Chapter Thirty-Four
And yet, it only took a matter of minutes, carrying Daisy into Tyler’s living room where Seth, Steven, and Heart were playing a board game, eating popcorn, to give Tyler the CliffsNotes version of what had happened tonight, having set the lawyer into overdrive.
Another minute of Heart fretting in the doorway, worried, and he was storming out and hopping back in his truck, breaking the speed limits like twigs beneath boots.
He flew through the night, roaring into Charlie’s driveway to see his woman whirl around on a step ladder in the yellow glow of the porch light with her screwdriver, boarding over broken windows with a piece of plywood?
Fuck that bastard! Shattering her world and leaving her to clean up the mess.
He shoved out of his door, slammed it, loosened his tie and threw off his suit coat as he approached the front door, letting it land on the front walk, rolled up his shirt cuffs, and leapt up both steps as she began to descend her ladder at ten fifteen at night for God’s sake.
“Thad,” she croaked, in the face of his anger—
He gripped her face, tilting it this way, that way, inspecting, because if there was one spot on her skin that hadn’t been there before, he would—God, he would…
A cut had scraped her forehead. A bruise rested aside her neck. His hands shook, his lips trembled, his molars were going to crack. His eyes pricked with stinging. Blood lust licked through his veins.
“I’m okay.” She nodded, gripping his wrists, his grip so tight he needed to loosen it, so he didn’t hurt her, too, her jade gaze burning desperately into him.
But he couldn’t look her in the eye, couldn’t speak, because he should have been here to ward off the devil like his gut had told him, and his face crumpled as his pricking eyes burned with tears, memories of New York, of a different tearful phone call.
Except this time it wasn’t Charity’s face he saw as he shoved down her front door, it was Charlie’s.
It was a little blond, blue-eyed girl leaning on his arm as sadness demolished her happiness like a wrecking ball.
It was visions of Charlie Bradford with baby Daisy cowering beneath the fist of a monster, summoning T.R.
’s past to the surface, reminding him that she might see a prince in him, but he was just as much a monster, and his lips landed on Charlie’s, this need to feel, to know she was whole, to know that she was in his arms where he could breathe the realness of her lilac scent.
He walked her backward, against the door as he wove his fingers into her hair over her ears and clenched, leaning over her.
“What do you need from me, baby?” he breathed roughly, resting his forehead to hers and feeling the need to dig into the touch, to put pressure against his forehead to take the pain off his heart.
“Nothing, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry—”
“Dammit, Charlie, what do you need?” he growled, so tired of this woman apologizing for shit that wasn’t her fault, his grip around her nape firming. “Be straight.”
Her hands clenched down on him, as if she were finally capitulating, finally going all in and dammit!
He was a bastard for building that trust on a cracked foundation.
He owed her the truth, especially after tonight, when things had gotten too real to ignore.
Because when he closed his eyes and relived New York, relived the mess of blood on the floor from his fi—
“You.” She gripped his cheeks. “In any way you’ll give me.
I trust you.” Music to his ears. She searched his eyes.
“This man who’d never hurt a soul …” A shiv in the side of his conscience.
“I just need you. And your patience. And your honor. And your sure hands that only know how to love and not punish—”
“Flower Girl I gotta tell you something,” he blurted out.
“I’m okay,” she whispered, lifting his face in the cradle of her palms, gazing into his distraught eyes as he chewed his confession into his cheek.
She brushed his cheekbones desperately. She pressed her lips to his worried ones. Shook her head. “Whatever it is—”
“Flower Girl, I—”
“Make love to me, Trouble,” she whispered, pressing her lips harder to his, begging him to keep wanting her.
“As messed up as all of this is, I just—” She swallowed, as her fingers traced up and down his spine, welcoming him against her, begging him.
“I just want to know I matter enough … to you, for you to accept this messy version of me, because I just want to bask in this safety I feel with you—”
His lips crashed to hers, silencing her.
Love her. It was so fast. Only days, and yet, her supplication tore at his resolve and made him whole.
She was finally coming to him, asking him, as she pushed up on her toes and pressed her lips to his and pulled his arms from her face around her body to press into her back and rear and he was … lost.
He gripped her. Rolled into her. This need to connect, to unify, to stake a claim and make her his, to override all common sense and decency and just … hold on.
She mewed against his lips through her emotion, and he extracted her DeWalt from her grip and together they fumbled the door open and Artex sniffed at him, but he didn’t care.
Because he was hoisting his woman up, encouraging her legs around his rear as he carried her toward the stairs like that first night over two weeks ago, as if discovering this gorgeous songbird for the first time again.
Goddamn, he was erect, so hard it was painful.
And yet as he thumped his way upstairs, he knew.
He just wanted her to love him too. Not judge his intelligence based on his grades.
Not judge his worth based on his accomplishments or his character based on some social media fan page.
Just love him. Just like she needed someone to love all of her messy past and the promising future.
The brainy girl who hadn’t been shallow enough for a momma’s love, whereas he’d never been brainy enough for his parents’ love.
Together they stumbled into her bedroom.
Crashed to the mattress as he fought up her T-shirt—his T-shirt on her—her fighting open his belt buckle as he jammed open each button down his shirt and tore off his tie.
She shucked his sleeves down his arms as he shimmied her leggings over her rear, dragging them free and throwing them aside.
He collapsed onto her, covering her body like the stake claimed that it was, and dove in for her breasts encased in soft lavender lace he wished he could take time to appreciate.
Except he had to feel her. Biting them through the lace, her kneading his scalp, tugging his hair, was a balm he’d needed.
He suckled. She arched up for him and clenched his hair, and the contented moan from her lips was a struck match to dry tinder.
Fighting the cup down he latched onto the pink tip. Groaned.
God, so good, he rolled his cock against her thigh, creating blessed friction that both relieved the pain and stoked the fervor and yet, through it all, as his skin rested warmly to hers, as his arms cradled her face and shoulders, she skimmed his waistline with her nail, scoring the flesh and eliciting a growl of want so visceral it reverberated through his chest to hers.
“Please.” She exhaled the pained word.
And his remaining thread of control snapped.
*
He shoved his jeans down as he tore his heavy erection free.
Her panties were stripped down her legs, discarded into the abyss of their other clothes as she lay flopped beneath him like a rag doll and he landed back down atop her, fighting his hips between her legs as he lifted her knee, opening her to him, and shoved within her.
She arched, head thrown back, a cry welling from her chest as a rough growl rolled up his throat to be seated within her. This shocking stretch, delicious pain from his fierce entry.
So good.
She clenched his shoulders, his arms, to stabilize herself as his mouth swallowed her sounds.
Somehow, his hips were banging her thighs, skin slapping skin, lips devouring lips.
Somehow, his fingers were woven with hers, pinning her hands to the bed above her head as if he needed the anchor to hold himself down.
Somehow, this frenzied mating felt like love—messy with an edge of pain but oh, so good.
The passionate, rough pounding intense and delicious but this, skin to skin, heart to heart, need to need … it was love. Young and uncultivated. But found between two souls.
“Charlie…” he crooned her name, guttural and rough, like the lyric of a song.
“You—” His roughness just what they needed, began to transform into something more, something gentler as his tongue plied hers, his fingers clenching hers.
“Need to pack, because you—” He shoved up on his knees; his thighs splayed beneath hers. “And the girl—belong with me—”
At his cabin. Where memories and music were made around a fire.
And as he hoisted up her thighs, anchoring her in his grip, the most primal part of her held open to him, he tipped his head back, and pounded home.
Hard, fast, cathartic undulations that spiked tingling across her skin and through her belly, because looking up at him, his torqued muscles and golden hair and work-roughened body, she saw a future.
A man she didn’t have to worry about turning drunk and angry.
His thumb fell to that sensitive place, swirling as roughly as the rest of him, making her squirm, as he wrestled with controlling his climax while trying to let her go first.
Good, this torn-up man, the one ready to chase down the demons of the world for her, was worrisome, but the seducer captivated with need for her, was the one she needed, to vanquish the pain and make her feel safe.
*
Her leg trembled in his grip but he held her firm.
“C’mon, baby,” he growled, feeling her squirm, feeling her fight for release, watching her blond locks flop across her cheek and forehead, desperate to push her over the edge first and give her the hit of dopamine she needed, like a fucking gentleman and not the barbarian he was acting like because, damn straight, he’d hold out to finish last.
“Perfect, baby,” he praised. “Gimmie your pleasure, baby.”
Her head tossed side to side and she arched her pretty breasts up to him, an altar at which he’d happily pray for the rest of his life if he could…
The rest of his life. The realization hit like a train.
A life where he got to watch this woman shine in the spotlight beside him and teach about her daisies with pride instead of like a victim in hiding.
A life where she got to take on the world and bask in the stage lights as he ran his grandparents’ farm and, together, they brought his songs to life and maybe, just maybe, together they’d achieve that Nashville dream.
And God, his spine was tingling, his lust coursing through him, ready to explode.
A life where he’d watch more babies nestled to these breasts if they so chose; babies he’d give her, siblings he’d give little Daisy, because this woman didn’t think he was a fuck-up.
A body swelling with progeny he’d put there, to be revered as the miracle they were, as little Daisy should have been so loved by a father.
Her body tensed. Her nails gripping his forearms dug into his skin, as her mouth parted and her eyes fluttered shut and the beautiful sound of her release trembled from her lips, his name, once so much a curse, now a prayer.
“Thaddeus… I’m in love with you.”
He detonated, feeling her warmth coating him with every primal thing she felt for him, and he yanked free, bareback, as she gripped his cock and pumped with those pretty fingernails—
His release draped ropes of seed across her navel. He fell forward, bracing his weight on his arms, and yet, they trembled so badly as he nudged and growled out each jolt, pressed between their bodies as if to bond them.
So lost in the moment. So found when it came to this woman.
Did she realize what she’d just said? As he returned to gravity, his heartbeat roaring in his ears and his release growing sticky against their skin, he kissed the cut on her forehead, his eyes pinching closed, as if to kiss away her hurt and his guilt.
As her nails began to massage, contemplative combs through his hair, feeling so content.
“Are you sure you want us living with you?” she hedged into the silence.
Should she put herself in a position of dependance again, he read between the lines.
His head lifted. He cupped her crown, resting on his elbows, and stared down at her. Jason was part of her story. He’d shaped the woman beneath T.R. now.
Embroiling herself in a position of dependance on a man was risky for a girl like her.
“I want my girls safe,” he croaked. Pressed a kiss to her cut again as her eyes fluttered closed. “I wanna know they’re both happy.” Pressed a kiss to her nose, feeling the tension relaxing from her chest on a long exhale that warmed his cheek. “I want them to know they’re worth being loved.”
Her eyes opened at this as she idled her fingers in his hair.
“What did you need to tell me before?” she murmured against his neck.
Fuck. His lips trembled to say it. He chewed his cheek, petting back her hair as if to buy time to find the right words.
“Your girls want their man to know he’s worth it too,” she whispered in the face of his silence, as she twisted a clump of his hair around her finger.
His heart might thunder out of his chest and yet, the feeling, so sublime…
She reached out, fumbling for something, as he pressed his lips to hers. He kept petting back her hair, warm in this moment, his chest expanding with the thought of a woman loving him in return, when she held up a wad of cash in front of him.