Chapter 13 #2
She really wanted to know whether he’d rather sleep on his couch than—God!—with her. How could she wonder about that?
And then something strange happened. Mike drifted outside himself for the first time in his life. He wasn’t looking at a situation entirely from his point of view.
Mike saw Chloe, really saw her, looking past himself. Saw how scared she was, how brave she was. Saw what she felt for him right there in her eyes. Saw that whatever his answer, she’d accept it.
Pale, bruised, Chloe was asking whether he wanted her. And even as he looked, he could see her bracing herself for rejection.
“No.” The word came out raw, rough, as if he hadn’t spoken in days. “No, I don’t want to sleep on the damned couch.”
Mike reached out a hand, looked at the bandage on her arm, stopped himself. His arm dropped back to his side. “You’re wounded.”
Man, just the thought of hurting her…it make him nauseous. Mike was rough in his sex. He never really thought about it. Most times his brain just switched off and his body took over.
When he thought about it, which wasn’t often, he realized he fucked the right kind of women, ones who got off on him and a good thing, too, because he didn’t work too hard for their pleasure.
In taking care of his own, they got theirs. Win win.
Right now, he was crazy excited, hard as a club. Muscles tight with sexual tension. This was familiar ground, this was right about the time when his mind switched off and his dick took over.
But…suppose—just suppose he forgot himself and hurt Chloe’s arm, or was rough where she had bruises? It could happen, if he wasn’t paying attention. He felt slick hot bile rise up in his throat at the thought.
The picture of Chloe in pain because of him bloomed bright and clear in his mind, cool and precise. Hearing her cry out in pain, pain he’d caused…oh Jesus. Fuck no. He’d rather tear out his own heart.
Because he could. If he went with fucking-as-usual, he’d be entirely concentrated on his own dick inside Chloe and experience told him he wouldn’t be thinking at all.
And he could hurt her.
“I can’t do this, Chloe,” he whispered, the words almost physically grating against his throat. “I just can’t.”
She stepped back sharply. Her face closed up completely and now she looked like a little doll—porcelain and perfect and lifeless. Somehow she was far away from him, out of reach of his touch though she was only a foot away. She was utterly closed to him.
“No problem,” she said smoothly. “I need a shower and then I’ll go to bed.
I don’t need tea. I’ll just, um, go into the, um, bedroom.
Right now.” Her voice started shaking, breaking up.
She turned around fast but not fast enough for him to miss the pain on her face and he nearly burned up with rage at himself.
He didn’t want to hurt her? How about right now, slick? You’re goddamned hurting her right now.
This was a woman who’d had violence done to her three times. More than any woman should have to bear. And each goddamned time she’d been left completely alone. Including right now.
Right now he was sending her to his room without even a hug. And why? Because he was a coward.
Because he was such a fucking coward, Mike was sending her away. The whole hurting her thing was true but was also bullshit of the highest order.
He didn’t flail around while fucking. He didn’t bite or twist limbs. He could control himself enough not to physically hurt her. That was all a line of crap.
The truth was he was scared shitless. There was nothing here he even remotely recognized as familiar, except his hard-on.
And even that felt somehow different. It wasn’t a normal hard-on, the kind he had when an available woman was around.
No, it was a Chloe woodie, through and through.
Impossible to deal with, impossible to get rid of.
He buzzed with crazy energy.
He felt raw and unsure, like he was about to fall into some huge black hole, never to find his way back again.
He was terrified this was going to change him in some unknown way and instinctively, he was taking the coward’s way out by rejecting her.
Never mind that Chloe was being hurt in the process, just as long as ol’ Mike’s butt was covered.
Those fuckers had hurt her physically but Mike, man he was a real champ because he wasn’t hurting her body, which would heal, he was hurting her heart, which wouldn’t. At the very moment she needed him, he was turning his back on her.
And even realizing this, even knowing Chloe was heading back to his bedroom to deal with her fear and trauma on her own, as she always had, he hesitated, frozen like a statue. Unable to move forward, unable to move at all.
Because this was a huge moment for him and his life was going to divide into two, right here, right now.
She was disappearing into his room and in a second, it would be too late. He’d stay forever on this side of the divide, alone and hurting.
“Chloe,” he said quietly. “Stop.”
She stopped, back to him, head low.
And then Mike said three words he had never said to any human being before. Three words he never thought he could say, three words he’d worked his whole life not to have to say.
“Chloe.” His voice was hoarse, the words painful to get out. “I need you.”
She turned around and he winced at the sight of her face. Ice white, hurting, without hope.
If she wanted to rant at him, scream at him, she’d have every right. Mike wouldn’t have treated any woman who’d suffered violence this callously. So why was he doing this to Chloe?
Looking deep into his heart, something he was extremely uncomfortable doing and did as little as possible, he understood why. It was because he cared too much for Chloe, but how could she know that?
He sure as shit had never told her what he felt.
Not in all these six months in which he’d been her shadow.
He’d fixed things in her house, driven her around, carried in her groceries, kept her company when she baby-sat, made sure she did her weight reps right.
All those good guy things that cost him nothing but that meant he could be near her.
Because getting up in the morning, knowing he was going to drive Chloe to RBK or to the shelter or spotting her in the condo gym three morning a week, well, that made his day.
Not one word about what she meant to him. Ever. Not one fucking word.
No wonder she wasn’t expecting anything from him, not even now, when she needed him.
She was looking at him, eyes wide, mouth open. “What did you say?” Shocked.
He was shocked himself. The hand he held out to her trembled. A sniper’s hand that trembled. His hand never trembled, but it did now.
He stepped over that chasm sharply dividing before and after and took her uninjured hand, brought it to his mouth. Her skin was smooth and icy cold. The cold of shock. Well, of course.
She’d been attacked, brutally and violently. Her worst nightmare, come to life. Again.
Mike hated to see her like this, the old Chloe, the Chloe who’d showed up at RBK on a wild quest, frightened and uncertain. She was even moving like the old Chloe, slow, hesitant, shaky.
That old Chloe had all but disappeared these past six months, wrapped into the folds of a loving extended family, deeply loved by two little girls and with Mike—well, with Mike around a lot. If nothing else, building up her muscles.
She walked well and fast now, laughed often, was a quiet charmer. Had been pretty before and was now extraordinarily beautiful.
How it hurt him to see her back to the damaged woman who’d arrived in San Diego, hoping but not expecting to find a family.
“How do you need me? What do you mean?” she asked finally. She was so shocked it took her a couple of beats to answer him. “I don’t understand.”
Mike kept holding her hand, trying to warm it up. But also because it just felt so good in his. He reached up his other hand to touch her cheek. She flinched instinctively and his heart gave a huge thud in his chest.
Men had hurt her all her life. Though Chloe knew in her head he could never hurt her, he hadn’t given her any reason to turn to him, to think of him as a refuge.
She was feeling raw and alone, hunkered down into herself, surrounded by her loneliness like a force field.
He wanted to break that force field down, shatter it.
She controlled her wince and let him stroke his fingers down her cheek, run the back of his fingers down her neck. Skin so smooth, so soft, so chilled. “I need you every way there is, Chloe. I’m not good with words the way you are, so I can’t explain it, but I sure as hell can show you.”
He stepped closer still, bent slightly, lifted her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom.
Mike carried her into his bedroom.
Chloe had never been carried as an adult woman.
She’d been carried as a child, sick in the hospital.
In all the thousands of romance novels she read, she always loved it when the man carried the woman somewhere.
It just seemed to feed right into some primordial female lobe that was stubbornly resistant to modern notions of female equality.
Chloe sighed at the scenes she read, never believing in a million years that something like this would ever happen to her. And yet, here she was, in a man’s strong arms, being carried somewhere. To…the bedroom, actually.
Mike carried her easily, without watching where he was going. The only thing he watched was her eyes.
He was preternaturally strong and showed no sign whatsoever of making any kind of effort. He could just as easily have been carrying a glass of water, not a full grown woman. And she’d even packed on 15 pounds of pure muscle these past six months. Mike had seen to that.
To keep her balance, Chloe had to put her arms around his neck, loving the play of Mike’s shoulder muscles along the inside of her arms. Sheer, unadulterated male power.
He walked slowly and directly into his bedroom, which she’d never seen. Her heart thumped painfully as they crossed the threshold.