Finally—finally—he stops. Two deep breaths, and he pulls me around in front of him, wrapping his arms around my back so we’re chest to chest, cupping his hand behind my neck.
He looks me over, eyes wide and horrified. Much of the paint has washed off me, and I’m guessing he can see the cuts more clearly now. I tense my muscles so I can grab onto him if he starts into the wall again.
Instead, his face twists. His eyes glisten, filling with moisture. And then, before he allows me to see anything more, he drops his head onto my shoulder and presses his face into the damp skin of my neck. I feel his lips move in time with his voice.
“Jesus, Red. I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry.” With his face still hidden in my hair, he runs a hand up my neck, over my cheek, and over my head, smoothing down my wild, red locks.
His arm, around my shoulders, presses me closer to him. So close I can barely breathe.
I stroke my fingers gently up his back.
I know for sure now—he didn’t kill her. He would never hurt a woman.
“It was my fault,” he whispers. “I tried to blackmail him.”
“Who?”
He tilts his face up and I watch as his eyebrows draw subtly together. His eyes search my face. He looks puzzled. Like a man waking up from a dream. He takes my face in his palms.
“Red.”
He drags his gaze down my body, flinching when he sees the deep slash on my thigh. “Jesus.” He digs his hand into his hair and turns away. When he turns back toward me, I can see him coming back into himself. “Fucking Christ,” he says, “I need to clean you up.”
He scoops me up and holds me over the water, with my feet hovering above the steamy surface. “Shit,” he says. “It’s gonna be too hot. You’re bleeding.”
With my body pressed against his chest, he leans over and adjusts the faucet. Then, in one elegant motion, he steps over the tub’s side and sinks down with me in his lap.
I close my eyes and let my mind drift. I like the feeling of him holding me. I can tell he’s trying not to jar me around, and affection for him swells inside me like a warm balloon.
“This is the second bath you’ve given me,” I murmur.
He sits down a little deeper into the water, and I feel it cascade over my feet and shins and butt. It burns, but it’s a good burn. I tell myself that it’s a cleansing burn. Dizziness spins through me.
Race smooths some water over my forehead. “This okay?”
I nod, but I can’t find the strength to open my eyes.
He angles me so the gash on my right thigh isn’t in the water. I feel him drag a wash cloth over my belly. There’s a cut there, but it isn’t deep.
He moves the wash cloth over every part of me, reaching out to re-wet it with cool water from the faucet before dabbing it on my cuts.
He saves the deep one on my thigh for last, and although I try not to flinch, I can’t seem to help myself.
He says something low and soft. Then I feel the scruff of his jaw against my cheek. He rubs his lips over my nose, and they touch down on mine for a sweet second before he pulls away.
My insides ache with needing him. Even after the last few hours. Especially after the last few hours. I peek up at him, reach out to twine an arm around his neck. “Please, Race…”
“Please what?” he whispers.
“I want you to touch me. Make me feel better.”
He leans subtly away from me, and the arm that isn’t holding me dips down into the water. His mouth tightens, and he directs his gaze somewhere over my shoulder as he shakes his head. “No, Red. You don’t need that.”
“Don’t tell me what I need.” My voice is strong, but my body still feels weak. I fumble for his fingers, grasping his free hand and twining two of my fingers through his limp ones. “Please. I need you. I need…someone.” I can feel the tears sting my eyes now, and I’m worried I’m about to lose it.
He’s looking away from me. Like he doesn’t care, but I know he does. I wrap both arms around his shoulders. I love how hard he feels. How warm and damp his skin is. He feels so soft. And for the first time ever, I have a forbidden thought. I think: I want him to be mine.
In that very breath, he moves my arms off him and scoots back in the tub. I sink deeper into the water, and it burns the cut on my thigh. I wince, and Race’s eyes widen. A look of panic flits across his face.
“This is my fault, Red. My fault this happened to you. After I clean you up, you have to go.”
I start to cry, because really—after the way this day has gone, what else can I do? Emotion rises in my throat. It’s one I know well: the pain of losing someone. I cover my face with my hands, embarrassed by the force of my feelings for him. “I don’t want to go!”
“Why would you stay?” He sounds incredulous. I peek at him through my hands and find his face twisted in shock. It’s gone in a heartbeat, replaced by something flat and cold. “Do you have a death wish, Red? Is that why you want to stay?”
“Of course not!”
“Then you’re wrong,” he says grimly. “About me. You shouldn’t trust me, Red.”
My heart bumps off its rhythm, dragging out a beat. “But you didn’t do it,” I whisper.
He draws his knees up and rests his arms on them. Lays his head atop his arms.
“You didn’t do it. I know you didn’t.” He can’t have done it. “I won’t believe it.”
He looks up. “You don't know anything about me, Red.”
“Yes I do. I know everything I need to. I know you keep a clean house and you like the woods. You’re an amazing artist, and you’re loyal. You were loyal to Gertrude, and you didn’t have to be. You didn’t. I know you care deeply about things that matter to you, because ‘W.’ donates so much to charity. You’re good with your hands, you’re good with your mouth. I’ve never fucked someone as good as you, but that’s not why I want to stay.” My voice cracks. “I like the way you give me baths. I like the way you lie beside me.”
His face twists, and he’s out of the tub before I can draw another breath.
“You don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about,” he says as he stands there, dripping on the bathroom floor.
“So tell me.”
But he’s already gone.
CHAPTER EIGHT
RED
I jump out of the bath and wrap a towel around myself. The cuts sting, but I rush after him anyway.
I hurry into the bedroom, driven by the need to know what’s going on. Who was that man who tied me in the tree house? He told me his partners had killed Race. Who are his partners, and how did Race escape them? Why were they so sure Race killed his wife? And are there any more bad guys wandering around the island, waiting for us?
As soon as I step into the bedroom, I hear his voice. He’s standing nude in the open space between the bedroom and the kitchen. He’s got his body angled sideways, so I have a left side view of his beautiful, masculine profile. I realize his right hand is raised. He’s holding a phone.
“Bob?” he says.
I watch his shoulders stiffen. “Yes, I’m his brother.” Whatever they’re telling him isn’t good. He’s frozen, unmoving, unbreathing, until he growls, “He what? ...Bullshit! Bob doesn’t even take goddamned Aleve!” He goes even stiffer, as if he’s coiling right before punching someone in the face. “Where is he now?”
He groans a curse, then shouts, “Goddamnit!”
He hurls his cell phone, the movement so swift that for a second I don’t see where he threw it. It bounces to the floor in pieces as he stalks into the kitchen. I find him leaning his arms against the sink, his head hanging down between them. He’s breathing hard.
“Race…” I touch his arm, and he flinches.
“I’m sorry.” I pull my hand back, wrap both arms around myself.
“You think I need your help?” He turns the full force of those black eyes on me, and everything inside of me goes still. “Red, you’re nothing to me. Just a fuck. You need to call your fr
iend. Have her meet you somewhere in Charleston. Tell her it’s urgent. I can get you there somehow, and then you go—and don’t look back.”
I blink at him, feeling totally confused. In the same breath he says I’m just a fuck, he’s urging me to safety. I’m not sure what to think, but my stomach hurts. I wish I’d never come here.
“I’m not just going to go.” I want to understand things first. I want to feel a sense of closure.
Maybe that’s stupid. It’s not like I’m in love with him. I’ve spent very little time here, but I’ve lain in his arms, and I’ve felt safe. For the first time in years, I felt safe and sheltered here. Taken care of. I feel…something for him.
“I can’t just leave you here. I’d worry, Race.”
“I don’t give a shit.”
I remember, when we first met on the dock, how important it was to him that I give him the island. How important his privacy. I have a terrible hunch that it was me who somehow led the bad guys here—and even if I do leave in a few minutes, I want to understand what’s going on first.
“Cookie’s family is still after you, aren’t they? They think you did it.”
He shakes his head. Pinches his nose. “I’m not going to talk about this with you.”
And—finally—the disdain on his face flips my anger switch. “Oh yeah? You’re not?” I drop the towel and gesture at myself. “You don’t think you kind of owe me?”
He shakes his head. “I don’t owe you anything.”
*
WOLFE
It isn’t true. I do owe her, of course. I owe Red anything she asks of me. But the best I can do for her is get her out of here, and be sure when she leaves, she doesn’t take with her any information that could put her in danger. Already, I’m scared shitless I won’t be able to protect her. It’s unlikely, I think, that Linn and his motley crew would go after her once she gets back to her life, but I don’t know that. I know nothing.
Someone took Bob out. He’s in the hospital, in the ICU, after overdosing on cocaine. Which means someone set him up. Someone found out Bob knew where I was and monitored his phones or something. And if someone got to me through Bob, then nothing is secure.
Maybe today didn’t involve Smythson, but eventually it may. I’m a walking liability, because I know what really happened that night at Paige’s place.
I look at Red, standing nude in front of me. She’s pale and red-eyed. Her hair is matted all around her face. Her lips look chapped and raw. Because of me.
I’ve got to get her out of here.
“I don’t owe you anything,” I say again. I step over to her, clamp my hand down on her shoulder, the way my father liked to do when we were socializing. I know from experience that it doesn’t feel good to be steered around like cattle, and that’s why I’m doing it. I want to make her feel insignificant. To hurt her, so she’ll fucking go.
I steer her toward the door, tightening my fingers on her shoulder as we move. “What will it take, Red? How can I get rid of you?”
She looks up at me, and the confusion in her eyes almost breaks me. Her lips quiver, but she presses them together quickly. “I don’t know,” she whispers.
She’s looking at me in shock. Like I’ve crossed over to the dark side. It’s so preposterous. So amazing that she ever thought me anything but.
Her naiveté makes me fear for her. I curl my lip and aim all the revulsion I feel for myself at her.
“Do you want to be used? Do you want to be treated like a fuck doll? It was fun and games before, but games are over, Red. If you stay with me, I’ll fuck you hard and mean. I’ll make you regret it.”
She takes a few shallow breaths, and I can see her thinking. Finally becoming afraid of me, or feeling tempted to make another dangerous decision—one like her ill-fated ocean swim?
She looks at the door. At my phone, shattered on the hardwood. And then she looks at me.
*
RED
I stand there with my arm wrapped around my waist, waiting to feel trepidation. Waiting to feel the urge to run. I feel neither. I look back up at him, consumed by that same feeling from the rocks yesterday. Right before I slipped into the water. Only this time, it’s stronger. This time, I’m diving in.
“I want you, Race. I have no idea why. Maybe I’m crazy. But when I think of leaving right now, I feel like I’d never stop looking back. So you want to fuck me?” I step toward the bedroom and curl my finger at him. “Come fuck me.”
For a bare second, his mouth softens, and my heart lifts. Then his lips flatten, and he closes the distance between us. He yanks the towel off me and shoves me against the side of the bed. He’s already hard—pressing against me as he takes my face in both his hands and fits his hot mouth over mine.
“Red,” he breathes. “What’s wrong with you?”
I bite him, and he growls, and then it’s tongues dancing. Stroking. Teeth and tongues and hands and his arms under my ass, his arms around my back. He’s got me on the bed, my legs spread wide. He drapes his body in between them and kisses up my belly, to my breasts.
“I’m sorry,” he murmurs into my neck. His fingers spread my pussy open, plunge inside.
“For what?” I breathe.
He’s straddling my legs now, moving gently over me. He wrenches his lips off my throat and looks into my eyes. “Do you want to stop?”
His thumb rubs over my clit, while two of his fingers scissor inside of me. I clench around them.
“No,” I gasp. “Don’t stop!”
He drops his head back down, tracing his tongue down my throat, along my collar bone, and down to my breasts, where he sucks hard and rhythmic as his fingers plunge still deeper.
“Oh yes! Yes!”
“Fuck doll wants to be filled up?”
I bite my lip and nod. I clench around his fingers.
He grins at me as he takes himself in hand and presses his head against my entrance. His cock pushes into me and I grunt, spreading my legs wider for him. I grab at his hips—the skin so creamy smooth—and he pinches my nipple.
“Tell me you like it, Red.”
I moan.
He rocks his hips back, pulling out so only the big, round head of him fills me, putting pressure at my entrance. Then he plunges in with vengeance.
“Oh!”
“My fuck doll.”
He draws slowly out again, and I moan.
Another sweet punch and he’s buried to the hilt. “Feel me inside you. You’re mine, baby.”
In and then out, slam in, inch out. And as he inches out, I lift my hips to him. My cunt is desperate for him. I want nothing more than to be filled so deep I can’t walk for a week.
I lift my hips like an obedient fuck doll, and he reads my mind. He licks his finger, then spreads my cheeks apart and teases my back entrance with my slickness. He pushes his way in, and I quiver around him. He starts stroking, gliding in and out. I’m groaning loudly.
Two fingers of his left hand tug and twist my nipples.
“Race! Oh Race!”
“Come for me. Now.” He pushes every inch of his cock into me. Then he grabs my elbows. Using the leverage of my body, he jerks himself out, then punches in.
I gasp, then groan, then shout my orgasm. I’m creaming all over him, wrapping one leg around his hip.
“Never…stop,” I murmur, only half coherent.
He answers with a quick twist of the finger in my ass.
He angles his body so he’s leaning down close to me. His hips work just as fast as before, maybe faster, pounding the breath out of me.
He stretches my ass, and a second finger slides inside.
I can feel every line of his cock inside my pussy—the plump head, the long, thick shaft. I can feel his big balls slapping my taint, and I yearn to suck them into my mouth.
“You’re going to come again now,” he commands.
I’m so slick; he’s thrusting fast, fast, fast.
His mouth on my breast, fingers in my ass, cock in my p
ussy. This is everything I need. Everything my life lacked before meeting him. For the first time in years, I feel as if I’m actually alive. And I’ll do anything to keep this.
As I come again, my eyes pop open—just in time to see his face go slack. He jerks out in one smooth movement and spews all over my belly.