“Because of what Thomas called you?” Sarah tried to blink away her tears, but her heart was too big, and they tumbled down her cheeks. “I’m sorry you lost your friend. That must have been horrible. But I bet he’s smiling down on you as you give other people miracles.”
He touched her cheek, brushing her tears away with his thumb. Her eyes darkened, but there was trepidation there, too. “Do I scare you, Sarah?”
She shook her head. “The way I feel about you scares me.”
That made him smile. He slid his hand to the nape of her neck, drawing her closer.
“Why?”
“Because I have kids, and I can’t afford to put them at risk by making a mistake.”
He touched his forehead to hers, breathing her in. “Why would we be a mistake?”
“Because I’m usually really good at distancing myself from others, but being with you…”
She shook her head, and he drew back, searching for some hint of what was going on in her mind. “Are you afraid I’ll hurt them in some way?”
She shook her head again.
“That I’ll hurt you?”
She was quiet for a long moment before saying, “Not purposefully.”
“Oh, my sweet Sarah,” he whispered, pain slicing through him. “What have you been through that’s made you so scared?”
Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. “If you knew all my secrets, you wouldn’t want anything to do with me.”
“You’re wrong, Sarah. Give me a chance and you’ll see the truth.”
She swiped at her tears and turned away. “I’m sorry. Here you’ve given me the best night of my life, and I’ve turned into a sniveling mess.”
He drew her into his arms, gazing deeply into her eyes, and he touched his lips to her damp cheeks, tasting her salty tears. “You’re not a mess. We all have pasts. I’ve done things I’m not proud of.”
“Yeah, right. The guy who was raised to help and protect? What have you done? Jaywalked?”
“Yes. But other things, too. I stole a car once.”
“I can’t even imagine that,” she said with a smile that faded so fast it made him ache. “We’re from two different worlds.”
“Are we? Because I grew up with nothing but family. We didn’t have much money. My parents were leather-wearing, motorcycle-driving badasses who got sideways looks when we traveled outside of Peaceful Harbor. I grew up with rough men coming over to our house at all hours, my father leaving with them to go pound the shit out of some guy who had raped a woman and drag his ass to the police, or to stand watch over some poor abused woman’s house to keep her safe. As a boy, there was always scary stuff going on, things I wasn’t supposed to notice or talk about.”
“That does sound scary.”
“That kind of thing has a huge impact on a kid,” he said. “Part of me wanted to be just like my father, and another part feared it because although Biggs has physical deficits from his stroke, he’s still the kind of man who’ll toss his cane aside and step in front of a moving train to save someone else. As a kid I wasn’t sure I could pull off being that fearless, and following in Bullet’s footsteps? The man’s a beast. Living up to the expectations of a man who would stop at nothing to protect a stranger makes you dig deeper than you ever knew was possible. I’d put my life on the line for most anyone, but getting to that point? For a kid whose mind went through a methodical process before making even the littlest decisions, it took more than a leap of faith to wrap my head around what it really meant to be a Whiskey.”
“I can’t even imagine. Your father would really go after bad guys to save strangers?”
“We all would. I’m not the squeaky-clean guy you think I am, but I’m not a deviant who would ever hurt you or your children. You don’t have to trust me right now, Sarah, but I’ve never told a soul about Thomas until tonight. My family knows, and those who have lived here long enough to remember him know we were friends. But his family has long since moved away. I trust you, and I want to open up to you. I hope one day you’ll do the same.”
She inhaled a ragged breath, lowering her gaze to her belly. “Part of me wants just this one night without revealing my past. One night with you looking at me like no one ever has before, so I can pretend to be a normal single woman for just a short time.”
He knew he’d never stop looking at her like that, no matter what she shared with him. “One night will never be enough.”
He cradled her beautiful face in his hands, their connection drawing him closer. Her eyes were so dark and alluring, he was powerless to resist lowering his lips to hers. Her lips were soft and sweet, and she opened for him a little tentatively at first, but as he took the kiss deeper, she gave in to their passion, meeting every stroke of his tongue with an eager one of her own. He threaded his fingers into her hair, and holy hell, he’d been wanting to do that for so long, his entire body pressed forward, craving more.
“Fuck, Sarah,” he ground out against her lips. “Please don’t be afraid of me.”
He reclaimed her mouth, sliding his tongue over hers, along her teeth and the roof of her mouth, everywhere he could reach. He wanted to possess every inch of her, to wrap her in his arms and show her he’d protect her. The kiss went on and on, with no beginning and he sure as hell didn’t want it to end. But he needed more of her. He kissed the edge of her mouth and down her neck. She turned, giving him better access, and man he loved that.
“That’s it, darlin’. Show me what you like.”
“You,” she panted out. “I like you.”
He sealed his mouth over her neck in a series of slow, openmouthed kisses, cradling her face with one hand, feeling her sexy little whimpers, pleas, and gasps. Each one made his body thrum with heat. As he kissed and nibbled his way up to her ear, she turned her face, bringing his thumb against her lips. She dragged her tongue up the length of it, and he swore he felt it on his cock. A growling sound escaped before he could stop it, and she shuddered in his arms.
“I have wanted to kiss you like this for weeks.” He licked the shell of her ear and whispered, “I love your sexy mouth.”
She slicked her tongue along his thumb again, and he couldn’t resist pushing it between her lips. She closed her mouth around it, shocking the hell out of him and spurring him on to feast on her neck. Her tongue swirled around his thumb, and then she sucked hard, drawing a groan right out of him. He curled two fingers into the collars of her shirts, tugging them to the side, and lowered his mouth to her bare shoulder. Her skin was warm and smelled like lilacs. So fucking good he wanted to disappear into her. When she arched forward, he dipped lower, kissing the swell of her breasts. His hand moved along her thigh, beneath her shirt and up her side, feeling the roundness of her belly and the underside of her breast. He caressed her breast, and her nipple rose to a tempting peak against his palm.
She gasped a tiny, stilted breath.
The difference between hunger and hesitation hit him like a truck.
He slid a hand to the nape of her neck, gazing deeply into her eyes. Her silent warnings came through loud and clear—Be careful with me. I want this, but I’m scared. Taking her fears to heart, he put his mouth beside her ear and said, “Don’t worry, darlin’. I’m in no rush.”
“But I want to kiss you,” she pleaded, desire and hesitation still battling in her eyes.
He pressed his hand to her cheek, kissing her lightly, giving her a chance to back off, but she intensified their kisses. She was so eager, and so vulnerable, everything she did made him fall harder for her. He drew back again, needing to take a pulse on where her head was, and brushed his thumb over her lips. She inhaled another sexy gasp, this one void of any hesitation. He followed the same path with his tongue, and she pressed forward, meeting his mouth hungrily as he took her in another penetrating kiss. Her mouth was hot and sweet, and her body was sensual and sexy. Heavenly. She writhed against him, belly and breasts to chest and abs. He clutched her ass, hauling her closer without breaking their conn
ection.
He’d fantasized about kissing her for so long, thought about how her hands would feel on his body, her mouth on his flesh. But nothing had prepared him for the sweetness that was Sarah Beckley. She kissed the same way she protected her children, vehement and loving at once, and it was the sexiest make-out session he’d ever experienced.
She wanted one night without questions, one night to feel normal. She was so far beyond normal, there wasn’t a woman alive who could measure up to her, and Bones vowed to make her not only see it, but believe it.
Chapter Eight
WHEN THEIR LIPS finally parted, Sarah turned away and fixed her shirt, avoiding his gaze. Bones reached for her, and she stiffened.
He smoothed his hand down her back and said, “Sarah, there’s no reason to be embarrassed.”
“That’s easy for you to say. You didn’t just suck on a man’s thumb on a first date.”
He gathered her hair over one shoulder, trying to see her face, but she kept turning away from him. “Here, darlin’, let me fix that.” He lifted her hand and sucked her thumb into his mouth.
She yanked it away with a sexy laugh. “It’s different for guys. It’s expected. I’m not the kind of woman who does that, and I don’t want to be that person in your eyes. I just got swept away in the moment.”
“First of all, you’re right about perceptions, and that’s got to suck from a woman’s perspective. But not all guys are like that. I haven’t seen you as anything other than a strong, guarded woman and mother who also happens to be sexy and beautiful. What we did doesn’t change that. If anything, I feel closer to you because you let me in.”
She faced him then, her cautious eyes sailing over his face. Could she see that he was being blatantly honest? Did she want to see it, or was she too scared? Or worse, had he somehow misread the situation?
“Did you feel pressure to be close to me? Because if you did, I—”
“No,” she interrupted. “It’s not that. I wanted to kiss you. I wanted to do more than kiss you. I’m just…I told you I have baggage. I’m better at being friends than I am at this, and I’m not even very good at being friends. I’m always waiting for the smiles people wear, the kindness they share, to peel off like shed skin, revealing monsters I don’t want my children to see.”
He gritted his teeth against the anger simmering inside him for whatever she’d gone through that had left her so scarred. He flattened his palms to his thighs to keep them from curling into fists. “Because of the situation you grew up in? Or the father—or fathers—of your children?”
She pressed her lips together, her arms circling her belly, as if to protect her unborn child from hearing what she had to say. Then she lifted her chin, squared her shoulders, and said, “Both.”
The word devastated him like a bullet to the chest. “Sarah…?”
“My father was abusive to me and Scott, emotionally and physically, but luckily, not sexually.” She didn’t look away, didn’t flinch or slow down, as if she were talking about someone else. “By the grace of God, he didn’t touch Josie. But for whatever reason, Scott and I were targets. When I look back now, I wonder why I never told a teacher or the police. Anyone. But when you’re in the thick of it, all you think about is surviving from one minute to the next. Walking on eggshells. Trying to figure out what you did wrong every time you got hit or yelled at. I’d see kids at school, girls holding hands with boys, kissing in the halls, passing notes, and I’d wonder what that must be like. Why weren’t their parents calling them sluts? Or were they? Did they have bruises on their bodies, too?”
His heart broke, and his anger mounted with every word she said. He moved closer, taking her hand in his, and held on tight, wishing he could have been there to protect her.
“I used to hide in the bushes and write stories about a girl my age and how she’d fall in love with a boy and run away. They were just silly stories, but they were my stories of hope. They gave me a place to disappear into my imagined world, where a boy would want to hold my hand, carry my books. Where my parents would read to me or smile and tell me I did a good job instead of saying I was a tramp or a whore for doing nothing more than getting my period.”
She looked away with a nostalgic glimmer in her eyes that blew Bones away. How strong did she have to be to survive such an upbringing? To create a shred of hope and to become the woman she was today?
Her expression darkened, and she said, “As Scott got bigger, he fought back. What Scott didn’t mention the other night at dinner was that my father beat him up really bad the night he left. I’ll never forget. I thought they were going to kill each other. Scott got him good, too, but my father’s a big man, and even if he was almost six feet tall, Scott was only a teenager. Josie and I were a mess, crying and screaming, begging them to stop. My mother was hollering at us, slapping me as I tried to pull my father off Scott. Josie huddled in a corner. God, she was so small at thirteen, I remember thinking if they ever hit her, she’d break.”
She swallowed hard, fighting tears. Bones reached for her, but she pulled away.
“Please don’t,” she pleaded. “Just let me finish, or I’ll never get it out.”
It took every ounce of restraint not to haul her into his arms. He nodded, jaw tight, hands fisted.
“I tried to break up the fight,” she said softly. “But my father went after me, so Scott told me to take Josie downstairs. That’s where our bedrooms were. A few minutes later Scott flew down the stairs and into his room, panting and bloody. He grabbed a duffel bag, which he must have packed earlier. He told me and Josie not to go upstairs no matter what until the next day. I guess he’d been planning on leaving for a while, because he had a fake ID, and he gave me a bank card and said to guard it with my life. He’d had a friend open a bank account for me. He said he’d get a job and send money to that account so my parents wouldn’t know. I wanted to go with him, but my father threatened to have Scott arrested and thrown in juvie.”
“Jesus, Sarah. What about your mother?”
She shook her head. “She’s a waste of a human life. She was just as bad. She’d slap me and Scott around, call me awful names—slut, bitch, whore. I’d never even kissed a boy. I used to wonder if Scott and I were adopted or something, but…” She shook her head. “I know Bradley told you she was dead. I told him they were, but I have no idea if they are or not. I don’t ever want them near my children.” She inhaled shakily and said, “Things got better for a while after Scott left, and I thought maybe my parents had realized they’d run him off and were trying to change their ways. But then I came home one day and found my father in my room. He’d torn it apart and he was holding one of my notebooks. The others were shredded all over the floor. My mom and Josie were gone. That was the day I got the worst beating of my life. When my mom and Josie didn’t come back that night, I thought my mom had come to her senses and tried to save Josie. I knew she’d never save me. The next morning I packed what I could in my backpack, like I was going to school. My father worked at restaurants. He was a cook, but he also worked as a janitor for a company, so he was always working weird hours. He was still asleep that morning when I left. I went straight to the bank, cleared out the account, which had about four hundred dollars in it. I don’t know how Scott got the money so fast. He still won’t tell me. I took half of it and left the other half for Josie with a note telling her I’d come back as soon as I had a place to live. We had a secret place we left notes for each other, in a crack in the foundation of the house out back behind the heat pump. I knew I had to get away while I could, so I went to the main drag and hitchhiked.”
It was all Bones could do to let her speak without unleashing his anger.
“I must have had a guardian angel that day, because a girl named Susan picked me up on her way out of town. She’d hooked up with some guy at the military base and was heading home to Orlando. She was nineteen and worked at a salon. She let me stay with her, and after a week, when my bruises weren’t as noticeable, sh
e got me a job as a shampoo girl. They paid me under the table in cash. I was going crazy worrying about Josie, so the next week when Susan had time off, she took me back and we waited for Josie after school, but she never came out. I saw a girl Josie knew, and she said she saw Josie leave in a car with some guy two days earlier and she hadn’t seen her since. She thought the car was blue, but it could have been gray; she wasn’t sure. Susan and I went back to the house, and I snuck around to check our hiding place. Josie had left me a note that said she was afraid to wait any longer. She found a way out and she took it.”
Bones felt sick with rage. He wanted to hunt down her parents and slaughter them. “She was thirteen? Did you find out who she left with?”
Sarah shook her head. “Susan and I drove around all night, but…” She shrugged. “I thought I lost her forever, and I didn’t know how to get in touch with Scott. I had no idea who his friend was who set up the bank account, and I just felt lost and scared—”
“But you had Susan; that’s something.”
“Not really. She helped me look for Josie over the next couple of weeks as time allowed, but then she got scared that she’d get in trouble. She drove me to a homeless shelter the next night, but I was worried they’d send me back to my parents. I guess she felt bad, so she gave me two hundred dollars and her driver’s license and dropped me off at the bus station. I bought a train ticket to Baltimore. I got another job at a salon as a shampoo girl, and I was sleeping out back in the bushes by the salon. One night I woke up to a guy grabbing at me, so I took off and finally went to a shelter. I had Susan’s ID, so I used her name there just in case. I had no idea how the shelters worked with minors, and I wasn’t taking any chances. After a few weeks, I met a girl named Reagan at the shelter, and we hit it off, and we rented a room together. Eventually I met Lewis Warsaw, the father of my children. I went to cosmetology school, and a few years later he shed his skin, too.”
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