Chapter 28 #2
He instinctively tightened his hold on her and pressed his face to her hair.
“It’ll all work out,” she said softly.
How could she know that? He’d gone to San Antonio to try to drag his brother away from that lifestyle and had somehow wound up agreeing to things he’d had no intention of agreeing to.
“You never should’ve gone there.”
“What would’ve happened if I hadn’t?”
“I would’ve handled it.”
“That’s what you do, isn’t it? Shut people out, handle things, and then take off.”
His chest caved in, forcing all the air from his lungs. “You have no business in that life.”
“That life is no longer your life. You don’t seem to get that.”
“Gang life isn’t something you ever completely leave behind.” Yeah, it clung like the scent of a roadkill skunk.
“You don’t trust the deal he made you?”
God, Alex didn’t know what to think. “I trust that he wants better for his daughter.”
“Yet, you don’t think better is you.”
“What the hell do I know about raising two teenagers?”
She laughed, low and comforting in the dark. “About as much as any adult does. Face it, teenagers are a separate species.” Turning in his arms, she framed his face in her palms, fanned her thumbs over his cheekbones. “We just have to take it a day at a time.”
“I can’t ask you to—”
She cut him off with a gentle but insistent press of her lips against his.
They shouldn’t be in the bed together. Especially with him ass-naked and her wearing nothing more than a T-shirt and a pair of panties he could rip away with one halfhearted yank.
But she felt so warm, so reassuring against him.
He wanted to sink into her, just be absorbed into her skin until his life wasn’t one big jumble of broken dreams. Might as well tattoo himself on her because that wasn’t likely to ever happen.
Greer crowded closer and stroked the corner of his lips, asking him to do for her what he hadn’t done before.
To open up and let her in. He angled his head and finally let go, giving her access to his mouth.
He might as well have handed her a pair of those rib spreaders and let her crack open his chest. Because that was what it felt like when they were body to body.
Felt as if he would never be able to close himself back up like he was before he met her.
She pulled away just far enough to say, “Whatever you’re torturing yourself with over there, stop it. Let it rest. You don’t have to beat every problem into submission. Sometimes you just have to give them time to breathe. Still your mind and just be with me tonight.”
“That’s what I want for the rest of my life.”
Her breath hitched and her fingers tightened on his face. “Alex, you know I love you. And you know what that envelope meant.”
He squeezed his eyes closed, but the picture of that crumpled bit of paper still haunted him. “And you know why I left it behind. If I had baggage when I showed up in this town, now I need one of those red-coated guys and a couple of damn hotel carts.”
Her hands left his face, stroked down his throat to cradle his shoulders. “I’m strong enough for a full set of Samsonite. And none of that new light stuff. I’m talking the stuff my parents got for their wedding back in the day.”
He had to laugh, a low chuckle, because he’d learned this woman was as tough as they came.
“But for now,” she said, “the only thing we have to do is this.” She wrapped her arms around his neck, aligned her curvy body perfectly with his, and kissed the hollow of his throat.
The simple tenderness of the gesture, and the acceptance it implied, burned Alex from his thudding heart to his eyes.
“Let me,” she murmured against his skin.
Alex allowed her to push him to his back. Greer straddled his hips and pulled her T-shirt over her head. Her breasts were bare and full. Alex reached to cup them, but she drew them to her hips instead. “Let me have you.”
He knew what she was asking for, and it was more than just control of their lovemaking.
She wanted him to trust her, trust her love enough, to shut down all the noise in his head and just let her take care of him.
His belly tightened with tension, but he forced his hands to relax away from her body.
He tucked them behind his head in a casual pose, both to show his agreement and to keep the damn things pinned down.
Greer’s sweet and sexy smile was all the reward he needed.
She pushed against his chest and stood on the bed to shimmy out of her panties.
The view of this woman naked was one he’d never tire of taking in.
Hell, he’d build a fucking scenic overlook and stay parked there twenty-four hours a day if she’d let him. “I love looking at you.”
“Then let me show you what you’ll be giving up if you walk away from me again.”
The bed shifted when she knelt again, her knees on either side of his legs.
She leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to his abs, the soft skin of her breasts skimming his dick.
As if she had all the time in the world, she trailed kisses up the middle of his body where ink met bare skin.
As erotic as it was to watch a naked Greer slide up his body, the symbolism of what she was doing grabbed his heart in a fist and wrung it out.
She was trying to heal him, to reunite the two sides of him. The boy he’d been and the man he wanted to be.
The man he wanted to be for her.
He wove his fingers into her hair, trying to tug her up for a kiss, but she shook her head and continued up his breastbone until she found the unmarked hollow of his throat. She ran her lips over the skin there, and her breath warmed Alex from the outside in.
He wanted so damn badly to believe he could rebuild his life. Wanted to believe he deserved to build a life with this woman. “I don’t even know where I’ll be living two days from now.”
“I already talked with Cal about my dad’s house. You and the kids can move in there, no matter what you decide about us.”
“You’re way more than I deserve,” he said hoarsely.
“You’re exactly what I deserve.” Greer murmured against him, her lips teasing his skin.
Alex tilted his head back, grinding it against the pillow. The shadows wrapped around him, slowly loosening the fist in his chest. Be in this moment. You’ll never be here again.
Finally, he opened his eyes and tugged on Greer’s hair to get her to look at him. “Do you know what you do to me?”
With a little ass wiggle, she squirmed against him. “It’s kind of hard to miss.”
“I don’t mean there.” He slipped a hand between their bodies and pressed it against his chest. “I mean in here.”
She blinked slowly. “You have to tell me, Alex.”
“You make me feel things I’ve never felt before. Things I never wanted to feel.”
She dipped her head, but he cradled her face and lifted her chin. This wasn’t something he wanted to say to the top of her head. “In my world, caring about someone the way I care about you was a weakness. It was a way for other gangs to get to you, to cut off your balls.”
“Is that how you felt after Javier was killed?”
“I thought my guts had been torn out of my body.” Even now, his stomach clenched. “But if something ever happened to you, if I ever put you in danger like I did yesterday, if someone ever hurt you because of me…I wouldn’t survive that kind of pain.”
“You’re scared.”
He laughed, a violent huff of air. “You’re just now figuring that out?”
“It’s impossible to keep the people you love completely safe.
Things happen. Life happens. And when it does, it’s the other people around you who hold you tight, who keep you in one piece.
Humans weren’t meant to live in solitude.
We die that way. Just atrophy emotionally until there’s nothing left. ”
He wanted to close his eyes against her, hide all that was raw and wrong inside him. But she deserved better than a fucking coward. “I don’t know how to do this.”
She leaned in, slowly rubbed her lips against his. It was as if she were trying to breathe her belief in him, in them, into his body. “No, Alex,” she whispered against his mouth. “You’ve just forgotten.”