"I want to go to your place," she murmured. "Please."
He put his hand over her clasped ones on his chest. "We can be there in fifteen minutes."
He lived in a small bungalow on the marsh, one of Florida's prime pieces of real estate with the run down look of a fishing shack on the outside, a rambling, cozy interior and a breathless view of the marsh from the large back screen porch.
He parked the bike in a crofter on the side and took her hand to help her off. It wasn't a highly athletic maneuver, but he could tell she was still shaky, and the muscles were starting to stiffen, as he predicted. On a surge of emotion, he simply bent and scooped her up to carry her up the small path to his back porch door.
"Mac, I can walk," she protested. "It was just a graze, after all."
"I know. Humor me. I need to take care of you."
That quieted her down, and she placed her hands on his neck, those fingers little bigger than a child's. Those tiny hands had held a service revolver steady today and blown away a man determined to kill her. He pushed it away, held her tighter as she rested her head against his shoulder, settling in with a little sigh.
Violet knew that not all male submissives were nurturers. She'd gotten a hint and a hope when Mac made her dinner. But a nurturing, straight male submissive cop with powerful alpha tendencies? It broke all the preconceived molds.
When he took her to the bathroom first thing to run her a bath, she could all but hear the plaster shatter and fall away. The thought almost coaxed a weary smile to her lips, pressed against his shirt front.
The bathroom was clean and had a deep, old fashioned claw foot tub. He set her on the commode and knelt beside her, one arm braced on the outside of her hip as he kept his other beneath the water flow. After it warmed, he took her hand in his, placed it beneath the stream, and she almost wept at the comforting heat of his touch combined with that of the water.
"Too hot?"
She shook her head. "Perfect."
"Okay." He dumped in some mineral salts from a vial on the shelf and tossed in a couple green bath beads. "The salts worked so good at Tyler's I went out and got myself some for daily use," he explained at her curious look, managing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "The beads have got aloe, one of my Mom's remedies for scrapes and cuts. They've also got somewhat of a male aftershave smell, but nothing too overpowering. Do you have to keep the bandage dry?"
She shook her head. "I can take it off. There's no stitches or anything."
"I'll do it." He took his hand out of the tub, released her, dried his fingers on a towel. "With your permission," he said quietly, and then began to slip the buttons of her ripped and bloodstained uniform shirt. As he took it off her shoulders, she watched his face when he ran light fingers over the bandage taped over the curve that joined her throat to her shoulder. He put gentle pressure on it. "Why they always use this goddamned hair-pulling tape... Take a deep breath, sugar."
She did and he pulled it off so quickly, there was just a faint tingling burn.
"You could get a job doing bikini waxes," she said, trying for humor.
"Lucky me." he responded, laying his fingers over the welt that showed the track of the bullet. There was murder in his eyes, and she felt something rise up, threaten to choke her.
"Mac..."
"Sshh, it's all right." He shook it off, visibly. Gently taking the shirt all the way off her arms, he reached around her to unhook her bra. She pressed her cheek to that wide bicep a moment, letting herself feel her connection to him, the connection he had underscored with a deep black marker by showing up at the hospital to take her home.
He didn't have to do this, didn't have to be part of her life in this way, but after less than a week of having one another, he had chosen to do so. Had as much as said that's what he wanted when they made love after dinner less than three nights ago. This was one of the worst days of her life, or her best, depending on the perspective, and he had jumped in both feet to be part of it, no holding back.
Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, he brought the garment forward and off her body. He unlaced her boots, took them off, his hands sure and strong on her ankle, the arch of her foot, and then gently raised her to her feet, removing her trousers and the practical underwear beneath. She stood before him only in her delicate cross and her own fragile, mortal skin. He turned, took a wash cloth off the counter, dampened it and turned back to her. Bemused, she felt him raise the cross from her skin, touch it and her sternum with the cloth.
"Gun powder," he explained. "We'll take some silver polish later, give it a good cleaning, but that'll do for now." Then he tossed the cloth in the sink, bent, slid his arms around her, and lifted her again. The hard thighs, the buckle of his belt and the buttons of his shirt pressed against her. She welcomed them, the heat of his skin through the fabric. Though she didn't think she was cold, she was shivering.
"Shock," he said, as if reading her thoughts. He lowered her into the water, shut off the spigots. When the heat of the water enveloped her, she moaned in pleasure, and he smiled, kissed her fingers. He arranged a cushion beneath her head with his other free hand when she wouldn't let go of him.
"I'm going to scare you up some food. I'll keep checking in on you, so don't you worry about falling asleep. I'll take care of you tonight. "
"I know," she said, her eyes falling half shut. Her nose recognized the smell of the bath beads, smells that had clung to his skin from the first night she had met him. They comforted her, surrounded her, so she could find it in her to be an adult, let his hand go, but something in her chest tightened painfully as his fingers slipped from hers. She listened to his feet recede, was absurdly comforted when she realized the kitchen was close enough that she could hear the sounds of him moving around, finding her dinner.
The proximity worked for Mac as well, because he was able to see the profile of her head on the edge of the tub. Keeping his peripheral eye on her as he set some tea to brew, he pulled one of his Mundial cooking knives from the maple wood block knife holder and quickly and quietly chopped up some fresh asparagus and set it in a soup stock to cook. When a tremor ran through his hand, he stopped a moment, taking a steadying breath, tearing his thoughts away from the sudden image of a bullet fired at Violet's face, tearing through that pale, delicate flesh and ending her life.
He prepared the soup with extra care and precision, put some fresh baked bread in the warmer, keeping his mind in a culinary net so it couldn't go where he wasn't ready to let it go yet. He could have his mental breakdown later. She needed him to be the strong one right now.
A soft cry and a splash from the bathroom, and he was at the door before the knife hit the counter. She blinked wildly, and he knelt by her, drawing her to him.
"It's okay, sugar. Flashback. They happen a bit at first, whenever you doze off. You're okay."
"God." She pushed her hands through her hair. "I am so pathetic."
"No, you're not," he said, tightening his hands on her. "You want to know what I did the first time I took a life?"
She nodded, her arms folded against her front. It was an unconscious gesture of someone trying to shield herself from a pain that was attacking her from the inside. He rubbed his hands over her wet bare back, fingers marking each bump of her spine, trying to soothe.
"At first, I tried to blow it off like it was any other day. You think, when you're a rookie, you're supposed to be as tough about it as the older guys. I pretended like I was fine, even got a little snappish when the vets tried to bolster me up, like Hank did for you. Later, I remembered the way they looked at me, not snapping back like they normally would. They knew I was going to break. They tried to get me to go for drinks with them. No way, I was fine. I went home because you know, that was standard, I didn't have any choice. They let me go for the rest of the day."
He nudged his chin against her forehead, and she burrowed her head deeper into the crevice between his head and chest.
"I woke up at two in the
morning in a sweat," he continued. "The perp's face, those shots, roaring in my head. I put on my clothes, drove a hundred and twenty miles and knocked on my mother's door at four in the morning. Not a smart thing for a guy to do when the woman in question has two sons who are cops. I probably took ten years off her life, making her think one of us had been killed.
"But she knew. She looked at my face and knew. I was too manly and old to let her undress me and put me in a tub of course." He smiled against her temple. "But she ran me a bath, fed me, sat with me, and held my hand when I finally fell asleep on her couch next to her. I know she didn't let go. Not until I woke up and felt I could face it, because I'd managed to get through the first night, thanks to her."
"You're not making that up." She lifted her head, looked hard at him.
"No, I'm not." He smoothed back her hair, kissed her brow.
"How many times...?"
"Seven times in twenty years," he said. "Once it was a woman. Once it was a fourteen-year-old kid." He framed her face in his hands. "Just some advice. Give yourself time to accept it, mourn it. Let it run around in your head awhile, wait a few days to analyze. In our line of work, there's no walking away. Sometimes the choice has to be made, and sometimes it's made for us. I can tell you from experience, the first way is a lot harder to live with than the second. It's that simple. Okay?"
She nodded, thinking, and he brushed his thumb over her lips. "Let me get you something to wear, if you're ready to get out."
Violet was, and she waited in the tub until he brought her one of his T-shirts. He didn't let her dry herself. He had her step out onto a soft floor mat, and then rubbed her gently with a thick terry cloth towel. A dark heavy cotton that had his musky smell, the T-shirt was so large it fell to mid-thigh and slipped off one shoulder. When he had it on her, he picked her up, carried her out onto the back porch where the sun was setting on the marsh in a glory of rose and gold, a confirmation of life, and miracles. She looked at him as he settled her, his face intent, and knew it was a confirmation of something else, something too clearly present in this past hour to be anything else.
Of love.
Chapter 19
After they ate, he curled up behind her on the bed in his room, stroking her hair until she fell asleep watching the moon rise over the marsh out the window. When she woke, its light was streaming in. She held her hand up to it, watched the play of silver on her pale skin.
I'm alive.
A large hand lifted into her vision, entwined its fingers with her own, and she felt Mac's broad chest pressed into her shoulder blades.
And I'm not alone.
In that quiet moment she saw what she was and could be to him - Mistress, lover, woman. What she already might be to him. Everything. A humbling, terrifying and exhilarating thought all at once.
"Okay?" he murmured, his voice like a soothing stroke over every raw nerve, drawing a curtain over the things she could not bear to face right now, that her consciousness would have to accept a small piece at a time. A bullet firing, a man's face turning into meat, the stop of a heartbeat.
"Let it go for tonight, sugar." His hand whispered down over her back, the curve of her waist, her hip, his fingertips smoothing over her skin like raindrops sliding down, the touch of something natural, expected, known. Something that sustained life. Hope.
"Do you know what I thought when he lifted the gun, and I knew it was going to fire?" She kept her eyes on the movement of the waters through the marsh grass, stirred from the movement of some creature who dwelled there, she expected.
She could have chosen not to tell him, knew it probably was not wise to tell him, but in the loneliest hour of the night, there was only truth, and a trust that she could tell him anything.
"What, baby?"
Her lips curved at the endearment, one a Mistress didn't often get to hear. Her alpha male.
"I thought, 'What if I never see Mac again?'"
She looked up at him then and found him leaning over her, those silver eyes so close and alive, silver filled with moonlight. "That was the last thought I had before that gun fired."
His arms closed around her and he lifted her up against his chest, enclosing her in his heat and strength. Warmth. Life. He was pure, pulsing life. She kept her arms tucked into her body, letting him hold her completely, surround her, her forehead and lips pressed to his chest.
"Make love to me, Mackenzie," she whispered. "Please. Nothing but you and me."
He eased her back, looked into her face. He didn't ask if she was sure, but he gave her that moment. She reached up, touched his jaw.
The kiss took her under, into a warm, languid world of pleasant dreams and slow thoughts that drifted into waters that turned her, spun her in a dizzying eddy of light and sensation. She opened her mouth and tasted him, the moist heat of responsive flesh, and his arms increased their hold upon her, so she felt the beat of his heart and the arousing stir of his cock against her hip and stomach.
He eased her to her back, his silhouette over her, and the moonlight gave her another glimpse of his expression, intent, devoted to her, worshipping her, cozening her, desiring her. He could have held back, let her only see the gentleness, but as if he knew instinctively what she needed, he revealed that flare of male desire, the impatient lust to take, and her blood stirred, suddenly eager for his passion, the brutal strength of a taking.
She brought his head down to her breast and then took her hands beneath the covers to find the hem of the T-shirt she wore, get it out of the way. Before she could, he had bracketed her breasts in his larger hands, stretching the soft fabric tight over the taut points, and brought his mouth down on one to torture her through the cloth. Dampen it with his mouth, lick and suckle her through the rub and caress of the cotton.
"Mac." Her voice was a breath of sound in the quiet bedroom. His knee pressed between her thighs, and she spread open for him, cradling him, gasping as he seated his cock against her sensitive clit and pubic bone. She was naked beneath the shirt. And he had come to bed naked, making himself available to her in any way she needed him.
He didn't crush her, but he used his weight to advantage, keeping her helplessly pinned as he nursed her breasts, one then the other, then back to the first. She didn't know how he'd act as an equal partner in the bedroom, had wondered if he'd rush it like most men to get the pussy he craved, but he was paying ardent homage to her breasts. The fluid arousal in her lower body began to emanate through her like a cyclone of energy, through her belly, widening to encompass her breasts so her body from the anchor point between her legs to the flare of her arched upper torso became a tornado, undulating, twisting the small amount allowed by his grip. He stopped suckling and started flicking her nipples with his tongue, a firm flick, several rapid flicks, one slow, then over to the other for the same treatment and back again, the quick tweak of friction making her jerk and her heels dig down into the mattress helplessly, her pubic bone grinding insistently against him, her cunt slick against his hard abdomen as she mewled in ecstatic distress.
"Mackenzie," she gasped.
"No orders, sugar. Just take it. Let me make you crazy." He pressed his hips firmly against hers and she screamed at the rocket of sensation that spun through her cunt and up to each nipple tip that he continued to torment with that firmly flicking tongue. Left. Right, back again. Flick.
She felt the shudder start in her thighs. At the exact moment he raised his head, shifted his grip to her upper arms and shoved hard into her, her climaxing pussy clamped down on him, making him ram through the tight clutch of her muscles. He lifted his hips, slammed into her again, and kept to it, bucking her light frame like a doll on the bed. He was giving her full strength, holding nothing back, and it was frightening, bruising her. Yet she wanted it, his loss of control, this savage hunger in his eyes that could consume the image of gunfire and hatred, sweep that away and leave nothing but a helpless surrender to this.
She was strong enough to match him emotionally on any fi
eld, but she knew he was making it clear he had the strength to shelter her whenever she needed it. Protect her not only from whatever life threw her way, but from herself. Like now. Under that was his anger, irrational as they both knew it was, for risking her life, for making him worry, and so she opened wider, let him give it all to her, all of himself, the anger with the desire.
She had no choice, regardless. All she could do was hold on, cry his name and let the pounding waves of the orgasm take her once...twice...three times. Each time she thought she was done, he changed his angle in that skillful way he had, and she was shot into the storm again, until she was sure she could bear no more, that his hard, relentless cock would be the instrument of blissful destruction for her.
She came off the third wave like a surfer who had been tossed into the embrace of the ocean and rolled over and over, landing on the sun-kissed beach in a state of limp, exhilarated exhaustion. Her pussy was like a small fist, opening and closing in spasmodic vibrations on his cock, and it took more than a few moments to realize he was still hard within her, his body held still and waiting against her.
Though she had not commanded it, he had offered it as a gift to her, which made the gesture all the more potent. Her body quivered in renewed response as she touched his face without opening her eyes, traced the firm lips, the tense jaw, the trembling body.
"Come for me, Mackenzie," she whispered. "You have my permission. Come for me now. But do it while stroking inside me very....very...slowly."
His hands went to her thighs, raised them so her ankles rested on his shoulders. He levered her up higher, his face close to hers, and then he began to stroke her, slow and even.
"All the way to the tip of your head," she whispered. "Then back in, so slow, so gradual, feel every kiss of my pussy upon you. Ah, God." He was hung like a horse in truth, filling her completely. "Out...slow now...slow."