He didn’t respond, and she pushed her hands up, bringing his t-shirt and his open flannel up, too. He took over and pulled the shirts off, dropping them to the floor behind him.
The bruises had healed, but there were several other marks, like scars of some kind, rounded and dark. His ribs stuck out; they provided more definition now than his muscles had before. She smoothed her hands over his chest—slowly, gently—and he stood still and let her.
The wound through his nipple still bore a bit of a scab, but had nearly healed, and the infection had cleared. She drew a finger lightly along the fresh scar where he’d cut the infection out, and he made a noise at the back of his throat.
Looking up at him, she asked, “Did I hurt you?”
After a beat, he shook his head.
“Good. That’s good. Let me call Faith, and then let’s get into bed.”
~oOo~
He was already in bed when she turned and set her phone on his dresser. While she shed her clothes, he watched, quietly.
It was strange to her to feel like she was the stronger of the two of them. Despite his struggles with nightmares and his bouts of anxiety, Trick was a strong man. In many ways, Juliana had felt unequal to him—he had an electric intellect, a calm demeanor, a keen eye, a strong will, a virile body, and, usually, a clear sense of himself and his place. Though he had anxiety, that anxiety was a symptom of trauma, not a state of being. Even now, even while he struggled with more, greater trauma, even while he faltered, there was deep strength in him.
For her, anxiety had always been a state of being. She’d spent great quantities of energy making her life predictable and stable wherever she could. Loving Trick had exploded all of that in spectacular fashion. Her old self would have seen the aftermath as a disaster and would have run as far and as fast as she could in the other direction.
And yet, she felt strong—stronger than ever. All her supports had been pulled out from under her, and she’d found herself still standing. Emily had forced her out, but she’d stood toe to toe with her and wrenched a parachute from her. Her new job would be better. She’d been there a couple of times, just to get a sense of how things worked before the office closed for the holidays. Her bosses worked with a sense of mission that had nothing to do with financial success and everything to do with injecting justice into a grossly unjust system. Exactly what she wanted to do, too.
There was distance between her and Lisa now, but it wasn’t an unfriendly distance. Their lives had been separating for years, anyway, and Juliana had simply been unwilling to admit it. Lisa was a party girl. She was single and meant to stay that way. She never wanted children, and, though she doted on Lucie, she also resented her a little, too, for the ways Juliana’s life had changed with motherhood.
Her inability to confide in Lisa about Trick hadn’t changed their friendship, it had simply clarified it. And now Juliana and her daughter had the Horde as their family, too—a host of women who understood her life and were there without delay when she asked for help, a bevy of children for Lucie to be close with, and even more men who would throw themselves between her and Lucie and trouble. Even while Trick had pushed her away, they had kept her close.
Which was why she was even here in this room with Trick now.
She was stronger for loving Trick and being part of his family. And she was strong enough to help him finish healing and come fully home.
~oOo~
Juliana woke in the middle of that night when she was tossed violently over and almost fell out of the bed. By reflex, she caught herself on the edge of a table of some sort and just had time to understand that she was in Trick’s dorm room when another blow hit her in the back, knocking the wind out of her as Trick flew off the bed and stopped, frozen and panting, his hands up in a fighting stance.
This was different from his nightmares of before. Those had been calm on the outside. She’d been awake for a few, and he’d be still and silent, and then his eyes would fly open. At most, he might gasp as he woke. Then he’d sit up and, usually, hurry to the bathroom. Or just go out and drink, pacing the living room.
This one, though, was violent, and she wasn’t yet sure he’d woken.
They hadn’t closed the blinds on the window, and the floodlights over the parking lot made the room glow with eerie, long-shadowed light.
“Trick?”
He flinched but didn’t answer her. Feeling afraid and still rattled from the blows he’d unwittingly dealt her, she eased herself out of bed. They were both naked, and she felt particularly vulnerable walking toward him while he was still so stiff and ready to fight.
Cautiously, she reached out and put her hand on his arm. “Trick.”
He wheeled on her, his eyes open and wild. Their gentle, prolonged and intimate, but not sexual, contact when they’d first come to bed had disheveled his long, thick, wavy hair and beard, and he looked feral. Juliana felt true fear, the kind she’d felt the night she’d come home and found Mark sitting in her living room.
Then he blinked, and the crazy left his eyes, replaced by simple confusion. “Fuck. Jules?”
Blowing her fear out in a long breath, she closed the last of the distance between them and cupped his face in her hands, sliding her fingers through his beard, holding on when he tried to jerk away. “It’s okay. You’re okay. Just a dream.” He tried to shake his head, but she tightened her grip and wouldn’t let him. “Yes. Just a dream. Do you need the bathroom?” His dreams before had often nauseated him.
He seemed to think about that, then shook his head—this time she let him.
“Okay.” Pulling his head down to hers, she pressed a light, lingering kiss to his lips. “Come back to bed, then.”
When she pulled on his hand, he came with her. She climbed into bed first, propping herself up a little on the pillows, and held her arms out. He came in and let her embrace him. She tucked his head against her shoulder and kissed his forehead, leaving her lips there as she combed her fingers through his unruly hair.
“I’m here, corazon. You don’t have to go through anything alone. You’re not alone. And neither am I.”
He sighed and tightened his arm around her waist.
At some point, they both slept again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Trick opened his eyes to a room filled with light.
The muffled mechanical sounds of the shop at work thudded subtly against the wall. It was late. He was late. He didn’t care, though. His build was dead in the water; he’d lost the commission, and he couldn’t build, anyway. The pull of it, the need to do it—what he thought of as his muse—was gone. He didn’t know if that was a temporary condition, but for now, he didn’t have much to do in the shop. The paperwork that was now his responsibility he could do whenever he felt like it.
And Juliana was here—right here. She was with him. He’d take the day and spend it with her, if she wanted. They had some work to do to start moving forward again.
She slept at his side, on her belly, her face turned toward him. He’d always loved that she preferred to sleep on her belly, even though it meant that she usually turned out of his embrace at some point every night. There was something relaxed about the posture, something…trusting.
He trailed his fingers over her shoulder and down her smooth back, closing his eyes at the lush sensation of her silken skin under his callused fingertips. He wanted to see, though, so he opened his eyes and watched gooseflesh rise up in his wake.
Though he hadn’t shaken that painful clench of his muscles, like a punch to the gut, each time she’d touched him in a new way last night, he could touch her to his heart’s content. Touching her made him believe in the concreteness of this world, made the other place the dream.
His PTSD had gone nuclear, he knew, in the aftermath of this latest ordeal, but it still turned only inward. It sliced into his mind, carving deeper and deeper, but never deep enough to lance the wound and drain the poison.
His mind wanted to flip reality and m
emory; that was what PTSD was first and foremost, at least for him: the loss of his ability not to live memory. But he never became wholly unfettered. Always, he kept enough sense so he didn’t act out. Past overlaid present and made a double image, cancelling out the clarity of either. It was a blurry way to live, and it was the only way he lived now. No longer did he experience ‘bouts’ of trouble. It was all trouble now.
Which had the unexpected benefit, such as it was, that he wasn’t having anxiety attacks. What had been an attack before was a state of being now, and he was functioning around it. More or less.
The first time he’d felt real clarity since he’d been back had been sitting with Dora Vega, when she’d rewritten his understanding of her, and he’d felt shame for something simple. He’d misunderstood her, underestimated her, and it had felt freeing and clear to be so obviously wrong, to be corrected, to apologize, and to be forgiven. Sitting in that hotel suite, his lens had cleared up for the first time. And, so far, he hadn’t been as blurry as he’d been before.
That exchange had given him the clarity and will to seek out Juliana, but he hadn’t had to. She’d come for him. Trick suspected that some choreographed intervention had occurred, probably between Connor and his mother, but he didn’t care how it had happened. Juliana had been waiting for him.
And now she was lying next to him. He brushed her dark hair back and drew the backs of his fingers over her cheek. As he circled her beauty spot with the tip of his finger, she opened her eyes.
When she focused on him, her eyes glistened wetly. “Trick.”
She reached out to touch his face, but he didn’t want that clench in his gut, so he grabbed her wrist. Pushing her arm to the mattress between them, he leaned over and kissed her shoulder. She tasted sweet and familiar and smelled of sleep—and of him, his bed, his space. Sighing softly at his touch, she relaxed and closed her eyes.
He felt himself grow hard; he hadn’t been hard, not even morning wood, for a very long time. Shifting over her, he kissed her shoulder blade, her spine, his hands pressing on her arms, holding her down. He made his way down her spine, feeling her body everywhere under his. Every time she flexed or writhed, a bestial sound came unbidden from his throat, and he used his body to make her still. He didn’t want her to move. He wanted to move her. He needed it.
Before he knew he’d done it, he’d bitten her, taken the flesh just above her hip between his teeth and borne down until she’d flinched hard and cried out. He let her go, but he didn’t apologize; it didn’t occur to him to do so. Driven by a suddenly consuming need to have her, to make her his, to keep her in some real way, he moved downward, sucking and nipping, biting, his hands now dragging roughly down her arms, over her shoulders, down her back.
The room was full of animal sounds; they were his, coming from him. He didn’t care.
He knew what he needed, what would clear his mind and keep it that way. Taking a last nip at the juncture of her ass and thigh, he pulled himself back up, over her, grabbing one slim thigh and pushing it upward with him.
As he took hold of his hard self and pushed at her, Juliana gasped, “It’s okay. You can do whatever you need. It’s okay.”
A part of him wanted him to stop and hear her, think about what she’d said and what it meant, but that part was overlaid with a need greater than he could manage, and he pushed hard into her.
It had been years since he’d had sex without the piercing in, and even through his driving, inhuman need, he felt that it was softer, closer somehow. Without that small bit of metal, it was more about the most intimate contact of skin on skin.
That awareness brought him more completely into the actual moment, made him more aware of what Juliana was giving him, and he dropped his head to her shoulder as he drove into her. When her hand came up and around his head, he didn’t feel the clenching punch. And he could hear the sounds of her pleasure. He wasn’t hurting her. She was with him.
But it wasn’t enough. He needed more of her. Still feeling that immense oral pull to consume her, he pulled out and flipped her over. She cried out in surprise and again tried to reach for him. Again, he grabbed her arms and pushed them away.
His bed had a plain, slatted headboard, and he wrapped her hands around the slats and squeezed, meeting her eyes and saying without words that she should keep them there. She nodded, and he released his grip and eased his way down her body, leaving a trail of nips and licks from her cheek down every inch to her breasts, where he stopped to suckle her until her body arched under him and she cried out his name.
Downward he went, over her twitching belly. He pressed a lighter kiss to the bruise that was forming at her hip and then settled her thighs over his shoulders and buried his face in her pussy.
She was soaking wet and tasted like every good thing he’d ever known. Wrapping his arms tightly around her hips, he licked and sucked, drawing her clit into his mouth, then dipping his tongue into her and drawing it up over the knot of nerves that had her fighting his hold, rocking and writhing, her bare heels digging into his back. He needed to make her come. More than any release of his own, he needed that of her, that control of her.
Understanding that, he backed off and looked up her beautiful body to see her staring down at him, confused, maybe even distressed, that he’d backed away. She’d been close. And that made him feel good. Truly good. He smiled.
And she smiled back.
Again, he drew himself back up her body, face to face this time, and he bent his head and kissed her. He knew his beard was full of her, and when she groaned lustily and pushed her face harder to his, he flexed his hips and sank into her again.
He reached up and took her hands from the headboard, bringing them down and wrapping them around his back.
And then he fucked his woman properly.
~oOo~
“Is she mad?”
Sitting in the passenger seat of her Nissan, Juliana turned to him. “She’s Lucie. And she’s five. She’s not mad. Anyway, I told her you were away for work, and she believed that. She’ll just be happy to see you. We’ve missed you so much.”
She regarded him for a few moments and then added, “You know, she saw you, that first day you were back. She saw you ride away from Bart and Riley’s. She didn’t understand—she was worried that you were mad.”
“God,” he muttered.
Trick stared out the windshield at Demon and Faith’s weird little ragtag ranch. Chickens wandered loose around the yard, as did cats and little goats. He didn’t see people or ponies, or their funky looking dog, but their place went on a distance behind the house. Demon’s bike and Faith’s van were parked outside, so he knew everybody was home.
Strange, but he was more nervous about seeing Lucie again than he’d been about Juliana. How did he make it right with a child? She couldn’t understand, and he couldn’t explain.
Juliana laid her hand on his thigh, and he jumped. When she pulled back, he caught her and laced his fingers with hers. He was done letting his sick head make him its bitch.
“Come on,” she said. “Show her that you love her. That’s all she needs.” Without waiting for his response, she opened the door and got out, and Trick followed suit.
As they approached the house, they could hear Tucker and Lucie talking, the sweet tones of happy children. Then Virgil, their dog, came around from the back of the house and barked once, a warning; then, when he recognized them, he barked again, a greeting this time, and trotted up, his tail wagging.
Juliana put her hand out first. “Hey, Virgie.” She ruffled behind his floppy ear.
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