Chapter 4
4
JOSS
Years ago, I’d somehow convinced Peter to go shopping with me at the mall. I’d picked out a few items to try on, and he offered to hold my coat and purse while I went to the dressing room. When I came out, he was nowhere to be seen.
He’d gotten bored waiting for me and left me to go to the movie theater with his friends. He left me at the mall in the dead of winter, with no coat to stay warm, no purse to pay for anything, no phone to call for help, and no way to get home.
My best friend, Cheyenne, had driven over an hour through crappy weather to come rescue me. The entire drive home, she’d tried to convince me to break up with Peter, but I never did. I thought I was in love. I thought it was a misunderstanding. I made excuse after excuse for him and couldn’t even confront him when he finally rolled in the next afternoon because he was drunk, and I didn’t want him to hit me again.
I should have listened to Cheyenne then.
I wished I had Cheyenne here with me now. Because as Rylan had gathered up all the clothes from my dressing room to go pay, he’d snagged my purse and boots as well.
Flashbacks of that night pummeled me as I stared at myself in the full-length mirror, and panic gripped my chest. I was wearing the shorts and tank top we’d decided on for ziplining—clothes I didn’t own but Rylan said he was going to include in what he bought. The sundress I came in was nowhere to be seen, and I was hundreds of miles from the best friend I needed to rescue me.
Worst of all, I’d peeked out a few minutes ago and I couldn’t find Rylan at all.
On wobbly legs, I pushed out the dressing room door, sure I was going to have to call Peter and beg him to send JaCinda to help. I’d gotten myself into a mess—all because I finally broke up with that cheating bastard and tried to do something that made me happy for a change. I stumbled toward the front of the store on bare feet and nearly fell to the floor with what I saw.
Rylan was on one knee near the doorway, smiling up at me, and relief greater than any I’d ever felt swept through me before I gasped and raised my hands to cover my mouth. For a split second, my mind played tricks on me, and I thought the thing in his hand was a ring. That this man who’d swept me off my feet was proposing to me.
Instead, he knelt there with a shoe in his hand, the box it came from on the floor at his side.
“Found you some shoes,” Rylan said, his eyes doing that thing again—where he’d drag his gaze over the entire length of my body, leaving me feeling like he was stripping these fancy clothes off me one item at a time. When he brought his attention back to my face, I swore my knees shook. “Thought it might be safer to zipline in something that was secured to your foot.”
He held the shoe up to me like it was a ring, and I had to blink multiple times to convince myself I wasn’t seeing things. He was here. My purse was sitting beside dozens of bags bearing the boutique’s logo. He was on his knee in front of me, and for some reason, my ribs clenched.
Even when he motioned me forward, even when he smiled at me in a way that made my panties melt, I still had one thought running through my head: You’ll never be loved.
Hadn’t Peter already proved that to me? I hadn’t been gone two days and he’d already found someone else to fill his bed. He couldn’t love me, and I didn’t need a therapist to tell me I didn’t really love him either.
“What’s wrong, gorgeous?” Rylan snagged my hand and dragged me closer, until I was staring down at him and the shoe he was still holding.
Shaking my head, I let out a shaky breath. “I’m just… overwhelmed.”
His lip twitched at one side, the corner pulling up minutely. “You need a minute?”
A weak smile creased my lips. “Maybe.”
“I was thinking.” Rylan let go of my hand and gripped the back of my thigh, sliding his palm down my leg as he sent shivers of pleasure through every inch of me. “There’s a gelato stand right around the corner. Why don’t I send all this stuff back to the hotel and we can go get that sweet treat I promised you?”
He tugged gently at my calf, shoe ready in his other hand, and I shifted my weight to let him take my ankle and put the fancy white tennis shoe on. Somewhere between him lifting my foot and me sliding my toes inside, my balance left me. I let out a squeal and grabbed the first thing I could to keep me steady.
Rylan.
I grabbed Rylan.
His soft black hair felt like satin between my fingers. His strong hands felt steady as he dropped the shoe and grabbed the backs of my legs. And his eyes, as he removed his face from my stomach where I’d smashed it and peered up at me, glimmered with mischief and something more.
Rylan’s smile did things to me I wasn’t ready to dissect, but his touch, as he spread his fingers before smoothing his hands down my thighs, turned my entire body to jelly. Heat flashed through me as he dipped his face and inhaled deeply before pressing a kiss to the line of skin showing between my shirt and shorts.
Was it wrong that I wanted his lips pressed to every inch of my body?
It had to be. I barely knew the man.
But oh, how I wanted to. Rylan was nothing like anyone I’d ever met, and everything inside of me reacted to his mere presence—the sight of him felt like home.
“Hold tight, gorgeous,” Rylan whispered, that mischievous smile sparking something in my belly. I held onto his head as he helped me into both the shoes, and I didn’t want to let go. Not when he put my foot down on the floor. Not as he cupped the backs of my thighs with his palms and pulled me into him, burying his face in my gut. Not as he slid his fingers between mine and rose to his full height, smiling down at me like I was the most precious thing in the world.
While I was lost in him, Rylan directed the boutique staff to deliver my things to his room. Then, handing me my purse, he dragged me down the street, asking about my favorite ice cream flavors as we went.
“It’s either strawberry or cookies and cream,” I told him as he stopped in the line to the gelato booth. “How about you?”
He grinned at me like a child before he hooked one of his arms around my shoulder and pulled me closer. “I’ve only had it once, but it was the best thing I’ve ever had. Left my heart racing and my mouth watering, and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since.”
I nudged him with my shoulder, laughter shaking my shoulders. “Are you going to tell me what it was?”
He took his arm away and held his hands in front of him like he was trying to make me see the memory on a billboard on the horizon. “Coffee and chocolate flavored ice cream with thick chunks of chocolate covered espresso beans. It left me absolutely buzzing.”
“You’re crazy.”
“I’ve been called worse.” All the levity on his face left him as we got to the front of the line, and for a moment, it had me bracing for a hit. Rylan took my shoulders in his hands and stared down at me without a hint of a smile. “We need to talk.”
My mouth went dry. “About what?”
“What flavors are we going to order?” A breath heaved out of me, and my shoulders sagged but Rylan continued on as if he didn’t notice. “There’re probably twenty flavors up there, and I love every one of them. If we don’t figure out what we’re ordering now, I’ll be here all day tasting every one of them.”
“How about,” I said, lifting my hand to his face and tracing a finger across his jaw, “I get strawberry, and you get chocolate. It’s like?—”
“Chocolate covered strawberries.” His words came out all breathy and quiet. His blue eyes sparkled and my own were drawn to his parted lips as his tongue slipped out to wet them. He grabbed my hand from his face and held it to his chest. “That’s perfect. Let’s do it.”
* * *
A drip of chocolate gelato fell from Rylan’s offered spoon to my lap as I leaned forward to take a bite. It just missed the edge of my brand-new shorts, but I was too distracted by the flavor bursting in my mouth to care. That was, until Rylan reached his big hand out and swiped the cold droplet away with his thumb.
His touch on my already warm skin was almost unbearable, sending shivers and shards of lightning racing over every inch of me. He was too kind. Too sweet.
Too damn attentive for his own good.
“That’s a nasty bruise you got there.”
I struggled to swallow my mouthful of gelato, then tried to cover my hesitation with a long sip of my water to wash it down. When I locked eyes with him, it was all I could do to force a smile.
“Yeah.” I tucked my hair behind my ear. There was a lie perched on the tip of my tongue, the same lie I’d been telling everyone—and myself—for the past few years.
The problem was, I wasn’t clumsy.
I didn’t need to watch where I was going.
My iron levels were fine, and no number of supplements were going to make any difference to the number of nasty bruises on my body.
Swallowing down my lie, I set my gelato cup aside and turned my full attention to the man sitting next to me on the patio. For reasons I couldn’t understand, I felt compelled to tell this perfect stranger the truth that I’d been hiding from everyone.
“Peter…my ex.” I was distracted as Rylan swiped his thumb over my leg again. I squeezed my eyes closed. “He hits me. He has for years. Everything that goes wrong is my fault, even when it’s not. And I…”
“What is it?” His voice was gentle when he spoke, wrapping around me as if it were his arms giving me a much-needed hug.
My throat tightened, causing my voice to rasp. “I don’t want to go back home to that.”
“Then don’t.” Rylan lifted my hand from my lap, stringing his fingers between mine. I opened my eyes and got lost in his. “Don’t go home to that. This is your chance to break the cycle. To escape him and live somewhere safe, around people who won’t hurt you. People who… just want to see you smile.”
At that, I did smile—a tiny curl of my lips that grew as Rylan’s did the same.
“There it is.” He chucked me under the chin with his finger before swiping his thumb across my lips. “Gorgeous.”
The Las Vegas heat swarmed through me, turning my face and neck into what had to be a steaming, bright red. I ducked my chin and let him pull away. Once he took a bite of his gelato, I followed suit.
“Tell me, where is home?” Though he looked casual, like he was just making small talk, I couldn’t shake the feeling that every ounce of his attention was focused on me. Like the slow movement of his mouth, the bowl clutched in one hand and the spoon in the other, were just a show.
It was… unnerving. And yet, I didn’t want it to stop.
“Right now, in Minnesota. But I’m from across the border in North Dakota.”
“Really?” He leaned forward, eyes sparkling and smile growing wide. “I’ve never met anyone from North Dakota before.”
I couldn’t help it; I rolled my eyes.
“What’s that for?”
Grabbing my napkin from the table, I wiped my lips. Rylan had his head cocked to one side, a little furrow in his brow. I shrugged.
“People always have these preconceived notions of what North Dakotans are like.”
His lips twisted up into the most handsome, most irritating smirk. “Really?”
“Yes, we had horses and sometimes it was just plain easier to take a horse to my friend’s house than to ride a bike out on the road. But we didn’t ride them to school or have carriages to take us into town. Our cars worked just fine, thank you very much.” I frowned. “Providing you remembered to plug them in during the winter. And riding snowmobiles to school was perfectly normal. Lots of people did it.”
Rylan’s tongue traced across his crooked smirk. “That sounds fascinating.”
I huffed out a breath and dropped my spoon into my cup. “And yes, we have ice cream and the internet. We may be a little behind on trends, but that doesn’t mean we’re all homesteaders, making our floral dresses and looking like we grew up on Little House on the Prairie. I mean… Except…”
“Except what?”
My gaze darted to the white wisps of clouds hovering in the sky. “I may have made my sundress. But that’s because I found the fabric in my grandmother’s sewing room, and it was too cute to pass up.”
“It was very cute.”
“Right?” I looked back at him, only to find that smirk still in place. I scratched at my neck, then forced myself to stop by crossing my arms over my chest. “I grew up in a zoo, not a homestead. Just because I know how to sew, doesn’t mean we?—”
“Wait, what?” Rylan’s big hand landed on my thigh, higher than it had been earlier. My mouth, which had felt dry as the desert around us a second before, suddenly felt flooded with moisture the same way my body was awash with heat.
That heat only spread as he leaned in closer, his other hand curling around the back of my other calf before he was tugging me toward him. Nearly pulling me right out of my chair.
He was so close, closer than he’d been since he swung me in his arms back at the landing zone. My skin tingled where he touched me, and I swore he’d stolen the breath straight from my chest.
“Did you just say you grew up in a zoo?”
My head jerked back, and I blinked, not once but five times to clear away the lightheadedness that had overtaken me so I could focus on him. “Yes?”
His eyes dropped from mine to my lips, and I couldn’t stop from licking moisture back onto them. “Are you joking? A literal zoo?”
“A literal zoo. With tigers and bears and all that.”
“Your parents owned a zoo?”
I shrugged, then cursed myself for that movement. Rylan brought his eyes back to mine. “The city owned it, not my parents. But they ran it. And me and my siblings had to help.”
His face twitched like he was holding back a laugh. His fingers smoothed across the skin of my legs, stealing my sanity as he dragged me forward to the edge of my chair. “Tell me more.”
I opened my mouth to do just that but damn near jumped out of my skin when a loud bang sounded down the street. Before I realized what had happened, that it was just a car backfiring and I wasn’t about to get hit, I found myself wrapped in Rylan’s big, strong arms.
“It’s okay. I’ve got you.” His lips whispered against my head while he smoothed a hand over my back, sending shivers through me.
Once my breathing had calmed and my heartbeat had slowed, I lifted my chin and found his sparkling eyes. This time, though, they were darker, as the blacks of his eyes nearly swallowed the blue.
“I’ve got you,” he repeated, and for the first time in as long as I could remember, I felt safe.
I felt wanted.
And as Rylan dipped his head forward and captured my mouth with his, I had the crazy thought that maybe, just maybe, I was loved.