High Reward

by Brenna Aubrey

  With a swallow and a deep breath, I let out a “Hooyah!” as I tackled the first steps.

  Chapter 16

  Gray

  If anyone had told me forty-eight hours ago that I’d be mounted on Ryan Tyler’s back and we’d be going up a hill. That I’d be clinging to his half naked form while his stunning muscles rippled underneath my hands, I would have laughed in their face. That haunted sort of laugh that came only from the hollow chest of a broken-hearted woman.

  But here it was, happening. And as I fought delirium from the delicious smell of his heated skin, I couldn’t help but think that life was so freaking bizarre sometimes.

  Ryan all but ran up the concrete stairs, his head bent to watch the ground in the very low light so as not to miss his footing. If only I had been as careful. I leaned my cheek against the warm skin on the back of his neck, and his muscles rippled and tensed underneath my hands on his shoulders. Not once did he miss a step, and he only paused on each landing for a few seconds to catch his breath before he began climbing again. I did what I could not to throw him off balance, and we made it to the top in no time.

  Slowly I slid to the ground, balancing on my good leg and noting that the blood had pretty much completely soaked through his shirt. Panting heavily, Ryan opened the side door of the cabin and peered at me through narrowed eyes. “It’s still gushing isn’t it?”

  I shrugged. “It’s not bad.”

  He shook his head. “Your blood is running down my pant leg, so don’t fucking lie to me.”

  I cleared my throat, the sting of his admonishment nearly bringing tears to my eyes. Where the hell had that come from?

  I sniffed. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to get my blood on you.”

  He grimaced and hooked an arm around my waist to pull me against him. “That’s not what I meant, okay? I’m worried. Let’s get that bleeding stopped.”

  Then without saying another word, he scooped me up into his arms and carried me inside. I tried not to think of the irony of him carrying me across a threshold like a groom with his new bride, but my stubbornly hopeful mind went there anyway.

  I leaned against his broad, solid chest and tried not to remember that I’d once dreamed about our forever. Heat and resentment burned in my chest like acid at the memory. If only he’d been as stubborn about preserving our relationship in the face of my dad’s threats as he was about preventing me from standing on my own two feet.

  How easily he’d given us up. The shame and pain of it still burned.

  Ryan took me straight to the downstairs bathroom and laid me inside the sunken tub to keep the blood contained and proceeded to ferociously whip off my shoes, socks, the bandage and then my pants, almost taking my underwear off in the process.

  “Chill out for a second,” I snapped, pulling the undies back on. Seeing me naked once today was enough.

  He didn’t respond, instead grabbing my leg, which was now free of his improvised pressure bandage, and inspecting my ankle, pulling it up perpendicular to the ground. Hot blood continued to ooze from the wound and drip all the way down my leg.

  “The wound needs to stay up above your heart. You keep that fucking leg up, you understand?” He rasped in a breathy voice that had nothing to do with his taxing run up the hill with me on his back. “I need to get ice.”

  I laced my fingers together around the back of my thigh to continue holding up my leg. My ankle, calf and thigh were sticky with dried blood, and though I didn’t say anything to Ryan, I had to admit that I was starting to feel slightly lightheaded.

  Ryan returned in minutes with a clump of ice wrapped in a towel. “The home remedy for stopping bleeding is to lower the local temperature to constrict the capillaries. This isn’t going to feel great, fair warning.”

  I took a deep breath, closed my eyes, and then opened them again. “Lay it on me.”

  With that go-ahead, Ryan pressed the cold to my wound and held it there, leaning my leg against his thigh. Neither of us said anything, and we avoided each other’s gaze during the stretch of time that we waited for the ice to have its effect. Finally, I couldn’t take the pain any longer and pulled my leg away.

  Grim-faced and obviously reluctant, he slowly pulled the pack away from my ankle and bent for a closer inspection. He turned my ankle this way and that, stroking the skin carefully with his long fingers, seemingly unaware of the shivers he was sending down the length of my leg. Pain or no, this unbelievably sexy and shirtless man bent over me, carefully administering to me, was turning me on in a major way.

  “Let’s get you cleaned up so I can be sure the bleeding has stopped.”

  I lifted myself to the edge of the sunken tub and he ran the water. With a washcloth, he slowly, carefully wiped down my leg. And honestly, even that was turning me on.

  I was so damn mad at myself for that, too. I’d gone twenty-five years without having sex before Ryan and I had gotten involved. Now I was like a cat in heat every time he looked at me or touched me because I hadn’t had any for four weeks.

  Of course it didn’t help matters when, having finished cleaning the blood off of me, Ryan dropped his pants. He used another wash cloth to clean the blood I’d leaked all over his strong, muscular, hairy legs. I swallowed, my heartbeat accelerating.

  I should have averted my eyes. He now wore nothing but his boxers which clung to him and left little to the imagination. Yeah, I’d seen him gloriously naked many times. I’d felt that incredible naked body pressed against me during the only hot sex I’d ever enjoyed in my life, and it had been amazing.

  But I sure as heck didn’t need a reminder of that now in my wounded, vulnerable state.

  After cleaning the gash and slapping some taped gauze on it, Ryan scooped me up to carry me into the bedroom. He ignored my protests, and I tried my hardest to ignore that he was naked except for his boxers.

  I had on just my panties and a t-shirt with no bra underneath. We might as well be naked, and he was taking us to the bed.

  Yeah, not a good idea. So not a good idea.

  Gently, he lay me against the pillows and then blew out a long breath. I studied his face and noted for the first time how stressed out he appeared. He’d been really worried about me. I reached out and touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

  His cheeks bulged where he tightened his jaw and then relaxed it. He looked visibly shaken. As if, having moved out of problem-solving mode, he was now crashing from the adrenaline rush and reacting to the “danger” I’d been in.

  He swallowed and turned to me. “Stop wounding yourself, for God’s sake.”

  Then he jumped up from the bed and left the room.

  In just a few minutes, he reappeared with a bottle of vodka in one hand and a shot glass in the other.

  The shot glass, I noted, was empty.

  “Did you just do a shot of that?” I asked.

  He frowned. “Yeah, and I’m going to do another one.” And as if to prove a point, he tilted the uncapped bottle, poured a shot and then put the glass to his lips.

  “Stop!” He hesitated and turned his head to look at me. “That’s not fair. Where’s mine?”

  He raised a skeptical brow at me. “You want to do vodka shots?”

  I folded my arms, crossed my legs and wiggled my foot expectantly. “Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.”

  “Have you ever done straight shots of vodka before?”

  I fought rolling my eyes. “I’ve had vodka before, thankyouverymuch.”

  “That’s not what I asked.” He approached the bed slowly with the full shot glass.

  I held out my hand, wiggling my fingers. “Just give it to me. I’m not a baby.”

  He obediently held out the glass to me, and I took it, knocking it back in as convincing a badass manner as I could.

  Unfortunately, that involved a little sputtering and coughing after I swallowed. But he didn’t laugh. Solemnly, he took the glass back and poured himself another shot, this time with a Russian toast tacked on.

  I waggled
my hand at him. “Give it here. You’re sharing that shit or I’m going to protest.”

  He sank onto the edge of the bed and poured another shot, passing it to me. I drank that one down too, glad that there was much less sputtering. And we continued like that for a few more shots until, on the fifth one, he refused to pass the glass to me, keeping it just out of my reach.

  “You have got to be feeling a buzz by now.”

  I raised my brow at him. I most certainly was feeling a buzz—actually I was somewhat past a buzz. I’d sailed past tipsy, too, and was well on my way to drunk. But, since all I had to do was just sit there on the bed and not stand up straight without wobbling or walk without falling over, I was able to hide that better than I could have in other circumstances.

  “I’m fine,” I said, meeting his gaze unwaveringly although the rest of the world around him looked fuzzy.

  He stared at me skeptically, and I raised my brows at him without saying more. The less I said, the less likely it would be that I’d slur the words.

  Slowly he handed me the shot. “That’s the last one, so enjoy it.”

  I only got half of it down before I started coughing and he had to pull it away from me. Then he put the glass to his lips and sucked up the rest, following it by another full one. “You sure you aren’t part Russian?” he asked me.

  “Nope. Mom’s Welsh. Dad is Midwestern, born from English and Irish stock.”

  “And here I thought he was just pure evil,” he muttered. I stared at him, willing him to go on. Willing him to say, Screw Conrad Barrett. I want you anyway, Gray.

  But he didn’t, and my heart took a little dip. Hurt a little more from the sadness, from missing him.

  The only thing I could do in response was hiccup. He grinned as if suppressing laughter. “We never had dinner. You drank all that on an empty stomach.”

  I shrugged and sent him a sloppy smile. “I feel jus’ fine.”

  He laughed, capping the bottle and setting it on the night stand. Then, he reached to chuck my cheek. “You sound just fine.”

  Under his touch, I froze. He froze. Our gazes locked, and breathing stopped. At least mine did. I swallowed. He swallowed.

  Then slowly, he reached out to my cheek again, smoothing the skin there. “You worried me, baby girl,” he murmured.

  Something in that touch and in those words melted me inside. Not a little, no. Places inside me heated and shifted and warped as if they were actually made of wax. Rearranging the hardened scar tissues around my heart. Those wounds he’d torn so deftly just a month before.

  His thumb stroked across my cheek again, and I shivered slightly before turning my head to pull away from that touch. What good was it to let him speak to me this way, all kind and sweet, as if he still really cared? Fuck him.

  “Fuck you,” I said, echoing my thoughts.

  “I wish.”

  Without realizing exactly what I was doing, my hand lashed out, and I slapped him across the face. His eyes widened, and he caught my right wrist before I could do it again. His hand clenched around that wrist firmly, and when I tugged, the hold tightened even more. I let out a small gasp, and our eyes waged a battle, locked in one another’s grasp.

  Finally, he swallowed and, without changing his expression, he licked his lips. I watched the mark I’d left on his cheek grow angry and red. “I may have deserved that,” he finally conceded.

  My breathing came faster, and I was all tension. My body coiled up as if expecting the other shoe to drop—something violent in his response to my violence.

  Or maybe he was waiting for an apology.

  “My ankle may have stopped bleeding, but my heart didn’t,” I said in a small voice while our gazes tangled with each other.

  He slowly blinked, as if sifting through inebriation to absorb the meaning of my words.

  I let out a long and shaky breath that, to my shame, sounded a bit like a whimper.

  “Shh,” he said, reaching up with his free hand. His head drifted closer as if he would kiss me. I pulled back.

  “No, you don’t get to do that. You don’t get to shush me. You don’t get to tuck it away like you never did anything wrong. I’m angry with you, Ryan.”

  He held my gaze, his hand tightening around my wrist, his jaw setting. Those blue eyes, those gorgeous blue eyes, like the bluest of blue layer of sky before the black and violent cold of space, something passed through them. Something that looked a lot like pain. “I know that.”

  I licked my lips. “I may not show it, but it hurts. I’m hurting.”

  “I’m sorry you’re hurting. I never wanted to hurt you.”

  I blew out a breath in disgust and held up my other hand as if to slap him again. “Do you want another one? I do have a free hand.”

  Somewhere deep inside, Sober Me was horrified by my own actions. It wasn’t like I didn’t have control over myself, but rather that the guard I’d always kept firmly fixed around me by sheer strength of will had been let down. I’d given that guard a bit of a vacation. Told him to pack his bags and head to Bermuda until I was sober again.

  Besides. I had to admit that it had felt good to slap him that once.

  He did deserve it. I’d given him my heart. A pure, unadulterated gift. And he’d tossed it away because, as he’d said, he’d “made me no promises.”

  No promises. And what he hadn’t said was that I’d been a fool to expect them.

  Ryan grabbed my left wrist before I could make good on my threat. His gaze flew up to mine, and I could see he was not angry. No, he was…guarded.

  He cleared his throat and spoke in a low voice. “Is there anything else you want to say to me?”

  My hands, where he held them clamped at the wrists, knotted into fists. I settled back against the pillows, regardless.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  He nodded. “Yes.”

  “Why? Why would you give up so easily?” It came out all wrong, all guttural and emotional as if it had been torn from me.

  His eyes still reflected that same pain. “Because I don’t deserve you.”

  I shook my head. “An easy, trite answer.”

  “The truth,” he murmured. “I never did deserve you.”

  “Give me a break.” I yanked against his hold. “Spare me your I’ve touched an angel BS and give me the truth for once, Ryan.”

  His eyes were on mine, unwavering. “I’ve never lied to you.”

  I shook my head, refusing to be the first one to pull my eyes away. I couldn’t accept this. There was no way he hated himself this much.

  Or did he?

  But why punish me, too, if he did?

  He took a deep breath. “You deserve so much—”

  “Oh please! Shut the fuck up.”

  Something in his gaze changed, and the air thickened between us. His eyes fell to my lips and he drifted closer, almost as if he were fighting with himself and the part of him that wanted me was winning.

  “I decide what I deserve. Not you. Not my father.” Enough with these men who wanted to run my life. “Me.”

  And something in him snapped. Without warning, he was on me. He yanked my hands above my head, pinning them down with one hand while he took my face in his other hand. His mouth was on mine and his kiss was ferocious. He lay on me, his body partially overlapping mine, pinning it down to the bed.

  His tongue invaded my mouth. He tasted like vodka and desire.

  Desire.

  His erection was hard against my leg. His breath came fast, as fast as mine, and we were hot and sweaty and rubbing against each other in seconds. Primal urges claimed us like animals in a frenzy.

  My free leg clamped around his hips and he ground against me. There were two thin layers—my underwear and his—between us and what we craved most. Union.

  My throat was making sounds I’d never even heard before. Somewhere between wounded and delirious with lust.

  His mouth left mine and he trailed hard kisses over my neck and down my chest until he
was sucking and biting my nipples through the thin fabric of my t-shirt, his cock swelling against my body. My eyes clamped shut, and I couldn’t think. Couldn’t breathe. Definitely couldn’t sort out the possible consequences of these actions.

  I could only want and crave and hunger.

  “Ryan, I need you inside me,” I finally rasped when he made no move to take this further. He didn’t reach under my shirt. Didn’t pull off my underwear like I wanted him to.

  He kept at his torture, sucking my nipples until I gasped and writhed. Grinding against me as if he were already penetrating me. But he wouldn’t take it further and he wouldn’t release my wrists, which he held in a death grip.

  His free hand was in my hair, holding my head still, and I had zero control over how this would go. The only thing I had were my words. “Please, I need to feel you inside me.” More sucking through that goddamn t-shirt. My lust was so peaked it was almost painful. “Ryan!” I ground out.

  He slowly stopped what he was doing, pulled his mouth away and stilled against me. I was hopeful, so I rubbed my hips against his and he groaned in response. But something had changed.

  Something was cooling him down before this could escalate.

  His breath came as fast as if he had run up the stairs while carrying me on his back again. His mouth was pressed to the side of my neck now as he struggled to regain control. Suddenly he released my hands and pulled back, looking down into my face.

  His own face was flushed with desire. And those blue eyes burned with it. I’d seen that look in them many times before. That look used to precede hours of the two of us grinding against each other naked on the way to multiple orgasms.

  But…

  Apparently not tonight.

  Turning my head, I blinked as the room swam. I was a lot drunker than I’d initially thought. Trying to reframe my perception, I struggled to find the right side up to everything.