Chapter 19
I’m not clearing up any rumors about this unless they say I’m out there drinking unsweet tea.
— Cutter to Copper
CUTTER
She was right.
It was her family.
Only , it was Shasha with a stack of papers that said, “ Congratulations . She kept her last name, though.”
I took the papers from him and looked at the top sheet.
It was a marriage certificate.
I blinked at the documents and said, “ I should probably have told my sister and brothers before I went and got hitched.”
“ It happened kind of fast.” Shasha laughed. “ Have a good night.” He paused halfway down the walk. “ With you here, I won’t leave the guard.”
I nodded. “ I’ll take care of her.”
His eyes studied me for a long second before he said, “ One hundred and seventeen confirmed rapists killed by you and your club is reassuring, Cutter .”
I snorted. “ Confirmed .”
We killed more than that.
Pedophiles .
Rapists .
Murders .
If you committed the crime, and you were a bad person, and the criminal justice system chose to give you leniency, or you didn’t get caught…well, the Truth Tellers would give you the fitting punishment.
Most of the people ended up dead.
Some of them were in places that they’d never be found, living their lives in a way that meant no more happiness for them. Ever .
We knew how to get away with murder, too.
Which , likely, was what brought Shasha’s attention to us in the first place.
“ Right , confirmed,” Shasha said. “ If I had any doubt that you’d take care of her, I wouldn’t have asked you to marry her and protect her.”
I nodded. “ I’ll take care of her.”
And I would.
No matter what it took.
Shasha disappeared through the gate and down the street, a man appearing out of the shadows to walk behind him.
His guard.
Or possibly Milena’s guard.
Once the place was locked down and the alarm was set, I walked back toward the bedroom to hear Milena in the shower.
Whereas mine took five minutes, hers was going on ten, and when I got into the room, it was to see her shaving.
The red towel I’d used earlier was hanging back up along the railing, blocking most of her from view.
I could see her slim shoulders from the back, the way her hair was somehow piled onto her head with only what looked like conditioner holding it in place.
She had one long tendril that’d escaped the mass and was trailing down the length of her spine.
It was so long that I couldn’t see its end.
“ Milena .”
She looked behind her and said, “ Yeah ?”
“ You almost done?”
She snorted. “ This is one of those showers that’s going to take fifteen minutes because I’m shaving everything.”
I grinned. “ Your brother dropped off some papers.”
“ What papers?” she questioned, turning fully now.
Her beautiful tits, though on the smaller side, were perfectly perky.
Her nipples were a dusky brown and…
“ You have a tattoo,” I said, studying the small sun underneath her left breast, mostly on her ribcage.
She pressed her hand to her breast and lifted it up and out of the way, giving me a better view.
A sun.
“ It was a reminder to myself that I’d find the sun again,” she said softly. “ And I did, mostly. I just need him permanently gone to finish up the healing.”
If it was the last thing I did, I’d make sure that he was wiped free of this planet.
There wouldn’t be a single goddamn hint of him, not even a name on the internet, when I was through.
She let her breast go, and then leaned her head back so that she was mostly underneath the showerhead.
The water sluiced down her hair then her back, and I watched, transfixed.
For the next fifteen minutes I sat on the counter and talked with her about everything and nothing while she did what she called an ‘everything’ shower.
Her arms were shaved. Her legs were shaved.
She’d exfoliated with something.
She’d left a hair mask in her hair.
Then she was getting out, letting me get a full view of everything as she did.
My mouth watered, and the erection I’d barely been keeping in check popped from semi to full.
She dried everything, left her hair up in the towel, then went to the bedroom for a shirt before saying, “ I’ll be right back.”
And she was, with a shirt on her back that clearly belonged to a man.
“ I have a shirt in my bag.”
She blinked at me. “ What ?”
“ A shirt. I have one in my bag. Wear it.”
I didn’t know why it bothered me so much that she was wearing another man’s shirt, but it was all of a sudden very important to me, so I didn’t question it.
She studied my face for a long second before she said, “ Is this a husband thing? I only wear your shirts?”
I shrugged and gestured toward the papers on the counter. “ It’s a Cutter Clayborne thing. And I guess it’s a now-husband thing.”
She hummed, then disappeared only to come back with the towel gone, and her wet hair trailing down my single-most favorite shirt I owned.
It was a Dallas Cowboys one that I’d bought when I was nineteen after seeing a game with Copper , Chevy and Keely the night before Copper was locked up permanently.
When Dorie had tried to wear that shirt weeks ago, I’d thrown a fuckin’ fit.
Now , there Milena was, wearing it.
And I felt nothing but excitement to see her in it.
She walked right up to the papers on the counter and I heard her gasp. “ He already did it?”
“ Guess so.” I shrugged. “ But , just sayin’, we have to tell my family before they flip the fuck out.”
She brought both of her hands up to rub at her temples.
“ We have to tell mine, too,” she admitted. “ Maybe we could just send a mass text message to them all, include Shasha in it, and then go on a beach vacation somewhere that has no signal.”
I snorted. “ One , that might work for the time being, but eventually we’d have to come home. I like the beach, but I don’t like the beach enough to live there full time. Two , I have about eighteen jobs lined up right now, two of which are at the Dallas Cowboys stadium to put in lockers in their locker room, and it’s going to pay me a whack. I can’t skip out of town for more than a weekend for now. And three, you’re not a coward. You face stuff head on.”
“ I do?” she teased, looking at me.
I walked up to her and smoothed her hair behind her ear, fingers tangling in a small wet knot, before saying, “ You’re a Clayborne now. We don’t back down for nothin’.”
She smiled. “ According to these documents, I’m still a Semyonov .”
My eyes gleamed. “ Legally , on paper, you might still be a Semyonov . But I know where city hall is, and I know how to fill out paperwork.”
She giggled. “ If you want me to change it…”
“ I do,” I said suddenly.
Fiercely .
Her eyes widened. “ Then I’ll change it.”
Mesmerized , I watched her dry her hair.
She struggled with it for a while before I said, “ How do you usually dry the ends of your hair?”
“ I mostly let them air dry. I can do it, but it’s exhausting.” She wrinkled her nose. “ I’ve thought about cutting it for a long time, but when I was hurt, I’d immediately decided that my hair was getting cut. All of it. Shasha and Dima begged me to leave it, so I did. But I made them promise to dry it for me forever, no exceptions. They could be old men, and they had to dry it for me. Whenever I wanted. They agreed, and when I need it dry, I usually go to Shasha and make him dry it.”
“ Not Dima ?” I asked.
“ Dima is military,” she said. “ He’ll do it, if he’s home. He actually did it yesterday. But since he’s not here all that much, the burden falls on Shasha .”
I hopped off the counter and held out my hand for the brush.
She placed it into my hand with a raised brow.
I took the Dyson —excuse the fuck out of me, but didn’t they used to make vacuums?—and turned it on.
After a couple of minutes of learning the best way to make the round brush turn and not get it stuck in her hair, I started to effectively dry her hair.
It was actually fairly soothing, and the bonus was that the fan kept causing the t-shirt to smooth down taut over her backside, revealing her ample ass to me.
When I was done, she arched and stretched, causing the curve of her neck to be exposed.
I wanted nothing more but to wrap my hand around that throat and pull her to me.
Before I could stop myself, I was doing just that, not stopping until her backside was now pressed against my erection.
Her eyes flared wide, and I immediately kicked myself for the move.
“ I’m …” I began to apologize, but she turned in my arms and pressed herself against me fully.
“ Do you know how fucking hard it is to be a sexual being, for wanting sex, all kinds of different sex, and the men in my life treating me differently because of something that they think I should be traumatized by?” she asked.
I looked down into her indigo eyes and said, “ Tell me, exactly, what I’m allowed to do.”
“ Everything but hold me down and take me when I’m saying no,” she said.
I blinked, my blood boiling now.
I didn’t know whether to pull her to me and drop my mouth to hers, or to punch a hole in the wall for how that Pennington prick was about to pay.
In the end, she chose for me by saying, “ I’m not fragile. I like sex. I like hard sex. Sometimes , when I’m by myself, I get my eight-inch vibrator out of my…”
I didn’t need her to say anymore.
For the last few days, everything had been leading up to this moment.
Before I knew that she’d been hurt, I’d wanted to take her roughly.
Against a wall.
Bent over my motorcycle.
In the back seat of my truck.
Anywhere I could get her alone for just a few minutes.
That would be all I needed.
I’d get us both off with barely any effort.
My hand smoothed up her arm starting at her wrist. I moved until I was cupping her throat, using my thumb to tilt her head up to stare into my eyes before saying, “ No means no. Always has, always will. You say no, I’ll stop immediately.”
Something inside of her seemed to settle because I saw the visible wilting of her body before she said, “ You’ll treat me normal?”
I dropped both hands and cupped her under her ass.
“ I don’t know about normal…”