Chapter 17
Chapter Seventeen
Athena
I peeled my eyes open, and instantly, the world was on fire—no, not fire. Light.
I gasped and sat up, eager to let the light blind me because it was light. And I could see it.
My eyes blinked rapidly to adjust, my surroundings coalescing into shapes and colors and shadows.
I could see.
A happy sob bubbled from my chest, and I scrambled out of bed and searched for the first piece of clothing I could find: Dare’s tee at the foot of my bed.
My bed. My rug. My house. My— Dare. My nipples pebbled against the loose fabric that draped down to my thighs, the whole of me awash with memories from last night that were just as bright as the sun.
The heat of his mouth. The orbit of his attention. The size of his body.
I was both sore and empty. Sore from the first…and the fo llowing three times he’d claimed me last, his body already inside me, hard, when he’d begin to move. Sliding in and out, arousing me from sleep.
My aching muscles clenched, recalling the thickness of him and the magical—possibly miraculous—way his piercings stroked that elusive spot inside me, flinging me so quickly, so forcefully over the edge of release I could hardly catch my breath.
Especially the last time, when he’d filled me from behind. That time, he’d thrust into a spot that was too pleasurable to be anything but a fantasy, the way it made me come not once but twice on his cock. My orgasms stacking in a matter of strokes that seemed to turn my bones and body into a melted mess of release.
But still, he’d stayed inside me. Slept inside me. And now, I needed to see the man who’d claimed me in a way I hadn’t expected or thought possible.
The man who’d saved my life. The man who’d changed my life.
I was going to finally see the scar I’d felt a hundred times with my fingertips. The lips that explored every inch of my skin like it was the finest porcelain. The arms that held me when it felt like I couldn’t hold myself. And him—the whole of the man who’d punished himself for years—locked himself away in darkness until he’d found me in mine. And we became each other’s light.
The clank of silverware echoed from the kitchen as I opened the bedroom door.
More light burned images into my brain, and my eyes glazed with tears.
Dare.
The thud of my heartbeat overpowered my footsteps; my steady steps belied how my heart raced to reach him. Somehow, this approaching moment felt even more intimate than the whole of last night. The last hidden piece of him would be exposed.
His low hum reached my ears first, my other senses were still heightened while my vision remembered how to work.
I rounded the corner and stopped short.
He filled my small kitchen. The sight of him. The scent of him. The sound of him. My skin broke out in a rush of warm ache. He filled my home the way he’d filled me. Completely. Utterly. Irrevocably .
Silently, I watched the muscles of his tanned, bare back move as he sliced a bagel in two. Smaller scars dotted his skin like constellations of courage and sacrifice. My gaze lowered to the waist of his dark jeans and then darted back up to his neck and then the dark waves of his hair, the ends curled like they still held the shape of my fingers in their inky strands.
“Dare.” My voice was half whisper, half rasp, and I found myself reaching for the wall for a different kind of support.
His big body stilled, and my breath caught and held like a fish on the end of a line, waiting as he turned slowly and reeled the oxygen out of me.
Thick, strong arms, the tanned skin printed with tattoos of crests and numbers I’d ask about later.
The sharp profile of his nose and cheek.
His scar.
He faced me fully, and the ricochet of my heart exploded into silence.
“Athena.”
My jaw dropped. Too many times in the last few weeks, the ground has given way underneath me, but never like this. Never with such a sudden, sharp, deep foreboding. Even oxygen didn’t bother to enter my lungs, knowing I was a lost cause .
I didn’t stare. I blinked. Over and over again, willing each fresh look to bring me a different sight. Willing, even, for it to take me back to the darkness once more.
But it didn’t.
In the span of a second, I’d traded in my broken brain for a broken heart.
“Darius.” There were so many things I thought I’d feel in this moment, but recognition wasn’t one of them. The man who’d given me my last kiss was the same man who’d given me my first. On the same kitchen counter.
The light burned my eyes, but it was the truth that brought them to tears.
Darius Keyes stood in my kitchen. The man who’d saved me—cared for me—was the same boy who’d broken my heart.
“Athena.” He knew. He knew that I knew .He stepped forward, and I instinctively stepped back.Pain creased his face, which had only grown more handsome with the way life and experience had shaped it. “Please,” he begged, lifting a hand as though I were a wounded animal about to bolt.
“Why?”
Why hadn’t he told me? All this time, everything we’d shared…and he hadn’t told me who he was. The way he’d kissed me…touched me…I gripped my stomach, nausea hitting me like a freight train to my stomach. Last night, the way he’d…I gasped, but the invisible band around my chest made it feel impossible to breathe.
“Athena—”
I shook my head wildly, drawing away from him like a cornered, frightened animal.
I needed air. Fresh air. I spun and bolted for the front door, my feet hitting boxes and my shoulder bumping the wall along the way.
I needed a minute. Fresh oxygen and a single minute to process the fact that I’d let the first man I’d ever loved break my heart for the second time.
I stumbled onto the front porch when his hand found my shoulder.
“Please—”
“Don’t.” I yanked out of his reach, banding my arms over my chest as I backpedaled onto the lawn. “Tell me why.”
He stood with that familiar stillness, the one that always made me feel as though he worried his next step would be on a land mine.
And I was the land mine.
“Athena…”
“Why didn’t you tell me who you were?” I said, my voice cracking. “Were you trying to see how long you could fool me?”
“No—”
“Was I some sort of unfinished business?”
“Stop.”
Stop what? Stop hurting? Stop crumbling? Stop wondering if I’d just fallen in love with a man who was the best at breaking my heart?
“Please, Athena.” His voice was the most honest thing about him. Ragged with self-loathing and crackling with remorse. “Please, just let me—” He broke off suddenly, his eyes narrowing over my shoulder.
I turned to follow his line of sight. “What is it?—”
“ Get down!” he shouted right before the weight of him crashed into me with a bang.
No. The bang wasn’t from him. It was from agun.
The thud of my body hitting the ground wasn’t as loud as the sound of gunshots firing above my head. Pain bloomed through me, his big body shielding all of mine.
I clung to his chest, wishing I could crawl between his ribs and hide there until this was all over .
“Stay down,” he ordered, and then lifted his weight with a grunt just as I heard the squeal of tires pierce the air and then fade.
I turned on the ground, air heaving into my lungs as he sprinted in the direction of the disappearing car.
Someone had just shot at me— tried to kill me.
Again .
I pushed myself upright with a gasp, half-afraid my vision was going to disappear again. But it didn’t. It wobbled and blurred and took a few seconds to focus. But then it did, and that was when I saw it.The red patch of blood on my shoulder.
Oh my god. First, I’d almost been blown up. Now, I was shot— Wait, where was the pain? I hurt, but not gunshot-wound hurt. I shoved the fabric aside, seeing unmarked skin underneath.
No.
My head snapped to Darius and the matching bloom of red on his bare shoulder and the distinct dark circle where the bullet had gone through him.
“Oh my god.” I scrambled to my feet as he came back, striding and scanning the surroundings as though he weren’t injured at all. “Darius?—”
“Get inside and get your things,” he snapped. “We’re leaving.”
“Your shoulder?—”
“It’s nothing.” He barely looked at it as he moved behind me, using his frame like a human shield to protect me.
“Who was that? Why?—”
“Athena, please.” His grimace of pain scolded me. “We have to go.”
I snapped my mouth shut and nodded, walking quickly into the house. While I changed and gathered my things that I hadn’t even unpacked from yesterday, Darius stood guard with his weapon by the door. I heard his strained voice speaking low as I got closer, but as soon as he saw me, he ended the call and shoved his phone in his pocket.
“Ready?”
“Darius…” I dropped my bag and rushed to the kitchen for a clean towel. When I returned, he was looking at his shoulder wound, the blood oozing in a thick stream down the ridges of his torso.
I rushed over, wiping the smear of blood and then carefully pressing the towel over the bullet hole until Darius groaned.
“Sorry,” I murmured, catching how he locked his teeth as though this pain was the least he deserved from me.
He placed his hand over mine, and my head snapped up to meet his gaze. There was something about looking into his eyes after all this time…after everything. Something I hoped for my sake would go away the more I faced him, because otherwise, I’d have to face a truth I didn’t want to see.
“Can you grab that duct tape?”
I nodded, sliding my hand out from under his and fetching the roll of silver tape sitting on top of one of my moving boxes.
“I need you to tape the towel to my shoulder.”
Again, I nodded, my throat too thick to say anything. I gained my sight but lost my voice. For some reason, it was easier to speak when there wasn’t anything to see. Or anyone to see me.
Warmth rose in my cheeks as I tore strip after strip of the tape and carefully sealed the towel to his chest, making sure my fingers stayed on the smooth tape and didn’t stray onto his equally smooth skin.
“Here.” I handed him back his shirt I’d put on earlier. I wish I had a clean shirt for him, but this was it. He hadn’t planned on staying the night…or being shot .
He didn’t ask for my help to put the tee on, though there was no hiding how painful it was for him.
“We need to go.”
My brow creased, and I peered out the window on the door. “Isn’t someone coming?” I assumed that was what his phone call had been about.
“We don’t have time to wait.” He pushed his leather jacket in my direction.
“We’re going to take the bike?” My jaw went slack. “But you’re?—”
“Capable of riding my motorcycle.” He took my arm, ending the discussion as he led us out of the house.
“Did you see who it was?” I couldn’t stop myself. The questions oozed from me like my own brand of wound.
“No,” Darius said with a glance backward. His steps faltered the moment he realized I didn’t need his hand on my arm to guide me any longer. I shivered as soon as he let me go.
“You said Ivans…” Was dead.
“I know.” He stopped at the side of his bike and handed me the helmet.
“Then who…”
He inched closer to me and cupped my cheek. Maybe I should’ve pulled away, but I couldn’t resist the feel of him. The security of his touch. Even knowing who he was…and having a million questions about why he’d broken my heart.
“I’m going to find out, Athena. I promise,” he swore low.
“Okay.”
His hand fell, and he climbed onto the dark silver Harley, the engine awakening with a snarl as I found my seat behind him and carefully wrapped my arms around his middle.
Again, he’d saved my life. Protected me. But this time, the flutter in my chest was weak like a bird whose wings were clipped.
It was strange to see the garage rise up in front of us. Strange to see a place I’d experienced so differently for the first time. It was large. Impressive, but unassuming. And not at all like what I’d pictured as the front of the safe house.
The hollow in my chest grew larger, realizing there was even more to this I was missing. More that had been kept from me.
As we slowed, the bike wobbled for a second, forcing my arms tighter. Instantly, we leveled and came to a stop in front of the open garage bay.
My jaw dropped a little. There were so many bikes perfectly positioned as though this were a museum rather than a garage.
The engine cut off, and Darius held out an arm for me. I tried to put as little weight on the support as possible, but I still heard his groan of pain as I climbed off the bike.
I pulled off my helmet to see him slightly slumped forward on the seat, and my heart jumped into my throat. He needed help. Everything else could wait.
“Rob?” I called into the space.
“Dare!” Another man called from the far end of the garage. His jog slowed when he saw me. “Athena.” He knew me.
“He’s injured—shot,” I blurted. “He needs a doctor?—”
“Rorik is on his way.” Thank God. “I’m Tynan—Ty,” he introduced himself as we both turned toward Darius.
He stood next to his bike, both hands resting on the helmet on the seat.
“Darius?” Something wasn’t right. He looked at me silently— and ashen. And I started to run.
“I’m sorry,” he slurred right before the mountain of his body collapsed to the ground.
“Darius!” I cried out, my knees landing with a thud on the concrete.
I yanked his jacket to the side, the towels underneath soaked with blood. Oh my god. This whole time, the whole drive, he risked himself to get me back here safely. My eyes burned as tears instantly collected in the corners, spilling down my cheeks as I grabbed the first piece of clothing from my bag and pressed it over the wound.
Pressure .
It needed pressure.
Shouts and curses echoed around me as Ty and then another man I could now recognize as Dare’s older brother, Harmon, appeared.
“Let’s get him to his cabin,” Ty rumbled. “I don’t think Rorik will want to move him again.”
“I’ve got his shoulders,” Harm said as Ty moved to his feet.
“Careful. He was shot—” I swallowed the rest of the words, feeling like a fool as I swiped tears from my cheeks. Of course, they knew he was shot. He was covered in blood. Passed out.
“Athena.” Rob’s voice jarred me, and I turned to the woman I’d already relied on for so much these last few weeks…and reached for her support once more.
Our eyes met, and she realized I could see her.
“You know,” she said softly.
I nodded, and a fresh round of tears spilled free. I knew who he was. I knew Darius was both the man who’d saved my life and the boy who’d broken my heart. And I needed to know why.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured as her arms came around me, and though I didn’t have siblings, I knew this was what the hug of a sister felt like. Solid and steady as I shook with unshed sobs.
“I’m okay,” I insisted, refusing to break down now. Later, once I knew Dare would be okay, I could cry and crumble and do whatever else my body needed. Right now, I needed to be strong for him.
“Let’s get some water?—”
“No.” I shook my head, already following Ty and Harm and forcing Rob to follow me. “I can’t leave him. Not until I know he’s okay.”
We walked behind them, the maze of the compound blurring behind the heavy thump of my pulse.He had to be okay. He had to. When we reached the long hallway, time slowed, recognition scratching in the back of my mind. All the doors looked the same, but behind the one they opened, there was a stairwell that had the same number of steps as the one to the safe house.
And at the top, we entered a space my mind had already mapped out—a blueprint of steps marking out the bed and the bathroom and the hall and the kitchen. Seeing the place I’d stayed in for the last several weeks shaded in details, but it couldn’t color over the truth.
“His cabin…” I breathed out the words as they carefully laid Darius on the bed.
When I turned to Rob, she held my eyes and then let her chin dip in slow confirmation. His cabin was my safe house.
All this time, he’d given me his home.His bed. His protection. And now, I was afraid his life.
“Rorik’s here,” Harm announced and moved around us to go get the doctor while Ty grabbed towels from the bathroom.
In the commotion, I found a straight path to Darius’s side, kneeling on the floor next to the bed and taking his hand in mine. Like he’d done for me.
“He’ll be okay,” Rob assured me, her hand gently finding my shoulder.
My throat was too tight to respond. My chest too tight for my heart to beat. My lungs too tight for me to breathe. Pain and sadness and fear consumed me, but it was anger that held me in a chokehold.
Anger that he’d hurt me again. Anger that he’d lied by omission. Anger that he’d cared for me so fervently and tenderly. Anger that he saved my life without concern for his own. Anger that he’d made me ache and burn for him. For his touch. His kiss. For more. And anger that made me want to forgive him for everything if he’d just be okay.
Darius Keyes had to survive this because I wasn’t done being furious with him yet.