Built

by Jay Crownover

  The idea of Zeb going away, of him losing everything he had worked so hard for because of me, had done what thinking about my mother and talking about my father hadn’t been able to do. The gates were open, the plug was pulled, the walls were down, and every single fear, desire, want, dream, nightmare I had ever had rushed forth. It wasn’t feeling one thing, it was feeling all the things I had repressed for so long, and it was enough to take me to my knees. I stopped breathing, stopped thinking, and let the flood of everything I had tried so hard, for so long, to pretend didn’t exist carry me away.

  Zeb had too much to lose and I refused to be the catalyst for it. I couldn’t cost him or Hyde a future. If I did that I would deserve every awful, hateful word my father had leveled at me. The contempt and scorn that had been my everyday would finally be earned and I couldn’t abide by that. Not for a second. Ancient words about worth and value, about not being enough, started to drag icy fingers along my spine. I knew what it was like to grow up without an ounce of love and there was no way I would ever put Hyde in that position. I would never make Zeb sacrifice like that for me.

  I curled my hand over the thick muscle as much to keep myself steady as to make it possible for me to talk directly into his ear. My voice was shaky and raspy but he was so intent on the man he wanted to hurt I doubted he could tell. “You have too much at stake to be tossing this guy around like a rag doll. You don’t want someone to call the cops. That’s the worst thing that could happen when you’re this close to getting custody.”

  The guy gurgled as Zeb crammed his forearm into his neck and cut off his airway. “He had his hands on you.”

  “I know, but I had the situation under control.” I hadn’t really, and now I was even more out of control than I had ever been. But there was more at stake here than this drunk idiot and Zeb’s natural instinct to protect those he cared about. My bruises would fade, but if he lost Hyde over something stupid . . . I could never live with that kind of consequence. “Let him go. Please.” I was begging and on the verge of tears. I could feel the desperation to get him out of here pulling at me with grasping hands.

  I felt the tiniest bit of tension loosen in his shoulders and suddenly he stepped back and let the disheveled man fall to the floor in a shaken and terrified heap.

  “Keep your hands to yourself, asshole.”

  The guy blinked up at us dumbly and then slowly nodded. I put a hand on the center of Zeb’s back and wanted to cry when he shook off the touch. This is why emotions were dangerous. They hurt so much and there were too many of them to handle. I could feel mine cresting and breaking all around me. He stalked through the crowd with me hot on his heels until he found Church.

  “Some drunk idiot just manhandled her in the hallway. He was shaking her and had his hands on her. He wouldn’t let her go.”

  Church stiffened and nodded, his unusual eyes solemn and intent on the direction in which Zeb pointed. “His shirt is halfway open and he has a red tie on. The fucker is lucky I didn’t strangle him with it.”

  “I’m on it. We’ll eighty-six him. Do you want me to call the cops?”

  “No.” I poked my head around Zeb’s back and shook my head frantically. “I’m fine. Don’t call the police.”

  “Are you sure?” Church crossed his arms over his chest, and had the situation been different I would have taken a moment to appreciate the way they bulged under his tight, black T-shirt. He really was an extraordinarily beautiful and intense man.

  “I’m sure. Let’s just go, Zeb.”

  There was an exchange of masculine grunting and glaring that apparently communicated things that went beyond my knowledge and then I was whisked away and cloistered in the front seat of the Jeep and enveloped in a stony silence as Zeb seethed next to me. I could only take it for a few minutes before I blurted out, “I’m sorry.”

  His head whipped around so fast I was shocked the Jeep didn’t run off the road. “For what?”

  I shrugged. “For everything.” For not handling this better. For thinking I could do this and end up unscathed. For not being able to be as passionate and loving as he was. For not being brave enough to trust him to breathe life back into my mistreated and shriveled heart like he had done to my house.

  “I can’t stand to see men with their hands on women. It’s a hot button for me.” I knew it was. It had to be after what happened to his sister.

  “It was fine. I was fine. I was handling it. You have too much at stake right now to come riding to the rescue like that.”

  He growled low in his throat and I saw his hands go white on the steering wheel.

  “When you say shit like that, it makes you sound like my lawyer, not my lover. Whenever someone hurts you, threatens you, or makes you afraid, I’m going to interfere, Sayer. I care about you . . . I lo—”

  I cut him off before he could finish the thought. I couldn’t hear that. If I let him say it the flood would wash me under. I took a deep breath, collected the tattered pieces of my shell around me, and prepared to do what I knew I should have done from the start to keep us both safe. I reached over and put a hand on his leg and waited until he turned his head to look at me.

  “I am your lawyer, Zeb. I want what’s best for you and your son.” It looked like later had descended upon us sooner than either one of us had thought. I knew how to be his lawyer and give myself fully to that. I wasn’t going to let him risk anything for me. Not his heart. Not his child. Not his future . . . nothing, not when I couldn’t offer him anything in return.

  He was deathly silent as we made it the rest of the way to my house, and when he pulled in the driveway and shut off the engine, I knew this good-bye was going to hurt worse than any other kind I had ever said before.

  His green eyes were dark with prickly, painful things and I could feel their impact all over my suddenly too sensitive skin.

  He blew out a breath that was so heavy as it landed on my skin that it felt like it was loaded with every hope and dream of his that I had taken away.

  “So that’s it? You want to be my lawyer? You want to figure out every problem you have on your own and handle anyone that tries to hurt you by yourself, even though I’m right here? I know I have a lot to lose if I get myself in trouble, Sayer. I understand that there is a lot at stake; what I don’t get is how you can ignore that you’re one of those things I’m trying my damnedest to be better for.” His eyebrows shot up. “You’ve seen me, just me, from the very beginning, Sayer. Why is it so hard for you to believe that I’ve seen you, all of you, as well?”

  He was going to make me cry. I bit down on my lower lip and reached for the door, but before I could push it open he was there. He was always there, in that spot right in front of me that seemed to belong only to him.

  He put his hands on either side of my face and I felt him rub his thumbs over my cheeks. I was surprised at the moisture that followed the trail he left.

  “I don’t know what else to do here, Say. I built you a house. I made love to you. I gave you all the colors and helped you celebrate them. I melted you over and over again. I want to tell you how much I care about you . . . you tell me what else I can do?”

  The world.

  This big, tough man had given me the world and I couldn’t do anything with it. For once, it was my hands that were too cold, while my heart felt like it was burning up inside my chest. So many feelings. So much fear. It was all too much to grasp as I flailed around inside the torrent. I reached out for the only thing that seemed stable, that seemed rooted to the ground. I reached for him.

  I curled my hands into his shirt, I pulled his mouth down to mine. I whispered to him that I wanted him to come inside with me one last time, and I did it all knowing Zebulon Fuller would be the first and last boy whom I ever kissed because I was changing, slipping and sliding into a person who wasn’t before or after but who was a confused and jumbled mess of both. He should have something better than that. I was half a woman lost in the horrors of the past and half a woman just now f
iguring out what she wanted and needed in a life that was her own. He deserved someone whole and so did his son.

  He destroyed me with openness and stark honesty. I destroyed us by not having any space inside of myself. Even with the emotions I was purging and choking on leaving a hollow and empty space, I still couldn’t find room to hold all of those wonderful things he was trying to give me.

  CHAPTER 14

  Zeb

  She kissed me good-bye and I followed her inside. This was one of those prime opportunities for me to practice thinking long and hard about the consequences of my actions before I dove recklessly into the deep end. Too bad I wasn’t going to stop and do anything other than fall even harder for her.

  It was stupid. Probably even stupider than spending a night with Hyde’s mother when I was off balance and unhinged after two-plus years without an ounce of freedom. Both experiences would end up leaving forever marks on who I was and how I loved. I knew Sayer was going to break my heart and I was willingly letting her do it. She was as cold as she had ever been on the outside, her skin like ice everywhere we touched. On the inside she was an inferno, a raging storm of too many emotions, making her typically clear eyes cloudy and wild. Again I thought she was a tempest, a gale that was going to wreck me and ruin me, and I wanted her to lay me to waste.

  Everything I had ever felt for her, good, bad, uncertain, clean, and dirty, flared up into burning-hot points that wanted to pierce through my skin in order to get at her. She was going to completely melt for me now because there were no more icy walls holding me back from the very center of her. I’d done the hard work, made room for myself and my boy in her life, rearranged a space that was just mine; now it was up to her to figure out how to get rid of all that other junk so I could rightfully claim the rest of what was mine.

  I undid the buttons on my flannel as soon as her bedroom door was shut behind me. I would leave her in this house I had built just for her and I would leave as much of myself behind with her as I could, so even if she wanted to, she couldn’t forget me and couldn’t ignore what I knew we meant to one another.

  I watched with heavy-lidded eyes as she pulled her blazer off and turned toward me as she peeled off the rest of her clothing. She was beautiful and this was all so tragic. I told myself to turn around and walk out before things got even more complicated and fucked up between the two of us. But then her shirt cleared her head, and her bra hit the floor, and her hands were suddenly under the T-shirt I had worn under the flannel in defense against the diving fall temperatures. Her touch was firm and far more direct than it typically was when she put her hands on me.

  She liked to run her fingers over me, liked to explore and caress with a light touch. This felt more like she wanted to take something. Like she wanted to hold on to me even though she was the one pushing me away with both hands. Before I knew it, she had my pants undone and was shoving the denim and my boxers out of her way. Even if my head and my heart knew this was good-bye, my dick didn’t seem to care about the impending heartbreak. It eagerly fell into her waiting hands as she looked up at me with those tumultuous eyes. It wasn’t a pretty squall trapped in there. It was ugly and crashing. Beating against the inside of her in endless waves, and it almost killed me that this wasn’t something I had the skills or know-how to fix. There was no repairing Sayer Cole. She had to tear it all down and rebuild from scratch.

  I was already as bare as I could be for this woman. There wasn’t anything else I could offer her or create for her, so I stepped out of her grasp, which made her whimper a little and my dick really pissed off at me, and put my hands on her shoulders so I could turn her around so that she was facing away from me. I wasn’t sure I could get through this alive with those tumultuous eyes pleading up at me to make it all better. I had done all I could. Now it was all on her.

  I popped open the fastener on her pants and skimmed the charcoal-gray fabric down her long legs. Just like I suspected when I bet her in the mall about her underwear, they were a deep turquoise in color and very much in my way. I got her out of those as well, still without turning her around to face me, and slid my hand around the back of her neck. Her hair was still all twisted and tied up on the top of her head, so the skin was exposed and made her seem slightly more vulnerable than she really was.

  I kissed her naked shoulder. I licked the vein that was pulsing out my name as it throbbed on the side of her neck. I ran my nose along the sweet curve of her jawline and stepped even closer so I could whisper in her ear, “When this is over, and I’m on my way out the door, I’m going to tell you that I love you.”

  She went stiff where my chest pressed into her back and tried to turn around to look at me. I wouldn’t let her. I curled a hand up under her arm and circled her rib cage so that I could fill my palm with her breast. The delicate pink tip immediately puckered and dug into my skin. I used my hips to point her toward the edge of the bed since my legs were still trapped half in and half out of my pants. I had no intention of getting any more undressed. I loved her, but I couldn’t make love to her right now. I was too pissed. Pissed at her. Pissed at myself for following her inside when I knew it was going to end in sorrow. And just generally pissed off at the entire situation. We deserved to be happy. We deserved to make this work. It infuriated me that I couldn’t just force things to be the way I wanted. I was used to my persistence and stubbornness getting me what I wanted.

  She obeyed my silent command to get on the bed in front of me on her knees. The position had that delectable ass up in the air and her already slick and glossy entrance lined up perfectly with where my cock was pointed. She crossed her arms and rested her forehead on the bed, unable, I think, to look at me after what I told her. I did love her. Whoever she was and whoever she decided to be, but I couldn’t be in love with her until she had the room inside of her to love me back.

  I walked my fingers up and down her spine and palmed the curve of her hip. I wanted to slam into her. I wanted to pull her hair and use my teeth on all of that delicate skin. I wanted to scrape my face across every pale inch of skin and leave marks on it with my beard. I wanted to use my tongue to torment her, to bring her to the brink of pleasure and then take it away like she had done with all the love I had for her. I wanted to use everything that normally brought her pleasure to cause her pain. I was hurting and I knew she was, too. The difference was she had the power to make it all stop. All that pain and all that hurt was in her hands, she just had to put it down and grab on to the other stuff I was trying to hand her, things like love and forever.

  I dug the fingers of one hand into her hip and let the others trace those little indents at the base of her spine that I was infatuated with. I skated my touch along the plush curve of her ass and didn’t play around when I reached her already hot and begging center. I dove right in, swirled several fingers around, and told her to hold still when she jerked a little at the sudden invasion of her body.

  It wasn’t very nice. It totally wasn’t smooth or romantic in any way, but I was feeling pretty split open and nasty. A good-bye like this wasn’t supposed to be easy on either one of us, I supposed.

  She was so warm and soft under my touch. So much the opposite of everything that was locked up tight when she looked at me. She was supple and sweet as she moved in time with my stroking fingers. She moved to lift her head up and I knew she was going to look at me over her shoulder and I wouldn’t be able to deny the connection, the pull to try and save both of us from drowning as the current inside her pulled us farther and farther apart. I let go of her hip and leaned forward to bury my hand in her hair. I pulled with little finesse, sending the tie and a million bobby pins scattering across the bed and the floor. The blond tresses fell in endless, kinky waves across her shoulders and into my waiting hand. I grasped a handful and used it to keep her where I wanted her, which was as far away from me as possible, even though my fingers were inside of her and my dick was happily rubbing along the crevice her perfectly formed backside offered up. I felt h
er mutter a sound of distress as my belt buckle hit the back of her legs, but I still didn’t stop what I was doing to her. We could both be distressed as far as I was concerned.

  She started to make little noises in her throat, and I could feel her body quicken and tense where I manipulated it. She was close to coming, close to letting me give her the one last thing I could, pleasure and memories, and I knew I would regret it if I gave that to her without being inside of her to share it.

  I pulled my fingers out of her now dripping core and yanked her closer to the edge of the bed. That had her ass even farther in the air and it took very little effort to sink down deep inside of her scalding heat. I felt her muscles contract around me as my eyes nearly crossed at how good she felt. I might not like either one of us very much at the moment, but there was no denying I would always love this. Worshipping her body with my own was never going to be an ugly or brutal thing. There was no punishment when we joined together, only acceptance and beauty. I was an idiot to think otherwise.

  Steam . . . fire and ice made steam. It boiled and percolated between us and bubbled viciously and fiercely.

  I couldn’t stand the distance anymore. Couldn’t handle fucking her and not being with her while I did it. So I used the hold I had on her hair to pull her up so that her back was pressed into my front and so that when she turned her head to look at me, our eyes were only a few millimeters apart.

  She was crying.

  Big, fat tears rolling out of her eyes as we watched each other. I put one hand on her breast and squeezed and the other over her heart so I could feel it beat out my name in code. I slowed down the pace I was moving in and out of her. I slowed my fury down by lightly touching my lips to hers. I slowed my heart down by realizing those tears were the ice she was forever encased in melting. There was hope. It was small. It was fleeting. It hid behind so many other things that felt so much more important. But it was there and it wouldn’t be ignored.