Chapter 42
WILLOW
I wake up the next morning with Ransom’s arm thrown over me, his body tucked in behind mine in the bed.
Everything feels warm and hazy, and I drift in the comfortable space between sleep and waking, letting my eyes stay closed as I breathe deeply.
It takes a few minutes for my brain to fully switch on, and I blink as the events of last night come flooding back to me. All of it plays out in my head in vivid color and sound, and I feel my cheeks flushing just from the memories.
The food, the teasing, the tattoo talk. And then… everything else.
It almost feels like a dream, like something that happened to someone else. But I know it was me. I have the headache from too much booze and not enough water to show for it, and my chest is sore from where Malice tattooed me. And that’s not the only place that’s sore.
When I stretch in the bed, my pussy aches lightly, tender and swollen from the pounding it took last night.
I shift a little and hiss in pain, my body protesting the movement.
It’s a quiet noise, but it’s enough to disturb my bed partner all the same.
He yawns and stretches, and when his arm moves from where it was thrown over me, I feel a little pang of disappointment, missing his touch already.
Ransom rolls me onto my back, going up on one elbow so that he can look down at me. He’s always so handsome like this, with sleep ruffled hair and lines on his cheek from the pillow, and there’s already a smile tucked into the corner of his mouth.
“Are you okay?” he asks, looking me over.
I nod. “Yeah. Just a little tender from… you know.”
His smile grows, and he reaches down, sliding his hand beneath the oversized shirt I’m wearing to cup his palm over the mound of my pussy. He massages it gently, working the outside of it while his middle finger slips between my folds and finds my clit with ease.
He’s not trying to work me up, but the feeling of his hand sliding against me makes my body react immediately, my core getting wet and my nipples going hard and tight.
I take a deep breath, letting the feeling wash over me, and it does do something to ease the achiness a little, even if I am still sore.
“Is that any better?” he asks.
“A little bit. I think it’s just going to take some time. It was…” I blush, glancing away from him. “It was the first time I’ve ever done anything like that.”
Ransom chuckles, dropping his head a bit to skim his nose over my temple. “Honestly, pretty girl? I would never have guessed that if I hadn’t already known. You’re a natural, and you’re fucking stunning when you let yourself go.”
The praise goes to my head, just like it did last night, and I find myself smiling back at Ransom, a giddy feeling expanding inside my chest.
He withdraws his hand from between my legs and brushes my hair back from my face. The strands are still a bit wild and messy from last night, since I haven’t showered. I cleaned up with a wash cloth afterward, but I was too tired to do anything else.
“You know, when you first came to stay with us, we all agreed we weren’t going to fuck you,” he says, running his fingers through a small tangle in my hair.
“Why?” I ask, biting my lower lip.
“We didn’t want to complicate things. We were supposed to be focusing on finding out who was asking questions about Nikolai’s death and keeping you out of that person’s hands. If we’d fucked you, you would have gotten under our skin.”
“I would have been a distraction,” I murmur.
Ransom nods. “Yeah. And you know how we are,” he teases, tugging gently at the lock of my hair. “Very business oriented.”
I snort, but then something occurs to me. “So… why did you and Malice fuck me last night, then? What changed?”
Ransom’s eyes gleam in the early morning light that trickles into the room. “I guess we just realized it was too late for all that. You’re already under our skin. There’s no hiding it anymore. No denying it.”
My heart skips a beat. Hearing him say that does something to me.
I have no idea what’s going to happen now, but it’s nice to know that I’m not the only one who feels…
changed. That I’m not the only one who feels like I’ve been infected by the others.
I’ve affected them too, and that’s something I never expected.
When I first met them, they seemed so larger than life. Like angry gods that strode out of the darkness to wreak havoc and then returned to the shadows. Invulnerable. Untouchable. As if nothing could break through their armor.
But I did.
The three of them may have turned my whole world upside down, but I’ve left my mark here too.
“I’m glad you broke your rule,” I whisper.
Ransom chuckles warmly. “Me too.”
He drops his head to press a kiss to my forehead, then gets up out of bed.
He stretches, and I watch shamelessly, enjoying the way the morning light plays over his skin.
If he’s getting up, I guess I should too, so I drag myself out of bed, wincing a little when my body complains about the movement. I walk gingerly, and Ransom notices.
He considers me for a moment, then strides over, scooping me up into his arms.
I yelp in surprise, throwing my arms around his neck and holding on automatically. “What are you doing?”
“I have an idea. Come on.”
He carries me down the hall to the bathroom, kicks the door closed, and sets me down on the counter. Then he turns the taps on and starts to fill the tub, drawing a bath for me.
“Oh,” I breathe as the warm water sends steam curling through the air.
“This should help,” Ransom tells me, glancing over his shoulder as he kneels down to test the temperature.
Once the tub is full, I slide off the counter and get undressed. I was so wiped out last night that I didn’t even put on my usual pajamas. Ransom gave me one of his shirts to wear, so I went to sleep in that.
Now I peel it off, leaving it on the floor in a heap.
Ransom watches me, his blue-green eyes locked on my body.
Some of that old self-consciousness flares as his gaze tracks over my scars, but it’s nowhere near as bad as it used to be.
I don’t feel the need to cover myself up and hide them away, and when Ransom reaches out to help me into the bathtub, I don’t flinch at his touch.
I settle into the water, and for a second, it’s too hot. But then my body gets used to the temperature, and I let out a soft, contented sigh. The heat feels good on my sore muscles, soaking into my skin and easing the aches that were causing me pain.
“This is really nice,” I murmur, and Ransom smiles.
“Can I join you?”
I glance around at the tub. “Yeah, if there’s enough room.”
“There’s always enough room for a bath with a pretty girl.”
He winks, then strips out of his boxers to get into the tub with me. It’s a tight fit, but we manage to make it work. I scoot forward a little, and he gets in behind me, tucking me between his legs and pulling me back against his chest.
I lean against him, closing my eyes for a moment as steam rises around us, feeling more at peace than I would have thought possible.
For a while, we just soak in silence. There’s the occasional splash of water as one of us shifts position a little, and Ransom starts trailing his wet fingers up and down my arm.
It’s the one with the most scar tissue, so the feeling is a little muted, but even with the dulled sensation, I shiver at his touch.
He grabs a washcloth and some body wash from the shelf behind us and lathers the cloth up, dragging it over my skin as he starts to wash me up.
After everything that happened last night, I should feel absolutely filthy, but there’s no frantic need to get clean.
Ransom is washing dried sweat and cum and whatever else from my skin, but I don’t want to wash it from my memories.
The reality of what happened last night will linger even after this bath is over.
And I’m glad about that.
“I know I already asked you about these,” Ransom says after a while, breaking the silence as he traces the edge of one of my scars. “And if you don’t want to talk about them, you don’t have to. But will you tell me what happened? I want to know.”
I hesitate, the way I usually do when this subject comes up, but none of the usual defensiveness flares. Ransom doesn’t sound disgusted or horrified, just curious, and I relax against him, nodding.
“They’re from burns,” I say, my voice soft. “I got them when I was really little. I was in a fire.”
He lets out a low whistle, running the cloth down my arm and over the worst of the scarring. “Do you remember any of it?”
I shake my head.
“No.” Then I consider it for a moment and add, “Maybe. I dream about fire sometimes. About being trapped in a place filled with heat and smoke. I can never see anything, and I can’t even really breathe or scream for help.
But I don’t know if that’s a real memory from when I was little or just something my brain cooked up from thinking about it so much and wondering what happened. ”
“Maybe a bit of both,” Ransom suggests.
“Maybe,” I reply with a shrug. “But I’ll never know either way.
I don’t know much at all about my life before whatever this accident was.
I wish I did. I wish I knew who my real family was, at least. I assume they died, and that’s how I ended up in the system. But I have no real idea what happened.”
I run my fingers along the scarring on my thigh, trailing them through the soapy water.
“It’s weird,” I continue quietly. “To miss people I never knew. But sometimes I get this pang in my chest.” I draw one wet hand up and touch my chest, right above where Malice tattooed me.
Right where I can feel my heart beating.
“Sometimes I feel this… sadness. This kind of longing. And I know it means I miss them, even though I don’t really know who they were. ”
Ransom is quiet for a beat, then he wraps an arm around me. “I get that.”
I turn a little in his arms, looking up at him curiously. “But didn’t you know your parents?”
He nods. “Yeah, of course I did. I just mean I know what it’s like to miss someone who isn’t here anymore. I miss my mom.”
From the way all the brothers talk about Diana, it makes sense that they still miss her to this day.
But it feels like there’s something else Ransom isn’t telling me.
There’s something behind his eyes that flickers and fades when I peer at him, but I don’t push it.
There are probably hundreds on hundreds of secrets the three of them have, and even if they started telling them to me for some reason, I’d probably never know all of them.
Besides, there’s still an end date on our time together—a moment in the not too distant future when they’ll go back to their lives and I’ll go back to mine, when the forces that pushed us together in the first place will fade away.
And even though I know that will be for the best, it makes me want to savor the last bit of time I have with the brothers.
So it’s easy to settle back into Ransom’s arms and let the heat of the water keep soothing my aches. It probably shouldn’t be easy, considering who he is, but ‘shouldn’t’ stopped mattering a while ago.
All of this is something I shouldn’t be doing.
And yet, I feel so relaxed and happy in his embrace. For the first time in a long time, maybe in my whole life, I feel cared about.
I just want to soak that up a little more.