiating from her velvety center. I hadn’t been this close to a woman in a long time and all my favorite parts of being in bed with one hit me like a ton of bricks. I’d had too much on my plate to worry about the lack of action in my love life as of late, but with Echo mostly naked, the curves of her perfectly rounded backside cradling an erection that felt like it was hard enough to hammer nails, everything I was missing ripped its way through me. I never bothered to know the women I usually went to bed with and they were never that interested in knowing anything about me beyond my reputation. I felt a connection to Echo. One that was born from saving her life and in turn, feeling like she might have saved mine.

  The thing was, I’d never been this close to a woman that I actually gave a shit about. It felt different. It felt heavy in my gut and significant as it wound its way through my thoughts. It was the only time my heart was throbbing and pulsating with as much intensity as my dick was.

  I blew out a breath that moved her hair and had her shifting her weight more fully into me. Her legs twitched and rubbed against mine as her body slowly stiffened and tightened with wakefulness. Her ass moved against the front of me and my cock went even harder, which I couldn’t believe was possible. I untangled my hands from her wild hair and rolled onto my back with a groan that was torn from my soul. If it was possible to die of repressed want and desire, I was going to be a dead man by the time she found her way off my mountain. Need clawed hungrily and furiously at my insides, which meant I needed to get out of this bed and put some much-needed space between us before I reverted back to my old ways, which involved me taking advantage of both the girl and the situation we were in.

  I threw myself out of the bed and took a minute to stretch my arms up over my head, spine cracking. Without a doubt my hair was sticking up all over my head from the product that I hadn’t bothered to wash out the night before, but that didn’t stop Echo’s ocean-blue eyes rolling over me with an intensity I could feel. I scratched my beard and ran a hand over my chest. Her eyes tracked the motion and her legs twitched under the covers. Her tongue darted out and slicked across the full curve of her lower lip, leaving a wet trail I wanted to taste more than I wanted my next breath.

  “I’m gonna jump in the shower and then see if I can scare up something for breakfast even though it’s closer to lunchtime. I bet the doc makes his way up here sometime today or tomorrow to check you out and if you’re cleared to travel, he’ll probably take you with him down the mountain and into Surrender. I want to hike out to the accident site and see if I can find your stuff that was thrown out of the car when it flipped. You’ll need your ID to get on a plane home.”

  Her chest shuddered with a sigh and her eyes widened a little when I mentioned the word “home.”

  She forced her way into a sitting position, the big shirt that she was swimming in falling to cover all the parts of her that were the most distracting. I liked that she wasn’t shy or insecure about the way she looked. She didn’t need to be; she was beautiful and every kind of temptation I wasn’t used to denying myself.

  She rolled her shoulders and winced when her bad one lifted, but other than her eyebrows pinching together, she didn’t seem to be in too much pain. “Before you tackle that mission, do you think you could help me clean up as well?” She lifted her good arm over her head and gave herself a sniff. I could have told her she smelled just fine, like pine and snow from when she was crawling around on the ground. There was still residual blood trapped at the roots of her hair near that wound that I was sure she was ready to wash away. “I think I can stand up without falling over today. My shoulder still feels like someone is jabbing a hot poker through it, but the pain doesn’t make me want to throw up anymore. That water bottle helped.”

  The idea of her naked and wet with so little space between me and her lusciously curved body made my mouth water and my cock jerk. I growled without meaning to and shook my head to clear the very X-rated and illicit thoughts circling my brain. Without thinking about how she would react, I reached down and adjusted the situation brewing in my boxer briefs. Her eyes widened and she made an audible noise low in her throat. The tension between the two of us was palpable and it was risky.

  She wasn’t supposed to be here and she wasn’t supposed to know who I was, the new me or the old me. I’d given her too much because I was selfish and tired of pretending to be someone I wasn’t. I’d put her in danger at the same time I’d done my best to stop her from doing something she would regret. I wasn’t about to add myself to the list of mistakes and rash decisions she was making in order to distract herself from her grief.

  I dropped my arms to my sides and dipped my chin down in reluctant agreement. It was going to be torture, but I’d survived much worse. Plus, if I got fifteen minutes in the shower to work myself over and take the edge off, I wouldn’t feel so much like an animal ready to pounce and feed on its captured prey. “Yeah, I’ll hang around and make sure you don’t drown or fall over and hit your head. I’ll stoke the fire again and get more water boiling so you can put the heating pad back on while I clean up.”

  She nodded and shifted her gaze away from the prominent bulge that was in desperate need of her attention. “That works.”

  I took care of all the things I told her I was going to and made my way into the minuscule bathroom. I couldn’t strip fast enough and the trickle of warm water that came out of the showerhead was hardly enough to wash away the rampant longing that was crawling all over me. It also wasn’t enough to melt away the coiled tension that spread across the span of my shoulders and along the length of my spine.

  The only thing that helped was the pressure of my fist wrapped around the steel rod that was pointing up directly at my stomach. I closed my eyes and pretended it was something else tight and slick that was wrapped around my cock…pretended it w
as someone else.

  I could see the bright blue of her eyes blazing.

  I could see the elegant curve of her hips and the enticing roundness of her breasts.

  I could see the long sweep of her endless legs.

  I could feel the satin texture of her skin and the silken tangle of her hair.

  It was so vivid and real that it didn’t take long for pleasure to unfurl and shoot up my spine. My entire body vibrated with the release and my head fell forward as the sharp lines of tension finally loosened the hold they had on my neck. I gave a deep sigh of relief and dropped my forehead to the tiles in front of me so I could get my head under the water. Now that my lust was semi in check, I needed to get my mind out from between Echo’s legs and back on the task of making sure she was healthy and whole when Thomas MacKenzie showed up to check on her.

  I stepped out of the basin and wrapped a threadbare towel around my waist. I only had a couple of them on hand and I wasn’t sure if any of them were exactly clean. Back in the day, I used to wine and dine women with gourmet meals and nights spent in luxury hotels. I finally met a woman I liked, one that could matter if the situation was different, and I couldn’t even offer her a clean towel.

  Shaking my head at the ridiculousness of the situation, I sent water droplets flying everywhere. I was lifting a hand to wipe away the condensation on the mirror so I could run a comb through my hair when there was a tap on the door. Leaning over, I pushed it open and was met with a red-faced and anxiously waiting Echo.

  She let out a strangled-sounding gasp when the door swung open and the hand she had used to knock went to her throat. Her long lashes swept down as her eyes dropped to my still wet chest. I could feel their impact like it was touching my skin. She watched water droplets roll across my abs until they disappeared underneath the towel at my waist without blinking.