by K. M. Scott
“Even the person who saved my life doesn’t want me. You can’t forgive me.”
She turned to run away, but I caught her by the hand and held her there. I wasn’t the man she deserved, not at that moment or any other time, but I was the man who loved her.
“Let me go. I don’t want to hear you tell me things will be okay because they won’t. It’s just like I thought it would be. I’ve been traded like a car or some other inanimate object from my father to my husband. It won’t be okay. And now you don’t want me either. I know that now.”
I couldn’t stand to hear her say that, so I stood and kissed her like I’d wanted to every day since that night she and I were together in the garden. Desperate for the closeness she offered, I relished the feel of her lips against mine. Soft and eager, her kiss soothed my heart.
As I let myself get lost in her, she pulled away, tearing me out of the moment. I looked down into her eyes and saw she wasn’t sure.
“Do you forgive me? I need to know, Ryder.”
I nodded my head, knowing only one thing for certain. Nothing she could do would make me stop loving her.
“I’m so sorry,” she asked softly.
“I know. None of that matters now. Not that you’re married to another man. Not that you tried to kill yourself. All that matters is I love you and you love me.”
She took my hands in hers and gently squeezed them. “Whatever happens, you won’t suffer because of me. I promise that. Never again.”
The touch of her hands on my skin sent ripples of need rolling over my body. I’d waited for what felt like forever to have her next to me like this again.
Pulling her to me, I said in her ear, “I’ve suffered every night I couldn’t touch you, Serena. More suffering couldn’t be any worse than what I’ve already endured.”
I kissed her once more, harder this time, and slid that silky white nightgown off her shoulders. It fell to the floor around her feet, leaving her naked for me. Slowly, I let my hands explore her supple body, tenderly running them down her back to cup her ass.
Her fingers quickly unbuttoned my shirt, and she slipped her hands beneath it to touch my chest as she intensified her kiss. Teasing me, she flicked her tongue along the inside of my mouth, and I felt my cock harden.
Backing away for just a moment, I undid my belt and unzipped my pants as she looked up at me wide-eyed. I cupped my hand against the back of her head and pulled her against me, kissing her long and deep.
She felt so incredible next to me, her soft skin touching mine as she trailed her hands across my stomach and down to my hips. My cock ached I wanted her so bad, and when she slid her hand under my boxer briefs to palm it, I groaned into her mouth it felt so good.
“I’ve needed this, Serena. Needed you. Dreamed about the way you’d feel against me as I fucked you again slow and easy,” I whispered against her lips.
As she pushed my shirt off my back, she looked up at me with worry in her eyes. “Even when I was being so horrible to you?”
I cradled her face in my hands and stared down at her. “Always.”
“I’m so sorry, Ryder. I didn’t mean to be—”
Cutting off her sentence with another kiss, I stopped her from explaining herself because she didn’t have to for me. I knew what she was, who she was, and I loved her completely. It wouldn’t matter if she spent the rest of her life telling me she hated me. I knew better now.
I led her to the couch and stepped out of my pants before sitting down. The thin piece of cotton was all that separated my cock from her, and I quickly slid out of my boxers before pulling her down onto my lap.
She kissed me and whispered, “Promise me you’ll always love me?”
Lifting my hips, I gripped her waist as I slid my cock through her wet pussy. “Always.”
Serena pressed her forehead to mine as I slowly pushed her down onto my cock. “I don’t want you to get hurt by my father.”
The feel of her snug cunt around me made me brave. Or stupid. I wasn’t sure which. “I don’t care what he does to me if he finds out. Now no more talk about him or anyone else. I want to watch you ride my cock while I fuck you.”
Tugging her head back, I kissed her neck like the mere taste of her was all I ever needed in life as she rolled her hips and took every inch of me inside her. Fuck, she felt perfect on my cock. If I died at that very moment, I’d leave this earth a happy and content man.
Tentative and sweet, she responded to me just as she always had. Her movements were slow at first, but gradually she let herself go until she rode me with abandon, her hips bucking wildly as she groaned in the sweetest voice in my ear, “God, you feel so good inside me. Don’t stop. Please.”
I stuffed my hand into her hair and tugged harder this time to see her wince as her expression showed the sweet mixture of pain and desire. “I won’t stop until you come and your legs are so weak you can’t stand. Until then, I’m going to fuck you and love every second I get to be inside you.”
As much as I wanted to draw out our time together, it was no use. Neither of us could hold back, and when the first sign of her release squeezed my cock, I was lost. Taking every inch of me in, she ground her pussy against me as wave after wave of pleasure raced through her. I thrust as deeply as I could get and let myself come, flooding her cunt with everything I had inside me.
All the need and longing filled her as it had me for so long until there was nothing left between us but the purest satisfaction I’d ever felt with a woman. Serena had given all of herself to me, and I’d given her all of me in return.
Whatever happened, nothing could change that.
Chapter Eighteen
Serena
After making me come once more on the couch, Ryder carried me to the bedroom and we made love there until there was nothing left of me to give him. He eased out of me and I lay down next to him, exhausted and content. Wrapping his arm around me, he pulled me to him and I laid my head over his heart to hear its strong beat.
Tired but unable to sleep, I ran my fingertips over his skin and felt scars. I’d never noticed them before. How he’d gotten them I had no idea, but I imagined his muscular body taking painful blows to get injuries that would have left scars like the ones that I felt.
Curious, I asked, “What happened to you to get all these?”
He touched a large scar on his right side over his ribs and groaned. “Fighting.”
“Who were you fighting?” I asked, wondering what kind of fight would leave such a mark.
“Serena, I was a fighter.”
I looked up at him confused. What did that mean? “What kind of fighter? Like a boxer?”
He shook his head. “No. Underground fighting. Street fighting with no gloves and no rules.”
Touching a scar near his shoulder, I gently ran my finger along the length of it and imagined what could have injured him like that. “I don’t understand. Why would you do that?”
“I didn’t have a choice at first. When I was fifteen, my uncle made me fight to pay my way, and then when I got to be eighteen, it was the only way I knew to make money.”
“That’s terrible. You were only a child. Did you stop because you got hurt?”
He opened his mouth to speak but said hesitated. Finally, he said, “I stopped because your father had me beaten intentionally right after you left.”
I sat up, trying to understand what he meant. “Is that why you were in the hospital for weeks right after I went to Italy? My father had someone beat you up?”
Narrowing his eyes, he shook his head. “Your father found me fighting. He bought me, basically, and brought me here that first night. I continued to fight for him and won him a lot of money, but to punish me for what he saw us doing, he set me up with a fight I couldn’t win. The other fighter was twice my size and beat the hell out of me. When I got released from the hospital, your father came to me and offered me a job. I didn’t have anywhere else to go and no money, so I said yes.”
My he
art clenched at the idea that my father had punished Ryder like that. “I’m so sorry. I never knew. Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I wasn’t supposed to tell you or anyone else that I fought for him. He doesn’t want you or your sister to know that side of his business.”
“He bets on these fights? Is that what you mean?” I asked, shocked that my father could be involved in anything like that.
“He more than bets. He owns the fights, and with me, he owned the fighter.”
“You can’t own someone, Ryder. Even my father can’t do that.”
His chuckled, cracking that sexy smile I’d seen so rarely recently. “Really? Because he owned me. I got a nice place to stay and he likes to tell people I’m like his son, but he owned me when I fought for him. I was his property.”
My shoulders sagged at this revelation. I’d always known my father had seen me and Janelle as his property to do as he liked with, but Ryder wasn’t his flesh and blood. Although I’d never known why he brought him to the house, I never dreamed it was because he basically owned him.
But what was he now if he wasn’t fighting anymore?
“He doesn’t own you anymore, does he?” I asked, suddenly worried how he could hurt him if he found out about what we’d just done.
Ryder took a deep breath and smiled. “I don’t know if I’d call it owning anymore, but it’s not like I can go anywhere else without having to pay a pretty steep price if I left.”
I didn’t want to talk about this anymore. The mere thought of my father owning him in any way made me sick to my stomach.
Placing my head on his chest again, I asked, “If you could go somewhere, where would you go?”
“I don’t know. Somewhere quiet, maybe the country. I’d love to buy a little place on some land and leave the world behind.”
All I heard was leave me behind because I was stuck in this mad world my father had created in this house. I rolled away from him and pulled the sheet over my naked body, suddenly feeling lonely there with him.
He followed me and kissed me softly on the lips. “What’s wrong? Why did you move over here after I told you that?”
I avoided looking at him and stared up at the ceiling. “Because that’s not a life I could ever have, so your dream could never include me.”
Cradling my cheek, he looked down at me with concern in his eyes. “I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just what I would do if we ever could leave. Don’t you ever think of going away from this house anymore?”
I ran my hand over the scar on my wrist and shook my head. “Not anymore.”
Ryder lowered his head and softly kissed where I’d cut into my skin. “I never regretted saving you before this moment.”
The sadness in his voice crushed me. He saved my life, and for that, he should have felt like a hero. Instead, I’d blamed him from the moment I opened my eyes, and even now a small part of me deep down wondered if he’d been wrong to rescue me that night.
He looked up from that awful scar that marred my skin and I knew I had to make this right. Pushing his hair off his forehead, I smiled, and for the first time, I said what I should have all this time.
“I’ve been terrible to you, and you haven’t deserved any of it, Ryder. You saved a life. There’s nothing more heroic than that, and I’ve treated you like some criminal for doing the right thing. I’m sorry. My life may not be what I had hoped it would be, but I have a chance every day to make it better. You gave me that chance. I owe my life to you.”
My words made him smile, and he wrapped his arms around me. “I promise to protect you, Serena. It’s all I’ve ever wanted to do. I should have done something that night your father sent you away and then the night he announced you had to marry Oliver. I know you said you couldn’t leave, but I should have found a way. If I could have found out where your mother is. Then when I saw you lying in that bathtub…I couldn’t let you down again.”
“You protected me when I needed you most, Ryder. That’s all that matters.”
Left unsaid was the obvious truth that now he might not be able to protect me from whatever my husband decided to do. Closing my eyes, I silently prayed I wouldn’t need him to ever face that.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, kissing the top of my head. “You got quiet there.”
So he wouldn’t see how much I feared what the future would bring from my husband, I pressed a smile onto my lips and shook my head. “Nothing. I was just thinking about the first night you came here. Janelle was so sure you were meant to be with one of us, and I couldn’t imagine that.”
“You looked disappointed that night when you came into your father’s office and saw me standing there,” Ryder said as he twirled a lock of my hair around his finger.
I thought back to that moment when I thought I would see my mother for the first time in so long and instead saw him. I had been disappointed. My father had promised me he would find her that time, but like every other time before, he didn’t.
“I was expecting someone else.”
“Another stud?” he joked, making me smile.
I looked up to see him grinning that sexy smile of his and rolled my eyes. “No, not another stud. My mother. My father had sworn he would find her and bring her home, but as always, he didn’t.”
He gently kissed the top of my head again and asked, “Do you really think she’s still out there?”
His question made my heart clench. I didn’t know if my mother was still alive or if my father had just used the threat of hurting her against me to get his own way when I said I wouldn’t marry Oliver. Maybe she was gone and he was just cruel, like always.
Weaving my fingers through Ryder’s, I pressed my cheek against our hands. “I want to believe she is. That she never wanted to leave, and when she finds out that I have wanted to see her that she’ll come back. But I don’t know.”
“I wish I knew one way or another so I could at least give you that, but he’s never said a word about your mother in front of me. It’s like she never existed, to be honest.”
“That’s how he wants everyone to feel. Janelle acts like we came from him alone, but I can’t let myself forget her. It feels like not knowing her is a huge missing piece from my life.”
I slid my fingers from his and sat up to get dressed. As much as I could have spent the rest of time right there in his arms talking, I had to go. I didn’t have a choice.
He caught me by my wrist, and when I turned to see his face I knew what he was about to say. “Please don’t make this harder than it has to be. I don’t want to leave. You know that, right?”
Nodding, he lowered his head. “I know. I just don’t want you to go already.”
I leaned over and kissed him long and deep, only making it harder for me to leave. When I pulled away, he didn’t try to stop me a second time.
All the better. There was no point in it. No matter how much I wanted to stay with him, my father had made sure I was another man’s wife.
* * *
When I woke up in my bed in the apartment my father had given Oliver and me as a wedding gift, my husband lay next to me like we were any normal married couple. He’d chosen to go to his brother’s on our wedding night instead of staying with his brand new wife, and when he returned sometime during the night, I heard him undress and silently crawl into bed next to me. There were no words said or any gesture of kindness at all.
Just a man getting into bed with a woman and nothing else.
I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle this life. So I turned to the one man who had proven he cared for me. As I lay there watching Oliver’s chest rise and fall while he slept, I couldn’t say I felt guilty for going to Ryder either. I’d never chosen any of this, so why should I be expected to live without even the slightest caring touch or word?
I got out of bed to begin my day, unsure how to act toward Oliver now that he’d so clearly shown me he had not even the slightest interest in even pretending to care about me. Perhaps he had a woman he c
ared about on the side, someone like Ryder who made him happy. I couldn’t blame him. I wouldn’t. It would actually make life much easier if he did.
Day after day, we lived in that apartment but said very little to one another. I offered him coffee in the morning after I’d made some, and he politely declined. He announced every day that he’d be home late because of work, and I genuinely wished him a good day. Then at night, he slept next to me without ever trying to touch me and the next day we’d start over again.
It wasn’t good or bad. It was just life.
His absence from my days and nights offered me the chance to see Ryder, and each night I spent in his arms gave me the strength to face the next day of my messed up life. It wasn’t what I’d ever dreamed of for myself, but it was enough.
And then one night everything changed.
Chapter Nineteen
Ryder
The knock on my door made my heart race. Just the thought of Serena in my arms never failed to make everything bad about my life disappear, if only for the time she was next to me.
For three nights, I’d been without her. Secret texts from a phone no one but I knew about told me she was worried Oliver would find out, but today I hadn’t gotten any message.
I opened the door to see her standing in front of me in jean shorts and a t-shirt like she used to wear when she’d come to see me in my room over in the main house. Pulling her into my apartment, I quickly closed the door and kissed her, dying to feel her lips against mine.
“I missed you,” I said nuzzling her neck to taste her skin.
She squirmed out of my hold and giggled. “Hang on. Let me take these shoes off first.”
I looked down and there on her feet were black sandals. Confused, I asked, “Why are you wearing shoes? You never wear shoes.”
A sheepish look came over her face. Avoiding my gaze, she shrugged and headed toward the couch. “It’s no big deal. They’re just shoes.”
But they weren’t just shoes. In all the time I’d known Serena, she’d hated wearing shoes because of what happened to her as a child. Whenever she was home, she was barefoot. It gave her a natural feel no one I’d ever met possessed. Now she was suddenly wearing shoes and it wasn’t a big deal?