20. Ryder #2
The door swinging inward.
The impact of her phone hitting the floor.
Her fucking scream.
I press my forehead to the tile and drag in a breath that doesn’t go deep enough. I’m not sure if I’ll ever be able to really breathe again.
I have spent years telling myself that watching her meant I could prevent the worst things.
I knew her routines. Her windows. Her coffee order.
The way her apartment light looked from the street at two in the morning.
I built a whole rotten comfort out of the idea that noticing enough could become a kind of protection.
Today, I listened while someone tried to take her and everything that I’ve justified over the last decade was left in a heaping pile of ash on the ground.
The bathroom door opens.
I don’t move, but every part of me knows it’s Alex before her bare feet touch the tile outside the shower.
“Ryder?”
My hands curl against the wall. “I’m not gonna be good company right now.”
“I know.”
The glass door slides open behind me.
I turn my head enough to see her through the steam.
She’s naked, hair loose around her shoulders, bruises showing in faint shadows where his hands were.
She steps into the shower before I can find a single useful thing to say because the sight of her makes me stupid with desire and lust and greed.
Water hits her skin and runs down her body, and my brain tries to split itself in half between want and fury.
“Alex.”
She reaches past me for the shampoo bottle, ignoring my anxiety and turning this into a completely normal moment instead of my carefully hidden panic attack.
“I’m showering,” she says.
“I can see that.”
“Then stop using my name like you’re warning me to stop.”
I stare at the water sliding over the bruises on her upper arm. “I can’t look at those marks and not want to kill him.”
Her hand stills on the cap. Alex sets the shampoo on the ledge and turns toward me fully, rain and hallway fear and police questions gone now, leaving only her and the damage someone else put on her skin. The damage that I couldn’t stop.
“I know what you want to do,” she says.
“No, you don’t.”
“I know enough, Ryder. I see you. All of you.”
I look away first because the truth in my face feels too ugly for her to stand this close to. “You shouldn’t be in here with me when I’m like this.”
Her fingers touch my wrist. Not pulling at me or trying to be calming. Just there, warm beneath the heat in the water. “I’m not here with you because you’re calm all the time.”
The words move through me slowly, creeping through my body like a creeping vine, cracking through the walls I’ve tried to build.
She steps closer, taking my hand from the tile and setting it against her waist. I keep it loose.
She presses her own hand over mine until my fingers curve around her.
Her body is warm and slick under my palm, alive, here, choosing to be within reach of everything I keep trying to make acceptable before I offer it to her.
“I’m not choosing the part of you that looks safe in public,” she says, voice quieter now. “I know you’re angry. I know you’re scared. I know there’s a part of you that wants to tear the world apart until it’s safe for me again.”
My throat tightens. “Alex.”
“I’m still here. For the rage. The obsession. The guilt. I’m here for all of you.”
That almost takes my knees out.
She rises on her toes and kisses me, soft at first, then harder when I don’t move fast enough to claim her.
I let her have my mouth. I let her push into me, crave the way her hands slide over my chest and shoulders, and am ready to worship her for the way the tension in every part of me eases at her touch.
When she presses against me, my hands go to her hips before I can talk myself out of touching her.
She makes a small sound that reaches straight into my soul and claims me.
I break away and hold her still. “This can’t be because of what happened. I never want you to use me for an escape.”
Her eyes flash, and there she is. My Alex. My Allycat. Furious even with bruises on her arms and fear still fresh under her skin.
“It’s not.”
“You were attacked today.”
“And I’m aware of that.” She reaches for my hand and drags it from her hip to the center of her chest, holding it there so I can feel the hard, steady beat beneath my palm. “I’m also alive. I’m here. I want you. Those things are allowed to exist at the same time.”
The water runs between us. My thumb moves once because I can’t stop it, brushing the curve of her breast before I lock down again.
She notices. She always notices.
“Don’t make me beg you to believe me,” she says.
That breaks through the last of the resistance.
I kiss her hard enough that she rocks back against the shower wall, but my hand gets there first, bracing behind her head so she doesn’t hit the tile.
Her fingers dig into my shoulders. Mine spread over her waist, her back, the curve of her hip, learning every inch like touching her is the only proof my body will accept that she wasn’t taken from me.
She’s here.
She’s here.
She’s here.
I lift her so easily it’s almost comical the way Alex’s legs wrap around my waist, and the sound she makes against my mouth turns my restraint into something thin and useless. I pin her with my body and she moves against me like she’s done waiting for me.
“This is what I want,” she says against my mouth. “You. Like this.”
“Say it again.”
Her hands slide into my wet hair, tugging until I look at her. “I want you, Ryder.”
I bury my face in her neck for a moment because hearing it still does damage.
Then I reach between us, finding her with my fingers first, making sure her body is with us and not only her stubborn, beautiful mouth.
She gasps against my shoulder, hips rolling into my hand, and the sound drags a curse out of me.
“You’re sure?”
She bites my shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt. Enough to make a point. “I swear to God, if you ask me one more time, I’m going to start taking it personally and I will murder you.”
A laugh breaks out of me, rough and short and almost painful. It’s the first thing in hours that doesn’t taste like rage.
I line myself up and push into her slowly, even though every instinct I have is screaming at me to take, claim, keep.
Alex’s head falls back against my hand. Her mouth opens, but no sound comes out at first, and I watch her face because I need to see every second of this.
Not to manage her. Not to search for fear.
To be here with her while she chooses me.
All of me.
The part that makes her coffee. The part that checks the locks. The part that wants to be good for her and the part that would bury a man for putting bruises on her arms.
When I’m fully inside her, I stop.
Alex’s eyes open, heavy and dark through the steam. “Ryder.”
“I know.” My voice sounds wrecked. “Give me a second. You’re my every hope and dream rolled into one, and being inside you is fucking perfect. Just…give me a minute.”