Chapter 15 Sydney
Sydney
With the remains of my snack cleared away, I sit on my side of the bed and wait for McRae.
I’ve decided to call him by the name I used when he got his tattoos.
His first name won’t stick, but having something to call him besides “the man” gives him a place of permanence in my mind and my life.
He’s real to me now, as strange as that sounds.
McRae returns from the bathroom, a navy T-shirt stretching across his powerful shoulders and a pair of thin gray sweats riding low on his hips.
I force my gaze from the revealing fabric back to his eyes and hold out a detangling brush and a new bottle of leave-in conditioner. He takes the hair care supplies from my hands, then climbs behind me on the bed, his thighs bracketing my hips, and his knees slightly raised.
His touch comforts me, and I’m done fighting myself to pretend it doesn’t.
“I’ll try not to hurt you. If I tug too hard, tell me,” he murmurs, then presses my hand to his thigh, “or give me a swat if it’s hard to talk.”
Liquid heat rises inside me at the feel of those hard muscles surrounding me. My insides clench. An image pops into my mind. A sweaty, naked vision. I don’t know if it’s a memory or a fantasy, but this isn’t the time for my libido to wake up.
It requires more effort than it should to drag my attention back to our actual task and not run my hand over him in possessive exploration.
Don’t be a damn pervert, Sydney. He’s brushing your hair, not seducing you.
“He’s your husband. He probably wants you to touch him,” the devil on my shoulder argues in response.
My mind may be lost and confused, but my vagina, apparently, doesn’t care about pesky things like remembering his first name or the details of our marriage. Which is absolutely bonkers when I may need to run from him, sooner, rather than later.
A different kind of heat, one far less pleasant, flushes through me when I think of the way I lost control earlier. It was more terrifying than anything that’s happened since I first woke to this beautiful stranger bathing me.
I gave him, and myself, at least one bruise, and I barely remember doing it.
McRae sprays a section of my hair, then brushes it, working his way from the bottom up. I want to ask him how he knows to do that, but my raw throat and frustration with my uncooperative mouth keep me silent.
”I used to do this for you before bed sometimes,” he says conversationally. “You didn’t need it, but you liked it, and I loved it.”
The words alter my perception, my unease at being perceived as a burden easing slightly.
Closing my eyes, I sink into the feel of his care.
As a child, I had short hair because I had to be able to wash and brush it myself.
As a teenager, I let it grow in and watched online videos to learn how to care for and style it.
Aside from a once or twice yearly trip to a salon as a teenager, no one ever did it for me.
In my first placement after Dad died, I missed him so much that I tried to snuggle against my foster father to watch TV.
The man pushed me away so hard I landed on the floor.
He told his wife he wasn’t comfortable with someone with “those kinda issues” in the house.
Then he gave me a stern lecture about getting too close to men and not to let anyone in a foster home touch me.
So I went to a new place and I remembered.
All of my memories from the age of eight onward include a type of emotional and tactile starvation I’d never have been able to name.
McRae makes me feel the way I did when I finally allowed myself those first mouthfuls of applesauce.
I want to devour his easy affection with dog-hungry gulps, but my heart cramps at the deluge.
It’s too much and not enough all at the same time.
And, beneath it, lurks my fear that his affection isn’t what it seems. Or, worse, that he needs protection from me.
His gentle strokes lull me into drowsiness. This day was exhausting, despite me taking a long nap. My tangled hair takes a long time, but he doesn’t yank or grow impatient.
When I slump, he eases me against his chest. I turn my head to the side and let my eyelids drift shut as he continues.
I doze against him until he shifts behind me, moving subtly away. It’s too late; I already felt the hard length of his erection against me.
McRae leaves the bed and returns the brush and spray to the bathroom. I climb under the covers and watch him through the open doorway. When he returns and nears the bed, I slam my eyes closed and stop breathing.
Habit.
Instinct.
His fingers brush carefully across the crest of my cheekbone. The clean, masculine scent of him speaks to a part of me I don’t recognize.
He’s mine. The thought isn’t gentle or nice. It’s that of a guard dog ready to maul anyone who would hurt him or threaten to take him from me.
“Sweet dreams,” he murmurs.
I inhale and open my eyes. “Good night. Thank you.”
“Always.”
“No sex. Stay on your side,” I say, unsure if I’m warning him or myself.
He nods gravely. “I will.”
When he slides under the covers, the expanse of the king-sized bed between us, and snaps off the nightstand lamp, beautiful, blessed darkness descends. He tosses a few times to get comfortable.
I lie on my back. Still. Barely breathing. Is this different from when I was in the other bed? He could have attacked me at any time, but he didn’t, and he won’t.
“Not until he discovers your betrayal,” a voice whispers in my mind. I need to remember what I did. I can’t warn him to be prepared for something if I don’t know what it is. And I won’t know how long I can put off running either.
No. I’m not the slightest bit afraid he’ll attack me tonight. It’s my own pathetic need that has me quaking internally beside him.
The vast size of this bed means I wouldn’t be able to touch him even if I stretched out my arm. After ten minutes or so, he stops moving altogether, and I sleep.
I wake in darkness with no idea how much time has passed.
“Hey.” It’s the barest whisper of a word, testing to see if he’s awake.
When he doesn’t respond, I slip from beneath the covers, move some papers over on the nightstand to reach the switch, and turn on the nearby lamp. Then, I wait, watching his unmoving form.
Barely breathing, I allow a few more minutes to pass, then lower to my knees on the floor and open the drawer in the bedside table.
I looked in here earlier and found a mishmash of items. Some kind of rechargeable flower-shaped thing was nestled next to a pair of knee socks with McRae’s face screen printed all over them.
They were so ridiculous I’d almost smiled.
Then there were these short rubber torpedo-looking things and, oh my God, lube.
It took me way too long to figure out they were sex toys.
It wasn’t until I found the box of extra-large condoms that I realized what those other items must be.
It feels like I’m spying on someone else. It’s not just my sexual history in this drawer, after all, but, presumably, part of his. I lift a condom packet between two fingers, and a pleasant, squeezing sensation inside has me pressing my thighs together.
I shoot a glance back at my husband. Even in sleep, he exudes strength. He has a core of steel. Truly patient people always do. It takes an iron will to maintain that kind of self-control.
Surely, I had more common sense than to deliberately choose to make this man my enemy. Did I really do something so stupid, or is it a trick of my mind?
My mind and body are a mess. I shouldn’t be thinking about sex with anyone, let alone a man I have every reason to believe could turn on me, eventually.
I drop the condom back into the box, ready to push the drawer closed, when instinct, almost muscle memory, has me sliding my fingers under the upper lip of the drawer.
I graze some type of smooth surface. Nothing happens.
I reposition and slide my middle finger into the oval that feels custom-designed for it.
The front panel swings open on silent hinges. If the sight of the condom heated me up, the newly revealed matte black handgun hidden in a secret drawer coded to my fingerprint freezes me to the core.
McRae lies vulnerable beside me. What if I lost my mind, picked it up, and accidentally used it on him before I could stop myself?
Never. The answer comes from deep inside me. It may lack the slightest hint of self-preservation, but if someone walked into this room with the intent to harm this man, I would throw myself in front of a bullet for him. I would walk through hell, then turn around and retrace my steps.
They can’t make me hurt him, not even in self-defense. I’ll run first.
But I did hurt him earlier. I don’t remember what happened, but he has a bruise on his jaw from me. What if, instead of a comb in my hand, I’d had this gun? What if I thought, for even a moment, that he was one of the people who hurt me? It’s not safe to have this here.
You’ll need it. He kills his enemies, and you’re one of them. He’s a dangerous man. The voice in my head doesn’t feel like mine, and that’s enough to make me want to throw both middle fingers in the air and trust him on principle.
On the other hand, McRae is terrifyingly beautiful. That should have been enough reason to stay away from him.
Women loved my dad. Men admired him. He rested on his NCAA football-hero status long past his college days, accepting free drinks at the bar and regaling people with stories of how he’d been a shoo-in to be the first draft pick for the NFL until his back injury took him out of the sport entirely. It was true, and everyone knew it.
More than once, I had some obsessed woman speak to me in a sugar-sweet confiding voice and tell me my father was “the one” and we were all going to be such a happy family.