He shrugged. “I’ll make do.”
She chewed the inside of her lip. She truly had no desire to go next door to her own place, though she knew they’d have to soon enough. “There’s no reason not to go back home. I’m being a ninny,” she admitted. “But I don’t want to go back in there unless it’s during the cold light of day.”
“You’re not a ninny,” he dismissed, sounding gruff. “You were going to bean the guy with an iron poker if you had to.”
She swallowed, shuddering. It was still too vivid. All she had to do was close her eyes and she could feel Bobby looming over her and looking crazed.
She heard Sloan curse. Then he slid his arm around her and pulled her against his chest. She couldn’t keep herself from clinging to him. From pressing her ear against his chest where she could hear his steady heartbeat. Feel his steady breathing.
“I wanted to kill him,” she whispered. “I never thought I’d feel such—” She broke off, not even able to articulate what she’d felt. “He hurt his own son. Scared Dillon out of his mind. God only knows what sort of nightmares he’ll have now.”
“Why does he have them in the first place?”
Sloan’s hands slowly moved up and down her spine. He had never taken the time to change out of his uniform, and the fabric of his shirt felt smooth and crisp against her cheek. And beneath that, he was warm. Steady. Safe.
“His mother used to leave him alone for hours on end.”
“You never refer to her as your mother, too.”
She pulled back enough to look up at him. “It’s hard to think of her as mine, though biologically she is. I have no relationship with her and don’t want one.” She thought about it for a moment. “It probably sounds shocking, but I really don’t have any feelings toward her at all except for disgust at the way she cared for Dillon. The parents who counted for me were Minerva and Thomas Marcum.”
He didn’t look shocked, though. “And the parent who’ll count for Dillon will be Abby.” He said it as if it were already fact. Then he set her away from him and moved, looking suddenly restless. “Were her parental rights severed? Is it official?”
She tried not to think he’d put the granite-topped island between them as a barrier, even though it seemed that way. “I’m legally Dillon’s guardian. I don’t expect her to ever come back wanting him. She never did with me. But if she did, she wouldn’t get anywhere. I have the assurance of several family-court judges on that particular score. Dillon’s not going anywhere.”
He studied her. His jaw was roughened by a dark shadow but not enough to mask its sharp angles. “You scare the hell out of me,” he said abruptly.
Her stomach hollowed. “Why?”
He rubbed his hand down his face. Clawed his fingers through his hair. “You’re twenty-three freaking years old.”
“You want me to lie?” She smiled weakly. “Pad my age with a few years?” She pressed her palm against the cool granite, letting it steady her. “Shouldn’t it matter less about the years and more about the life? There’s ten years between us, not fifty.”
“Might as well be,” he muttered. His gaze drilled into hers. “You felt like you wanted to kill Bobby. Well, I have killed.”
She swallowed hard. “Because you were doing your job?”
“While I was a Deuce.”
“While you rode with the Deuces.”
His lips twisted. “Don’t romanticize it, Abby. I spent nearly a year closed up in a federal penitentiary just so my cover held water before I even got close to the Deuces, much less became one of them. There were whole years when there was no difference between them and me.”
“Sloan.” She spread her hands. “Of course there was a difference. If there hadn’t been, you wouldn’t be here now! You would have stayed with them. They’d have never known the truth. None of them would have seen the inside of a jail cell because of the evidence you brought to light.”
His lips tightened. “The only reason I finished the job was because of Maria. She was a cocktail waitress where we’d hang.” He went silent. The only sound came from the faint tick of the clock on the stove.
She pressed her tongue hard against the roof of her mouth, aching from the way he said her name. Maria.
“We got involved,” he finally said. “And she hated thinking she’d fallen for a Deuce. She hated everything about them, but she couldn’t get away from ’em because she already knew more about them than she should.” He yanked off his loosened tie as if it were strangling him and balled it up in his fist.
“You loved her,” Abby concluded softly. “So you told her the truth.”
“And I got her killed because of it.”
Her eyes burned. “I’m sorry.”
“So am I.” He turned on his heel and left the kitchen.
Abby’s breath slowly eked out of her. She listened to the clock tick. Listened to the silence.
She could gather up Dillon and take him home. There was no bogeyman there. He was safely locked up in a jail cell for now. She could give Sloan space.
She ran her hand over the cool granite and heard a soft sound from above her. He’d gone upstairs.
She gathered up the blanket he’d given her—the one that smelled like him that she’d stayed huddled in for the past several hours—and balled it up in her arms, pressing her face into its softness for a moment.
Then she left the kitchen and padded silently past Dillon. He was still sleeping on the couch. Even Rex was snoring softly.
She reached the foot of the stairs and put her hand on the wooden newel-post. There wasn’t much light coming from up there, but there was enough.
She put her foot on the first step and very nearly lost her nerve and turned around. But she didn’t. She climbed the second step. And the third. And each one after that just got easier. At the top, she turned in the direction of the light and found Sloan sitting on the foot of a wide bed. It had no blanket. Only rumpled white sheets.
He was still in his uniform. His tie still balled in his fist.
She set the blanket on the bed and silently tugged the tie free from his hands. He didn’t fight her. But she felt his gaze burning between her shoulder blades when she turned and smoothed out the tie carefully on the top of the chest of drawers across from the bed.
Then she turned back and crouched at his feet and began undoing the laces of his highly polished shoes. When they were loose enough, she pulled them off his feet then rolled off his socks and set them neatly aside.
Now the only thing she could hear was the sound of her own pulse clanging inside her head.
But she was here. And he hadn’t told her to go.
She pushed to her feet and took his hands, pulling him up.
His eyes narrowed, but he stood, and she led him around to the side of the bed. She unbuttoned his shirt and tugged it off his shoulders. The white T-shirt beneath clung to his muscular shoulders, but that wasn’t what made her breath catch in her throat. Nor was it the tattoo spreading below the short sleeve of his undershirt. It was the ugly scar tissue rippling over his right biceps. Maybe there’d come a time to ask about it.
But not now.
Reminding herself that she was a trained nurse didn’t keep her hands from trembling as she undid his leather belt. It slithered from the belt loops when she tugged it free of his pants. She coiled it up and set it on the felt-lined tray sitting on top of the chest.
Nothing about Sloan moved except his eyes, which followed her as she came back and stood in front of him. She undid his pants, tugged them down his hips and willed herself not to pay too much attention to the dark gray boxer briefs he wore beneath as she kneeled and waited for him to step out of his trousers. Once he had, she shook them out and folded them over the back of the straight-backed chair in the corner.
She returned to stand in front of him once again. She started to lightly touch his shoulders, but she curled her fingers into her fists and reached around him instead to pull back the top sheet and smooth out
the bunched-up pillows. The bed was as neat as she could make it in just those few seconds, and she looked at him. “Lie down,” she said quietly.
His gaze flickered. The mattress sank a little when he sat down on the side of it. She waited, and after a moment, he let out a sigh and stretched out on his side, facing her.
She smoothed the sheet over him then turned off the lamp that was sitting on the nightstand next to him, plunging the room into darkness.
“Where are you going?” His voice was deep. A man’s. But the question behind it could have come from her little brother.
“Nowhere,” she soothed calmly. She walked around the bed, and her hand found the blanket where she’d left it. Then she climbed onto the mattress and stretched out behind him, spreading the blanket over them both. It was strange—her heart was pounding heavily, but she’d never felt more calm. She slid her arm over him, and her palm found the center of his chest. She pressed her cheek against the soft cotton knit stretched over his tense back. “Go to sleep, Sloan,” she whispered. “I’m not going anywhere.”
She didn’t close her eyes. She didn’t sleep. She simply counted her heartbeats. Breathed slowly, knowing that he would feel the movement against him.
And a long, long while later, she felt a deep breath shudder through him, and he closed his hand tightly around hers.
Only then did she close her eyes.
Only then did she sleep.
* * *
Dawn was a silvery glow outside the slanted blinds at the window when Abby next opened her eyes. Sometime during the night, Sloan and she had turned over, and their positions had reversed. His arm was a heavy weight clamped over her waist.
She lay there for a long while, listening to his steady breathing; it wasn’t quite a snore but obviously he was sleeping soundly. And while the idea of happily lying there with him for the rest of her days was lovely in theory, it wasn’t exactly practical. Moving gingerly, she managed to slide out from beneath his arm without seeming to disturb his sleep and scooted off the foot of the bed. She glanced out the window as she passed it and realized it looked down on the side of her house and her own bedroom window.
Had he ever looked out, thinking of her?
She quickly turned away and silently slipped downstairs, where she visited the powder room tucked next to a room that could have been an office or a bedroom if it had possessed even one stick of furniture. She cracked the back door open long enough to let out Rex. For once, he cooperated beautifully, and in seconds he trotted back inside, where he immediately returned to the living room and hopped onto the couch near Dillon’s feet. He circled a few times then settled in a ball and lowered his head on Dillon’s leg. Her brother didn’t even stir.
She adjusted the coat still draped over him like a blanket, and when he slept on, as peacefully as she’d ever seen him, she tightened the tie on her robe again and crept back up the stairs to Sloan’s bedroom.
He hadn’t moved, either, so she carefully worked her way back to where she’d been when she’d wakened, right down to the wonderful detail of his arm lying heavily across her waist.
She let out a long breath and closed her eyes.
Then Sloan’s lax fingers tightened. They moved and spread and pressed flat against her belly, pulling her entire backside from shoulders on down solidly against him. “Wondered if you’d come back.” His voice sounded rusty with sleep but that was the only thing that was sleeping where he was concerned.
That fact was glaringly noticeable, and the heat that collected deep inside her was instantaneous. She tried to speak, but only a garbled sound came out.
His knee crooked against the back of hers, and his hand ran possessively from her belly up over her hip. She could feel the heat of his palm even through her robe.
“Also been wondering what you had on underneath this thing.” His fingers inched along the flannel, slowly drawing it up her leg. “If anything.”
She let out a careful breath, thinking about the pretty panties she could have purchased at Tara’s shop. If she hadn’t chickened out, she wouldn’t now be wearing her plain white cotton. “Nothing exciting.”
“I don’t know about that,” he murmured. His palm slid beneath the flannel and curved over her upper thigh then slid behind it, gliding up over her hip, back down then up again. Gaining another inch with each pass, and making it increasingly difficult for her to remain still.
When he reached the narrow edge of her panties and slid his fingers beneath, her lips parted and she hauled in a soundless breath.
His hand palmed her rear then tormentingly inched between her legs, where there was no mistaking her arousal. “That’s pretty exciting,” he murmured.
She moaned, shifting restlessly and much too quickly as his hand moved again but only to unknot her tie belt and draw the flannel away from her body. He kissed the shoulder he bared. “That’s pretty exciting, too.”
He shifted, his thigh sliding over hers and nudging her onto her back. His eyes roved over her as he slowly spread the robe, leaving her wearing nothing at all but her panties. “Ex.” His fingers grazed oh-so-quickly over the juncture between her thighs again then trailed up the flat of her belly. “Cite.” His fingertip circled one rigid nipple, then the other, then dragged over the hollow at the base of her throat, up her neck and stopped beneath her chin. He tilted it upward, toward his lips. “Ting,” he whispered and kissed her softly.
And all the while he kissed her, his palm slid back down again, retracing its path. Lingering longer. Not teasing, but promising. When his hand glided over the center of her, she gasped. Then his fingers moved, swirled, and she shuddered, rocking needfully against him.
His breathing roughened. “Exciting, all right.” He kissed her harder, only to pull back. His hands deliberately gentled. Slowed. His kiss turned sweet.
Her heart felt as if it were cracking open. She loved him. She knew she did. But his tenderness was almost more than she could bear, because she didn’t know how she was going to survive it when he left.
And leave, he would.
“Don’t stop now,” she managed to say, pretending that her throat wasn’t tightening and her heart wasn’t breaking. She dragged at his T-shirt. “Wouldn’t want to be rude, would you?”
He smiled a little. He pulled back enough to yank the shirt off, revealing the tattoo in its entirety. She caught her breath. The complicated design spread over his entire left shoulder and fanned out over his pec. “It must have taken days,” she whispered. “Why?”
“Part of the job.”
His hand slid along her cheek. “You want me to put my shirt back on?”
His thumb brushed over her lips, and she had to close her eyes against the tears that wanted to come. “No.” She ran her hand deliberately over the tattoo. It was just ink. He was smooth and warm.
“If you want me to stop,” he murmured, “just tell me. Something you don’t like, you say so.”
She let out a strangled laugh. Her body was humming, desperate for more, while he was only concerned that he might hurt her.
He would, too. She knew it. But it wasn’t the hurt beyond his bed that counted here.
She rubbed her finger against the line between his brows. “I don’t think that’s going to happen.” She shoved at his shoulders and pushed him flat on his back. She kicked off her panties and straddled him then leaned over until her breasts were flattened against the hard planes of his chest. Sensations buffeted her at every turn. Physically, there was nothing about him that wasn’t hard. Honed. But inside, she knew he was even more vulnerable than she.
“I’m not going to break, Sloan.” She kissed his bristly chin. Tugged gently at his lower lip with her teeth. “Please don’t treat me like I will.”
His hands closed over her rear, pulling her down against him, and she gasped at the thrilling feel of him pulsing against her. His eyes searched hers. “Are you sure?”
She rocked her hips slowly, and her eyes nearly rolled back in her head with
pleasure. “Never more.”
His hand left her only long enough to reach for the drawer in the nightstand. He pulled out a foil packet. “You that sure?”
She took it from him and tore it open. “Still questioning?”
He gave a strangled groan. “You’re killing me here, Abby.”
She leaned over again, her lips hovering above his. “I’m a nurse, remember?” She felt the quick twitch of his lips, and it made her feel braver. “Show me, Sloan,” she whispered. “Let me make it better.”
His hands clamped on her head, and he kissed her deeply. Then he showed her. And when his fingers fisted around the bedding beside him rather than her, she tugged at his hands until he let go and guided them to her hips instead and slowly took him in.
“I don’t want to hurt you,” he gritted.
“You aren’t,” she promised, lying only a little. The pressure was immense, but he was inside her and she loved him, and soon the pressure was just pleasure that kept growing. And when she didn’t think she could feel anything more, he groaned her name—her name—and he turned, tucking her beneath him. His palms slid against hers as he lifted their linked hands above her head, and he drove even harder, even deeper, and the bed squeaked softly.
Even though she’d promised herself that she wouldn’t cry, helpless tears leaked from the corners of her eyes, because there were only so many ways her emotions could escape. And then his hands left hers and cradled her face. “Look at me.” His voice was low. Rough. “Abby. Look at me.”
Everything inside her was tightening. Opening her eyes felt nearly impossible. But she dragged them open.
His face was tense, his jaw tight. But it was the tenderness in his eyes as he stared into hers that made it feel as if her soul were cracking wide. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Let yourself go, sweetheart. I’ve got you.”
He reached down, one hand clamping around her hip, tilting her, and she felt him even deeper. As if the blood pulsing inside him were her blood; as if her heartbeat had become his. Then there was no more except the ecstasy of exploding with him in a perfect shower of light.
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