17. Ever
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
EVER
I take the gloves off her hands.
Slowly, because the tape underneath is a mess and because my hands need something careful to do before I do something not-so-careful with the rest of her.
Her wrists are small and fine-boned in my grip. Too small for the violence circling her life. Too small for the anger she was trying to pour into that heavy bag a few minutes ago. Christ, it weighs more than she does.
When I came in here and saw her going at it, that animal sound caught somewhere between her throat and an actual sound… It made me ache. It made me want to hurt someone.
She watches me work the tape loose.
Her breathing has steadied, but her face is still blotched from crying. Her lashes are damp. Her mouth is swollen from the kiss she asked for, and the sight of it all does something ugly and possessive to my self-control.
I peel the last strip of tape from her knuckles and toss it aside with the gloves.
“Better?” I ask, my voice barely above a breath.
“A little,” she whispers.
A little. That’s not enough. I’ve never had a woman I wanted to fix as bad as I do Reva Leigh Hart. I just want to make everything better. Which is a joke, because how can I do that when I’m as broken as I am, myself?
I can see that everything’s not…better…in the way she looks at me. The panic has loosened its grip, but it left room for something else to move in. Heat. Need. That restless, skin-too-tight desperation that comes after a breakdown, when the body starts looking for proof it survived.
Her fingers rise to my chest, tracing the black ink along my collarbone where it disappears beneath my shirt. I go still under her touch. I don’t want to spook her. Don’t want to crowd her. Don’t want to take even one inch she hasn’t offered.
She studies my face like she hates that I’m waiting.
“Ever,” she says, voice rough. “I need you. I don’t want gentle.”
My jaw locks.
She keeps going, fingers curling into my shirt. “I don’t want to be handled like glass. I’m already broken. You can’t make it worse.”
A sound comes out of me before I can stop it. Low. Rough. Warning, maybe.
Because I can make it worse. Men like me are very good at making things worse. But I can also hold her down until the ghosts stop clawing at her throat, and right now, that is what she is asking for.
I stand, taking her with me.
She comes easily, knees unsteady, hands gripping my shoulders. I don’t carry her far. The mats are beneath us, thick and black, marked faintly where she wore herself out trying to beat answers from leather. There’s a weight bench a few feet away, but I don’t want steel under her.
I want the ground.
I lower her to the mats and follow her down, bracing myself above her. Morning light filters through the high windows, cutting across her face, catching on the tear tracks drying at her temples.
She looks wrecked and yet somehow still alive.
I brush damp hair away from her cheek. “I’m not Nash.”
Her eyes stay on mine.
“I don’t need to own you,” I say. “And I’m not Shiloh. I won’t charm you into forgetting.”
Her fingers tighten in my shirt.
“I’m just the man who’s going to hold you down until the ghosts give up.”
Her breath breaks. “Then hold me.”
She pulls me down. The kiss is heavier this time.
Not the first soft touch from before. Not a question.
This one has weight behind it. Her mouth opens under mine, and the sound she makes moves straight through to my spine.
I kiss her slow because if I don’t, I’ll take too much too fast. Her hands move over me, restless and clumsy, trying to get skin she can’t reach through fabric.
I pull back long enough to strip off my shirt, yanking it with a hand to the collar.
Her eyes drop.
Her fingers follow, tracing ink, scars, the hard line of my shoulder, the healed ridge beneath my ribs. She touches like she’s mapping proof. Like she needs every inch of me catalogued.
I catch the hem of Shiloh’s hoodie, and she helps me pull it over her head.
Under it, she’s in a fitted tank, dark with sweat from training, and black leggings riding low on her hips. She is all heat and exhaustion, all fight burned down to need. I slide my hands under the tank and feel her ribcage expand beneath my palms.
She shivers as I pull the tank over her head and toss it aside.
She is bare beneath it, her nipples tightening immediately as the air from the lazily circulating fans wafts over them. Her skin is flushed from crying and exertion, marked here and there by the mats, by tape, by the life that keeps putting its hands on her.
I lower my mouth to her collarbone, and she inhales sharply. I continue, kissing down the line of her throat, over the center of her chest, then lower. She arches under me, hands sliding into my hair. When my mouth closes over one breast, her nails bite into my scalp.
“Ever…”
I lift my head. “Say stop and I stop, firefly.”
Her eyes are closed. “I don’t want to stop.”
“Say slow and I slow down.”
“I don’t want slow.”
I believe her. I also know she is shaking.
So I move with purpose instead of haste.
I hook my fingers into her leggings and pull them down with her underwear.
She lifts her hips to help me, impatient now, breathing hard.
The clothing catches at one ankle, and she kicks free with an irritated little sound that would be funny if I weren’t on the edge of losing my mind.
I settle between her thighs.
She reaches for me, but I catch her wrists and pin them gently above her head. Holding her down.
Her eyes flare.
“Til the ghosts give up,” I remind her.
She nods.
I slide one hand down her body, over her ribs, her stomach, lower. She’s wet when I find her, hot and slick against my fingers. My control slips another inch.
“Fuck, firefly.”
Her hips lift into my hand.
I press my palm against her clit, slow and firm, giving her pressure before I give her more. Her breath catches, and she tries to twist her wrists free. Not to get away. To touch me.
I hold her there anyway and slide two fingers inside her.
Her mouth opens on a silent gasp, and her body tightens around me. I watch her face. Every flicker. Every hitch. Every time her eyes try to flutter closed, I slow until she forces them open again.
“That’s it,” I murmur. “Stay.”
“I hate how good you are at that.”
“At what?”
“Knowing when I’m leaving.”
I curl my fingers, and her complaint breaks apart.
She is so responsive it makes my teeth ache. Anger and grief have stripped her nerves raw, and every touch lands like a match. She rocks into my hand, chasing more, and I give it to her until she is trembling hard enough that I have to brace my forearm beside her head.
“Ever. Please.”
I withdraw my fingers.
She makes a furious sound.
I push my sweats down just enough to free myself, then reach for my wallet from the pocket I left folded with my shirt. The condom is there because I am practical and because being near Reva without preparing for my own bad decisions would have been stupid.
Her gaze tracks the movement. “You carry those to training?”
“Just when you’re involved.”
“You don’t need to. I’m on the pill. And clean.”
I lower to kiss her, tossing the condom aside. “Same.”
“You’re on the pill, too? That’s ama—”
I surge inside with a single powerful thrust, shutting her up. “Smart ass.”
Her moan echoes up into the beams, changing to a giggle at my accusation.
I stop when I’m fully seated, my forehead dropping to hers. She’s tight around me, hot and shaking, her wrists small beneath my hand. My body wants to move. My head wants to memorize.
I do both.
“I’ve got you,” I whisper. “I’m not letting go.”
I don’t even know why I say the words. Maybe because that’s what she needed to hear when she was a child. That on her darkest day, someone had her. Someone wasn’t letting her go.
She stares up at me, her giggles quieted, and raises her lips to kiss me.
Then I start to move.
Slow at first, each thrust deep enough to make her breath stutter. The mats shift beneath us. Her legs hook around my waist. Her heels dig into me, urging me harder, and I give her a little more. Enough to make her body jolt. Enough to make her fingers flex against my grip.
Her eyes stay open, intent on mine.
Good girl.
I don’t say it. That belongs to Nash, maybe. Or maybe it belongs to any of us if she likes the sound. I’m not thinking clearly enough to decide. I only know she is here under me, and every time I drive into her, some of the wildness leaves her face.
I release her wrists and cup her face.
Tears slide from the corners of her eyes. I wipe them with my thumbs and kiss her hard, my tongue moving with the same slow rhythm as my hips. She moans into my mouth, arms wrapping around my neck, nails dragging down my back.
My control fractures.
The pace changes.
Faster.
Harder.
Her body welcomes it. Demands it. She breaks the kiss and turns her mouth against my shoulder, trying to muffle her sounds. I grip her jaw and bring her face back to mine.
“No hiding.”
Her eyes are glassy. “Bossy.”
“Yes.”
I drive into her again, and the word turns into a sob.
She’s close. I feel it in the way she tightens around me, the way her thighs lock, the way her nails dig into my skin. I slide a hand between us and find her clit with my thumb.
She jerks.
“Ever—”
“Let go.”
She shakes her head once, stubborn to the end. “I can’t—”
I press harder and thrust deep.
She comes apart under me. Her body clamps down around my cock in tight, violent pulses, and her cry fills the carriage house. I hold her through it, watching her face, watching the ghosts lose their grip for one clean second.
That second ruins me.
I bury myself deep and come with a sound that does not feel like mine. My body locks over hers, every muscle pulled tight, release tearing through me until the room narrows to Reva’s breath in my ear and her arms around my back.
I stay there afterward.
Mostly on my forearms, enough weight to ground her, not enough to crush her. Her fingers move lazily over my spine. Her breathing is uneven, but calm now. No keening. No panic. No faraway look.
She is here.
I kiss her temple.
Her mouth curves against my shoulder. “Better?”
A laugh moves in my chest. “That’s my line.”
“I’m stealing it.”
“Then yes.”
She turns her head, eyes heavy and warm. “Better.”
The door opens, and Reva freezes beneath me. I turn my head.
Shiloh stands in the doorway with two coffees in one hand and a paper bag in the other. His gaze takes in the scene fast: clothes on the mats, gloves near the heavy bag, Reva under me, me very much still over her.
He sighs like a man personally wronged by fate.
“Aww, hell.” He steps inside and lets the door swing shut behind him. “I always miss the good stuff.”
Reva makes a sound into my shoulder, her body shaking in mirth and doing things to mine, still lodged inside her. “Oh my God.”
I don’t move off her immediately.
Shiloh lifts the coffee tray. “I brought breakfast, which now feels like really poor timing on my part.”
“Turn around,” I tell him.
“I am wounded by your lack of hospitality.”
“Shiloh.”
He turns, facing the wall of practice knives with an exaggerated sigh. “For the record, this is exactly why we need a schedule.”
Reva cranes her neck to see around my shoulder. Her face is bright red. “A schedule?”
I lift off of her and ease back enough to shield her while she reaches for the hoodie. “It was my turn.”
Shiloh looks over his shoulder, and I give him a death glare.
He turns back around, but the grin is obvious in his voice. “Your turn.”
“Yes.”
“What about my turn?”
“You had your turn already. My turn was technically last night, but was postponed.”
“That sounds like forfeiture language, and I object.”
Reva yanks the hoodie over her head. “I cannot believe this is happening while I’m naked from the waist down.”
Shiloh raises one hand. “I am respectfully facing a wall.”
“No, you are gleefully facing a wall.”
“Well, that’s true enough.”
I hand Reva her leggings and stand to pull my clothes on. She snatches them from me and wrestles them on under the hoodie with as much dignity as possible, which is not much. Especially when I graze my hand over her bare ass.
Shiloh clears his throat. “If we are discussing fairness—”
“We’re not,” Reva says. “My body, my say.”
“—a rotating schedule only seems practical.”
“No.”
“Alphabetical order favors me.”
“How do you figure?” I say. “My name starts with an E, dumbass.”
He sighs. “Fine, although I am compelled to point out Deacon’s starts with a D. Seniority?”
“You lose that too.”
“Well, technically, I was there first.”
Reva gets to her feet, hair tangled, cheeks flushed, mouth swollen. She takes one of the coffees from Shiloh as she passes him. “What about no schedule and everyone stops playing tug o’war?”
Shiloh looks at me. I look at him. Then we both look at her, Shiloh with a shit-eating grin on his face.
Her eyes narrow. “Absolutely not.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Shiloh says.
“You thought something very loudly.”
“I think many things.”
“Think quieter.”
His grin turns wicked. “I’m just thinking there are options besides a schedule.”
I cross my arms. “Careful.”
Reva looks between us. The blush climbs higher on her neck, but she doesn’t look away.
“I can make the next joke for you. We don’t have to take turns…we can just tag team!”
Shiloh goes still—only for a second, but long enough. Then he smiles.
“Joke,” he says. “Sure.”
Reva drinks her coffee like she did not just throw gasoline into the room. “Men are exhausting.”
Shiloh’s gaze stays on her mouth. “So I’ve heard.”
I step between them before his thoughts get any louder. He laughs, but the look in his eyes stays.
It’s fine. Some things need time to become inevitable.
Reva points at the heavy bag. “I’m not training anymore this morning.”
“No,” I say. “You’re done for the day.”
Her shoulders loosen.
Shiloh hands her the paper bag. “Pastry?”
She takes it. “You are my favorite for the next ninety seconds.”
He looks delighted. “I’ll use them wisely.”
I pick up the abandoned gloves and toss them onto the crate. The heavy bag hangs still now. Reva stands between us with coffee in one hand and breakfast in the other, looking tired, embarrassed, and steadier than when I found her.
That’s enough for this morning.
Shiloh leans beside me while she takes a bite of the pastry.
His voice drops. “Tag team.”
“No.”
“Not no.”
“Not now.”
His smile sharpens. “So we’re negotiating timing.”
I look at Reva. She is pretending not to listen. Badly.
“Later,” I say.
The word lands between all three of us. Reva’s eyes flick to mine, then to Shiloh’s. She takes another bite.
No denial. No retreat. Shiloh’s grin softens at the edges, turning into something more dangerous with the promise.
Later, then.
For now, she eats.
For now, she breathes.
And the ghosts stay quiet.