“And then you kissed me. You kissed me and the focus in my life changed. I’d been reacting and surviving. Building a life where I was in total control. And you came along and kissed me senseless and cooked me brunch and made me realize there was more than reacting.
“And then my life began to bloom. This art project and you and work and just so many things. Opening up. My world got larger and I wasn’t just looking at surviving anymore. I wasn’t just reacting. I was living.”
She could tell he wanted to interrupt her a few times. That he’d definitely wanted to reach out and hold her. But he held back knowing she had to speak on her own or she’d lose her nerve.
“I feel safe when you’re around. When you’re with me. I like being at your house. I don’t feel comfortable in a lot of places and yet I’ve taken naps on your couch. I like the way my skin smells after you sleep next to me all night. In short you changed everything for me.
“Tonight my fear was that your family would be hurt. That my father would hurt you all to get to me. To make me submit. My fears were so much bigger because they included the loss of this thing I didn’t know I needed and now that I have it I don’t think I could get by without it. I know I don’t want to. I’ve had Maybe most of my life. But you, Vic? You’re my family too. More? You’re my place to belong and I will fight like hell to protect it.”
A rough cry came from him as he moved close and pulled her into his arms. “My beautiful, beautiful Rachel. You continue to surprise and move me. I was just this happy-go-lucky guy and you came along and saw me as a man. A man worthy of a woman like you. I was made to be your safe space.”
She absorbed his warmth, the steady beat of his heart and the strength of the arms around her.
He wasn’t scared. He wasn’t going to walk away and leave her alone. He would get in her business and try to be bossy. He’d be infuriatingly charming as he did it too.
Underneath the charm was a will as tough as hers. A heart unlike any she’d ever known. He was patient and funny and great in bed. But he was a man. Her man and being with him was fun and satisfying, but it meant she had to be the same kind of partner to him. It would take work and commitment and drive.
Never in her life had she been more sure about something. He was it for her.
She squirmed until he loosened his hold and when he did, she moved, shifting so she could swing around and straddle his lap, facing him.
Emotion was so bare on his face it brought her to a halt for a moment. She cupped his face in her hands and kissed him. Softly at first, just little nips of taste until his hands settled at her hips, yanking her closer.
“Mine,” he told her.
She rolled her hips, grinding herself against him in answer.
He reached out and in two deft moves, grabbed and snapped the front of her pajama shirt open.
A gasp tore from her lips as her skin heated in anticipation of the moment when he slid his palms over her breasts to take their weight.
“I’m so glad you changed into pajamas because I wouldn’t have ripped that pretty dress you had on earlier,” he said right before he bent to brush his lips over the curve of each breast.
She was glad too.
Even more glad when he flicked his thumbs from side to side over her nipples.
Her toes had been pointed so hard she got a cramp in her calf when he nuzzled against her, taking a nipple between his teeth.
“I don’t want slow and tortuous,” she managed to say.
He pulled back with a pop that sent a shiver through her. “Is that so? What do you want then?”
Leaning in, she pressed her body to his and said in his ear, “I want you to fuck me hard and fast and right now.”
He snarled a curse and moved so quickly she was already on her back on the bed as he got out of his clothes, watching her so intently it was hard to find the coordination necessary to get the rest of hers off.
His cock was hard and fierce and it gave her a thrill to recall just how good he was with it. It should have shocked her, the depth of her greed for him. It should have scared her. It had scared her.
There he was in her bedroom so big and strong and naked and erect and tatted and pierced and all hers.
All those jagged parts inside seemed to fit against his, clicking into place.
“Don’t give me that look. You have some fucking to do,” she told him as he raked his gaze over her like he was going to eat her up. Which normally she happily endorsed. But she knew what she wanted and it was to be full of him.
“I’ll get to it. I have other plans.”
“You always say that and then you go down on me and I lose all sense. Plan to fuck me. Come on. You know you want to.”
He looked like he was prepared to put up a fight until she slid her hands all over her upper body and let one of her thighs fall open.
She wanted to laugh with joy when he snarled a curse and pretty much leaped on her.
“You’d better have condoms because I don’t know if I’ve got any in my pants.”
“I don’t know what kind of man with a big old cock doesn’t have condoms when his gal is ready to fuck all the time,” she teased him as she stretched to pull one from her side table drawer.
“Just another quality to love about you.” He waggled his brows.
“I like your priorities,” she said, the last bit ending on a bit of a squeal as he settled on his side and grabbed one of her legs, pulling her to him.
She loved that he had the strength to do that so easily. Something she thought she’d never find attractive. Apparently it just took the right big strong dude to do the trick.
With her flat on her back, he pulled her legs up over his hip and entered her that way. That angle enabled him to get deep and left her sort of delightfully helpless to do much more than get fucked.
It was exactly what she needed.
She reached up over her head, grasping the side of the mattress for purchase so she could push back at least. That and keep herself from getting thrust right off the bed.
Each time he thrust all the way in, it sent her breasts bouncing. His gaze got caught up each time it happened and it only made her love him more.
“I love to look at you this way. Stretched out, all your ink and skin there for me to see and touch as much as possible. Your muscles flexing. Long and tall and curvy in all the right places,” he murmured as he placed a flattened palm against her lower belly and pressed slightly.
That did incredible things to her clit as it also made her tighten around him. “That works,” she wheezed out.
His laugh, damn, his laugh was so dark and dirty it sent as much of a shiver through her as when he physically touched her.
“I’m here to serve,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, utterly genuinely. Some people’s boyfriends made sure they had gas in the car. Hers made her come so hard she saw stars.
And that was before he slid his hand down enough so his thumb brushed over her clit and sent every last thought skittering from her brain.
* * *
VIC WANTED TO crow with triumph when her eyes glazed over. Sex drunk. He loved to make her that way. To provide so much pleasure she went pliant. Around his cock, her body tightened around him, her inner muscles fluttering as they did when climax was near.
He hummed his satisfaction as he also focused on not coming. Not yet. No matter how good she felt, no matter how sexy and raw her demand he fuck her was. His personal rule was that her orgasm came first.
Not as if that was a chore. Especially after all the things she’d said to him earlier that night. He may have jumped the gun on his timeline for telling her he loved her, but after everything she’d told him it was clear she loved him too.
And with everything that’d happened after he’d told her, he hoped that little bit of knowledge helped her t
hrough what was obviously distressing. She’d gone into that confrontation with her father knowing he loved her. Like armor.
He liked that. His love being her protection from all the crap life might hurl her way.
She took a shaky breath as she arched her back, coming in a hot rush that was so good he felt it all the way to his toes.
This was his forever. She was his forever. That was all he thought as orgasm claimed him.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SHE HADN’T FELT this shy around a client since her earliest days tattooing. But when Vic slid that damned shirt free from his body and all those taut muscles, all that skin she had been delightfully able to grope of late, she realized how much it meant to her to give him exactly what he wanted and it wasn’t just about ink.
It was more. His opinion mattered. The way he felt where she was concerned mattered. She was getting used to it. To the way he’d become central to her life. To being concerned about his well-being.
He turned, catching her looking at his body like she was going to lick him and he grinned, leaning down to kiss her right in the middle of the shop and all she could do was blush and barely manage not to jump him right then and there.
They were alone in the shop because early mornings were a time when he could be there around his work schedule and she liked having him all to herself. Something she was freely able to admit to herself by that point.
“Let me get this placed,” she said, indicating the transfer she’d made of her design. Sage and birds. A blue jay, wings expanded with a yellow warbler perched in the shelter they made. “Show me exactly where.”
He stood in front of her, the heat from his bare torso blanketing her. He addled her and it was pretty delicious.
“Perfect,” he said, looking at the spot from a few angles.
No lie there.
“Straddle the chair for this part. We’ll go an hour and see where things stand.” She’d already told him a piece as big as the one he wanted with color would take more than one session.
“Your wish is my command. You know I’m high-tolerance.” He smirked at her and though it sent a rush of warmth through her, it also relaxed her. Eased that shyness some.
Outlining always felt like a ritual to her. Like the first steps in whatever magic the perfect tattoo came with. That repeated movement, the hum of the tattoo machine, the scent of ink and antiseptic married with the spice of Vic’s beard product.
Her hands on him shouldn’t have given her such a thrill. She gave tattoos every day, it wasn’t as if it was novel to have hands on skin. But this was Vic. And it changed everything.
Sage and birds, he’d said. The sage was for home. The birds too, he’d implied without saying explicitly.
“I had a dream about you last night,” he murmured, breaking her free from her thoughts.
“Yeah? Did we do the sexytimes?”
He snorted, but managed to stay still so she kept working.
“It was about birds. And cages. Sometimes I think it takes my subconscious to figure you out. Do you ever want to talk about it? You don’t have to. You’ve already told me a lot. I just...it’s a thing you went through and I’m trying to figure out if I’m doing the boyfriend thing right.”
“Doing the boyfriend thing right? What do you mean? You’re pretty awesome in that department.”
“I want you to know you can always talk to me. And I’m here for you to talk to. I won’t judge you. You’re safe with me,” he said quietly and her heart squeezed a little.
“I am safe with you. I never doubt that. I told you I made a mistake. A stupid professional error and that’s when he took me. His house, which I didn’t know at first, was in the middle of the woods. I don’t really remember the physical stuff that happened. I mean, I can recall it, but I try not to focus on that.
“But what I really remember, what sticks with me even though I wish it hadn’t was the way I felt. Caged, yes, but more I had no ability to do my job. I could not save those women, the ones he killed while I was there.”
“Did he... Never mind.”
She knew what he meant. “It’s okay. He didn’t rape me. Not that way. I was different for him. He consumed those others. He used them and hurt them and then when they were empty he threw them out and started on a new victim. He collected me. I was a symbol of his power. He’d gotten the drop on me. He had some sort of weird competition with me as I’d been tracking him.”
He’d made her watch. Made her listen. Knowing her helplessness would be a form of torture that was designed to weaken her. Break her.
“But you won. In the end, you won,” Vic said.
Over the years since she’d gotten free from that basement, she’d heard similar commentary but never once had it felt like it had when Vic said it. Vic understood that the win came with a loss she was still processing to that day. But that she’d endured and that was a triumph. He knew her.
She kept her focus on the lines as she continued, letting the feel of him remind her she was miles away, years away, a lifetime away from that place.
“When I woke up in the hospital I knew I would never go back to law enforcement. I could not turn it off. The part of me that was trained to be a special agent kept running in the background. No matter how hard I didn’t want to hear it and think about it I was still cataloging things. Still building the case. That focus kept me alive. Stopped me from shattering into a million pieces.”
“But you didn’t want it anymore. That thing that would always be tainted by what happened in that basement.”
How did he always get her so well? And how did she get so damned lucky?
“Yeah. Pretty much. My brain was trained to act in a certain way. It’ll always be part of my makeup. I can’t deny that. But what I do now uses a different part of my brain. A different set of tools and it’s better. If that makes sense. The way my life is now, how I spend my time and with who, it enables me to keep living and being happy. Keep me living without constant anxiety and fear.”
If she’d kept her job at the Bureau, the fear would be in her face all day every day. Every case would have something to remind her. Rachel was tired of the fear and in truth, if she’d stayed on it might have eventually broken her.
And she never would have met Vic, which she told him.
“If I could erase that harm for you, even if it meant I never had you in my life I’d do it.”
He would. She knew that without a single doubt. And how could anyone matter more to her than he?
“Well, that’s sweet and all. But I’d rather have you. So. Up on the table on your side so I can get to your ribs easier.”
He stood but didn’t immediately lie on the table. First he cupped her cheeks ever so gently and kissed her. “I love you.”
He really needed to stop being so perfect or she’d just be a mess of hormones all the damned time.
* * *
THREE WEEKS LATER they had just finished a several-mile hike with the sounds of nature all around them as they went.
Birds everywhere. Laughter and chatter from the friends out on the trail. It did make Rachel feel better when they got quieter during the more strenuous parts too.
She hadn’t been out on a trail so remote in years and after the first hour when she’d had a few shaky moments, she’d found herself soothed by the clean air, by the sounds of the trees in the breeze, the flap of wings, the scent of warm tree bark and earth.
It had been like a filter, letting her discharge all the heaviness that had come in the time after that last scene with her father.
After the initial elation had worn off, she’d had to do the difficult job of tracking down the identities of the men who’d been with her father that night. Four in all, as it turned out.
And after she’d left Morris Spacer’s office—the security firm he worked for had been the registered ow
ner of the SUVs from the scene that night—she’d had to ’fess up to her attorney just what was going on.
Attorney-client privilege was pretty nifty, and it gave her someone to lay everything out for. Someone who’d have effective advice on next steps and that sort of thing.
As she’d figured, her aunt Robbie had called after she’d been the recipient of a nastygram from Rachel’s father. He was angry, which wasn’t a surprise to Rachel. But he was boxed in. He had no real options without risking the wrath of his dopey friends.
Worse, he knew it.
He hadn’t called Rachel or Maybe though. And from what Rachel could tell, there’d been no more surveillance of any of them.
She’d set up like she had in the old days. Had anticipated and erected walls on every single avenue her father could have used to escape responsibility and turn the situation to his advantage. He wasn’t better than her. Not a bit. She wanted him to know he was hemmed in. Wanted the sting of it to keep his ass out of their lives if for no other reason than fear that she’d burn his life down and he’d given her all the ammunition.
And at the end, there’d only been one last gambit. One she and Maybe knew was coming.
That had happened just the day prior to the hike, not too very long before she had to leave work to drive up to the hotel with Vic and his friends where they’d stay the night before the hike.
She’d been both dreading and needing that last step to happen and once it had, she’d needed some time to process what she’d heard, said and done.
The miracle of it had been that Vic hadn’t been put off by her need for space to do her thinking. Not that he’d disappeared. Nope, he’d been there at her side. Giving her space, but making sure she knew he was there for the long haul.
Essentially being perfect. Again.
On the trail, he looked at her from time to time. Just keeping an eye on her general state. He seemed to have a trust of her skill level, which was flattering given just how athletic some of his friends were.