Chapter 8 #2
They cooked together while darkness slowly settled outside the windows. Reeze had offered to help, which rather quickly turned out to mean Charlie did most of the cooking while he leaned against the kitchen counter and distracted her.
Or perhaps it was the other way around.
She couldn’t quite decide.
He watched her far too much and didn’t even bother pretending otherwise.
She could feel his gaze while she moved around the small kitchen, while she reached for spices and when she twisted her hair up into a messy knot.
Every time she glanced over at him, he looked completely unbothered, as though staring at her like that was the most natural thing in the world.
“The mince is dying,” she said dryly when the smell from the frying pan began to change.
Reeze looked down.
“Fuck.”
Charlie burst out laughing and crossed the kitchen to take the wooden spoon from him.
“You are officially banned from cooking.”
“That feels aggressive.”
“That feels justified.”
He moved aside reluctantly, although not very far.
Never very far.
Charlie tried to concentrate on the food while he stood behind her, but the warmth of his body made that increasingly difficult. His hand slid over her hip and remained there as though it belonged there.
“Reeze.”
“Mm?” His voice was far too close to her neck.
“You’re distracting me.”
“Good.”
She tipped her head back to look at him over her shoulder and immediately realised her mistake. He was standing so close that her back almost touched his chest, and she saw the exact moment his gaze changed when their eyes met.
“What?” she asked quietly.
Reeze studied her for a moment.
“I’m trying to work out how this became my favourite fucking place to be so quickly.”
The words knocked some of the air from her lungs, not because they were particularly grand or romantic, but because they sounded completely honest.
Charlie turned in his arms and slid one hand up his chest.
“You’re dangerously easy to get used to.”
He laughed quietly. “That didn’t sound like a compliment.”
“It wasn’t.”
“Liar.”
She barely had time to protest before he kissed her again.
Reeze had noticed Charlie during her first week in the building.
At first she had simply been the pretty neighbour across the yard, then the woman who always carried her own shopping even when it looked as though she could have used a hand and who insisted on greeting everyone she passed even though most of them answered with little more than a grunt.
Then she had thrown herself at Molly in the yard without a second’s hesitation when it mattered.
After that, he’d been fucked.
Completely.
“You’re hopeless,” Charlie muttered against his mouth.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Several times.”
“I choose to focus on my positive qualities.”
“What positive qualities?”
He gave her an offended look.
“Now you’re just being fucking mean.”
Charlie laughed, and Reeze found himself simply watching her.
That was what made her most dangerous to him. Not the fact that he wanted her; he’d done that for a long time.
It was how much he fucking liked seeing her happy.
“What?” she asked.
“I’m still trying to work out how I managed to stay away from you for so long.”
“You didn’t stay away.”
“I did.”
“Reeze, you stared at me through the kitchen window.”
“That was research.”
“That was stalking.”
“Semantics.”
The colour spreading across her cheeks betrayed her, and Reeze looked entirely too pleased about it.
After dinner they ended up on the sofa and never really moved again.
Charlie lay half across him with her head against his chest while the television muttered something forgotten in the background.
Reeze had one arm around her waist and the other behind her head, relaxed in a way she suspected he rarely allowed himself to be.
It was strange how natural it already felt, almost as though his body simply fitted against hers.
Charlie slowly traced her fingertips over the tattoos on his forearm.
“How old were you the first time you hit someone?”
Reeze laughed softly above her.
“Jesus, Charlie.”
“That wasn’t an answer.”
“Too young.”
“Thirteen too young or nine too young?”
“You ask uncomfortably specific questions.”
She smiled against his chest.
“I’m a journalist.”
“Twelve.”
Charlie lifted her head and looked at him. There was no pride in his expression and none of the macho posturing she might have expected, only the simple acknowledgement of something that had happened a long time ago.
“Were you scared?”
Reeze met her gaze and, after a moment, nodded.
“Yeah.”
“Are you now?”
His hand continued its slow path up and down her back while he considered the question.
“Not in the same way.”
“What does that mean?”
He was silent for a few seconds before looking directly at her.
“Now I’m scared of things I actually give a shit about.”
Something warm moved through her chest and Charlie shifted slightly higher against him.
“Like what?”
His hand stopped between her shoulder blades.
“Getting used to someone.”
Charlie blinked slowly. That wasn’t the answer she had expected, and Reeze laughed when he saw her expression.
“You thought I was going to say something hard and dramatic, didn’t you?”
“A little.”
“Sorry. I’m emotionally developed sometimes.”
“Sometimes?”
“Don’t fucking exaggerate.”
She laughed and caught the hem of his shirt. Reeze helped her pull it over his head, and for a moment she simply sat there looking at him.
She had seen some of the scars before, the ones visible when he wore a T-shirt or his cut, but never all of them at once.
A thin white line crossed one rib, an older scar marked his shoulder and several smaller ones were scattered across his skin, traces of a life in which problems had not always been solved with words.
Reeze followed her gaze.
“Stop.”
Charlie looked up.
“What?”
“Don’t look at me like you’re counting them.”
A small smile touched her lips.
“I’m a journalist.”
“Exactly my fucking problem.”
He pulled her closer before she could say anything else, and Charlie let her hands move over his bare chest. There was something almost overwhelming about Reeze whenever he decided to focus entirely on her.
He filled her awareness so completely that every time she thought she had grown used to his presence, he found another way to send her pulse racing.
Then his hands reached the hem of her shirt and something changed.
Not between them.
In him.
Charlie saw the exact moment he noticed the pale marks on her body.
His hands stopped.
Only briefly, but it was long enough for the old shame to crawl up inside her and make her want to turn away.
Reeze said nothing. His gaze moved over the thin white lines and older marks, traces left by someone who had decided he had the right to hurt her long before Reeze had ever entered her life.
His jaw tightened and something dark appeared behind his eyes.
Charlie waited for the questions, for the anger or perhaps even pity.
None of them came.
Instead, he lifted one hand and rested it against her cheek.
“Babe...”
That single word contained more than she knew what to do with.
“Come here.”
Charlie moved closer and Reeze gathered her against him, not because he was ignoring what he had seen or because it didn’t matter.
Quite the opposite.
She could feel that it mattered far too fucking much.
But this wasn’t the moment for questions, old ghosts or the anger she could already see him fighting to control. That conversation would come later, when she wanted to have it and when he could listen to the answers without immediately wanting to kill someone.
Instead, he brushed his knuckles gently along her cheek before leaning in and kissing her.
The kiss was slower this time, not hesitant, simply different, as though he needed to feel that she was really there in front of him.
Charlie closed her eyes and drew in a shaky breath as his arms closed around her.
When she opened them again, she met his gaze.
He wasn’t looking at the marks.
He was looking at her.
“Stop thinking so fucking much,” he murmured.
Charlie laughed even though her eyes suddenly burned.
“You say that as if it’s possible.”
“For me it is.”
“Yes, but you’re you.”
A low laugh escaped him before he pulled her closer and buried his face in her hair.
Charlie wrapped her arms around him and remained there, skin against skin, while the television murmured in the background and darkness settled outside the windows.
The man who had stood in the yard had not been forgotten. Dennis had not disappeared, and what had happened to Charlie could not be erased by a few hours with Reeze.
But for the first time in a very long time, she didn’t feel broken.
And she wasn’t alone.
Charlie’s fingers tightened against his shoulders as Reeze drew her closer, their bare skin pressed together while her breath came hot against his neck.
Every movement of his body against hers made her want more, and there was nothing tentative in the way he touched her.
His hands moved confidently over her back and hips, gentle but relentless, while his mouth travelled down towards her collarbone.
Reeze seemed incapable of doing anything by halves, and now every bit of that hunger and attention was centred entirely on her.
He kissed her slowly but demandingly, his tongue brushing her lower lip before his mouth travelled down her neck and over her breasts.
His hands moved along her stomach and sides before returning to her breasts, his thumbs circling her nipples until Charlie drew in a sharp breath and let her head fall back.
His mouth left warm, damp trails across her skin and there was no hesitation in his touch, only restless curiosity and an obvious refusal to hold back now that she had let him this close.
He had seen her.
All of her.
And he still touched her as though he couldn’t get enough.