The caffeine in her system, the cold shower, none of her attempts to stay awake made a bit of difference under the weight of her exhaustion. She fell asleep with the midmorning sun shining hot on her face, and when the book slid from her slack hands and hit the ground, she didn’t notice.
“You push yourself too hard,” he murmured as he leaned down and pushed a few wayward strands of hair back from her face.
His voice had changed over the years, deepening just a little. His face had changed some, too, but he was still just as beautiful to her now as he had been when she was sixteen and he had come running to her side the night Joey and Lee had tried to rape her.
She didn’t know where Cullen came from, only that one second she was alone, and then she wasn’t. They were outside, and Taige was lying on the hammock, with Cullen standing over her and staring at her with dark, unhappy eyes.
In some part of her mind, she panicked. She knew that she’d fallen asleep, and now he was here. Now she’d have to face him, face the memories she tried so hard to bury and the longings that had never faded. But the rest of her? The rest of her was so happy to see him, she figured that if he crooked his finger at her, she would willingly strip herself naked and plant her butt in his lap.
The idea had a lot of merit, but Cullen seemed more interested in scowling at her than making love to her.
“Figures,” she muttered. “Even in my dreams, you’re going to be a pain in the ass.”
“You’re one to talk.” He glared at her, and Taige had a feeling he wasn’t impressed with what he saw, somebody far too skinny, far too tired, and now scarred to boot. The midriff tank and low-rise shorts she had pulled on earlier didn’t cover the ugly scar low on her belly. It had faded some, no longer the angry red it had been a few years ago. The scar tissue was darker than rest of her skin, calling attention to it, and belatedly, she tried to cover it.
But Cullen wouldn’t let her. He crouched down by her side and wrapped his fingers around her wrist, pulling her hand away so he could press his lips to it. A shiver raced through her. “You worry me,” he whispered, his breath dancing across her skin like a faint, teasing caress. “You don’t eat. You hardly sleep. You drink too much.”
Tensing, she tried to move away from him. Cullen wouldn’t let her, though. He ended up crawling into the hammock with her, cradling her up against him. He made it seem easy, and Taige lay there wishing the damn thing would flip them out onto their butts. “I eat enough. And I drink because I don’t want to dream. I hardly sleep because I don’t want to dream. You don’t like it, then stop showing up in my dreams.”
He sighed, and when she looked up at him, she saw that familiar look of frustration, worry, and want. It hurt to see that look on his face. He was just like the ghost of Rose that Taige had conjured up out of her loneliness. Nothing more than a figment of her imagination, and the love she thought she saw on his face was nonexistent.
These dreams weren’t any more real than his love for her had been. She knew that, so seeing him looking at her like she was the center of his world was like plunging tiny, needle-sharp shards of glass into her skin.
His hand came up, cradling her face for a long moment, and then he smoothed her hair back. “What happened this time?”
Taige flinched as though he’d jabbed her with a hot poker. She shook her head and tried again to pull away. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
“You never do.”
She sneered at him. “You’re nothing more than my imagination, you know. Since I imagined you, wouldn’t it make sense that you’d already know what happened?”
Slowly, Cullen’s thumb passed over her lower lip. “I’m not your imagination, darlin’. Tell me.”
But she didn’t want to talk about it. Her gut tied itself into ugly, slippery little knots every time she thought about the videos she’d found and all those girls and boys she had talked to, kids with chunks missing out of their lives, pieces of themselves taken away in the night. That the bastards had recorded it so that every last detail was floating around for the enjoyment of sickos everywhere made it so much worse.
Taige hated the perverts that had paid for the kids for what they had done to them, everything from the drugging to the assaults and the rapes. She hated that the oh so lily-white and pure soccer moms and their fine upstanding husbands had made videos of it, recording the way those kids had been victimized.
Taige wasn’t active law enforcement, but she had made sure she was there when the arrests happened, and she had threatened Jones within an inch of his life if he didn’t let her observe the questioning. She had left after the first two hours. There had been three couples involved, and most of them wouldn’t say a word. Their lawyers had shut them up but good.
One woman though, Deidre Sanger, hadn’t seemed to realize how much trouble she was in. Or why. “It’s not like they remember it,” she’d said. “It’s not like they know what happened.”
Taige had wanted to go through the mirrored glass and choke the bitch. Deidre had the nerve to act as though they had done the kids a favor by drugging them. Few people could understand how, sometimes, those drug-induced states made it so much worse for the victims. A piece of their life stolen . . .
“Taige.” A warm hand curved over her neck, and then a hard mouth pressed a gentle kiss against hers. She shivered and then opened her eyes, stared at Cullen. His lids were low over his eyes but that couldn’t hide the frustration she saw there. His hand tightened on her neck, but he didn’t say anything else. He just eased her body back up against his, holding her tight. She buried her face in the front of his shirt and wished this was real.
If it was real, she could tell him. She could cuddle up against him and cry herself dry, and maybe the ache in her heart would ease a little. Maybe if she cried hard enough, maybe if she told him all the vile crap she had been forced to wade through for the past decade, she could breathe without feeling like there was a band around her chest. She could sleep deep and easy without nightmares, without guilt.
But it wasn’t real. Cullen’s presence in her dreams came from years of loving the bastard, even after he’d kicked her out of his life. These dreams were a sham, something brought on by her weak, needy heart, and she hated them.
Suddenly desperate to wake up, to get away from him, she shoved against him, hard and fast. She ended up flipping the hammock over, but she landed on her hands and knees, away from him. He swore under his breath and reached for her, but Taige scrambled away. “I don’t want you here, Cullen,” she said, squeezing the words through her tight throat and wishing she could scream it at him. Wished she could hit him and do something to ease the pain inside her.
“Yes, you do,” he whispered, striding toward her. She brought her hands up, ready to punch him if he came any closer. Cullen was ready to risk it, apparently, because he just kept coming. She swung toward him, and he blocked the first punch. The second one caught him on the chin, but he still reached for her, pulling her up against him.
Taige struggled, kicking at his shins. But her bare feet weren’t going to do much damage. She ended up with a sore foot, and that only made her madder. “Let go of me, damn it,” she snarled.
“No. I did that once, and I’ve hated myself ever since,” he said, his voice calm and soft, gentle even. Taige leaned forward to bite him, and Cullen jerked back at the last second. Then he flipped her around in his arms, pressing her back up against his front and wrapping his arms around her in a bear hug that effectively pinned her in place.
Seething, she reared back with her head, but he moved his out of reach and kept her from smashing his nose the way she planned. “You son of a bitch, you didn’t let go of me. You kicked me out of your life. There’s a big-ass difference, and you got no right doing this to me.”
“Doing what?” he murmured. He nuzzled her neck. When she flinched and hunched her shoulder to keep him away, he just shifted his focus to her shoulder, kissing the skin bared by the thin straps of her shirt.
Making me still love you. Making me still need you. The words leaped unbidden to her mind, and she almost blurted them out. She had a little bit of pride, though, and she managed to keep them behind her teeth. Barely. “Touching me like this. Talking to me like you give a damn. Any of it.”
“You like me touching you,” he whispered. Slowly, his arms loosened, and the hands that had been restraining her left her arms to cup her hips. He pulled her back against him, and the feel of him through his jeans had her wanting to strip naked and beg him to touch her.
But she didn’t have to beg. Even though she hated herself for being weak, when he slid one callused hand up her side to cup her breast, she groaned and arched into his touch. He squeezed her nipple, rolling the stiff peak between his thumb and forefinger, tugging it lightly. Cullen rested his chin on her shoulder, and together, they stared at the sight of his hand moving under the thin cotton of her shirt. “You like it when I touch you,” he repeated, and his voice was hoarse and rough. The sound of it sent shivers dancing down her spine. “And I do give a damn. If I didn’t care about you, I wouldn’t keep coming to you.”
If you cared about me, you never would have left me, she thought. But she didn’t say it. She was tired of fighting him. This was inevitable. He would touch her, and she would let him. He would strip her clothes away and she his. He’d make love to her and for a little while, she would pretend it was real and that he did love her, that he hadn’t ever left her.
And when it was over, and she woke, she’d feel that much emptier inside, that much lonelier.
His hands grabbed the bottom of her shirt, and she lifted her arms so he could pull it off. The shirt went flying. Gathering the thick mass of her hair in his hand, Cullen bared her neck. She shivered when he bent down and kissed her skin. Then he bit her gently, his teeth grazing her skin and leaving a burning, sizzling path. He spoke, and when he did, it was an eerie echo of one of the last things he’d ever said to her. He’d said it time and again in their dreams, almost as though he had to hear it.
“Tell me that you love me, Taige,” he ordered gruffly as he slid his hands around and cupped both of her breasts. He teased the nipples, and each slow tug of his fingers sent need streaking through her, arrowing down and echoing low inside her belly. She squirmed and pressed her butt back against him.
“I love you,” she murmured, parroting back the words he needed to hear, words that she had to say. If she didn’t need to keep saying them, would she keep having these pointless, painful dreams? She reached behind her and pressed her palms to his muscled thighs, her fingers clenching and digging into the worn material of his jeans so she could tug him closer.
She felt him working the zipper of her shorts, and she bit her lip, holding her breath as he opened the faded denim and slid his hand inside her shorts and panties. He cupped her in his hand and pushed two fingers inside her. She keened out his name and rocked against his hand. Cullen wrapped an arm around her, lifting her against him, and she felt them moving. Opening her eyes, she saw that he’d moved them closer to the deck, and then he slid his hand out of her panties. When he wrapped his fingers around her wrist, she felt the heated moisture there. He guided her hands up, bracing them against the deck floor. Where they stood, the deck’s floor came up to her chest, and she leaned against it willingly, letting it support her a little as Cullen stepped back and stripped her panties and shorts away. They fell in a tangle around her ankles, and she went to kick them off. Cullen cupped her hips and leaned against her, muttering roughly, “Be still.”
It was déjà vu; she felt like she was reliving that last time with him, and as desperate as she was for him, she almost pulled away. She had to deal with that pain in real life. Was she going to have to deal with it here, too? Was he going to walk away from her again?
Her body was weak, though. Her sense of self-preservation might be telling her to run, but the rest of her was screaming, Stay! Taige remained motionless, leaning against the deck with her palms braced on the smooth, faded wood. She heard the harsh rasp of his zipper and caught her lower lip between her teeth, need and anticipation twining through her. She was so hot and shaky, so hungry and so desperate for him. When he pressed against her, she jolted as though she had been shocked. Her legs were pinned together by the shorts at her ankles, and he had to work his way inside, pushing through the tight tissues and forging his way in, deeper and deeper.
She groaned at the sensations dancing through her. The line between pleasure and pain blurred. She arched back, trying to take more of him. He gripped her hips and pulled back. When he shoved in, hard and fast, the line between pleasure and pain disappeared altogether. She screamed, a startled cry. He did it again, and she whimpered. Again and she twisted against him, unsure if she wanted him to do it again or if she wanted to pull away. Again, and she erupted, crying out his name and coming with an intensity that stole her breath away.
But he wasn’t done. He kept slamming into her. With her hands braced on the deck and his hands cupping her hips and holding her tight, she stood there, a willing vessel for him but too satisfied, too drained to feel anything beyond the pounding of her heart and the friction as he shafted her.
The roaring in her ears subsided, and she heard him muttering under his breath. “You’re mine, damn it. I want you back. Never lose you again—mine . . .”
Strange words, considering. But then he slid his hand around her hip, spearing through the curls between her thighs, seeking out the hard bud of her clit. She went from letting him ride her and thinking about the weirdness of her dreams and how her heart hurt just being with him like this to hot, hungry, and desperate, as desperate as he was. As though he had just been waiting for that response, he stopped touching her clit, left her hovering on the brink of orgasm. He trailed his fingers, wet from her, up over her hip, the small of her back, and up her spine. Then he bent over her, crowding her closer to the deck and bracing his hand by hers. “I love you,” he rasped in her ear. “You’re mine . . . aren’t you, Taige? Say you’re still mine.”
“Yours,” she agreed, even though deep inside she wanted to scream in denial.
Satisfied, he rode her hard, driving her to another climax before he came, and then he pulled back long enough to pull his jeans up. Taige leaned against the deck, panting for air and her knees wobbling. Then he pulled her into his arms and lifted, carrying her out of the warm summer sun and into the cool, quiet darkness of her house.
IT wasn’t a weird way for him to wake up, but it sure as hell was unsettling. Not to mention a little bit embarrassing, Cullen mused as he climbed out of bed and stripped the sheets away. Wet dreams were supposed to stop after puberty . . . right? Whoever came up with that obviously hadn’t had dreams about Taige Branch.
Bizarre dreams, dreams that seemed too real for them not to be true.
Bizarre and powerful enough, unsettling enough, that one dream was enough to hurl him into a black mood that could last for weeks. It was a good thing they didn’t happen too often. He’d spent most of his life trapped inside a guilt-induced rage.
Guilt and need colored too much of his life as it was. If these dreams came more often than they did, he’d probably end up on a shrink’s couch. And he didn’t have time for that.
From somewhere in the house, he heard music, and he glanced at the clock. Seven thirty. Shit. He’d wanted to be up an hour ago. They had too much stuff to do today, and now he was going to be running late.
“Daddy . . .” There was a knock on his door. Years of experience kept him from reacting when the door swung open, and he saw his daughter standing there with an expectant look on her face. He shifted his armload of sheets and blankets a little lower, just in case.
“Gimme a few minutes, Jilly,” he said. “Overslept.”
She grinned at him and said, “Hurry up, sleepyhead.”
She slammed the door behind her, and automatically, he called out, “Don’t slam the doors.” Then he looked down at his armful of sheets. He d
idn’t have time to mess with them right now, so he carried them into the bathroom and opened the closet in there, dumping them into the hamper. Marci, the cleaning lady, would be in while they were gone, and she’d make the bed with clean sheets, and he could wash the dirty ones when he got back.
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