43. Coyote
FORTY-THREE
COYOTE
My fierce fighter was broken, her laugh a horrifying echo of the usual one she launched at us on the regular. The despair in the tone, the raw emotion she choked on as each sound was torn from her throat, it destroyed me.
Just like I knew it would.
I could see this coming, knew the devastation she would endure when she realized that her perfect memory was nothing but a sham. I hadn’t wanted her to find out like this.
But I’d been too scared to let the others tell her, either. And I couldn’t find the words, no matter how much I tried.
This was all my fault.
I’d done this to her.
By hiding the truth from her, I had damned us to this emotional trauma, created a vast uncrossable chasm between us. In keeping silent, I set her up for heartbreak from the start.
Perhaps it was destiny; maybe this was how the world had decided she needed to know.
But all it did was hurt me to see her like this.
I turned on the water in the shower and set her on the counter, tugging her upright just enough to slip the straps of her dress off her shoulders.
Her laughter didn’t stop. But when I lifted her chin and stared into her eyes, it was like she couldn’t see me. Like I wasn’t even there.
She looked right through me.
“Ivy,” I choked out, desperate to hear her talk again. Only one of us was allowed to be silent. Only one of us could be a quiet, withdrawn, broody asshole, and that was me.
She didn’t respond, though she did hold still for me as I stripped her dress off her torso, letting it pool around her waist as she laughed and laughed and stared off into the distance over my shoulder.
Still, even broken and unhinged and hollow, she was beautiful. Her shoulders sloped perfectly, collarbone dipping into the hollow of her chest, making me want to put my lips there.
Splotches of blood hit on her skin beneath her dress, and now that I could see them, I felt compelled to check and make sure she wasn’t injured. I found a gash on her left hand, across her palm in a circular pattern, but no other injuries, thankfully. She didn’t cringe away as I poured rubbing alcohol directly on the open wound, searching under the counter for the sewing kit I’d stashed here the last time I got injured on the job.
I wasn’t the best stitcher, but I’d learned when Dingo got stabbed while Doc was out of town on a mission of his own. Between Lilly and myself, we managed to piece him back together, but neither of us had a very steady hand, so we’d set out to learn to do better. After a few lessons with Doc, I could at least stitch in a straight line.
“This might hurt,” I murmured, bending over her palm with a needle in hand, wincing like it was my hand as the metal slipped through her skin like butter, dragging a length of thread through the edges of the wound. I breathed a sigh of relief when the job was over, relieved to not have to hurt her any more than she’d already been hurt.
But she needed to get warm and get clean. There were chunks of what looked like brain matter, for fuck’s sake, clinging to her hair.
“Can you shower on your own?”
All I got in return was more laughter, though it sounded almost hoarse and weak now.
“Ivy, you’re scaring me.”
Still laughter. But her eyes found mine, and they looked almost . . . sad.
Like she knew she was slowly losing her mind, but she couldn’t reach out and grab the brakes in time.
Moving in to kiss her, if only to force her to stop laughing, was less of a conscious decision and more of an instinctual reaction. I would never raise a hand to her, never slap her across the face to snap her out of it. But I couldn’t just stand by and watch her descend into madness.
So I silenced her laughter with my lips.
She froze in my arms, her laughter halted, but the second I pulled away, they changed to whole-body-wracking sobs, dragged from the pits of hell and filled with every negative emotion known to man.
I let her arms wrap around my neck as she finally broke down, her sobs bringing a new sort of sound to the melody of echoes in the room.
For once, I was thankful for the noise-dampening effect of the running water. It allowed her to fall apart without worrying that others would hear her.
“Cry,” I whispered, burying my nose in her wet, tangled hair. “If you need to.”
By the time she’d exhausted herself, the water had grown cold. I turned the knob off as she leaned against the mirror behind her, staring into the paint like it might reveal the secret to happiness or something.
As I turned back to her, those calm, detached eyes turned on me. “Out of hot water?”
I nodded solemnly, suddenly clammed up tight now that she was talking back. Her sigh was so heavy I could practically see it settle in her like a brick in water.
“The thought was nice.” She picked at her dress, seemingly uncaring that it was around her waist. I watched her hands shake as she fumbled with the damn fabric, so I moved to help her, and suddenly, she went still.
I waited for her to speak as her hands settled over mine, stilling my movements. But she said nothing; she just stared at her lap, at the dress we both clung to now.
“Everything alright?”
“No,” she mumbled, a stray tear falling from her eyes. “It’s not.”
“Can I help?” I would do whatever it took to make her happy again. Let her chain me to the back of my own damn bike and drag me to the end of the freeway, leash me, and make me walk through the Guild in front of everyone, even roll in a field of flowers and mud. Whatever she wanted, I’d make it happen.
“You’ve done enough, don’t you think?” Her sobs had quieted and gone, and anger had replaced it.
Anger, I was familiar with.
“I protected you.” Even to my ears, the words were hollow and false. I hadn’t protected her. I protected us— from having to deal with the fallout of a misconception. We should have told her from the beginning. Shouldn’t have hidden the truth. But I was afraid to see her snap.
Afraid to be the reason for her pain.
And I didn’t even know her then.
“I never asked for your protection,” she whispered, her hands gripping the edge of the counter. “I don’t need it.”
“I’m sorry,” I tried again, hoping honesty would change the tide I found myself fighting against.
“Words mean nothing after the damage is done.” Her eyes were cutting, harsh, their light snuffed out by my own fucking mistakes. “And for a man who never speaks, you’ve suddenly developed quite a collection of worthless ones.”
That stung worse than alcohol on an open wound. Worse than stepping on a jellyfish on the beach. Worse than a shock from a taser straight to the bare skin. I yearned to tell her all the things that circled the drain of my mind, but the words got stuck somewhere between my heart and my mouth. And I could never give her what she deserved—someone to whisper sweet nothings in her ear late at night, who made promises and kept them, making her every dream and fantasy come true.
I wasn’t that man. Hell, I was hardly a man.
If she wanted a beast, I could give her that. But expecting more of me was asking to be let down. And the last thing I wanted to do was hurt her more.
I was like a broken record, skipping the same track over and over, unable to change the tempo, unable to adjust the needle of life, unable to reset myself without divine intervention, stuck on the same annoying notes over and over on a deranged loop.
I wanted to be her music, but instead, all I was for her was a scratchy, glitched soundtrack.
And I wish she could know how much I yearned to be more.
Without thought, without hesitation, I lowered my head to hers and pressed my lips to her forehead, closing my eyes as I drank her in. She wasn’t some soft, wilting flower who needed to be put in a glass cage and saved from dying. She was a fighter, a warrior, and she could defend herself.
But even the strongest of warriors needed someone every now and then.
“I belong to you,” I whispered against her temple, hands shaking so badly I had to plant them against the counter to keep myself from backing out. “Tell me what you need.”
“I don’t know what I need,” she grumbled, her voice low. “I can’t even tell up from down now.”
She reached over my shoulder and twisted the knob in the shower, the cold water splashing out to dance across my ankles as I stood there, watching her curiously. Her hands were steady, more than my own, and she shoved me back as she stood, letting her dress fall to the floor as she took off her bra and let it join the rest of her attire.
They splatted against the floor as she dropped them, but she paid it no mind, stepping into the frigid spray of the water without even flinching.
“You’ll get sick,” I tried, worried for her health, but she ignored me. The heaviness in the air settled like a boulder between us, and I might never have managed to climb it to get to her if I didn’t do it now. “Ivy?— ”
“If you’re so worried, then get in here with me,” she snapped, turning her back to me, the water still running a surprising red as it tore chunks of flesh and dried blood from her skin and hair, washing away the last traces of her night down the drain.
I steeled myself and stripped bare, suddenly very, very aware that I’d never been this vulnerable in front of another human in my life. With a deep breath, I stepped under the water, the frigid droplets shocking my system as I swore.
“Fuck.”
Her head tilted slightly as I stepped up behind her, reaching over her shoulder to grab the shampoo. “Too cold for you?”
“No,” I growled, the nearness of her body raising my temperature significantly. Even in this frigid water, my cock twitched in eagerness, wanting to take things further, desperate to make her see me as a man like she saw the others. “Close your eyes.”
My fingers worked into her scalp, hoping to release the tension she’d built up in every muscle in her body. She sagged against me, her body tired and weak, but she kept her footing as I worked the suds into each strand, making sure not a single fleck of tonight’s escapades remained.
When she looked in the mirror, she’d imagine it all a dream.
A bad dream.
Without warning, she turned to face me, her whole body touching mine as she looked up into my eyes, searching for something I couldn’t decipher.
What do you want from me? I wanted to ask her. What do you want to see in my eyes?
And then her hand snaked between us as I rinsed the suds from the back of her hair and grabbed my cock like the neck of a beer bottle.
And stroked it.
The sound that left my lips was less than human. It was downright embarrassing, feral, and unhinged.
No woman had ever put her hands on me like that before. And in that moment, I knew no other woman ever would. Ivy, in one move, one flick of her wrist, possessed me.
Wholly.
Completely.
Indefinitely.
“Ivy,” I gasped, my hands leaving her hair to slam against the wall behind her. “What?—”
“Don’t start talking now, Coyote,” she muttered, her lips turning down in a pout as she held my gaze captive. “All I need from you are sounds.”
A wave of regret washed through me. I didn’t want this to be what defined our relationship on an intimate level. I didn’t want our first time together to be a rushed interlude in the bathroom in the middle of a cold shower while the remnants of her tears burned her delicate skin and the feel of another man lingered in her mind.
“No,” I insisted, reaching down to grab at her wrist, but she slapped me away with her other hand, letting her eyes fall for just a second to take in what she held in her grip.
“Oh,” she murmured, the corners of her mouth twitching slightly. “That’s uh, that’s a lot.”
“I—”
“It’s not a bad thing,” she said, cutting me off with a little smirk. “It just means it’ll be a little harder to do this.”
She sank to her knees in the cold spray of the shower, eye level with my dick now, and licked her lips.
The groan that left me was damn near pathetic.
“Ivy—”
“Shut up and enjoy it,” she commanded, her eyes flitting up to stare me into compliance.
I ran a hand through my hair and swallowed the rest of the hesitation building in me, a part of myself hating the eagerness with which I abandoned what I knew was right in favor of this experience I’d never had before .
She wrapped her hands around it again and stroked it a few times, using the cold runoff to smooth the way and aid her strokes. It took everything in me not to buck into her grip.
And then she giggled and slipped her tongue over the head of my shaft, and I nearly put a hole through the wall.
When her talented tongue swirled around that sensitive head, I thought I was ready for whatever she could give me.
I had never been so wrong in my entire life.
She sucked me into her mouth, her lips wrapping tenderly around my shaft as she moved her hands down toward the base and used one to cup my balls. Her fingernails scratched lightly behind them, and I whimpered like a fucking dog, slamming my head back against the glass shower door as I swore.
Whatever the fuck she was doing now was like sucking the soul from my body through my damned dick. And heavens, but if she stopped, I might lose my mind.
Too soon, though, I felt the familiar sensation of impending orgasm and yanked her off my cock by her hair, immediately regretting the little yelp of pain she let out at the motion.
And then, without a single word, she put her mouth back on me and sucked me dry.
I had never come so hard in my life as I did down her throat. It felt wrong, like I was using her, even though it was she who made the moves, who insisted on taking my seed down her throat like she might die without it. I did none of this, but . . .
It still felt wrong.
I turned the water off and lifted her into my arms. As she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, I carried her out of the bathroom and into my bedroom—my den.
I bypassed the towels, the robes, and the warmth of the enclosed space and dropped her straight on my bed, staring down at her naked figure like she was a sculpture made of ice that might melt into oblivion.
She looked up at me and smiled, tears shining in her eyes. This broken girl was trying so hard to be strong, and the weight of her whole situation fell on me like a ton of bricks.
If she’d been carrying this her whole life, it was no wonder she turned out as jaded as she did.
I crawled up the bed to lay next to her and pulled her into my arms, tugging the blanket over us despite her protests of dampness, cold, and whatever else she was mumbling into my chest. My only goal now was to shield her from the chilly air and give her somewhere safe to hide for a little while.
“Sleep,” I murmured, tucking her head under the blankets as she protested and pushed them back down to her chin.
“What if I don’t want to sleep?”
I sighed. Even now, she fought to keep the upper hand, afraid if she turned over what little power she had, someone would abuse it, abuse her.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I said instead of the thousands of words I wanted to rush out with. I had so much I wanted to say, so much she needed to hear, to know, but now wasn’t the time. Instead, I nudged a knee between her legs, pulling her against me so she could rest her head in the bend of my elbow as we faced each other in the center of my bed.
A place I never wanted her to leave.
“Are you going to fuck me?”
“No,” I said simply, tucking her head under my chin. “Not now.”
“Why?”
“Sleep,” I said instead of answering her question, eager for her to shut up for once. “We can talk later.”
“You never want to talk.”
She had a point, but I wasn’t going to play this game with her. I was done playing the dutiful dog. There was no reason to hide the truth anymore, no reason to play along with the little power dynamic.
“You make me want to.” And with that, I reached out with my free hand, shut off the light next to my bed, and curled around her, making myself a safe space for her to do whatever breaking down she needed to. She could cry, swear, dream, lie awake, and lament the things she’d lost today: her innocence, a hero, the image she’d painted of her whole life.
Whatever she needed, I’d be that for her, for as long as I could. Girls like Ivy never stayed still for long. And it was just a matter of time before she lost what little purpose remained, and she left us.
Or killed us.
I would have almost preferred the latter. At least then it wouldn’t hurt when she broke my heart.