Chapter 19 #2
Her eyes began to water, and she blinked to hold back the tears.
She couldn’t remember the last time she had cried, and it certainly hadn’t been over the details of her childhood.
The girl Mateo described was dead and that death hadn’t been quick or painless.
Typically, she could think over the specifics of her past with detachment.
Those things had happened to someone else, not her.
But hearing Mateo say them out loud, knowing where it was leading, what this Melody’s end would be …
it made her throat clench and her eyes burn.
Mateo’s care in relating what he knew didn’t help matters.
His voice was so gentle, low and cradling every word as if he weighed each syllable before it came out.
He was being far softer with her than she felt she deserved.
“Melody ran away from home at sixteen,” he continued, raising his eyes to meet her gaze.
“Her family reported she might be staying with a friend, but an investigation revealed she had only been there a few days before moving on. The attempts to find her stopped after that. Runaways were common in her town, and she was just one of a string of girls who had left home, thinking to make it on their own. Then, the arrests started. Minor things at first … curfew violations, petty theft, loitering. But then … the first charge for solicitation of prostitution. And then another, and another. On top of that, a charge of failure to appear before a judge. She spent years in and out of jail, a few months here, a year there. After her last stint in Harris County Jail, she disappeared completely … before Melody Johnson began living and working in New Orleans. And, that is the end as far as I know it. But there has to be more, because the story doesn’t say what happened to her after Harris County.
How did she end up in New Orleans with a new identity?
How did she start a new life away from the people who trafficked her from city to city for half her life? How did she get out?”
Melody sobbed and wiped at her face with the back of her hand. “There’s no getting out. Not for anyone. Not really.”
Of course, she realized that a person in his line of work would already know that. But there was more; so much more. He didn’t even know the half of it. Mateo was looking at her now, his gaze so full of compassion that she couldn’t stand it. She stood and looked away.
“I should go. It isn’t safe for me to be here.”
He blocked her path to the door, taking her face between his hands. The suddenness of his nearness made her weak in the knees. His brow was furrowed as he stared down into her eyes. He was so close she could make out the different shades of brown glittering in his irises.
“I have a feeling you’ve never been safe anywhere.”
She closed her eyes and released another deluge of tears. He was tearing into her, ripping her apart with nothing but words. But he hadn’t said anything that wasn’t the bald truth.
“No,” she whispered. “Never.”
“Let me help you, Melody. I can protect you.”
Melody peered into his eyes and found that he really believed he could.
His voice didn’t waver and his hold on her was strong and sure.
She wanted nothing more than to melt into him and tell him that yes, she would accept his offer of protection.
Yes, she would tell him everything and trust him to find her way out of the trap that had snared her.
But experience had taught her that the only person she could truly rely on was herself.
It had also taught her that when a man offered her something, it was with certain expectations.
She had encouraged his attention even while trying to pretend she didn’t want it.
That dance at Solstice had been entirely her idea, and she had purposely danced close to provoke a reaction out of him.
She had let Mateo shove up her dress and fuck her in a dark storage room in a nightclub.
Of course he was offering her protection.
She had given him the thing he’d so obviously wanted from the moment they had met, and now he would expect it again as payment for what he was promising.
“No one can help me,” she argued. “They own me. There is no way out.”
“When I’m done with them, there won’t be anything left but rubble. You’ll be free and clear.”
Melody shook her head. How could he be so good at his job—the stories she’d read had told her that much—and still be so blind to what was right in front of him?
“I’m sure you’re good at what you do,” she hedged, not wanting him to know she had spied on him even though he had started it by stalking her. “But I don’t have the luxury of hope or waiting on a rescuer. I’ve survived this long by doing what I had to do.”
The furrows in his brow smoothed and he pressed a kiss to her forehead.
It was the oddest, sweetest thing Melody had ever experienced.
She hadn’t been kissed on her forehead since she was a little girl, by an uncle who had adored her.
He had been the only man in her life to show her kindness.
But his forehead kiss hadn’t been like this one.
It hadn’t affected her in nearly the same way.
“Stay,” he murmured. “I don’t want you to leave. I won’t pressure you or ask questions. Just … stay.”
Melody couldn’t have refused him if she wanted to.
And really, despite her fears, leaving was the last thing she wanted to do.
She had come here for a reason, and now realized what that reason was.
She needed the sight of him, real and whole and reminding her that she wasn’t entirely alone.
She needed the feel of him under her hands, the knowledge that he was as real as her senses told her he was.
She needed to stand in his presence and feel seen.
“Okay,” she whispered. “I’ll stay.”
He lowered his head to kiss her, and Melody brought her hands up to cover his, holding on for dear life.
This kiss was unlike the others he had given her.
The passion that seemed such a part of his nature was still present, but it was quieter.
It simmered under a thinly veiled gentleness that seemed to barely hold him in check.
His hands smoothed downward, stroking her shoulders and arms before taking hold of her waist. His lips devoured hers with aching slowness, his tongue a bare whisper at the seam of her lips.
Her breath raced, her pulse already thundering in reaction to the innocent kiss.
But there was nothing innocent about the way he was holding her.
His hands grew possessive at her waist, tight and demanding.
He hauled her against him, crushing their bodies together.
She moaned into his mouth at the feel of him, impossibly hard and solid, radiating heat.
His fingers curled in the hem of her shirt and began slowly dragging it up.
His knuckles brushed her sides in a hint of a caress as he slid the garment upward, breaking their kiss only long enough to get it off over her head.
Then, he was nibbling at her with more urgency, his breaths panted out against her mouth as he teased and tasted.
Melody followed his lead, suddenly desperate for there to be no barriers left between them.
At least not physical ones. They stood worlds apart, and her little social media investigation had only driven that point farther home.
In no other situation would she have found herself in this man’s arms, but she wouldn’t have wanted to be anywhere else.
Melody slipped her hands beneath his T-shirt, encountering the ripples of defined abs.
She pushed it further up, trailing her fingers through soft, silky, curling hairs.
The bulges of his pecs flexed beneath her palms, every inch of him coiling tight in reaction to her touch.
He had claimed that she responded to him as if she had never been touched.
That was true enough, as almost every man who had ever fucked her had paid for the use of her body.
Touching her, pleasuring her, caring about her …
they weren’t part of the bargain. It seemed only natural that she would feel like a knot of sensation under his hands.
But what was truly enthralling was the way he reacted to her, as if he didn’t know what it was like to be touched so intimately.
Or, maybe, she realized, thinking of Mari, he had forgotten.
He tore his mouth away from hers, then reached back to grab the collar of his shirt and pull it off over his head.
They went down onto the bed, arms around one another, mouths searching.
Mateo trembled on top of her, flexing his hips so she could feel the length and hardness of him through layers of denim.
She had gotten a quick look at a tattoo on his chest, as well as the ones decorating his biceps, but couldn’t take the time to inspect them with Mateo’s mouth and tongue making their way lower, down her neck to her collarbone, then lower.
He pulled back and rested his fingertip over the front clasp of her bra. Dragging his gaze up to hers, he flicked it open. The constriction around her breasts eased and they fell free as he slid the straps off her shoulders.
“I wanted this last night at Solstice,” he murmured, cupping one breast and stroking his thumb over her nipple. “I wanted to undress you, reveal every inch. Kiss you here …”
She gasped when he pressed the gentlest of kisses to the point of the nipple he had just stroked, then gave her the very tip of his tongue.
“And here,” he added, treating the other nipple the same. “And … here.”
She bit her lip around a moan when he cupped between her legs.
“There wasn’t time. But now … I have nothing but time.”