by Lilly Atlas
Shiv nodded and puffed on his cigar. “Not yet, or just no?”
Acer shifted in his seat, uncomfortable under Shiv’s assessing stare. “Uh, just no.”
“You think there’s any chance she’s in on this?”
His gut screamed no, but he didn’t listen to his gut anymore, at least not when it told him to trust someone. “I just don’t think she needs to know. It will only add to her stress.” That was more than him looking for an easy out from the guilt of keeping secrets, it was partly true. Her entire world had been rocked just a few short weeks ago. Her family failed to help her when she needed it, finding out now that they were a part in his troubles would add to her stress. She just didn’t need it.
Shiv snickered. “Playing with fire, my man.”
Didn’t he know it.
A loud pounding had both men turning toward the door.
“What?” Shiv called.
Lucky poked his head in the room. “Sorry, pres. Acer, we got a problem.”
Acer looked at Shiv who nodded. “You’re free to go. Let me know if you need anything from me.”
“Thanks.” If Lucky was at the door, where the hell was Fia?
He closed the chapel door behind him and advanced on Lucky. “Where is she?” He looked around expecting Fia to be steps away.
Lucky held his hand out. “Stay calm, brother. I had to help break up a fight, and while I was gone, some asshole came on to her real strong. Freaked her out big time. Not quite as bad as the other day, but bad enough.”
Tension radiated from him, so thick, he could almost see the waves flowing toward Lucky. “I asked you where she was.” He kept the panic out of his voice, but couldn’t keep the deadly intent hidden.
“She took off. I tried to catch up, but she was too fast. I’m sorry, brother.” Lucky’s eyes were bleak and there wasn’t a hint of the cocky swagger and bravado he usually employed.
Fuck! She was out at night. Alone. Unprotected. Sweat broke out across his forehead and his mind ran in a million directions. Sure, there had been no peep from Mike, but still. He couldn’t bear the thought of her alone and afraid. The attack hadn’t just affected her, it fucked with his head as well. All he could see was the image of her, battered and terrified, chained to the floor at the mercy of that monster.
“She said she wanted to go home. I’m guessing she went to your apart—”
Acer didn’t stick around to hear the rest of Lucky’s statement. He shoved his way through the crowed and out into the crisp desert air. His heart pounded in his chest as he ran toward his bike. Not for the first time since he met Fia, he felt completely out of control and helpless.
Fear wasn’t something he did. Lack of control wasn’t something he did. Was this how Fia felt? Constantly afraid and powerless. If so, she was a fucking hero, because two minutes of it and Acer was ready to claw his own eyes out.
He hopped on his bike, revved the engine, and sped off in search of his woman.
That’s right.
His fucking woman.
At least for today.
~ ~ ~ ~
Fia made it to Acer’s apartment in record time. Driving alone, in the dark, not far from where she’d been abducted did nothing to calm her. Grateful for Acer’s bright security lighting, she clung to the handrail and made her way up the stairs on shaky legs. Once inside, she stumbled into the apartment and straight for the bathroom, shedding clothes as she went. She needed a shower, scalding water to cleanse away the pain and grimy memories.
She reached into Acer’s large spa shower and flipped the water on, hot. While she waited for the stream to heat, she stared at herself in the mirror.
The circular scars forming an M over her ribs seared as though fresh wounds. Whenever she was in a panic, the fiery pain of the burns flared. The pink spheres glowed against her tanned complexion like neon lights, mocking her. Reminding her she was weak, helpless, a basket case who couldn’t even tell an overgrown frat boy who didn’t understand the word no to fuck off.
With a snort of disgust, she stepped into the shower and grabbed her body scrubber. The water was just shy of too hot, and she backed under until it fell in sheets around her head. Fresh tears, as hot as the soaking water ran down her face.
Fia stared down at the marks on her side. She loathed them and everything they stood for. The constant reminder of being completely at the mercy of a malevolent psychopath. How, in the blink of an eye, she transformed from a strong and confident woman to a panicked and timid shadow of that individual.
Acer had no idea her body bore Mike’s brand. He hadn’t noticed it the night he rescued her and she’d left her camisole on when they had sex. What man would want to stare at a physical reminder that his woman had been violated? And not an ordinary reminder at that, but a mark that screamed, “Mike was here.”
Acer already felt unwarranted guilt over what she went through. A nasty scar staring him in the face would be intolerable. But it was more than just that. This reminder would be with her forever. Any man she showed herself to in the future would want an explanation and would have a front row seat to her shame. Shame that she’d look at every day for the rest of her life in the mirror.
She ran her scrubber over the small round blemishes as though she could wash them off. After a few swipes, she increased the pressure, abrading her skin with the rough sponge.
The sobs came then, her entire body heaved with the force of her sorrow.
Who was she kidding, thinking she’d be back to her real life any time soon? She was such a fucking head case. Just as her body bore scars and would never be the same again, neither would her life.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Acer shoved his door open. It slammed against the wall and bounced back, smacking him in the shoulder as he burst through the entryway. There’d be a mark for sure—both on the wall and his shoulder. He stared at the alarm panel. It hadn’t beeped. Fia’s car was parked around back, so she had to be here. Had she forgotten to set the alarm, or had something happened?
“Fia? Baby, you here?” He listened for a response, but the rushing of blood in his ears overpowered any reply. He quickly trekked through the apartment, following a trail of clothes toward the guestroom.
She wasn’t in there. Where the fuck was she?
Acer stepped into his own bedroom, drawn by the sound of the running shower. Relief almost brought him to his knees. He took a cleansing breath before opening the door. She needed him to have his shit together.
He pushed the bathroom door open and waved the steam away. It was hotter than a sauna. As some of the steam cleared, he noticed Fia through the glass shower door. She stood under the spray, sobbing and rubbing a sponge over her stomach.
Her agony was palpable, and Acer ached as he watched her suffer through the anguish alone. He itched to run out of the room, into the night so he could scream his rage into the quiet desert. But he didn’t leave. In that moment, he’d have done anything, given anything to take away some of her pain.
The raw skin beneath the scouring sponge was an angry red, so much so, it was easily visible from his position outside the shower. “Fia!” He spoke loud enough to be heard over the rushing water.
She jumped and stilled, staring at him through ravaged eyes.
“Baby, what are you doing to yourself?” His voice broke and he worked to keep his own eyes from tearing. He’d cried one time in his life, years ago, at the news of Derek’s death. Seeing Fia suffer this way was just as horrific.
“I just want it to go away. It won’t go away.” Tears poured from her bloodshot eyes, and she started scrubbing at her stomach again.
Acer wasted no time stripping out of his clothes and opening the shower door. He stepped into the large stall and slowly reached out to still her movements. “Honey.” He kept his touch gentle and soft despite the urge to drag her into his arms and never let her go. “You need to stop. Your skin is bleeding. You’re hurting yourself.”
Fia dropped the sponge and it la
nded with a soggy plop. Without lifting her head to look at him, she whispered, “I’m sorry.”
She seemed to have no idea that he was naked, a foot and a half away from her in the shower.
He didn’t answer, he couldn’t. Rage began low in his gut and clawed its way up, wrapping around his windpipe and cutting off his ability to speak. His vision tunneled to a single spot on her dripping body. Through the abraded skin covering her ribs, small pink discs arranged in the shape of an M mocked him. It took three breaths before he felt under control enough to speak. “Did he do that to you? Did he fucking brand you?” His voice was a whisper, as rough as her scraped skin.
She finally looked at him and flinched. He could only imagine the fury reflected in his gaze, and tried to tamp it down, for her sake, but it was impossible.
“Y-yes.” She swallowed, and folded her arms over her sides. “He burned me with cigarettes. I’m sorry, I didn’t want you to ever see it.”
If he’d been alone, Acer would have punched the tile wall until chunks of ceramic fell to the ground and his knuckles bled. Maybe then, some of the murderous rage coursing through his veins would abate. Instead, he took one step closer, ignoring the boiling water that beat against him. “Please don’t say you’re sorry. Don’t every say you’re sorry. I’m the one who’s sorry. Sorry you worried about me seeing this, sorry I didn’t find you sooner, sorry for so many fucking things. Christ, baby, you survived something people can’t even fathom. Do you have any idea how strong that makes you? How amazing you are?”
She laughed, a humorless sound full of disgust. “You’ve got to be kidding me. I am not strong, Acer. Do you have any idea what happened tonight? Some jerk got a little fresh and I freaked out. Freaked out! I couldn’t tell him to go to hell, I couldn’t even breathe. Three months ago, I would have kicked him in the nuts so hard they popped out of his mouth. Tonight, I panicked, ran away, and now I’m in the shower trying to scrub a freaking scar off my body.” She pointed to herself with both hands. “This is not strength. This is the complete opposite of strength.”
Her words sliced at the cage around his heart. Her chest heaved, her gorgeous breasts rose and fell with her heavy inhalations. While he detested the words of self-hatred, he could handle her anger better than her consuming grief. Anger brought a spark of life to her eyes that was so much closer to the old Fia than she realized. Her beautiful face was flushed and she looked like a warrior ready for battle.
A very sexy female warrior.
“I’m not me.” She pushed her wet hair out of her eyes and stepped closer to him. “I’m someone else. I hate this person.” Her voice rose. “I hate her! This timid mouse with her fear and her panic attacks, afraid of every dark corner and every man who comes within ten feet.”
He reached out and placed one warm hand over the scars on her body. She tensed beneath his palm, but he didn’t move, waiting until her body slowly relaxed. “These scars mean nothing. They define nothing about you. They’re just pink skin. I don’t see them when I look at you. I see a beautiful woman fighting like hell to regain something that was taken from her against her will.”
“Acer…” she whispered.
He cupped her face between his hands, ensuring she kept her gaze on him while he spoke. This was far too important for her to miss a single word. She stared at him like he held the key to the universe. “I see a woman who’s come so far she can work again, laugh again, she can be a sassy smartass again, she can even fuck again.”
She huffed out a tiny chuckle and a ghost of a smile graced her sweet mouth. “Thank you.”
“And you’re not afraid of me.” The sound of the water splattering on the tiled floor was as loud as a herd of elephants as he waited for her response.
“No…I’m not.” The words were spoken so low he almost didn’t hear them over the stampede.
As though a light switch flipped in her head and she realized he was nude, her gaze flicked to his cock then back up to meet his. Before his eyes, her nipples tightened and her body tensed, but for a different reason this time.
There wasn’t a single thing he could have done in that moment to prevent the rush of blood southward.
They stared at each other across the shower, the air thick with steam and desire.
One, two, three seconds ticked by.
~ ~ ~ ~
Fia couldn’t tear her attention away from Acer if her life depended on it. How was it he saw her so differently than she saw herself? Was he right? She did find herself acting more and more like Old Fia each day, laughing, giving him sass, allowing him to touch her. While he seemed angry she had to endure pain from Mike burning her, he didn’t seem disgusted or turned off by the scars. In fact, he’d barely looked at them, focusing instead on boosting her confidence and squashing her insecurities. Maybe it was time to focus on the progress she had made and look to the future instead of living in the past.
She held his gaze for long seconds. Then, like someone lit a match in a room full of gas, they exploded toward each other. Acer was bigger and faster, backing her up until she hit the tile wall the same time his hungry mouth came down on hers.
All thoughts fled her mind. There wasn’t room for fear or sadness. There wasn’t room for anything but the consuming need to feel his hands on her, his mouth on her, and—dear God please—his cock inside her.
Their mouths ate at each other. Gone was the patient man from two nights ago, the man who let her take control. The man who ignored his own needs in favor of hers. In his place was a man who wanted her to remember how amazing the physical connection between a man and a woman could be.
He pressed her to the wall, his slick, muscular torso flush against hers, but it wasn’t close enough. Without breaking the kiss, Fia lifted a leg and wrapped it around his hips. The movement nestled his erection between her thighs. Almost where she needed it, but not quite.
She moaned against his mouth. If he didn’t get inside her soon, she might combust.
Acer must have sensed her desperation, or maybe his own matched it. He slid one hand down her slippery body and filled it with the soft skin of her ass, holding her leg in place around his waist. His other hand tangled in her hair and with a firm tug, he tilted her head back.
Fia’s mind spun with the overwhelming onslaught of sensation. Her beaded nipples pressed into the hard planes of his chest, his mouth sucked at the sensitive spot where her neck met her shoulder and his—
Oh my God.
Acer bent his legs and entered her in one fierce thrust.
She cried out and her knee buckled, the pleasure so intense she’d have fallen straight to the shower floor if he hadn’t been holding her up by her ass cheek.
His thrusts were short, fast and choppy. This wasn’t going to be a long drawn out lovemaking session where he commanded the pace and when she came. This was going to be a hard and fast race to the finish.
Fia could no longer distinguish between the sensations rioting through her. All she felt was pleasure, swamping every cell in her being. It went far beyond the physical, touching somewhere deep, and mending her fractured soul.
She wrenched her head against his hold on her hair, her lips seeking his. When his tongue found hers again, she moaned into his mouth. Acer thrust twice more, his pelvis bumping her clit with each slam, and just as suddenly as this began, Fia came.
Weeks of tension and strain fled her body in a rush of sensation so intense, it brought tears to her eyes. She cried out as she jerked in his arms, her pussy squeezing his thick length, demanding every last drop he had to give.
Acer tore his mouth from hers. “Fuck, Fia.” He grunted next to her ear as his body convulsed in her arms and propped her against the wall, preventing her from melting to the floor and down the drain in a satisfied puddle. She held him close as he came, loving how she could make him lose his mind as completely as he did her.
Wow. She’d had no idea how much she’d needed that. She’d just had crazy, intense sex with Acer without a hint of
fear or panic. She smiled, her face buried against his chest as tears fell, happy tears this time. Tears of relief and hope.
She wasn’t completely broken.
She was one hundred percent certain she couldn’t have done that with any man beside Acer, but that didn’t matter. He was the only one she wanted now, anyway. Maybe the only one she’d ever want.
He released her bottom and she flinched. There’d be a few finger shaped bruises there tomorrow. She couldn’t wait to see them, to remember how they’d attacked each other like starving animals.
She enjoyed the feel of his flexing muscles sliding under her palms as he pulled back. Blinking through the tears, she looked up at his face, anticipating the contented look of a sated man. She expected him to be as proud of her as she was. Instead, she encountered horrified eyes full of revulsion.
“Christ, Fia, I’m sorry.” He stared at his hands as though they didn’t belong to him.
“What? Acer—”
“I’m sorry.” He backed out of the shower and left the bathroom without grabbing a towel. The door slammed behind him and Fia jumped.
What the hell just happened? All the insecurities he’d quelled just minutes before rushed back full force. She shivered, the warm water having disappeared at some point in the last few minutes. With a frown, she turned off the spray and leaned against the shower wall.
Had she read him wrong? Maybe, despite what he said, he really was repulsed by the scars. She wiped a tear…the tears! It had to be the tears. He misunderstood them. Well, who could blame him? She’d been a weepy mess since she’d come back into his life.
Damnit.
Fia blew out a breath and pushed off the wall. She needed to fix this. No way could she allow him to think he’d hurt her. Not when he’d given her exactly what she hadn’t known she needed. Not when, for the first time in over three weeks, she felt like she had a fighting chance for a normal life again.
She quickly toweled off. Acer’s T-shirt and zippered hoodie lay on the floor so she threw them on over her nakedness along with her discarded panties. She never heard the rumble of his bike, so hopefully he hadn’t left. The idea of driving around town in the dark looking for a pissed off biker wasn’t appealing, but she’d do it to find him. Even though they had no chance for a future, for a happy ever after, she’d do damned near anything for him.