Chapter Thirty
Cash
When Rose dropped the towel and I saw her for the first time, with nothing on to hinder my view, my brain short-circuited.
My eyes didn’t know where to look first. Her perky tits, her slim waist. Her perfect fucking pussy that was hiding under a neatly trimmed patch of dark hair.
I was in sensory overload when she pushed me back and climbed over me.
It was why I let her take control. I wasn’t thinking straight. She wanted the control, and I tried to let her have it. She was skittish when it came to sex, and I chalked it up to inexperience. After all, she’d only turned twenty-one the day before.
But when she leaned over me to push my hands above my head, and her juicy tit hung right in front of my fucking mouth, I lost my mind.
What else could I do? I stuck my tongue out and flicked her nipple before sucking it between my lips.
And when I got a taste of her, I reacted like any other grown man that wanted to fuck his woman.
I flipped us over and looked into her eyes.
I waited for the protest, for the fear to show in her face.
All I saw was a hunger that no doubt matched my own.
And when she wrapped her legs around my waist and lifted her hips against my straining cock, I pulled her nipple back into my mouth and lapped at it.
Her back arched up, encouraging me on. I trailed my lips over her rib cage. I wanted to taste her cunt. Not the result of her orgasm on my fingers the way I did on the mountain. No. I wanted it all.
The feel of her smooth skin as my tongue slid against it. I wanted to flick at her clit until she was writhing beneath me and then fuck her with my tongue.
My fingers found her pussy, and I plunged them into her. “Jesus, Rose, You’re so fucking wet.”
I looked at her face as I slid down the bed. Her expression of pure rapture spurred me on, and I grabbed her knees forcing her wide open to my lust-filled gaze.
She was fucking gorgeous. Pink and wet. Exactly what I was looking for. I snaked my tongue from her ass to her clit, but I wanted more.
My hands slid down her thighs, and I stopped. I pulled back as my hands caressed her skin; I expected the slight feel of raised skin from the tattoos. Her legs were covered in them. What I didn’t expect was the calloused lines hidden beneath.
“What the fuck?”
Her eyes snapped open and the ecstasy I’d seen was quickly replaced with fear and panic. She scrambled back on the bed, tugging at the blanket beneath her.
“What happened to you, Rose?”
“Nothing. It’s nothing.”
“Don’t tell me it’s fucking nothing.” I grabbed her ankle and pulled her back. My hard-on long forgotten by what I feared were scars. I ran my fingertips over the raised flesh and my suspicion was confirmed.
Her thighs were covered in tiny, raised scars invisible among the trailing vines, thorns, and roses tattooed over them.
“Who did this, Rose?”
“Cash, please. Just let me go.”
I pulled her further down the bed until my face hovered over hers. “Who fucking hurt you?”
She turned her head. A single tear slipped from the corner of her eye and rolled over the bridge of her nose. Her eyes were closed, and she refused to look at me.
That was when I knew.
She had hurt herself.
The scratching at her legs. The fake smile. Her telling me everything was quiet when she was with me. It all made fucking sense, and I had missed it. Just like I missed that shit with Rachel.
The headaches, the nausea, not wanting to go outside in the sun. She kept brushing it off and I fucking let her.
Not this fucking time.
“How long?” I gently turned her face to mine. “How long, baby?”
She shook her head, refusing to look at me. Tears ran down her cheeks and pooled on the blanket below her. I gathered her in my arms and kissed the wet trail left by her sadness.
As I pulled her off the bed, her eyes opened, but she refused to turn them my way. “Get dressed, baby.”
I left the room, closing the door gently behind me. I pressed my back against the door and slid to the floor. My hands held my head as I tried to make sense of what I’d learned. What she wouldn’t confess.
Why did she do it?
Was she still doing it?
I pulled my phone from my pocket and dialed my brother’s number. When the call connected, my voice was like gravel as I said, “Brother, I need your old lady in my room. Right fucking now.”
I didn’t wait for an answer. I couldn’t leave her alone. Not without knowing if she was still hurting herself. Opening the door, I looked around the empty room. My eyes focused on the closed bathroom door.
I grabbed the knob and twisted. When it didn’t give, I called out to her. “Rosie, open the door, baby.”
I waited, but there was no answer.
“Open the door or I will bust it fucking down.”
Mellie rushed into my room. She must have been downstairs, because Mimic was right behind her.
“What’s going on? What happened?” she asked.
“Baby, open this fucking door.” I shoved my shoulder into it. Mimic pulled at my arm.
“What the fuck did you do?” he yelled. “Rosebud? Are you ok?”
“No, she’s not fucking ok.” I shoved him aside and stepped back, slamming my boot against the doorknob.
The door slammed open, breaking off the bottom hinges, but it barely registered. Because my woman, my Rose, was sitting on the floor, wedged between the toilet and the wall. A knife in her hand, as blood trickled down the outside of her leg.
“Rosie, baby.” I dropped to my knees in front of her and gently took the knife from her hand. After closing it, I tossed it into the tub. Her head was turned to the side, and I wiped the hair from her face. “Mimic, get the fuck out,” I called.
“No,” he said from the doorway.
I blocked her body with mine and looked over my shoulder. “She’s fucking naked. Get the fuck out of my room, that’s a goddamn order.”
“Cash, here.” Mellie’s voice was soft as she handed me a shirt. She must have dug through my drawers. I pulled it over Rosie’s head, then lifted her from the floor.
Walking out of the bathroom, I laid her on the bed. I looked at Mellie. I didn’t know what she saw on my face, but I knew it scared her. “Fucking fix her.”
“Cash, I don’t know what’s going on. Talk to me.”
I looked at the small woman I had fallen in love with as she lay listlessly on my bed. Her head turned to the wall, her eyes vacant and unseeing.
“I don’t fucking know,” I said, running my hands through my hair. “I think she’s cutting herself. Her thighs are covered in scars.” I kneeled on the floor next to the bed, getting into her line of sight. “Baby, talk to me. Rosie,” I whispered.
Her eyes flickered and I let out the breath I had been holding. She was still here. “I don’t want to talk to her,” she muttered.
“Why, baby? She can help you.”
She shook her head and closed her eyes tight. “No one can help. The monsters are too loud. No one wants me.”
“Baby, I want you.”
“Not now you won’t. I’m broken,” she whispered.
“We’re all a little broken, baby.” I kissed her forehead and sat on the floor, resting my chin on the bed so I could look directly into her eyes.
One hand lay on the top of her head, while the other rubbed up and down her arm.
I needed her to feel me. I needed her to hear me.
“Haizley isn’t the first shrink I’ve seen.
I went to three different ones in three years when I was a kid. ”
A crowd had gathered in the doorway, but I didn’t give a shit. I didn’t care who heard me. As long as Rosie heard me. She was the only person I cared about right now.
“They all told me I was broken. Told me I didn’t know how to feel things.
” I ignored Mellie’s gasp as I continued to talk to Rose.
“When my parents told me I was adopted, they didn’t understand why I wasn’t angry.
Why I didn’t want to ask questions about my birth parents.
So they made me see a shrink. They didn’t believe me either.
When they didn’t get the response they wanted, they all said the same thing.
I was repressing my feelings. That I didn’t know how to express them or some shit.
Instead, I buried them. They were fucking quacks.
“So, when King ordered me to talk to Haizley, I was pissed. I didn’t want to go through that shit again.
It wasn’t until after I met you that I started to open up.
Haizley wasn’t like those other assholes.
She listened to me. She didn’t judge me.
She let me say what I needed to say even when I yelled at her. ”
Rose smiled at that.
“You did that, baby. You’re the reason I started talking to her. You’re the reason I wanted to work through my shit.”
“Cash,” Mellie whispered, and I turned and growled at her. I returned my attention to Rose when Mellie backed away.
“Baby, we’re all a little broken. That’s what life does to us.”
“I’m sorry. It was all just too much. I didn’t want you to know.”
I wiped the tears from her nose. “It’s ok, baby. I love you, Rosie.”
Her eyes widened, and she blinked at me.
“What?”
“Baby, if you can’t feel that, I need to do a better fucking job.” I smiled when she lifted her head.
“You love me? Why?”
“Why? Because you, Rosebud Peterson, are fucking amazing. You’re strong, independent, and courageous.
” When she shook her head, I continued, “Baby, you save women and children for a living. When I threatened to throw you on the ground, you held a knife to my dick.” I lowered my voice.
“You have any idea how fucking hard that made me?” She chuckled, and my heart fucking soared.
“Baby, life shit on you from an early age. You had no control over that. But every time it knocked you down, you got right back up and told it to fuck off. There’s no shame in letting someone help carry the load, baby. ”
“I don’t want Thorne to know.”
“Baby, that ship sailed. He’s so fucking wild to get to you that we’ve had to have Tank sit on him. When he came in here and found me trying to bust that door down, he thought I had done something. He was ready to tear my heart out. He loves you, Rosie.”
She sat up and pulled her knees up to her chin, tugging my T-shirt over her legs. She glanced at the door and when she saw the people standing there, she buried her head in her knees.
I stood up and moved to the door. “Get the fuck out, all of you.” I pushed King out the door, ignoring the questions in his eyes, before I closed it. “Mellie, you can stay.”
“Would you like me to stay, Kytten? Or would you like me to go with the others?”
She shrugged, not really answering. I sat on the bed and pulled her into my lap. “Baby, it’s your decision. But I wish you would talk to Mellie. She can help you work through all this shit that tried to break you.”
“It did break me.”
“No, baby. You’re still fucking here. You’re still fighting. The only difference is, you’re no longer fighting alone.”
This isn’t the end... Cash and Kytten’s story continues in The Monsters Within...