But he knew that this would all get shot to shit if they ended up sleeping together tonight. He couldn’t risk her trust in him. So, no. He had to resist everything.
With a herculean effort, he stepped back from her bed. “Night, Fancy.”
“Night, Seek,” she whispered, her eyes following him out of the room.
He closed the door behind him and let out a long, low breath. Then he practically sprinted to the weight room. He needed to exhaust his body. And he needed to do it now.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Naomi thought that she might not be able to sleep that night, but because she was pregnant, because her day had been stressful and exhausting, and because she’d just been pleasured to within an inch of her life, Naomi almost instantly fell asleep the second her door closed.
She slept long and hard and when she woke up, it was to a startling clarity.
She loved him.
It wasn’t a truth that could be held up to the light and seen in different contexts. No. This was an undeniable fact. She had no idea when it had happened and frankly, she didn’t care. All that mattered was that she was here now. Loving the hell out of an extremely complicated man.
Naomi’s natural instinct was to go cannonballing straight into Sequence. To tell him everything. To drown them both in new love.
But, she was pregnant. And just like she wouldn’t go cannonballing into a pool at four months pregnant, she wasn’t going to go cannonballing into this relationship either.
And Sequence apparently already understood that. He’d been the one to slow her down yesterday. He’d been the one to remind her of the lines she’d drawn. He’d asked her to continue protecting herself, even though it left him out in the cold.
Naomi gave a dreamy, girlish sigh and rolled over into a patch of sunlight. The sun caught one of Sequence’s prisms hanging in the window and Naomi watched as a rainbow painted itself over her hand.
Suddenly, she sat straight up. She knew exactly who she needed to talk to.
***
“So, I just want to apologize in advance if I ask you something completely inappropriate, okay? I feel a little nutso right now and—”
“Naomi,” May said, clamping two hands on her shoulders and guiding her down onto the couch in the TV room. “You’re almost five months pregnant, locked up in a bunker, and in limbo with the man you’re having a baby with. You’re entitled to be nutso.”
Naomi took a deep breath and let herself be calmed by the woman next to her. May’s presence was really something special. Some women just had that thing. And May definitely had that thing. She was calm and competent and she had this pair of dark eyes that you just knew could see absolutely everything.
May was the sort of person who could walk into a room full of people and know exactly who was secretly sleeping with whom.
She sat next to Naomi on the couch, her dark hair spilling over her shoulder and her silver hoops peeking out and catching the light.
“If you offend me, I’ll tell you, how about that?”
Naomi nodded. “Okay.” Naomi tucked her hands under her thighs and turned to May. “When you got pregnant, were you positive that Rook was the one for you?”
“Wow. You weren’t kidding about the personal questions.”
“I’m sorry.” Naomi covered her face in her hands but May merely laughed.
“No, it’s all right.” May circled the silver rings on her fingers and tried to swallow down her discomfort at being in the bunker. She hated this place. Her ex-husband’s second home. His real home. The place he’d spent all his time after their divorce. She knew he had a townhouse as well, she’d been there plenty of times to drop off or pick up their daughter. And she hated that place too. It was irrational. Of course he’d picked up his life after they’d broken up. Of course he’d moved on. That was the whole point of breaking up. Moving on from one another. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t absolutely hate being anywhere that he’d most likely slept with another woman.
She gathered her thoughts. “Javi and I got pregnant accidentally, just like you did.”
“Rook’s first name is Javi?”
“Yup.”
“It’s so cute.” Naomi looked so perplexed that the man she knew as Rook might actually have a life beyond his security company that May had to chuckle.
“Believe it or not, when he’s at home, he’s actually a pretty cute man.”
Outside the door, Rook froze. He hadn’t come to eavesdrop. He’d come to make sure that everything was going all right. But now, an earthquake wouldn’t have moved him.
“He mentioned that your daughter was a prom night baby.”
“She sure was.” May had a mixture of weariness and affection in her voice. “Most kids would probably have been completely freaked out by becoming parents at 18. But not Javi. No. The way he saw it, he’d been wanting to marry me anyways, and this way, our parents would put their blessing on the marriage instead of imploring us to wait.” May sighed. “Pregnant at 17, married and a mother at 18. We were babies, what did we know?”
Naomi was quiet and outside the door, Rook felt something start to collapse deep within him.
“You’re talking like you regret it all,” Naomi said slowly, trying to understand May’s sadness.
“No. God, no,” May said immediately, and in the hallway, Rook began to breathe again. “I don’t regret a second of it. We were just too young. If I could change anything, I would have maybe had Ricky a few years later. Given Javi and I a fighting chance. We were too young to be married.”
“Is… that why you didn’t make it?”
“Oh, honey, we don’t have time for all that.” May’s words were filled with attitude and humor and the two women found themselves laughing together. A moment later, May sobered. “Here’s the one thing I know for sure. You can’t make decisions based on what you imagine will be best for your kid.”
Naomi’s brow furrowed. “That’s pretty much exactly the opposite of what everyone else says.”
May laughed again. “Don’t I know it. But that’s the truth. If you are going to force yourself to stay in a relationship for your kid, that’s just gonna bite you in the ass one day. But if you’re going to deprive yourself of a relationship for your kid, that’s gonna bite you in the ass just as hard. Kids are resilient. Ricky understands that me and her dad aren’t gonna be together like that. Just like she understands that we respect each other and work hard to be cordial and kind and understanding. And that’s so much better than me and Javi being together and hating one another all in the name of one big happy family, you know?”
“So… you’re saying that even if I’m not sure it’ll work out with Sequence, it might not be the most selfish thing in the world to try it out?”
“Naomi, exploring a relationship with the father of your child is not selfish in any stretch of the imagination. It might even mean that your kid grows up in a two-parent household. And if you guys ever break up, just don’t make it your kid’s problem.”
The women kept on talking, but Rook slipped away. Somewhere inside him, the teen-aged version of himself was shell-shocked and staring at the wall. They’d been divorced for five years and sometimes he still couldn’t believe that it was real. That he’d had May in every sense of the word, and then he’d lost her.
***
Naomi was ready. She imagined this was what ancient soldiers had felt like when they were layering armor on for battle. Except instead of chain mail and a clunky helmet, she was rocking freshly shaved everything and a sheer blue teddy and thong. Naomi applied just the smallest amount of makeup and brushed her hair to a high shine.
She stepped back and surveyed her dirty work. Her belly was highly visible, but she’d gotten the feeling that Sequence was kind of getting off on that these days. He was always looking at her belly or finding a way to touch it. She didn’t think hiding it would be the way to go. Besides, if the belly was too much, he could always just stare at her nipples, which w
ere aching, erect, and extremely visibly through this fabric.
Naomi didn’t come to play. She came to get her man.
Her conversation with May had changed everything. She’d realized that there was no point in withholding herself from Sequence simply because she was terrified of what might happen in the future. The only way to know what was going to happen in the future was to live life and eventually get there. And she could either get there on her own, alone and sexually repressed, or she could get there with a gorgeous, sexy, caring, sweet man on her arm. Her baby didn’t deserve to be caught in the throes of some potentially dramatic relationship, sure. But didn’t her baby deserve to know that his or her parents had at least tried out a relationship?
These were Naomi’s thoughts as she heard Sequence knock and come into her room the way he always did this time of night. She walked out to the bedroom to see him setting down a tray of tea and seltzer, a small plate of cookies next to it. She was certain that he’d baked the cookies. And didn’t that just absolutely slay her?
Naomi cleared her throat and Sequence turned. He instantly went still as a statue as his eyes swallowed her whole. His gaze went from her lips to her belly, up to her breasts, down to the scrap of sheer material between her legs and back to her breasts.
“Holy shit,” he murmured before pacing to the door and making sure it was locked. “Fancy—”
“I’m gonna make this real easy for you,” she told him, mirroring his words from their very first sexual encounter. She took a step toward him. “I want you.”
“And you can have me, Naomi. I told you. I’ll make you come any time you want.” He looked like a man on the edge, lit from within and smoldering. His back was against the door like he was trying to convince himself to leave but his body was making him stay, stay, stay.
“No, Seek.” She was almost all the way to him. Close enough to catch his warmed copper scent. “You don’t understand. When I say I want you, I mean that I want us.”
He wasn’t breathing. She could see that even from three feet away. His eyes bounced between hers for a long moment before his air came out all at once. “You mean that? You and me?”
“And the baby.”
His eyes were supernovas as he did that blackhole-magnet thing and damn near tipped the world on its axis. She fought gravity so as not to go crashing bodily into him.
“You want me as your man. Even though…” He trailed off and shook his head, obviously willing himself to finish his own sentence. “Even though I left you before?”
She shrugged her shoulders. “You haven’t left me since. You’re not going to leave the baby, Seek. I can feel it. So, why shouldn’t we try? I want you so badly I can’t sleep at night. Being with you… it was a revelation. Why not try?”
“You want me as your man,” he confirmed again. “You want me as your man and you wanna raise a kid with me.”
She took half a step back. “Don’t you want that with me?”
And then he was there, closing the distance between them and slipping his firm, rough hands around her waist. “Fuck, yes I want that. And I would have taken you any way you wanted to give it me. Even if that meant the fucking friend zone for the rest of my life. I would have taken it. Just to be near you. But you…” he trailed off and let his eyes wander over her for a second. His eyes fell to her breasts again and his circuits just seemed to short right out. “God, baby.”
For the second time in his life, Sequence fell to his knees in front of her. He was so big that he barely had to reach up to kiss each of her breasts, sucking her tightly through the fabric of her lingerie as if he couldn’t resist the temptation.
But then he buried his face in her belly, rubbing one stubbled cheek over her baby bump and then the other.
“I have to tell you something,” he said in a gravelly voice. “If you really want to make this work I can’t start with a secret.”
Naomi’s stomach plummeted. “Okay.” She went to her knees as well, but Sequence didn’t seem to like that. With a scowl on his face, he lifted her off the ground and deposited her on her bed. But she went up to her knees with a scowl of her own when she saw that he meant to pace next to the bed.
“Get on this bed right now!” She pointed self righteously down at the mattress and Sequence couldn’t help but smile as he acquiesced, kicking off his shoes and sitting next to her.
She snuggled herself into his side and slipped her hand into his.
He could barely believe that he was going to tell anyone this story, let alone Naomi. She was the one thing he’d ever allowed himself to want. To truly want. And he was going to risk fucking it up with the truth. But he’d never be able to make it work with her if he wasn’t honest. He’d learned as much in his sessions with Dr. Waters. His therapist seemed to be under the impression that people could forgive almost anything that they truly understood. So it was Sequence’s job to make sure that Naomi understood.
He took a long, deep breath, realizing that he’d already been quiet for too long. “You know that Atlas and I didn’t have a very good childhood.”
She nodded and started stroking the lines of his tattoos up his fingers. He watched her porcelain hands move over his inked ones and marveled at all the contrasts between them. How they could want one another so badly and be this different.
“My dad was a real bastard. Is. He’s still alive. He’s in prison. For murder. He, uh, didn’t commit the murder. Not that I’m defending him. But I guess it’s important to the story. Fuck. I need to start at the beginning.” He let Naomi take his hand from his lap and into hers. And he told her. He told her how mean his dad was when he was drunk. He told her how weak his mother was. Physically and mentally. How he and Atlas had figured out different ways to deal with all of it. Atlas was always the jokester, loud and gregarious and all the attention on him. He’d get their dad’s eye and lead him away from their mom. Sequence would hide in the shadows, waiting for the right time. And they’d lock him outside. More often than not, it didn’t work. Their father, being a grown up when they were just kids, wouldn’t allow himself to be tricked and afterward he’d pick one or both of them to beat. But it almost didn’t matter to them. Anything to keep him from beating on their mother.
It went on for years. And it worsened after their mother died. A heart attack.
Sequence told her about the biker club that his father had gotten on the wrong side of. He’d stolen money from them, and screwed up a deal beyond that. They were looking for him. His father was hiding out on the other side of town in a trailer that had used to belong to Sequence’s aunt.
Sequence had bided his time, waited for years, slowly building muscle and a plan and a strategy. He was so quiet, so insular, so hidden, that his father never saw it coming. It was the night of their prom when it happened. Atlas was all dressed up and still riding the high of the fact that their father had apparently blown dodge and good riddance. Sequence, however, had had a different kind of celebration planned.
At this point, somehow, his head had ended up in Naomi’s lap and her fingers were in his hair. She’d undone the buttons on the collar of his shirt and looked down at him with big, patient eyes. He couldn’t look at her for this part. The rest of it was just a sad story, but this? This right here? This was where she might very well decide that she couldn’t let herself be touched by a man like him.
“I went out to the trailer. It was out by the woods, on the edge of town. A real piece of shit. They’d been cooking meth out there. I’m sure you can picture what it looked like from TV or whatever. But yeah. He was holed up inside. Totally off his mind on drugs and drink. He barely recognized me when I burst in. But part of that was because I looked so different than I used to. Atlas and I… we were skinny for a long time. But not anymore. I was finally bigger than my father. Stronger too. And I was sober. But he was meaner. Once he realized that I was dragging him out of the trailer, he got some good hits in. Gave me this. And this.” Sequence untucked his white button down and li
fted his undershirt to show jagged scars along his abdomen.
Naomi made a sound like a wounded animal but Sequence just kept on going. He couldn’t stop now. If he stopped now, he’d never get the story out.
“We fought. Hard. I finally knocked him out and got him out of the trailer and into the truck. I drove across town. I could have dumped him off at the precinct. He had outstanding warrants against him. Enough to get him sent up for at least a decade. But I didn’t.” Sequence let out a shuddering breath and resisted the temptation to cover his eyes. He was perfectly still in her lap, his eyes on hers, needing her to know he was laying himself bare here, giving her everything. The good, the bad, and the terribly, horribly ugly.
“Instead I drive to the biker club’s headquarters. This warehouse out behind a bar. I brought the truck around and laid on my horn until a group of them came out.” In his mind’s eye, Sequence could still see them. These were not the tatted-up models on the covers of a few of Naomi’s romance novels about motorcycle clubs. No. These dudes were the real McCoy. Hardened, fucked up men who lived by a different code. “I opened the passenger door and booted him out of the car. Burned rubber and didn’t look back.”
Naomi’s eyes had filled with tears but she didn’t say anything. She also didn’t stop stroking his hair and Sequence would never be able to describe the feeling that rose up within him. She hadn’t recoiled from him.
He wondered, vaguely, if he hadn’t been clear enough. If she didn’t quite understand the story.
“I didn’t know what they were going to do to him. When I was driving away, I was sure I’d left him for dead. And it made me sick. I pulled over and puked. But I didn’t go back for him. Whatever happened to him, he deserved it. I did that for Atlas. If it was just me, maybe I could have moved away and let the chips fall where they may with the old man. But for Atlas, I left our father for dead. They didn’t kill him though. Lucky son of a bitch.”
Rook Security Complete Series Page 48