Fierce-Ella (The Fierce Five Series Book 5)

by Natalie Ann

  “Weaknesses have a time and place in life and this is it, Ella.”

  She wasn’t sure what he was talking about and couldn’t even work up the energy to think about it. Not when he was lifting her legs up and spreading them wide, slamming into her as hard as she’d been bouncing on him.

  There was a tightness building up inside of her right now that she didn’t think was possible, but she wasn’t about to let it go.

  “Don’t stop,” she told him, her arms going out and bringing him down to her level.

  “I have no intention of stopping until I get you there again.”

  She found the energy to lift her hips and it felt so good she had to do it again, this time higher. Her body was coming back to life. It was an awakening in the best possible way imaginable.

  Travis lowered his mouth and he kissed her hard, his tongue going in and mimicking the movement of him inside of her.

  She felt as if she was being pulled in all directions. Wonderful mind-blowing directions. The one she was going to listen to was her heart though.

  He lowered her legs and wrapped her up tight, then emptied everything he had into her, and she had no choice but to take that fall with him, knowing he’d have her in the end.

  He’d never drop her.

  He’d never let her down.

  Strength and Tenderness

  Travis felt like he just finished six weeks’ worth of SEAL training in thirty minutes.

  His body was aching, but the pain in his chest was the one he was pushing away. He wasn’t sure he was ready to feel that just yet, but he was feeling something.

  Ella just wrung him dry by doing nothing more than being the type of woman he said he never wanted years ago.

  Weak and vulnerable women were always his thing, making him feel secure himself. Giving him a self-worth to equal his size and strength.

  But when he failed and lost what he’d had, he said he didn’t think he could ever do it again.

  That the strong woman always turned him off.

  Then there was Ella.

  The toughest chick he knew. She was soft on the outside, feminine, but she was hard as steel inside.

  Until you got to know her.

  Until she dropped her guard.

  Until she showed a vulnerable side that let him know she might be the perfect mix of strength and tenderness that he’d been looking for his whole life.

  “Stay with me tonight,” she said softly. Like it was painful to get those words out of her mouth but she desperately wanted them voiced.

  Probably as desperately as he wanted to hear them. He ran his hand over her shoulder and down her arm. “Yeah.”

  They stayed like that for a few minutes. His heart finally slowing down, her breathing leveling out too.

  After a few minutes he started to sit up, but she wouldn’t unwrap her arms from around him. Thankfully he’d shifted them so he was on his back and she was on top. That vulnerable side he always liked to see in a woman was coming out right now and he was shocked to see it so blatantly from Ella.

  “I’ll be right back,” he said, loosening her grip. He went into the bathroom and cleaned up, splashing water on his face and looking at his reflection in the mirror.

  He could see a light back in his eyes that had been missing in him for years and he had her to thank for it. But saying that would probably scare them both.

  When he walked back out, she was still under the covers, then tossed them back for him to climb in next to her.

  Before he lost his nerve, he said, “Do you want to know about Julia?”

  She sat up, pulling the covers with her. “If you want to tell me.” There was a nervousness in her eyes and he wasn’t sure the cause, but he knew that if she was willing and he had the courage, that now was the time to get this off his chest.

  “I probably should. You know she died while she was pregnant with my daughter. Obviously my daughter died too. Julia was barely six months pregnant. If the baby had survived she mostly would have had long term complications.”

  “How did Julia die?” she asked.

  He took a deep breath. It might have been years ago but at times felt like it was only a week ago. This was one of those times. “I’ve told you a little bit about our relationship.”

  “That she was younger, didn’t like to be alone, and didn’t want you to stay in the service,” she said.

  “Yes to all of it. We had our ups and downs. We didn’t have a perfect relationship by any means. But I loved her and we were going to be a family.”

  He’d been willing to compromise on his career because that was what people in love did. That was what a man did for the woman and child he was going to vow to protect and cherish.

  “You don’t have to tell me,” she said, putting her hand on his chest. That little movement gave him encouragement and comfort when he needed it the most. She obviously sensed the change in him. He’d been so good for years keeping it bottled up, but the cork was ready to go sailing across the room.

  “I feel like I do. Maybe not for you, but for me. Julia wasn’t strong like you. Not for a lot in life, but I was okay with that, because I was the strong one. It was my job to take care of her and my child. My job to make sure she was safe and secure.”

  “I don’t know if I like where this might be going,” she said.

  “You probably won’t.” He was trying to tell it like it was a story. Trying to remind himself that he’d grieved enough, that he’d failed and he had to move on. But telling himself that and believing it had never been the same thing.

  “It’s okay to let your guard down with me,” she said. “I won’t tell anyone if you get upset while we talk.”

  “I get the feeling you aren’t someone who gets upset or sheds a tear often,” he said.

  “I get upset, but I don’t let it show. And no, I don’t cry much at all. That’s a sign of weakness that I try to hide.”

  “We all have weaknesses, Ella.”

  “And some of us are better than others at pretending they aren’t there.”

  “Except when a clown scares you,” he said, needing a laugh for the moment.

  “I’ll give you a free pass on that one.”

  “Thanks. I was away on an assignment out of the country. Julia and I didn’t talk much when I was gone, but I wasn’t always on missions, so when that wasn’t happening, we had a lot of communication. I liked to know how she was doing, not just for her but for the baby.”

  “What was she like?” she asked. “Her personality. Was she friendly? Happy?”

  “She was both. Young, immature at times, but she could make me laugh and there were times that I needed that. My job I loved so much was so serious that the laughter was needed to balance the scales for me.”

  “I can understand that.”

  “She liked to shop like you, but she wasn’t nearly as crazy about it.”

  “I’m not sure that many people are,” Ella said.

  “Julia was having cravings. I was told she wanted something to eat and it was late. I’d told her before that she shouldn’t go out alone at night, especially while she was pregnant.”

  “You said she lived with her parents, right?”

  “She did. Her parents were out for the night too. Julia decided to walk downtown to get some ice cream. It wasn’t that far.”

  “Sounds reasonable,” Ella said. “Did you keep a tight rein on her?”

  “No,” he said. “I just wanted her to be cautious at times. She wasn’t always. That immature naive part about being young and thinking nothing could ever go wrong.” He’d seen enough in the world to know that anything could go wrong at any time to anyone. He just couldn’t get Julia to understand that. He wasn’t jaded like Julia thought—he was realistic.

  “Yet she worried about you and your job?” Ella said.

  “Funny, I know, but she did. I think she felt nothing could go wrong in Charlotte in her eyes. On her way back she was attacked. A mugger. He probably didn’t mean
any harm. Just wanted her purse is my guess. But I’d taught her how to defend herself. I just felt she should always know those things.”

  “As every woman should,” she said.

  “I’m sure you could if you needed to. Between those deadly heels you wear all the time and the fast feet I heard you had for kicking.”

  She cracked a grin. “Your balls are safe if that is what you’re referring to. Cade and Brody felt my wrath for a long time. And yes, four brothers and my father, I can defend myself if I need to with or without the pepper spray in my purse.”

  “Well, Julia tried to fight back. She probably shouldn’t have. She should have just handed her purse over, but she didn’t. The mugger backhanded her and she fell and hit her head. On top of that, when she landed it was on her stomach.” Ella gasped, but he pushed through it. “A good hour had gone by before someone saw her lying there unconscious.”

  “What happened next?”

  “She was taken to the hospital, but she had a lot of swelling on her brain. The baby was in distress, but Julia wasn’t in good enough shape to even consider undergoing surgery to deliver and it was still way too early.”

  Travis looked over and saw the tears in Ella’s eyes and knew his own were filling up. “You can’t blame yourself, Travis.”

  He ignored her statement and continued on to get to the end. “She was put in a medically induced coma. At one point they had to drill into her skull to relieve the pressure on her brain. I was able to get home to her, but at that point it’d been almost forty-eight hours. They said she was brain-dead. We weren’t married and her parents were given the choice to keep her on life support to try to bring the baby to term.”

  “Don’t tell me that they took her off life support?” she said, her eyes going wide, the tears overflowing.

  “No, they didn’t. But a few days had gone by and the baby’s heart just stopped. At that moment, her parents felt there was no other decision left to make. Their granddaughter was gone, their daughter was nothing more than a body on the bed. Everyone said their goodbyes and Julia passed away that night.”

  “I don’t know what to say, Travis.”

  “You don’t have to say anything at all. I just want you to understand that I carry a lot of guilt around with me. I was supposed to be there to protect her and my child. If I wasn’t, I wanted her to be able to do it herself. I was so selfish about wanting to keep my career in the Navy. She wanted me to leave when we started dating and I didn’t. If I had, none of this would have happened.”

  “You don’t know that. No one knows and no one can plan or control the future.”

  “Logically I know that, but emotionally I tell myself that if I never told her to fight back, then maybe none of this would have happened either. If I hadn’t been so paranoid that something bad could happen to her.”

  “Or maybe it would have happened regardless,” she said, putting her arms around him and hugging him. “Carrying guilt over something you couldn’t control isn’t healthy for anyone.”

  “No, it’s not. Julia’s parents never blamed me even though I felt I deserved it. They’d asked me what I wanted to do even though we weren’t married yet. We made the decisions as a family should, but we never got to be that family.”

  “That doesn’t mean you never get to have the chance at another one,” she said.

  “I know. That’s why I wanted to tell you. I wanted you to know the demons I’ve got. In a short period of time I felt I lost everything in my world. My mother was failing, my fiancée and daughter died, and because I blamed myself and my career, I left that behind too.”

  “What do you think now though?”

  “What do you mean?” he asked. He lifted his hand up and just knuckled a stray tear forming in his eye.

  “Do you still feel like you left it all behind and have no chance at a future or finding that life with someone else?”

  “No. That’s the problem. I never thought I could feel that way with anyone again. I never thought I’d be able to open myself up to this with anyone.”

  “And then you bumped into me in the grocery store.”

  “Sweetie,” he said. “I would have bumped into you so much sooner if I thought you’d give me the time of day. And I’m telling you all of this because for years what I thought I’d never have a chance at, I’m finding I want it with you.”

  He hadn’t planned on saying those words to her. He hadn’t planned on dropping his guard this much either, but Ella had a way about her that just brought the best out of him.

  “Can I ask you a question?”

  “Sure,” he said, wondering what more he could possibly confess.

  “Had you picked out a name for your daughter?”

  He thought the question was odd. “Why?”

  “Because when you talk about her, you seem detached in a way. I’m just curious if that is your defense mechanism and that a name personalizes things too much for you.”

  He felt the tears dripping out of his eyes like a slow faucet leak. She hit the nail on the head with a sledgehammer. “Her name was Violet. I named her. Julia and I hadn’t discussed names yet, but I needed to give her a proper burial and headstone. She was Violet Julia McKinley.”

  “You don’t say her name because that is when the emotions come out, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “It’s a pretty name,” she said.

  “It was my mother’s favorite color.”

  “Oh, Travis,” Ella said. “Stop holding it all in for once and grieve. Don’t you think you deserve it? If not for you, then do it for Julia and Violet. Use her name going forward.”

  He did something he hadn’t done in years. He let go enough to really cry.

  A Human Factor

  The next morning while Travis slept, Ella replayed the night and the conversation back in her head.

  She wished she didn’t or couldn’t but she hadn’t been able to stop seeing Travis trying to hold it all in, and then finally let it out. She’d never thought much of a man crying before. She’d never seen it often. Her brothers, much like her, kept it locked in and didn’t cry in front of others.

  Travis didn’t cry long, but probably longer than he’d ever let anyone see before. And the thought that crossed her mind was there was a strength in that she’d never expected to see. A human factor that made him all the more perfect in her eyes.

  Then, she suspected to change her train of thought, he made love to her again and the two of them slept the rest of the night soundly in each other’s arms.

  She’d never been clingy or cuddly with a man in bed—when she spent the night with someone. She’d bet Travis normally wasn’t like that either. But last night they both seemed to need to hold onto the other for some kind of support. Or maybe it was a connection.

  And rather than be scared that he’d told her so much and knowing that it was a huge step in their relationship, she was feeling free herself.

  They turned a corner last night. They might not have expressed any love, but there were feelings there—deep feelings—that both of them might be a touch afraid of saying at the moment. But they were shared and it was enough.

  While Travis was still in bed she got up and showered, forgoing her morning workout until later. Maybe they could do it together. But she was going to make him breakfast first.

  She didn’t have a chance to do much more than crack a few eggs in a bowl when her front door opened. It wasn’t that early, just nine, but way too early for Cade to be walking in the door.

  “Hey,” he said when he made his way into the kitchen. “Did you just get up?” he asked, frowning.

  “Of course not.” He didn’t need to know she’d slept later than she had in years. “Why?”

  “Your hair is still wet and you don’t have a stitch of makeup on. Not only that, you’re just wearing yoga pants and a T-shirt.”

  Cade always was good at pointing out the obvious. She laughed. “First off. I’m not always as put together as you guys say
I am.” She ignored Cade’s snort. “And second of all, it’s Saturday morning, what are you doing here?”

  “I came bearing gifts.”

  “Where are they?” she asked.

  “I left them in my car because I wasn’t sure if you were home or not. I just came from Alex’s and she wanted me to drop them off.”

  “Not only are you up and dressed, but you’ve been somewhere other than here this morning? How is that possible?” Cade was known to be a night owl and sleep in. Or he used to when he was younger.

  “Alex and I have plans today, so she got my butt out of bed.”

  Ella grinned, figuring there had to be a reason. “Well, go get them,” she said.

  “I’ll be right b—” Cade stopped talking and looked over to see Travis standing at the bottom of the stairs smirking with his arms crossed. He was wearing his clothes from yesterday. His short hair looked neat enough, but the bare feet and the fact that he obviously showed up from her bedroom gave away where he’d been the night before.

  “Problem, Cade?” Ella said, trying not to laugh. Cade was almost never at a loss for words. Now he had a pained expression on his face like when she’d kicked him right in the balls the first time when they were ten because he was calling her a girly wuss.

  “Ah, no,” he said, turning to leave.

  Ella finally laughed when Cade walked out the front door. She looked at Travis. “I wonder if he’ll just leave without giving me what he had planned.” Her brother had been avoiding her for over a month since he’d found out she was dating Travis.

  They saw each other at work a few times a week, but they never talked about anything other than work related issues. Cade never brought up Travis’s name and neither did she.

  Guess it was time to change that.

  ***

  Travis couldn’t remember the last time he was unaware of his surroundings. He’d never heard Ella get up this morning, nor heard her in the bathroom.

  He had no idea how long she’d been moving around, but he became aware of voices downstairs, so he figured he’d better check it out.