Chapter Fifteen
Two days later
Ice unlocked the door of Vixen’s apartment, surprised at how eager he was to see where the woman actually lived. After all, they’d never gone home together, not in the whole eighteen months that they’d been having sex. All of their very active activities had taken place in Satan’s back rooms only, and weirdly, this glimpse into Vix’s personal life was far more intimate than anything they might have done with their clothes off.
“Welcome home, Vix,” he said, turning back to help her. “Easy now, I got you.”
It was still incredible to Ice that she was walking on her own, albeit gingerly and all stiff-limbed, so he tucked her hand into the crook of his arm, escorting her through the door. He had a quick flash of how this would look to a stranger – like an old married couple hobbling around, praying that they didn’t fall and break a hip – and he grinned. This image was also hilariously reinforced by the fact that Vix was wearing slippers. The emergency room doctors had cut off her sexy-as-fuck boots, as well as her clothes, because they’d needed to get to her quick and easy, to check on any internal damage.
Zoe had grabbed some changes of clothes when she’d been here cleaning and stocking the fridge and cupboards, but Vix’s swollen ankle made footwear a distinct challenge: the woman didn’t own a single pair of flats, so Zoe had been a bit limited in her choice of shoes. Ice had heard this, and in a rare moment of teasing and light-heartedness, he’d gone down to the hospital gift shop and sought out the slippers section. The choice had been limited and damn ugly – and he’d made a point of choosing the most atrocious old-man slippers on the shelves. When he’d presented them with a flourish to Vix, she’d stared at them, utterly aghast.
“ Really ?” she’d said, gesturing at her neck brace, her oversized button-down denim shirt and track pants, her unwashed hair yanked back in a messy ponytail, her face with the gauze across her cheek. “Am I not disgusting enough as it is?”
The doctor had come in then to do some final checks before discharging her from the hospital an hour earlier, so Ice didn’t get the chance to tell Vix what he actually thought, which was that she was the most gorgeous woman that he’d ever laid eyes on. She had been before what happened in the parking lot, after what happened – and sure as hell during . Ice didn’t think that any woman could or would ever be more stunning than Vix had been in those horrifying, terrifying few seconds.
So here she was, back home now. Ice gently deposited her on her sofa, then stood there in front of her, unsure how to bring up the next thing to discuss. None of The Road Devils wanted Vix left alone, and not just because of her serious injuries. Until things settled down and Scars and the boys knew just what the actual fuck was going on, all the women were going to be closely watched and fiercely taken care of.
And Ice wanted it to be him who stood guard over Vix. He wanted it more than he’d wanted anything for a long, long time.
“Uh, Vix.” He cleared his throat. “Can I – do you want something? Maybe some green tea?”
She gazed up at him blearily, looking small and hurt and bruised and exhausted. “You don’t mind?”
“‘Course not,” he said, moving quickly to the tiny kitchen, glad to have something to do and an excuse to stick around. “You hungry? It’s almost dinner time.”
“I’m really not.” She shifted her weight carefully, felt all the tugs and pulls in her muscles and bones, wondering just how the hell she was going to get up and off this goddamn sofa after Ice left her. “Zoe said something about making a bunch of easy-to-heat stuff that I can just throw in the microwave, but I’m too tired to eat right now.”
“I get that. Hospitals aren’t the most restful places on earth, huh?” He switched on the kettle, rooted around in the cupboards, looking for a mug and the tea bags. “Want me to take a peek in the fridge for you?”
“Please.” She managed a tiny grin. “Knowing Zee, it’s going to be bursting.”
He opened the door and took in the tottering, towering piles of tupperware. “Erm. Yeah. The woman made enough food to feed the whole fucking club. Three times over.”
Vixen laughed. “Do I look shocked?”
“No,” Ice said, before he could stop himself. “You look beautiful.”
Vixen blinked over at him standing in her kitchen, his massive, muscular frame making it look even smaller somehow. Her favorite Picasso mug looked like a child’s toy teacup in his large hand, the tea caddy looked the size of a matchbox. He was just utterly, achingly gorgeous and strong and healthy, and she was a wreck with a smashed up neck and permanent facial scars and greasy hair – and he was calling her beautiful?
“Sure,” she said, rolling her unmade-up eyes. “I’m Miss America over here. My crown is in the mail, but I think it got lost.”
“I need to talk to you about something,” he said abruptly, pouring boiling water into a mug with an abstract woman in a big red chair, who looked like she was sleeping. “It’s important.”
“OK,” she said, a bit taken aback at the change of topic and tone. “What is it?”
Ice came back to her, placed the mug on the table in front of her, watched to see if she could reach it without having to strain. It suddenly came to him that he was essentially inviting himself to live with this woman, and who knew for how long. That she needed some help wasn’t an issue, at all… but he wasn’t sure that she’d accept even that , if it was coming from him, considering everything. Maybe it was too complicated between them, maybe it would be better if one of the other boys came and stayed with her. But Ice wanted it to be him, for as long as she let it be.
Well, all I can do is ask .
“I want to stay here with you,” he said, deciding to just jump in with both feet.
“You – uh –” Vixen almost choked on her tea. “You – stay ?”
“Yeah. Stay.”
“Where?” Her eyes darted around the living room, trying to imagine Ice sleeping on her floor. The sofa didn’t pull out into a bed, so unless he was going to camp out on a mattress that he’d have to go buy, then that only left…
My bed?
“Anywhere,” Ice said calmly. “I’ve slept on factory concrete floors, and on sand in the desert, and in a bathtub when I was trapped in enemy territory and under fire. I slept sitting up in that hospital chair for four nights, Vix, and that was a fucking cakewalk. The important thing is that I’m here with you.”
“Why, though?” She watched his hard face carefully as she asked the next question, the one that had been nagging at her for days, ever since she’d gotten that flash of something from Scars. “And don’t tell me it’s just to make me tea and heat up lasagna. I know that something else has happened, besides me and Keira almost being pancaked in the parking lot. So what is it?”
Ice was silent, and Vixen huffed, done with the macho reticent bullshit now. She’d been run down by a van, a little girl had almost been killed, her neck was broken, she was permanently scarred. She deserved some fucking answers, and even though she’d always respected the whole MC code of silence thing, she also thought that she had earned her way into the inner circle. Just a little bit.
“Here’s the deal,” she said, throwing all caution to the wind. “Either you tell me everything , or you leave now. I’ll figure out how to get around on my own, and I’ll manage. It’ll be fucking exhausting, and I’ll be scared out of my mind the whole time that I’ll do something permanent to my neck, but I’ll do that before I have to look at you every day knowing that something is going on, and you not telling me. So, spill it Ice, or get out. Your move.”
He levelled her with a look, those eyes as cold and remote as they ever got, and her heart sank. She’d pushed it too far; she’d called out the ice in Ice, and she knew what that meant. It meant that he was about the walk out the door, and she’d be left figuring out how to wash herself without removing the neck brace, and arranging the bed so she could sleep half-sitting up, and reaching for things in the kitchen without moving her head. But first she had to get herself off this fucking sofa with zero spring support that she was steadily sinking into.
“You really think you can do it all by yourself?” he asked quietly.
“I think I’ve proven that I can take care of shit when it gets real,” Vixen said crisply, already sorry about opening her big stupid mouth, but she was committed now. “So, yes. I can.”
“Do you want to?”
“Want to – what?”
“Want to do it all be yourself?”
“Well.” She stared at him, her common sense and self-preservation overcoming her flash of anger and frustration. “I mean – no. No, I’d prefer the help, but –”
“Hannah and Joe have been taken.”
Vixen was so stunned that she actually stopped breathing. She swore that her heart literally stopped beating from the shock, and her brain screeched to an absolute halt in its functioning. How long she sat there in suspended and frozen animation, she had no idea, but however she looked, it was bad enough that Ice sat down next to her on the sofa and took her hands.
“Breathe, Vix,” he said quietly. “I got you.”
“Oh, my God,” she whispered, her eyes prickling with tears. “ Taken ? Are they hurt? Are they –”
“We don’t know.” Ice smoothed a tendril of hair off her pale cheek. “But if the fuckers who took them wanted to send a real message, they’d have – they’d have left the babies in the cribs. Left the bodies.”
“ Bodies …”
“Hey,” Ice said gently. “We need to believe that Hannah and Joe are OK. We need to, Vix. All of us.”
“But… but Briley. And the twins. They must be frantic.”
“The doctors have her sedated, most of the time, because when she’s awake she’s inconsolable and raging. The boys had to tackle her just yesterday because she tried to run out of the house into the snow in her bare feet, screaming about her babies being missing.”
“Oh, my God ,” Vixen said again, trying to imagine the calm and collected Briley Cross, ex-cop and smart-as-hell woman, being that out of control. “And Dux and Drake?”
Ice raised one shoulder in a shrug. “They’ve been in bad situations before, with people that they care about. They can – compartmentalize, sort of. They’re putting how they feel in deep freeze for now, but when it’s over, they’re going to fucking kill whoever did this.”
“And you’re not going to stop them.”
“No.” Ice’s tone was final. “None of us will.”
She was silent, thinking things through, wondering why having knowledge of a pre-planned and -meditated murder barely fazed her. “So… so this attack on me and Keira –”
“We don’t know exactly what the intention was,” Ice said. “It might have been to kidnap Keira too, even if it meant killing you in the process.”
“But maybe they wanted us both dead,” Vixen said hollowly. “You’ve seen the video of the way that van came at us, Ice… it looked like he was trying to run us over. I mean, if they’d wanted Keira to stash wherever with the babies, why wouldn’t they just hide out behind the van? Knock me out or kill me as we passed, and just grab Keira then?”
Ice sighed. “Yeah. Yeah, I think you’re right. I think they were trying to finish you both.”
“So why wouldn’t they kill the twins too?” Vixen asked. “Why Keira, but not Hannah and Joe?”
“Vix, I don’t have any definite answers, and I’m sorry. All I can say is that there’s a clearly well-planned and coordinated movement against The Road Devils, and the people that we care about. They went after you and Keira, and at the same time, they took the babies right out of their beds in Pennsylvania while Briley was asleep down the hall. And Wolf –”
He broke off now, and Vixen stared at him.
“Wolf what ?” she said, already terrified of the answer. “Is he –”
“He’s in trouble,” Ice said reluctantly. “That’s all I can tell you about that, and I hope you can understand.”
“But he’s not dead?”
“Until we have bodies laying cold at our feet,” Ice told her. “We assume that everyone is alive. That’s how we’ve always done it, Vix, so that’s what we’re doing now.”
“OK,” she whispered. “OK, I can try to do that too.”
“Good girl,” he said, and Vixen felt another shock jolt through her body, as strong and bright as lightning, but it was a good jolt this time. He’d never, ever told her anything like that before, and she found that she really liked it. “Now. Can I stay here with you? In light of everything I just told you, and the fact that you saved Keira’s life, and you being just a little bit injured, Scars wants someone watching your back and helping you out until you’re healthy again. Is it OK if it’s me?”
“Yes,” she said simply. “I wouldn’t want it to be anyone but you.”
They sat and looked at each other, just held eyes, held breaths, held hands. Something was sparking between them now, moving back and forth between them, and suddenly, they both knew that it was time to have a conversation.
The conversation.
And yeah, the timing sucked, and honestly, it was pretty much impossible for it to be any worse. Babies were missing, a mother was being drugged to keep her from rampaging around the earth looking for them. A small girl had almost been killed in a parking lot, and God only knows what that meant for how safe she felt moving through the world. An MC President was in trouble, all alone and unprotected, and his brothers one state over didn’t even know if he was alive or dead.
And just thinking about things between them, thinking about the past eighteen months: Ice and Vixen knew what each other looked like naked, knew every single inch of each others’s bodies and from every angle imaginable. Ice knew exactly how to fuck her from behind while stroking her clit to make her come hard enough to pass out; Vixen knew exactly how to tighten her pussy muscles on his cock to make him lose his mind and his control. They knew exactly how the other person sounded and looked when they came, how they melted into each other afterwards, into a tangled and heaving heap of shuddering, panting pleasure.
How they couldn’t wait to start teasing and torturing each all over again.
But with Vixen hurt as badly as she was, that was all off the table. No stroking her to eye-rolling, toe-curling pleasure with his lips and definitely no sex, no matter how gentle, and not in any position. No way she could work his cock with her mouth, or work his length with his hands until he came on her breasts. No way to have Vixen strain or stretch or seize her neck, so even gently stroking her honeyed pussy to orgasm was too much. Hell, even passionate kissing was out, because of the pressure on her neck.
Adding to all of that was Vixen’s certainty that even if she were able to resume their sexual activities, Ice wouldn’t want to, since he had to find her less attractive now. Her cheek was still bandaged, but under it, she knew that there were three scars that were never going to go away. He was as breath-stealingly gorgeous as ever, but her ? No. Not by a long shot.
So, if they didn’t have any of that – what were they left with?
The conversation.
“Do you mean that, Vix?” Ice said, his voice husky. “About wanting it to be only me who stays here with you?”
“Yes.” She smiled at him, her hands so tiny in his. “I really do.”
“Even after what I said to you? I got the feeling when I talked to you in the staff room that you weren’t sure about my apology.”
“You know,” Vixen said thoughtfully. “I wasn’t that day. I believed that the apology was sincere…but I was worried that you had actually meant what you’d said, even if you only meant it in the heat of the moment.”
“I didn’t. I’ve never thought of you as cheap. Not for one second.”
“I know that now.” She quickly brushed her fingertips over that maddening, lush mouth. “I really do.”
“So we’re OK, then?”
“Yeah. Yeah, we are.” Vixen ran a hand over her ponytail with distaste. “Except for the fact that I feel like I’ve been sleeping in a garbage can.”
“What?”
“I feel disgusting,” she said. “Greasy and gross.”
“Well, the doc did say that you can shower as long as you keep the brace on, and you stay sitting down so you don’t slip.”
“My bathtub isn’t that big,” she said ruefully. “No way I can get a chair in the tub, and the lip is so narrow, I’d be sure to fall backwards off it smack onto the floor.”
“Well,” Ice said. “What if I got in the shower with you?”
“Huh?” Vixen blinked at him, her mouth hanging open. “You just – you’d –”
“Get in with you, yes. I’d keep you on your feet, wash your hair so you don’t have to raise your arms and strain your neck, dry you off, get clothes over your head so you don’t have to jostle anything.” He grinned down at her. “It’s not like I’ve never seen you naked before, Vix, so no major need for modesty, huh?”
“Uhhhhh. Ummmm.” She cleared her throat, decided to use whole words instead of unintelligible gibberish. “OK. I’d really like that.”
“Sadly, you can’t like it too much,” he teased her. “It will be the cleanest we’ve ever been together with no clothes on.”
“Right?” Vixen said, accepting his help getting to her feet, out of the sofa eating her alive. “It’s weird to think of being naked with you, and not being utterly filthy.”
“Well, first time for everything.”
They walked down to her tiny bathroom, and when they were standing there, she did actually start to feel weirdly bashful. He saw it on her face, and he paused.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I mean… nothing. It’s just, this is…”
“Fucking bizarre,” Ice finished for her. “Can I throw out a theory why that is?”
“Go ahead.”
“Because as long as I’m staying here and helping you, we’re not going to be having sex. We’re going to just be hanging out. Like, as people. As friends. We’ve never done that before, so it’s a bit odd.”
Vixen felt her heart plummet into her stomach; if there was one thing that she’d discovered after Ice’s horrible words to her, it was that she had feelings for this man that went beyond friendship. But if she was just sex-on-tap when healthy, and firmly friend-zoned when hurt, then clearly she was alone in her emotional attachment.
“What’s wrong?” he said again.
And Vixen decided to just ask what she wanted to know. Things were so beyond fucked up at this point, and so out of control, and if she had to walk around with one more question mark hanging over her head, she’d lose her goddamn mind. If his interest in her didn’t go beyond the bar back rooms, fine. At least she’d know that for once and for sure.
Here we go .
“So you think we’re friends?” Vixen said. “ Just friends?”
“Honestly?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t think we’re friends.”
“Uh…” Unable to meet his eyes, she dropped her eyes to his broad chest, feeling more lost after the answer than she had been before, and also way more hurt. “OK?”
“Hey, let me finish.”
“Go on.”
“I don’t think we’re friends. Yet ,” Ice emphasized. “We sure as hell haven’t tried to be, have we? I mean… how much do we really know about each other outside of what we look like naked?”
“Uh, well…” Vixen thought about it. “I mean, a bit, I guess.”
“OK, what do you know about me?”
“Hmmm.” She blinked up at him. “You’re from Montana, and your Dad’s parents were Swedish.”
“Yep. And?”
“And… and you don’t drink hard alcohol, like ever. You take your coffee black.”
“Correct. What else you got?”
“You’re a personal trainer down at The Rock gym, and you have a military background.”
“Mmm-hmmm.”
“And – well. I think that’s probably about it for what I know for sure. Anything to do with you in the MC is just a guess.” She faltered. “Like, I know that you were the club Enforcer, and I know what that means, but I don’t have any details about what that actually means.”
“Whatever you think is probably right,” Ice said crisply. “And also totally wrong.”
“I figured.” She gave him a tremulous smile. “So. What do you know about me ?”
“OK, let’s see.” He cocked his head. “You’re not a natural blonde.”
She huffed out a laugh. “You’d know that from seeing me naked and in between waxes!”
“So it doesn’t count?”
“Nope. Try again.”
“OK.” He narrowed those incredible eyes at her. “You’re a huge Picasso fan and your dream is to go to Paris and see his stuff in person.”
“Wait,” she said, surprised. “How’d you know that ?”
“I heard you talking to Cole about it at Satan’s one night.”
“Eavesdropping on my conversations with other people doesn’t count!” she said indignantly. “First-hand knowledge only for this exercise!”
“Yeah, that’s fair.” He ran his hands through his hair, still staring down at her. “OK, real talk now?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know shit about your life, Vix, and that’s on me because I’ve never asked you a single question. I don’t know where you’re from, if you have family, if you like Indian food, how you take your coffee… I do know that you drink green tea, and that’s about all I’ve got. But that doesn’t mean that I don’t know you in some ways that really, really matter.”
“You mean biblically?”
“No,” Ice growled, all joking manner gone now. “ No . I mean that I know you’re the kind of woman who fucking stands in front of a speeding van to protect a little girl, at huge risk to herself. I know that you’re the kind of woman who, after she comes to in a hospital bed covered in bandages and braces, asks about that little girl before she asks about herself. I know that you’re the kind of woman who gets a broken neck, and can hang tough about it. You’re fucking brave, and strong, and fierce… and I’m the asshole who had you alone and in my arms, dozens and dozens of times, and never once asked you if you like wine, and if so, what color. Where you grew up. Your favorite movie. I didn’t ask you anything , because I was a self-absorbed prick just looking for a good time in a bar back room with a beautiful woman.”
Suddenly, Vixen had so many things that she wanted to say, but she held her breath, held her tongue. Ice wasn’t finished yet, she knew, and she was afraid that if she spoke now, he’d never say the rest of it.
“But seeing you get hit by that van, seeing you lying there on the ground,” Ice said quietly. “Your face wrecked, and blood everywhere, and your neck…” He took a deep breath. “Your neck at that horrible angle, so I knew it was broken, but I didn’t know if you were alive or dead, and when I found out you were alive, I didn’t know what shape you were in. It just – it changed everything , Vix. Everything about what I want with you.”
It took a huge effort to not respond to this, but she managed it. Barely.
“Here’s the whole truth, OK?” he said. “I’ve liked you for a long while, despite not knowing much about you, like life details. I know that sounds fucking stupid, but I swear it’s true. And when I say that I like you, I’m not talking about your hot little body and what you can do with it.”
She blushed. “No?”
“No.” Gently, so carefully, he reached out and stroked her unharmed cheek. “I mean, I like how you talk to Elle, and Jo, and Zoe, and especially Keira. That little girl adores you, and that was before you saved her life – you’ve always been funny and open with her, and kids can spot bullshit a mile away, so no way you’re faking any of it.”
She smiled a bit; she missed Keira desperately, to be honest, and she was counting the days before she could get eyes on her again.
“I’ve watched how the other waitresses treat you and talk to you, and I’ve seen you work so fucking hard to be polite in the face of incredible rudeness,” Ice continued. “I like how you talk to Cole and Scars, how you flirt and joke around with the customers, how you always have a smile on your fucking gorgeous face. You have a sweet, good, genuine heart, Vix, and even though I didn’t care much about it when it came time to take you to the back room, I’ve come to care about it. I cared about it even before you stood between Keira and that van, before you risked your life to save hers.”
“You – you did? You do?”
“I did and I do,” he said simply. “You’ve crawled on under my skin, and I don’t even mind. I want you there, and nobody but you. I want to know things about you, even though I feel like I already know all the most important stuff. I have no idea if you like wine or beer, but I do know who you are in your core, Vix… and who you are is fucking amazing. We might not be friends yet, but to me, you’re already something more than that. Someone more than that.”
Vixen stood there in her rumpled, oversized clothes, and old man slippers, with her face scarred and her neck smashed, her hair dirty and disgusting – and she had never felt more beautiful. Never, not in her whole life. Not in her shortest skirt, her hair flowing and perfect, her lipstick on point.
No… this was the most beautiful she’d ever felt in her life, and it was because this man – this hard, terrifying, dangerous man – was looking past her skin, her eyes, her breasts, and he was seeing her .
He was right that he didn’t know where she’d been brought up, but he did know that she was strong. He didn’t know that she liked sugar in her coffee, but he did know that she’d die to protect a child that she loved. He didn’t know her favorite TV show, but he did know that she did her best to be good to everyone, even people who weren’t particularly good to her.
He was right. He did know her in so many ways that mattered. And if she were being honest, she knew him in many of the same ways.
She opened her mouth to tell him all of that, but suddenly, she felt her fingertips tingling and her head spinning, and her world went a bright white. She gasped, and it wasn’t until his hands moved to her upper arms that she realized that she’d swayed forward.
“Hey!” Ice said, alarmed. “You OK?”
“Yeah,” she said, and as she spoke, his face came back into focus. His eyes were very dark blue, almost stormy, and he looked like he was seconds away from scooping her up off her feet. Her neck made that impossible, of course, but she knew that that was the only thing stopping him. “I felt dizzy for a second. I think I’m just really tired.”
“So I’ll put you to bed.”
“No, wait. I really want a shower, Ice.” She saw his lips set in a stubborn line and she almost laughed at how quickly the man could go from gentle to sheer granite. “Please. I’ll go straight to bed after, I swear.”
“Yeah?”
“Yes. I promise.”
“Well…” He stared down at her, saw her pleading expression, felt himself wavering. Goddammit. The woman had him wrapped around her baby finger, and he had to admit that he liked it just fine. “I guess you’d sleep better after a nice hot shower anyway, huh?”
“For sure I would,” she agreed. “And I wouldn’t make the bed smell like a dumpster in the middle of summer, either.”
“OK, that’s fair.” He nodded, then moved his hands to the buttons on her shirt. “Can I?”
“You’d better,” she whispered. “Then you can burn these clothes… especially these fucking slippers.”
He laughed, then slowly, so gently, he undressed her. When she was standing unclothed in front of him – somehow more naked and vulnerable than she had ever been while they were wildly fucking – he raised his hand to the bandage on her face, hesitated.
“I need to take this off now,” he said quietly. “It’s going to wash off under the shower anyway.”
“I know.”
“You ready?” Ice asked. “Ready to see?”
“Noooo,” she said emphatically. “But it’s my face now, isn’t it? I guess I need to get used to it sometime.”
“You do know that you’re going to be fucking stunning, don’t you? Scars and all?”
“I don’t know that, Ice.” She managed a small smile. “What I do know is that a few scars are a small price to pay for Keira to still be here, alive and whole and safe. So it’s OK. Really. I can get over my own vanity.”
“You won’t need to, I promise you.” Ice started to peel off the tape and gauze. “You’re breathtaking, no matter what.”
And he wasn’t lying at all, he saw now. Yes, there were two long purple lines on the left side of her face, running from her ear to just under her eye, and one that grazed her high cheekbone and touched her temple, just below the hairline.
But her eyes were the same inky black of a night sky, the starry night sky over the mountains that he’d watched on his lonely vigils, drinking coffee in his leather armchair. Her lips were the same soft rosebuds, full and curved, and he couldn’t stop himself from just leaning down and brushing them. Light, gentle, barely a touch. A whisper of a kiss. A promise of one.
She turned around slowly now, and she looked at herself in the mirror over the sink. He stood behind her and held his breath. If there were going to be tears, they’d happen now, he thought, and he wanted to be ready.
Instead, Vix just looked at her face, zeroed in on the bruising and the scars . She traced the lines over her cheek, up and down from her to ear to her temple, to her eye. Then she dropped her hand, and just stared, as if she was trying to see under her skin.
Their eyes met in the mirror now.
“Vix?” Ice said, fighting to keep his voice calm. “What do you think?”
“Well.” She sucked in a deep breath. “I think that if Olivia Jameson can lose an entire modelling career after getting a bunch of scars on her face, and end up married to the desperately sexy Dallas Foreman, and be loved and happy… I figure I can handle it. I’m not exactly losing a multi-million-dollar career, right, but do you think my bar tips will take a hit?”
“No.” Ice was firm, even as his lips twitched in a slight grin. “Not even a little bit.”
“No? You think that Satan’s customers will still want to flirt with me?”
“I know they will.” Ice gripped the back of his t-shirt, yanked it over his head. “I mean, I’m not gonna stop.”
And there was that muscled, massive chest that she’d run her lips and fingers over hundreds of times, the chest that had moved above her as Ice had fucked her breathless. It was here in her bathroom, all casual and tattooed and gorgeous, like it was no big deal at all. Like it had always been here, just like this.
“Ohhh,” Vix squeaked, turning to face him now, watched as his hands moved to his jeans. “Flirt away, handsome.”
He gave her a little wink that almost took her knees out under her, so she leaned back against the counter, watching avidly as the hottest man that she’d ever known got gloriously naked. Sadly, nothing could be done about it right now – except looking with deep appreciation – but after what Ice had just said to her, about how he saw her , she knew that didn’t matter. Not at all. Things between them had gone beyond the physical, in a startling and amazing way, and she was at peace with that. She even found that she liked it.
He turned on the shower, and that’s when she got a bit nervous about actually getting under the water, into a slippery tub. She’d been told over and over again at the hospital that it was totally safe, that she was so tightly packed into the brace that she couldn’t move or extend her neck even an inch, that water on plastic was of course completely fine… but she was suddenly frozen with trepidation.
Once again, Ice saw it on her face, and he knew what to do: he stepped into the bath first, adjusted the temperature, then extended a hand to her.
“C’mon now, baby,” he said. “I’ll make sure you don’t fall.”
She didn’t move.
“What?” Ice asked. “You changed your mind? It’s OK if you have, we can just shower later.”
“That’s not it.” She walked over to him, put her hand in his. “Say it again.”
“What? We can shower later on?”
“No.” The tears that she thought would come at seeing her scarred face were surfacing now, but for a completely different reason. “Call me that again.”
“Ah.” He stared down at her, his body glistening under the water, making him look like some kind of mythical sea god: powerful, dangerous, sometimes merciful. “You mean ‘baby’?”
“Yes.”
“I got you, baby.”
She smiled now, smiled through her tears, and she let him lift her over the tub lip and set her on her feet. She clung to his arms, her nails digging into his flesh, but he didn’t even feel it. Vix was standing here with him, naked and vulnerable and totally trusting him to protect her from further injury… and all he wanted to do was live up to that for her.
He was the man who was tasked with keeping everyone safe, and Ice felt like he’d been a colossal fucking failure at it lately, all over the fucking place. But here – in this woman ’ s home, in this bathtub, under this hot shower – he could do that for one person, for her . So he did.
He wrapped his arms around her small body and moved her under the spray; he gently pulled her hair out of its ponytail; he carefully worked the shampoo and conditioner into her blonde tresses; he lathered her entire body in fragrant shower gel; he rinsed her in warm water until she was fresh and clean and rosy pink.
Then he lifted her back out of the tub and dried her body, gently, carefully, like she was made of spun sugar, patting down the neck brace to dry it. He towelled himself roughly, then took her hand and led her down the hall to her bedroom. He paused in the doorway, really looked at where Vix slept, and he felt warmth move over him as he realized that it was where he slept too. At least for now.
Zoe had set up a sleeping frame for Vix, the one that the hospital had recommended, and she’d also bought several huge pillows. Ice found an oversized t-shirt, one with a wide neck that got over the brace without catching on it, and limb by limb, he worked Vix’s body into the soft material.
The whole time, she stood totally still, a bit tense to be sure, but the trust on her beautiful face was all Ice needed right now. He barely felt like he deserved it, but he’d take it, for as long as she was going to extend it to him. It was like a balm on his troubled heart, and although his worries and fears – for Hannah and Joe, for Wolf, for Keira, for the Road Devils and their women – didn’t lessen, they retreated. Just for a few sweet moments.
“OK,” Ice said. “Ready to get into bed?”
“Yes.” She looked at the frame and sighed a bit. “Sleeping sitting up isn’t great, but I’m so wiped out, I think I could sleep standing up.”
“I bet. So let’s do this, slow and easy. Sit down on the side of the bed, and let me move you into the frame, get you all buried in your pillow fort. OK?”
“OK.”
She did as he instructed, and in a surprisingly short time, she was comfortably half-reclined, surrounded by huge, sumptuous pillows that must have cost Zoe a bomb, with Ice lying down on his side, facing her, totally and gloriously naked. She longed to be curled up against that astonishing body, pressed up against all that heat and strength, but this was pretty damn good too. They hadn’t even discussed him sleeping with her – by tacit and silent agreement, it had just happened, and she was so comfortable with it, it felt like he’d been in her bed for years.
Ice reached out, gently traced her eyebrow. “So what do you think?”
“Way better than the hospital bed, that’s for sure.” Vixen sighed again. “It’s always better to be home, I think. Same broken neck, same sleeping position, but still somehow more bearable.” She gave him a quick grin. “Or maybe it’s because the company in the bed has improved? As in, now I have some.”
“I’m gonna put a bunch of pillows between us, though,” Ice told her. “That way, I can’t roll over and jostle you by accident.”
“An extra layer of pillow fort, huh?”
“You got it. A fancy defensive wall of cotton and foam.”
Vixen’s eyes were starting to feel incredibly heavy, but she wasn’t quite ready to drop off to sleep yet: she wanted to enjoy having Ice in her bed, just for a few more minutes. Sure, he’d be here with her for weeks and weeks, but this was the first time, the first night.
To be sure, they were doing things a bit backwards, a bit horse-before-cart. They’d been fuck buddies for over a year, all the time knowing nothing much about each other except for their sexual likes and desires and triggers… and now here they were, starting to know each other as people. It was weird, and not traditional in any sense – and it felt so totally and absolutely right to her, that Vixen felt zero need to question it or wish that things were any other way. It was their way, and it was right for them , and that was good enough.
Almost against her will, she closed her eyes, and found her thoughts wandering back to their talk earlier, to Ice telling her that he didn’t know that many things about her, but that he also knew lots about her. She started making a hazy, vague mental list of all the things that she wanted to find out about him, things like how he grew up back in Montana, and when he joined the military, and why he didn’t drink hard alcohol. That reminded her of something that he’d said, and without even fully realising that she was speaking aloud, Vix murmured:
“Red.”
“What, baby?” He stroked her exposed shoulder, marvelling at the softness of her skin, wondering how he’d never really noticed it before. “What about red?”
“I like red wine.”
Then she tumbled into the warm, welcoming darkness, and she slept for sixteen hours straight.