“Sorry, baby,” I said when she hissed and winced when I started to pull off her clothes, leaving her standing there in nothing but a pair of panties.
“Everything hurts,” she admitted, giving me a tired look through her heavy-lidded eyes.
“Yeah, I bet. These bruises are just started to come in,” I said, looking at her arms and knees, then turning her to find some bruises on her shoulders and hips as well. Leaning forward, I pressed a kiss to one of the ones on her shoulder. “I’m so fucking sorry, Abigail.”
“It’s not your fault,” she insisted, voice small, tired.
I imagine after all the adrenaline wore off, she was dead tired from it and all the fear and uncertainty and pain.
“Sh, it’s okay,” I said when there was a knock at the door that had her damn near jumping out of her skin. “It’s probably Dezi,” I added. “Sit. I’ll see what he wants,” I told her, moving out and closing the door behind me.
“She okay?” he asked, handing me a box from the Italian place, packed with what looked like four separate meals in their little aluminum containers. Along with two drinks and a bakery box. The donuts, I imagined.
“Banged up and tired, but yeah.”
“Got this,” he said, holding out a bag. “Creams and bandages, ibuprofen, that kinda shit,” he added, shrugging.
“Thanks, man. I really appreciate it. You and Voss going to be able to get along down there tonight?”
“If we keep the whole lobby between us,” he said, smirking.
“I will figure out a plan after I clean her up, so we can get you guys some relief. Or move the whole thing somewhere else.”
“The night shift girl is cute. I’m good where I am,” he said, eyes dancing as he moved off.
“Dezi brought us some food and stuff to clean you up with,” I told her, grabbing a washcloth and running it under the hot water with one hand as I laid out the other supplies. “This isn’t going to be pleasant,” I added, seeing all the bits of gravel and dirt in the cuts on her arms and legs.
“It will be better than what could have happened tonight,” she said, shrugging.
She was a trooper through my ministrations, only starting to jump and hiss when I’d been working on her for a solid fifteen minutes.
“I think this is good enough,” I told her, giving her thigh a squeeze as I grabbed the triple antibiotic to start smearing it over her liberally before wrapping her with the gauze. “He even grabbed some crackable ice packs if you want them for your bruises,” I said as I helped her into her robe.
“I’m okay,” Abigail said, wincing at her reflection as she followed me out into the room.
“Ibuprofen then,” I insisted, knowing the ache was only going to grow through the night. “Baby,” I called when she took her pills, then accepted one of the meals, sitting off the side of the bed with her plastic fork in her hand, staring off at the wall. “You okay?”
“It’s not over,” she said, her sad gaze slipping to me. “Two people were shot today, two others were killed, and it’s still not over.”
There were actually three bodies, but it was hardly the time to pile on.
“No,” I agreed, squatting down in front of her. “I don’t think it is.”
“He’s not going to give up.”
“Probably not. Until I force him to. And as soon as we get some sleep, love, I’m going to work out a plan to make that happen. This needs to be done. We need to be able to move forward.”
“You’ve done enough already.”
“No.”
“It’s too much.”
“Okay, listen to me. We’re not doing this,” I told her, watching as her gaze found mine.
“Doing what?”
“The whole ‘I can’t ask you to do this, I’m too much of a burden’ bullshit. So I’m shutting that shit down right now. This is not too much. You’re not asking me to do anything, I’m offering. There is a difference. And, yes, you are worth it. Case closed.”
“Cary…”
“It’s not open for discussion, love. That is just how it is. I get that you’ve been beaten down for so long—your whole fucking life, really—and it is hard for you to accept that someone will not only do this for you, but believe you are worthy of all of this and more. But I’m not the kind of man who blows smoke. I’m not saying it just because you’re hurt and scared and need comfort. I mean it.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you,” she told me, voice cracking.
I wanted to promise her that it wouldn’t. But that wasn’t the kind of life I lived. My job was risky. Handling her situation was risky.
“I’ve been in this life for a long fucking time, love. Longer than you’ve been alive, in fact. And I’ve managed that because I’m careful. I can’t promise you nothing is ever going to happen to me. But I can promise I will do fucking everything in my power to come home to you.”
“Hey, Cary?”
“Yeah?”
“I know this might be too much or too soon. But I think today really… it showed me how easily I could lose this. And you. And I don’t want anything to happen without saying it. Because I need you to know,” she said, her voice gaining strength as she went on. She reached out, placing her gauze-covered hand gently over mine. “I love you. And I think a part of me always has. All the way back to our letter writing days.”
“You know what, baby? I think I fell for you after your third letter. Just took me this long to realize it.”
Leaning up, I pressed my lips to hers. Soft. No expectation. Because she needed food and rest, not sex.
“But we are going to have plenty of opportunities to say that to each other in the future, okay?”
“Okay,” she agreed, but sounded dubious.
She wasn’t wrong to have her doubts.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Abigail
Okay.
I loved Cary.
And I truly, genuinely appreciated the way he was determined to take care of me.
But I swear the man was treating me like I was on death’s door instead of a little banged and scratched up.
I mean, did I totally lean into it for a day or two? Absolutely. I felt crummy. He seemed to truly enjoy making me feel better.
Once all the cuts scabbed over and the bruises stopped being so tender, though, it was starting to drive me a little crazy.
The man wouldn’t even let me get up to get my own socks when my feet got cold.
To be fair, it probably wasn’t just the obsessive caretaking. It was a bit of cabin fever from being locked in the hotel room again.
You’d think that, after being locked in Raúl’s home for ninety-percent of my time the past several years that I would be used to having my world be very small, very enclosed, and more than a little suffocating.
Maybe it was simply because we’d moved on from the hotel already, and that forward motion had felt good, so being back felt like steps in the wrong direction.
It was temporary.
Cary promised me that several times a day.
For the time being, though, everyone thought the hotel with guards on the lower floor was the safest bet.
There was a reason you didn’t see people get kidnapped from a crowded restaurant or event. There were too many witnesses, too many possible Good Samaritans, too big of a chance of getting stopped.
Cary had floated the idea of Hailstorm to me. Which was, apparently, some paramilitary camp with electric fences, dogs, tons of ex-military people with guns, and an entire building made of shipping containers.
Objectively, it was probably the best bet. But it sounded loud and crowded and completely lacking any privacy.
So we’d gone with the hotel.
A choice I was regretting more and more as each hour passed. And then I went ahead and felt super guilty for feeling that way since it was a nice thing Cary was doing, and all the guards who didn’t have to go out of their way to help protect me.
“We’re going to get ou
t of here, love,” Cary said, coming back in from the hallway where he’d gone to take a call. “I just want to make sure we do it right this time,” he said, coming up behind me, and running his hands down my arms.
It was a chaste touch.
But my body started to heat up regardless.
See, Cary was firmly stuck in the “she’s too fragile to touch” mindset. So there had been a lot of snuggling and light caresses, but nothing that went even remotely sexual.
But my body hadn’t felt fragile in a couple of days, so the lack of contact was making me hypersensitive to even the slightest of touches.
I leaned back into him, turning my head upward toward his chin, making him lean down and press a kiss to my forehead.
My hand shifted to slip on top of his, grabbing it, and sliding it up my thigh.
A deep, sexy rumble moved through him as he realized my intention just a second before I pressed his hand between my thighs.
“It’s been too long,” I told him, pressing his fingers inward to make contact with my clit.
“You’ve been too hurt,” he replied, his fingers taking over, rubbing at my clit through the material of my pants and panties.
“Not anymore,” I said, feeling his cock getting hard against my ass as I reached for his other hand, slipping it under my shirt, then sliding it up to cover my bare breast.
Need sparked through my system, flickers of a flame fanned by each swipe of his fingers.
On a growl, his hand slipped up to grab the waistbands of my pants and panties, drawing them down until they fell by themselves to the floor, leaving me bare from the waist down standing in front of the giant window overlooking the river.
There was barely a pause before my shirt was being dragged off as well, leaving me completely naked and him fully clothed.
Which wouldn’t do.
Before he could reach for me again—and it became impossible for me to think clearly—I turned around to face him, reaching up to slide his leather cut off his shoulders, then removing his shirt as well.
It never failed to amaze me just how toned he was, how I could literally sink a fingertip between his muscles, then watch them twitch at my touch.
I’d spent countless hours tracing my fingers over the tattoos covering his skin, learning the stories to the ones that had them, and just hearing the reasons why he’d gotten the others. Still, they fascinated me, begged for me to reach out and touch them.
So I did, tracing one of my favorites. Not because I was attached to the art itself, per se, but because of where it was situated. Over his ribs, but stretching so low down by his hip that it disappeared into the waistband of his pants. Which meant you had to undo them and draw them down to keep exploring.
Cary’s hands curled into fists at his sides as I yanked down his pants and boxer briefs, his body going ramrod straight as my fingers traced back up his thigh and over the tattoo.
Slow.
Borderline torturous.
Completely ignoring the fact that his cock was straining already, that he was as needy as I felt.
Then slowly, I lowered myself down in front of him as I bent my head back, watching his face as my hand closed around his thick length, stroking it to the hilt, then slowly opening my mouth in invitation, waiting for him to make the next move.
On a low, sexy rumble, his hand grabbed the back of my head, pulling me closer, letting his cock slip into my mouth inch by inch. My lips tightened around him, sucking hard as he settled deep.
A muscle ticked in his jaw when I didn’t immediately take over, as he realized what I wanted him to do.
Sucking in a deep breath, his other hand sank into my hair as well, using it to move my mouth up and down on him, letting him set the pace, letting him find what felt best.
It wasn’t long until the slow exploration got harder and faster, until he went from exploring my mouth to fucking it.
“Up, get up,” he demanded, voice tight, hand yanking at my hair, helping me back onto my feet so he could turn me to face out the window.
There was a short pause for protection before he was slamming inside me, taking every last inch of me with one hard thrust.
There was no control then, not for either of us. We were too far gone. It had been too long.
Cary’s hands grabbed my hips, using them to slam me back into him as he thrust forward.
Fast.
Not giving my body a second for the desire to ebb, forcing me up and through the first orgasm so quickly that it caught me off-guard, damn near stealing all the strength in my legs with its intensity.
Cary fucked me through the orgasm before grabbing me as he moved us toward the bed, sitting down off the side with me in his lap, still facing away from him.
“Ride, love,” he demanded as his hand slipped between my thighs, engaging my clit, making desire spark through my system once again as I moved my hips up and down, then around, finding the movement that felt best, then sticking with it as the pressure between my thighs grew to a fever pitch much faster than seemed possible.
“Fuck, yeah, squeeze my cock,” Cary growled as the second orgasm racked my system.
He waited until that orgasm passed through me, leaving me leaning back against him, trying to catch my breath. But then he was grabbing me again, turning me, pressing me back against the mattress, then kneeling in front of me.
Reaching down, he grabbed both of my legs, yanking them upward, and pressing them against his shoulder as he slammed back inside me.
His hand pushed down on my lower belly, the pressure creating a new feeling, a more acute sensation of the fullness inside of me.
And then he started to fuck me.
Not as fast, but hard, making me finally understand why the hotel room’s headboards were mounted on the wall and not actually attached to the bed, because if it was, we would have been seriously disturbing whoever was on the other side of the wall as Cary drove me up one final time, as my whimpers became loud moans, then gasps for air as the third orgasm worked its way through my system, somehow even more intense than the two before.
“Fuck, baby,” Cary groaned as he slammed deep, coming on the tail-end of my orgasm, then collapsing down at my side.
“I missed that,” I admitted, turning on my side to press a kiss to his upper arm.
“Me too, love.”
“Let’s never go that long without it again,” I said, feeling playful in the aftermath of all the oxytocin.
“You’re the boss,” he agreed, shooting me a sleepy-eyed, but satisfied smile. “Maybe we should switch to the clubhouse for a while,” he suggested, reaching out to run his thumb down my jaw. “A change of scenery.”
“I thought Fallon didn’t want me in the clubhouse.”
“That was before his brother got shot. And Louana. He’s invested now. Stop,” he demanded, reading my face. “You don’t need to feel guilty. The club, they understand this shit. Did I ever tell you about how Fallon met Danny?”
“No, actually.”
“Danny had Reign, Fallon’s dad, our president at the time, kidnapped.”
“No way.”
“Yeah way. And Roderick, he met his girl Liv when she stole a shipment right out from under him when he was trying to do a drop. Roan’s girl tried to sneak into the compound to kill him. Trust me, love, everyone there has a different kind of acceptance for the women and the wild shit they tend to bring around the club. No one is going to think twice about your history.”
Well, when he put it that way, it did sort of seem like my issues kind of paled in comparison to the others. And that was only a couple examples. The club, apparently, was full of stories like that.
I probably had nothing to worry about.
“Besides, you’re a part of my life now. You’re going to be around them a lot. The quicker you get to know everyone, the easier it will be to feel like a part of the group.”
That made sense.
The club and all the wives and kids and such, that was a family
to Cary. It was important that I stopped avoiding them, and got to know them instead.
I mean, everyone I’d already met had been nothing but nice and understanding.
“Okay. Let’s do it,” I decided. “Now,” I added as I sat up.
“Give a man a minute to recover,” he grumbled.
“Nope. I am going stir crazy here. Let’s get a move on,” I told him, already getting up to collect my clothes off the ground and climb back in them.
With a loud grumble, Cary got off the bed, grabbing his clothes, and making his way toward the bathroom as I started to tidy up the room, putting our clothes in our bags, moving all the garbage to the pail, then sitting and waiting for Cary.
I could hear him on the phone, saying something about bringing the SUV, then something else that was too low to make out.
“In a rush now, are you?” he asked when he reemerged from the bathroom, giving me a soft smile when he saw the bags lined up and ready to go.
“Alright, this is a couple trips,” he said, rolling his neck. “You hang tight, and I’ll be right back.”
“Okey doke,” I agreed, making my way back over toward the view that suddenly looked a lot brighter and prettier now that I knew it wasn’t the only thing I was going to get to see, day in and day out.
Hearing the beep of the keycard and the turn of the handle, I started to turn back.
“Did you forget som—“ I started before the words got caught, strangled, in my throat.
Because it wasn’t Cary.
No.
It was my worst nightmare come to life.
It was Raúl.
Coming into my hotel room.
With a gun aimed at me.
And I was trapped with no way to escape.
Sure, Cary would be coming back. But he had to load the bags into the SUV, if the SUV was even here yet. And, knowing the guys, he was going to stop to talk to them for a minute or two.
Not long. But long enough. Long enough for Raúl to grab me. Or simply kill me.
I was pretty sure I would pick the latter of the two if given a choice.
It was funny, though, how different Raúl looked when I was seeing him through my free, much more worldly eyes.
Cary Page 18