Chapter 46 Rachel #3
It was beautiful. It was powerful. It was everything.
His hands came around me, sliding about my waist, hauling me into him. His hands cupped me and shaped me as his mouth found mine.
Finally.
Lips parting, I absorbed his kiss, accepting the claiming. Needing it.
The pressure of his fingers increased as he maneuvered me into him, tongue and teeth tasting and nipping as one hand slid up higher into the sleek locks of my hair. He tilted me this way and that, making sure that he could get as close to me as possible.
His dick was hot and thick against my belly, and I swore to God that he could have pinned me against the bar right then and there.
Sex and I… we were complicated.
I knew it could be painful. I knew it could be terrifying.
Yet, where Rex was concerned, nothing was.
So the dichotomy of those two warring beliefs were always a battle that ended up a stalemate.
I knew it could hurt but I wanted him anyway.
Tonight, however, there was no denying that I’d missed him. After thinking that I’d lost him, after him throwing down an ultimatum, after weeks of phone calls and emails and texts, of relearning each other, I was all in.
As hungry as he was, as needy, as desperate for his touch and his kisses and his love.
God, I wanted that more than anything.
His lips broke away from mine, leaving us both panting.
Tongue tracing the line of my jaw, with no prickle from his stubble against my cheek, he reached my ear and whispered, “I got us a suite.”
The rumble of his voice settled inside me.
I peered up at him with dazed eyes and whispered back, “I missed you.”
His gaze darkened in turn. “I missed you.”
Nails digging into his arms, my mouth wobbled. “Don’t leave me again.”
“If you don’t leave me, I won’t leave you. How’s that for a compromise?”
His hand, calloused and rough from the work he did on his bike, made the hairs at my nape stand to attention as the sensation rushed through me.
Angling my chin into his hold, I thought about Lily’s brand and rasped, “I want your brand.”
His pupils bloated like he was glutting on delight, and he snarled, “Don’t say shit like that if you don’t mean it, Rachel.”
I swallowed, hearing his anger and finding myself shocked by it. “I do mean it.”
“You can’t. We’re not even together that way yet—”
“We are. It’s just an atypical romance.”
“Well, I don’t want atypical anymore. I want to go to bed with you. I want to eat breakfast and lunch and fucking dinner with you. I want to watch movies with you and to read in bed with you.
“I want to fuck you on the kitchen table and eat you out in the living room. I want everything with you, Rachel, so don’t tell me you want my brand unless you’re ready for what that means.”
Before I could tell him that I knew, that I wanted all that, he pressed his mouth to mine.
This time, the kiss was hungrier. Desperate. Seeking.
He nipped and bit at my lips, thrusting his tongue against mine like he was thinking about fucking me; his hands even grew harder in their possessive hold.
But I wasn’t afraid.
I knew what it meant.
He wanted my brand on him.
More than I did, and that was saying something.
I sighed, sinking into him, my bones turning lax as I leaned on him for support.
As his mouth tore into mine, I knew he was angry with me. Angry for making him hope, and I understood.
A couple weeks away and I was asking for his brand?
A few meetings with Giulia’s Posse and suddenly all was right with the world?
The short answer was no.
Of course all the broken parts of me weren’t fixed.
Tiffany hadn’t wrought a miracle and Rex’s time away hadn’t turned me off our usual status quo and made me want a ‘regular’ relationship.
But I’d missed him.
I’d realized what I was doing without.
I needed more, but I needed to figure out the landscape of what 'more' looked like.
I couldn't do that without him.
“Come upstairs with me?” he growled against my lips.
I nodded and pressed a softer peck on his mouth. “Of course. I’m still needed down here, but later…?”
As my words trailed off, he nodded.
Reaching up, I let my fingers trace his jaw and whispered, “I like this.”
“It was Wynter’s suggestion.”
I smiled at him. “It was?”
“She seemed to think it might help you.”
He'd...
God, he'd told her that?
Nervously, I asked, “You explained…?”
“I did. I think she wants us to be together.” Something flickered in his eyes. “She isn’t the only one.”
A shaky breath escaped me. “I want that too.”
“How do we make it happen?”
“You don’t look like Grizzly now,” I whispered, unaware that my heart was in my eyes.
He gritted his teeth. “I wish I’d known that before.”
“How… What—” I paused. “I couldn’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“You’d have killed him.”
“I should have. You denied me that.”
“I kept you safe, and he’d have lied, Rex.
He’d have told you I asked for it.” My mouth trembled.
“I-I couldn’t have taken you believing him and not me.
I-I think that would have broken me more than what they did.
Them telling me I was like my mom, that I was just a whore.
..” I shuddered. “No. It was for the best.”
His face flushed with his temper, but he didn’t argue. Just looked at me with gleaming eyes that burned like hot coals. “I’d have known the truth.”
“How could you?”
“You’re mine, Rachel. You always have been, and you always will be.”
“You never branded me.”
His brow furrowed but those goddamn eyes of his set me alight. “You were too young, and after, you broke up with me. Ever since, it’s not like we’ve been going steady, is it?”
It wasn’t like I could argue with him, even if a part of me wanted to.
“No,” I conceded with a grimace.
“Brand or no, you’ve had a ‘hands off’ sign to anyone who knows us both. I won’t mark you until you know for goddamn sure that you’re all in, Rachel, and you can’t tell me that you are now. I won’t believe you.”
It hurt, but I got it.
There was a ball of emotions in my chest that I couldn’t seem to unravel, and I stared at him, feeling lost and afraid yet somehow found and safe because I was with him.
“What is it, Rach?” he rasped. “Where’s this coming from?”
“It’s coming from the fact that I want your brand.”
“Don’t say shit like that unless you mean it," he reiterated, tiredly this time. "It isn’t fair, Rachel. It isn’t fucking fair.”
His anger burned away by that point, instead, turning to hurt.
Hurt.
I’d hurt him.
I hadn’t even meant to.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Because you’re fucking breaking me, Rach. You’ve spent the last twenty years wrecking me, destroying everything I know about myself. Making me change and alter how I do shit to accommodate you.
“Every day, I wanted to kill whoever hurt you. Every fucking day. But I couldn’t.
Because you didn’t tell me. You didn’t share with me.
I had to wait. I knew that I did. It wouldn’t mean the same if I forced you to tell me, because that was just me, being another fucking bastard who owned a dick imposing my will on you.
“I was not about to be a man who took something from you like that. I was not going to be like them. But it hurt me, Rach. It hurt me not to fix shit. Not to make it better, not to make the world right for you again.” He pressed his fist to his heart.
“It killed me to take Wynter away, to give her to someone else to raise, but I did it because having her near was killing you.
"I was stuck between a rock and a hard place, so I did what I thought was right—I gave her to Ally. She had more maternal instinct than Carol Brady—”
I knew the words burst free from jealousy. “How do you even know her?”
His gaze was measured upon mine. “She dated Link for a while. You have no reason to be jealous.”
Gritting my teeth, I turned away from him. “Things should have been different.”
“Damn straight they should have been,” he snapped. “In no way am I comparing this with what you went through, but Grizzly stole our future from us both; that didn’t just happen to you.
“You’re the love of my fucking life. You’re my soul mate, Rach, and I can’t touch you sometimes without thinking you’re about to leap out of your skin.
I want to make him hurt like he made you hurt.
I want him to suffer how you have. Because, baby, if I feel like hell, if I feel like my life is on hiatus because of him, how the fuck do you feel?
“Fixing is what I do for the people I love. I make shit right, but there’s no making this shit right. I can only do that by being there for you, to be whatever you need me to be for you, but I don’t even know if that’s enough. This has been our reality for almost two fucking decades, Rach—”
Staring into his tortured eyes, I reached up and pressed a finger to his lips to still his words. “You’re right. They stole from us both.” I sucked in a breath. “I’m tired of that being our reality, Rex. I’m tired of my life being stolen from me.”
I pressed my forehead against his shoulder, and as I did, the solid presence of the pooch on my belly made itself known to me. It was too small for him, but not for me to recognize.
The ability to raise Wynter had been hijacked from me.
The chance of living a full and happy life with this man had been robbed from me too.
And I’d let it happen.
I’d let them win.
His hands slid around my waist and he held me against him.
It felt so fucking good.
So right.
Our babies were the only people who should ever come between us.
No one else.
Nerves hit me, but his anger wasn’t what scared me. It never had been.
“Dance with me?”
I blinked in surprise at his request, my words blown from me as he snatched the wind from my sails. “Can you dance?” I blurted out.
His grin was sheepish. “Yeah. I can dance. Mom taught me.”
“Oh, to be a fly on the wall for that lesson.”
“I hated every minute of it,” he groused, “but she was right about one thing.”
He twisted us so that I no longer leaned against him as he guided us over to the edge of the dance floor so we weren’t making a nuisance of ourselves to the wait staff.
“What’s that?” I asked as I found myself back in his arms.
“There’d come a day when I’d want to dance with my woman and I’d thank her then.”
Heat filled me when I reached up and settled my arms on his shoulders just as his hands went to my waist, and slowly, we started to move against the other.
I’d never thought Rex would breach this half of my life, but seeing him here, dressed in a tux, socializing with Manhattan’s underbelly—I never imagined he’d fit in.
Never imagined he'd try to.
Yet another way he was a perfect partner for me.
A thought occurred to me, and I asked, “Did you drive up?”
“Nah, I flew.”
“You?” My brows lifted. “Where did you store your bike?”
“A secured parking lot.”
Despite myself, I had to grin. “I’m just trying to imagine you on a shuttle bus to LAX.”
He grunted. “Only for you would I rideshare and park my bike.”
His lips were light, as were mine, but I knew he meant it. It was a throwaway comment, but he meant it.
Only for me…
I tilted my head forward as the band moved into a tune I didn’t recognize. It was slow and moody. I could almost imagine it was a blues song with how it whispered along my sorrow and agitated the edges.
“I need to tell you something,” I whispered.
“I’m listening.”
The words were on my lips—I love you.
I’ve never stopped loving you.
I’ve only ever wanted you.
You’re the reason I woke up some mornings.
I wish things had been different.
I want to go to sleep beside you and not dream of your uncle.
So many things that needed to be said.
Instead, I rasped, “I’m pregnant.”
His tension wasn’t immediate.
He didn’t stop the slow and steady sway of us as we danced to the sultry sounds echoing around the ballroom dance floor.
If anything, his hands moved, one coming to the bottom of my back. The heat soothing something inside me that I didn’t know was a torn and ragged mess.
It took away my nerves. It took away my anxiety.
This was Rex.
In times of trouble, he didn’t fall by the wayside.
I just had to have faith.
So I didn’t prod him for an answer.
I didn’t challenge him for a response.
I waited.
And I waited.
Then, he put me out of my misery: “I want to see.”