When the two had come back to Safe Haven Saturday night, they had attempted to cause trouble again. They had been twice as pissed when I had kicked their asses for the second time. But it was Mel who had really changed their attitude about wanting to come back to Safe Haven. She had stepped on top of Scarface, as she liked to refer to him, or as I preferred, Biker One. There she was, stepping on the guy who was flat on his back with a second bloody nose in as many days, calmly informing him that if he didn’t make restitution for harassing me, I would file charges against him and Biker Two, or Lefty, as she liked to call the guy with the broken arm.
Restitution included cleaning every inch of the bar until Mel was satisfied. Mel was like a drill sergeant when it came to cleaning.
My face hurt from laughing and grinning by the time I got off the phone. I hadn’t laughed so much in five years.
And it was all because Kieran Stone had opened up something deep inside of me.
***
“Chinese?” I sniffed the cartons, my mouth watering at the aroma of honey chicken, noodles, fried rice, sweet and sour chicken, and pepper steak. Stone had found my weakness without even trying.
He laughed as he dropped down beside me on the floor in front of my television, the coffee table acting as our dinner table. I groaned, lost in the flavors of my favorite dishes with the first bite. “Whoa! To look at you, someone would never know that you like to eat so heartily.”
I dropped my chopsticks into the carton of noodles and wiped my mouth with a napkin. “I’m usually a health freak when it comes to what I eat,” I admitted. “But Chinese is my kryptonite.”
Those steel gray eyes darkened in a way that had my heart stuttering. “I will remember that,” he murmured as he picked up his own chopsticks and stuck a dumpling in his mouth. “This is a nice place you have here,” he commented as he glanced around. “It has a warm, welcoming feel to it. Just like you, once you get through those walls you keep up and under heavy guard.”
“I have my reasons,” I mumbled as I grabbed the remote and began channel surfing. “What do you like to watch?”
“Anything is fine with me as long as it doesn’t have to do with MMA. I’m a little fried right now.” He was really digging into his food, eating like he hadn’t had a meal in days. But I had noticed the night before that was how he normally ate. When a guy was as big as Stone, burned as many calories as he did with his workouts and training regimens, he was always hungry. It was kind of adorable, actually. And he wasn’t a pig about it either. Some guys would be making noises, slurping their noodles, and talking with their mouths full. I had seen it plenty of times at the gym or in restaurants.
“What?” he asked when he realized I was staring at him.
I smiled and just shook my head. “You’re kind of cute.”
“I try, babe.” He gave me a wink before turning back to his food. The next hour was filled with us enjoying our dinner and each other’s company. We watched an old Cary Grant movie because I was a geek when it came to old black-and-white movies, especially ones with Cary in them.
Kieran Stone had me laughing and more at ease than I had been in what felt like a lifetime. He sat close without crowding me, which touched something deep inside. He was really going to take things slow with me, just as he had promised the night before. My trust in him grew with that knowledge.
“As much as I like the makeup, I have to admit, the you underneath it really is more beautiful than words can describe,” he murmured, giving my makeup-free face a close appraisal. “And I love it when you smile. That dimple is such a tease.”
I found that I was sitting closer to him than I had been earlier in the evening. Only an inch or so separated us, and I was leaning toward him. “The makeup is my shield.” I reached out without thinking about it and brushed a piece of fuzz off his black shirt. “It keeps people out.”
“And you locked up deep inside,” he finished for me. “I understand that. I just wondered why you felt you needed to keep everyone out.”
“Because I have trust issues.” He rolled his eyes at the obvious statement, and I sighed. “It isn’t a pretty story, Stone. I didn’t have the happy family that you do. My parents weren’t like yours.”
His eyes narrowed, but he reached over and gently skimmed those magical fingers down my cheek. For once, I didn’t flinch at the first contact. “Tell me,” he murmured, and my heart clenched, making that freshly awakened muscle deep down inside ache.
I was trapped in his gaze, and I found comfort in his eyes as I opened my mouth. “My father died when I was young. I don’t remember much about him. Only that he would sometimes read me a story on the rare occasions he was home in time to tuck me in. Like Greg, he was a manic workaholic. So when he died, I don’t really remember crying all that much. It’s hard to miss something that wasn’t really in your life anyway.”
“How old were you when he died?”
“Seven.” I shrugged. “When he died, Greg promised to take care of my mother and me. He managed my inheritance, and he gave my mother a monthly allowance for herself and another as a kind of child support for me.” My body temperature dropped a little at the thought of my mother. “My mother sent me away to boarding school when I was nine. Switzerland.”
“What?”
I gave him a small smile. “By that time, I was more than happy to be as far away from her as possible. She had started using drugs and drinking heavily. Nothing too hard at first. But I can remember the prescription bottles lying half empty on the dining room table. Her room smelling of weed. The discarded liquor bottles littering the floor all through the house.” I shrugged again. “Our housekeeper tried to clean it up so that I wasn’t exposed to it. But Sharon worked faster at dirtying everything up than poor Petra could clean it.”
“Did you like boarding school?” His tone was a little hoarse, as if he was finding it hard to take in my story.
“I excelled at boarding school. I was top of my class. If I had continued on there, I could have graduated a year early. A few prestigious universities were already trying to entice me to attend.” I shook my head, thinking of what my life could have been like if I had stayed on at boarding school.
“Why didn’t you?”
My body temperature dropped a few more degrees, and I wrapped my arms around myself to keep what little heat I still had locked in. “My mother got married. Stephen Thorne, I’m sure you have heard of him?” He nodded because everyone knew who Stephen Thorne was. The man I had dubbed “The Pervert” was a hotshot in the financial world. He was known for having the golden touch when it came to deciding what to buy, when to sell, and when to buy more, more, more. I happened to know that he had access to a lot of inside information. Otherwise, he would just be like any other stockbroker.
“Sharon married him, and he convinced her that I was better off going to some private prep school in New York.”
Stone raised a brow. “You don’t like your stepfather? He has been very generous over the last few years with donations to Make-A-Wish and Feeding America.”
I laughed, although it held very little humor. “Yeah, well, it’s hard to like the man who was attempting to rape me on an almost daily basis, generous contributor to charity or not.”
six
I watched the emotions cross Stone’s face. Shock, disbelief, followed immediately by anger, white-hot rage, and something else.
I should have been frightened, but something told me I was safer with Kieran Stone than I had ever been with anyone else in my life. Even though he made a career out of pulverizing men on a regular basis, I knew he would never raise a hand to me. He reached for me, and I went willingly into his arms.
He was trembling as he held me against his chest. “He touched you?” His voice was dark and raspy, full of his need to damage something, but still, his touch was gentle on me.
The images of The Pervert with his hands on me… In me … Touching, squeezing … My gag reflex made me want to retch, and I swallowed a
few times before I had it under control again. “Yes,” I whispered.
Another tremble, this time so strong it made me shiver. “Did he…?” His voice caught on the next words, and I spared him from having to speak them out loud, even if they were rolling around in his brain.
“He never raped me. Not like you think.” I buried my face in his chest, getting lost in the feel of all of his muscles surrounding me, making me feel safe and protected. “But he did… I’m still a virgin, except there isn’t anything there to prove it.”
His arms tightened around me. “So that’s why you ran away?”
I took a few deep breaths to calm my nerves; getting used to being so close was hard. It was still a little panic-inducing for me. “At first, I tried to tell my mother what was going on,” I told him. “But she was so lost in her drugs, which had moved on from prescriptions to coke, that she couldn’t have cared less. Then I reached out to Greg, but I just kept getting his secretary, who said that he would call me back as soon as he had a free minute. Once, I tried to tell a teacher, but Stephen convinced her that I was just emotionally unstable from the changes going on in my life. Then, by chance, I found out he was scared of the Goth kids. That’s when I started wearing the makeup. It kept him at arm’s length for a while.”
I pulled back a little. The images from that last week at home were too emotionally disturbing for me to be so close to Stone. “Then one night I forgot to lock my bedroom door. I fell asleep studying, and the next thing I knew, he was in bed with me. Touching me…” I gagged at the memory and pushed away from Stone, needing distance to keep the panic attack at bay. “I screamed and screamed. I screamed so loud that my throat ached for days. The housekeeper, Petra, she came running from the other side of the house. She saw what was going on, but she was fired the next day.” I raked my fingers through my hair. “And I knew then and there that I had to go.”
I stood and faced him, a small but tight smile touching my lips. “Eventually, I ended up here, and Mel took me in. She helped me get my GED and gave me a job. And when she finally coaxed my reasons for running away out of me, she took me to my first self-defense class so I would never have to feel so helpless again.”
The rage was still there in his eyes, but there was a smile on his lips for me. “Mel seems like a special person. I’m glad you found her.”
“She’s the mom I always needed. And because of her past, she didn’t look down on me for running away from my problems, or my makeup.” I shrugged. “She’s my family now. Not Greg or my mother.”
“I can understand that. Family isn’t always blood. It’s who is there for you when you really need them.” He reached for my hand and tugged me toward him again. I went willingly, needing his arms around me. “You’re so strong, Reese. Stronger than most people would be in such a situation.”
His eyes were intense, and I could see the pulse throbbing at the base of his throat. Being this close, knowing instinctively that he wouldn’t hurt me, was helping push all my fears to the back of my mind. All I could see, think, feel…was him. “Stone…”
“Yes, baby?” His gaze was on my lips, seeming dazed, mesmerized.
“Will…” I swallowed hard, both nervous and excited at once. “Will you kiss me, Stone?”
A shiver wracked his body, and I could see the same need I was feeling in those incredible gray eyes of his. “You think you’re ready for that?” he breathed, his head drifting closer until I could smell his sweet, warm breath. “Are you sure?”
“I trust you,” I told him honestly. “And I want to kiss you.” The last was a soft whisper, but he heard me.
His lips gently brushed mine, and my heart stuttered. The next touch was so careful, so incredibly gentle that it brought tears to my eyes, and I reached for him. All my fears, my insecurities disappeared with the taste of this amazing man on my tongue. I opened my mouth for him, and his tongue ventured inside. But as the kiss went on and on, he never rushed it, was never less than gentle, even as I felt his body shake with the need to take things faster.
When at last he lifted his head, he was breathless. Resting his forehead against mine, he just held me for a long moment. “You taste like heaven,” he breathed. “I’m afraid I’ll get addicted to just your taste alone if I’m not careful.”
“Is that a bad thing?” I murmured.
“No. Just something different for me.” His lips brushed across my jaw. “The way you make me feel… I have never felt anything so intense in my life.”
His words, along with the soft kisses across my jaw, were making me melt in a way I never thought I could or would before. I had always considered myself cold, frigid when it came to romance and sexual arousal. But now I realized I had just been waiting on Kieran Stone.
He held me for over an hour, giving me a gentle kiss across my lips from time to time, skimming his fingers down my neck and arms. He told me more stories about his family, and I felt like I had known him for years by the time his watch beeped. With a curse, he stood and pulled me with him. “It’s eleven.” He grimaced. “And I have to be up early. I would love to stay, baby. But I have to stick to my normal schedule as much as possible until the fight.”
I didn’t want him to go. I wanted to continue the night as we had for the last hour, which had gone by way too fast. But I understood his need to keep to his schedule. I respected it and him for it. But my chest still ached as I walked him to the door.
He turned in the doorway and lowered his head to give me a long, lingering kiss. I melted into him, kissing him back. His tongue teased mine, and I moaned, wanting more but unable to ask for it. “Come spar with me tomorrow,” he offered as he lifted his head and grinned down at me. “I promise not to kick your beautiful ass too much.”
I laughed out loud at that. “You can try, big guy.” Unable to resist, I stood on tiptoe and brushed a quick kiss across his lips. “I’ll see you tomorrow. And we will see whose ass gets kicked.”
***
The gym was empty when I walked inside. Empty except for the six men in the back, all surrounding a few red mats laid out for sparring practice. Two of the men were in padded body armor—headgear, chest protector, and groin gear. They were all decently muscular, but Kieran stood out among them if not in height then in body mass and a sense of confidence that drew my gaze like a magnet.
I walked past the treadmills and other machines, watching the men as they joked and shoved each other good-naturedly. It wasn’t until I was just a few feet away that one of the men noticed me and gave a wolf whistle. “Hello, hotness,” he greeted.
I narrowed my eyes on the guy. Taller than Stone by few inches, with a head that was covered in ink instead of hair. His right brow was pierced and so were his nipples, something that was easily seen because he was shirtless, showing me that his abs were well-sculpted and hard. As a whole package, he was good-looking, but I was left without the melting feeling Kieran inspired.
“Reese!” Stone pushed the taller guy out of his way and lifted me into a gentle hug that belied his superior strength.
I gave him a shy smile when he put me down. “Sorry I’m late. I had a few things to deal with back at Safe Haven.” A shipment of liquor had arrived hours earlier than expected, and it had taken twice as long to deal with because half the items in my order had been wrong. My supplier was in deep trouble with me, to say the least.
“I’m just happy you could come.” He took my hand and pulled me into the middle of the five other men. “Reese, this is my crew. The rude dude you just met is Jake. He’s my manager and promoter. Over there are the spar twins. Gage is in the red, his brother Simon in the black. They let me beat them up most days.” He grinned down at me in such an adorable way that a light giggle escaped me.
The sound surprised us both. Me because I never giggled. Him because he liked the sound and wanted to hear it again. The look he gave me said just that.
He cleared his throat and turned toward the last two of the five men. “Mason is my coach. He’s
the best mixed martial arts trainer this side of the globe.” Mason was about five ten with crew-cut, dark hair and amused hazel eyes. He was lean but muscular, looking exactly like what I imagined a coach should look like.
“Maybe I will introduce you to my martial arts instructor and let you compare notes,” I told Mason as I shook his proffered hand. “Maddox has taught me everything I know.”
Mason grinned, his hazel eyes dancing with interest as they skimmed over me. “Bring him tomorrow. It would be my pleasure to take some notes from him.”
“And it would be my pleasure to rearrange your face,” Stone muttered as he pushed his coach away. “Reese, this is Corbin.” He introduced the six-five beast of a man with coffee eyes and perfect caramel skin. He looked like he was a year or so younger than me, but I couldn’t be sure. The muscles made him look older. “I guess you could say that Corbin is my protégé. I’m sponsoring him in the next amateur cage battles in Vegas.”
Introductions over, Stone took my gym bag from me and tossed it away from the mats. “Okay, guys, enough fooling around. Simon, get Reese some gear.”
“No, Simon.” I stopped the man when he turned to do just that. “Just a mouthpiece, please.”
Stone shook his head. “No. No way. If you’re going to spar with us, you need more than that. We get rough, Reese. You could get hurt.”
I surprised myself by cupping his jaw, but the action felt right. His eyes closed for a second, as if he were savoring my touch. Then I patted his cheek roughly. “Don’t worry about me, Stone. I’m a big girl. A little rough play isn’t going to dent me.”
He opened his mouth to protest again, but I turned away from him. “So, Simon—” I took the new mouthpiece that he offered me “—want to go a few rounds?”
He grinned. “Oh, yeah.”
“Simon!” Stone’s tone was menacing.