Chapter 16
Byrdie
Vonn strokes my back as he holds me against his chest.
I take in his bedroom, a room I only ever used to enter to clean, and now that we’re together, I view it differently.
There’s not much personality in the space. Everything is in order. His bed was probably perfectly made before he settled me onto the sheets that I made a mess of. It could be because he was in the army, where he got used to inspections. It could just be Vonn. Probably it’s a little of both.
“I’m sorry I made you cry,” he says quietly once my tears have slowed.
“You told me something I needed to know.” I wipe the last of my tears with the tissue he handed me. “It hurt, but I did need to know it.”
Maybe one day I’d have put the pieces together myself.
The odds of my mom badly injuring her leg days after I started hinting that we should run away from the compound were too high for me not to wonder if Jeremiah told his acolytes to stop her—and me—from leaving.
What Jeremiah wants, he gets. And he wanted me.
Vonn rolls me onto my back and stays on his side, one bent elbow propping his head up. His amber eyes are full of apology. “That doesn’t mean I don’t regret it.”
“The world is…” I strangle the first words I want to say. Evil. Cruel. “Unfair.”
“That isn’t what you were about to say,” he says quietly.
“No.” I look up at the chandelier over his bed, and it hits me how unreal it is that I’m living in a ten-bedroom mansion that probably costs millions of dollars.
Every room used to intimidate me almost as much as Vonn used to.
I’d freeze if he appeared at the top of a staircase when I was at the bottom.
Now here I am snuggled in his arms, and there is no place I’ve ever felt safer.
“I used to think that if you were polite and kind and didn’t go out of your way to hurt anyone, no one would go out of their way to hurt you. It was na?ve. I was na?ve.”
“The world isn’t always like that, Byrdie.”
His words don’t reassure. They can’t reassure me after what happened to my mom.
I look at him. “My mom was flaky. I hated that she kept pulling me out of school and wanting to move all the time, but I would never have left her. I loved her. She fell in love too fast because she never got over my dad leaving her. But she didn’t deserve to die the way she did.
People like Jeremiah should be the ones to suffer as they die.
And they win more than they should, and they shouldn’t get to win all the time. ”
“The world can be cruel,” he agrees. “It takes more than we would ever willingly give, and sometimes there’s no justice, no revenge, nothing but pain at the end of a long day.
But sometimes, the world surprises you with something sweet and soft, and so perfect, you wonder what you could have ever done right to deserve it. ”
Me. He’s talking about me.
He sees me as something special, and I look in a mirror and see ordinary me. Nothing the least bit special at all.
Shirtless, his tattoos draw my eye. When I was a maid creeping in the shadows, terrified of big men because Jeremiah’s compound taught me to be afraid, I tried not to look at Vonn, thinking he would hurt me just as bad.
But Vonn taught me that just because he’s the biggest man I’ve ever let myself get close to touch, he would burn down the world to save me.
“Are your tattoos from the army?” I curl my fingers into tight fists so I won’t touch the dense, intricate artwork that runs up and down both arms and over his shoulders.
One touch might lead to more than I’m ready for.
When he rubbed ointment into my bruised back, I sank into his lap and brushed up against his erection. I’d frozen then, terrified that brief touch would lead to things I wasn’t ready for, but he’d given me the sweetest kiss in the world and left it at just a kiss when I’d known he’d wanted more.
“After,” he says, eyes hooded. As if he knows what I’m remembering and is thinking of it too. “I have too many to tell you about each one now, but every single one helps me to remember the people I love and lost too soon.”
I lose the fight with myself, and my fingers trace a shadowed tree on a bulging bicep. “Would you have gotten one to remember me?”
His hand circles my wrist.
My eyes fly up to his face, holding his gaze when he lifts my hand and brushes a feather-light kiss across the inside of my wrist. I can’t help but shiver in response.
“That’s not a question I ever want to answer, Byrdie. And you shouldn’t touch. I’m a sweaty mess from working out.” That’s not the only thing his eyes are telling me.
A tiny spark of heat warns me that my touch arouses him almost as much as his arouses me.
“I think you’re beautiful.” The words sneak out before I can snatch them back.
A dull redness sweeps his cheeks, and he dips his head, embarrassed.
I’m glad I didn’t snatch those words back now, and a smile tugs on my lips. I think he likes what I just said.
He shakes his head. “I’m not beautiful. My body is covered in scars. I’m all rough edges and I need to shave.”
“Well, you’re beautiful to me,” I repeat, wanting his eyes to soften again, and they do. “And you haven’t made fun of my ugly shaved head.” None of them have. They treat me the same as if I hadn’t come back from the New Mexico desert with a shaved head and all my skin sunburned and peeling.
His smile drops. “Your shaved head is not ugly. It’s just hair. It’ll grow back, and even if it doesn’t, your hair doesn’t make you you.”
“Men like long hair.” Jeremiah and his acolytes did. It’s why they always made sure the women kept their hair long, even though I had to keep it braided and wrapped around my head.
“Some men like long hair. Usually shallow ones with not nearly enough hair of their own.” He kisses the tip of my nose. “I like every part of you, whether you come with hair or not.”
I can’t help but smile at that. “You always know how to make me smile.”
“I just say what I feel here.” He gently taps his chest with his knuckles, right over his heart, then lowers his hand to my right hip, his fingers brushing me there.
“Because of the army?”
He lifts one shoulder in a half-shrug. “A little. Mostly, it comes from knowing things can change anytime. You never have as much time as you think you do. I don’t like to waste it.”
“You take your time with me.”
He’s the most patient person in the world when it involves me. With Makhi, he’s ready to snarl at him for the smallest thing. I guess it could be because Makhi likes to provoke.
“It’s not a waste of time to wait for you, Byrdie,” he says with quiet intensity. “Just being near you is enough.”
“But sometimes you want more.”
He gives me a searching look. “Sometimes I do. But that doesn’t mean anything has to happen.”
The electric tingle of his fingers on my hip is distracting. “Like now?”
“Now is not a good time,” he says, avoiding my gaze. “I’m sweaty from working out, and you—”
“That isn’t what I asked you,” I softly interrupt.
His gaze darts to mine, away, then returns, holding it this time. He sees something in my eyes that makes him swallow so hard I track the motion in his bobbing Adam’s apple.
“You’re looking at me as if you want more from me, Byrdie.”
Knowing he would stop if I wanted him to, and that he would never hurt me, I let myself explore this feeling instead of running away from it like I did on the night in the kitchen when he first kissed me.
“My feelings for you are complex and complicated. You started stealing pieces of my heart weeks ago. Sometimes I think you’ll own it all if I give in to my feelings.
You deserve a better girl than I am. I have so many scars. ”
Inside and out.
He takes my hand, cradles it, and lifts it to press a lingering kiss in the center of my palm. “There is no better girl for me. You are the only one I want.”
My eyes swim with tears, and I blink them away.
He loves me. He doesn’t have to say it. I see it. I feel it.
His feelings make me feel brave enough to say, “I think I want you to kiss me.”
I swear he stops breathing for two seconds.
“Think?”
“Not think. I know I do. I thought that if I pushed you away, you’d eventually see me as I really am and find a girl you deserve.”
He laces our fingers together and presses our hands against his racing heart. He never looks away from me when he says, “This is yours. I’m the luckiest guy in the world to have the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen lying in my bed, looking up at me like she wants me to kiss her.”
“Then maybe don’t keep her waiting.” I tease.
His cheek dimples in a smile, and he dips his head. His breath is warm on my lips as he murmurs, “Yes, ma’am.”
It’s gentle and slightly teasing. The kiss of a man afraid he might hurt a woman. I slide my arms around the back of his neck and tug him down so he knows I want him to deepen it. I won’t break, and I know he won’t hurt me. Not Vonn.
He deepens it, and a sudden, alarming thought shoves itself into my mind.
I break the kiss.
“Byrdie?” Amber eyes crease with concern, and he starts to get up.
I grab both his arms and hold on to him. “Don’t go. Just…” My face burns. “I never… Um. I mean, I haven’t done this before. None of this is coming out the way I want it too.”
He’s so serious, but patient. Endlessly patient. “Take your time, darlin’. I’m not going anywhere.”
I take a breath and release my shame and embarrassment—okay, maybe not all my embarrassment—in a gusty sigh. “I’ve had sex before, but it wasn’t like this. It wasn’t what I wanted.”
Jeremiah gave me no choice in anything. What he wanted, he got. Always.
“I figured as much,” Vonn says.
I let myself relax when he doesn’t run away.
Not that I thought he would actually run away, but I’d braced myself for him to decide that maybe I came with too much baggage to want to bother with me after all.
“You were my first kiss. Well, the first kiss from someone I really wanted. I want my first time, where I get to choose, to be with you.”