Being Me

Twenty-nine

“Terrified and furious” doesn’t begin to describe my state by the time Chris brings the bike to a screeching halt just off the coastline, in the midst of twining trails and massive trees with towering trunks dimly lit by moonlight and stars. My heart is in my throat, my breath heaving, and my legs frozen to the bone.

He frees my hands and I scramble off the bike, stumbling and yanking off my helmet. “Are you crazy!” I scream, tossing it away and shoving the mess of my hair out of my face. “Were you trying to kill us, or just punish me, Chris? Have you not punished me enough?”

“Who’s punishing who?” he demands, setting his helmet on the bike and advancing on me.

My hands go up and they shake with the volume of adrenaline and emotion pulsing through me. “Stay back. Just stay back. I can’t believe you just did that to me.”

He grabs my arm and turns me, pushing me against a tree, my fingers digging into the bark, his hips against my backside. Anger and arousal and a sense of needing him ignite all at once within me. “Did you fuck Mark, Sara?”

“No!”

His hand slides up my waist, under the jacket, and over my breast. I squeeze my eyes shut against the delicious roughness of his touch I don’t want to react to. Not when he’s angry, not like this.

“Did he touch you here?” The question is gravely spoken by my ear, accusation etched in its depths, and I struggle to remember how I’d feel if I’d seen him with Ava.

“No. Chris—”

“Did you tell him no, Sara?” He yanks my skirt up, his hand framing my hips as he arches his pelvis against me.

“Yes,” I pant, impossibly alive with his touch, arching into him, the thick pulse of his erection nestled against my bottom. My body doesn’t care how angry and hurt I am.

He tears my panties. “Did he do that?”

“No,” I breathe out.

His hand curves around my hip, his fingers gliding into the slick heat of my sex. “Oh yeah, baby, already dripping for me. Or did he get you ready for me?”

“Enough!” I shout, driven to my limit by his crassness. I shove ineffectually against him. “Let me off this tree, Chris.”

“Not until I’m ready.” He squeezes my breast, strokes the slick, sensitive flesh between my legs, and I moan uncontrollably.

“Did you moan for him, too?”

That’s it! I elbow him hard in the side and he grunts, loosening his grip enough for me to twist around to face him, shoving against his chest for more space. “Have you not hurt me enough?” I demand, yanking my skirt down over my exposed, cold backside, and I blast him with everything I’ve felt these past six days.

“When is it enough? When, Chris? When you’ve totally ripped out my heart? I didn’t fuck Mark, but I could have. You said we were over. And damn you, you made me believe home was with you, then the first time life gets rough, you snatch that home from me and tell me I can stay until the Rebecca thing is over. Like I’m at a hotel. Do you know how that felt? Do you know how much it hurt me?”

For several beats we just stand there, staring at each other, the moonlight revealing the same anger carved in his face that I know must be mine. An anger I watch transform and soften the amber speckles in his green eyes, turning them to the gray of shadows and torment. His hands go to the tree, framing my face. “Sara.” My name gusts from his lips like an ocean wind, and he buries his face in my neck, the earthy male scent of him I’ve missed so desperately washing over me, filling my senses.

My arms wrap around his neck, my lashes lowering. His arm circles my waist, holding me close. “I’m sorry,” he whispers, his tone dark and tormented. “I’m so sorry, baby.” He cups my face, staring down at me. “I’d bleed for you, Sara. I would never intentionally hurt you. Never.”

“You shut me out, and—” My throat constricts. “I was supposed to be there with you. We were supposed to go through this together.”

“Losing Dylan”—he hesitates, seeming to battle within himself before he continues—“it brought back old demons I thought I’d dealt with.” He buries his face in my neck again, as if he can’t bear for me to see his face. “Do you know how I felt when you saw me like that?”

Anguish pours off him and into me and my hands settle on his head, cradling him against me. “I love you, Chris. I can deal with anything except you shutting me out.”

“You don’t know that.”

A heavy weight of doubt settles in my heart, and I wonder if we can make it through this. “You don’t know that,” I whisper. “You don’t trust me enough to believe in me, in us.”

He lifts his head, letting me see the shame in his eyes, exposing what he’s tried to hide. Shame I understand all too well and would never wish on Chris. “You have no reason to feel what you’re feeling right now. Not with me,” I say.

“There’s a part of me that lives in the belly of hell. You don’t belong there. I can’t take you there with me.” His forehead goes to mine. “And yet I can’t stay away. I can’t let you go.”

“Don’t,” I breathe, my hands press to his chest, the muscle flexing beneath my touch. I wish I could pull the pain from within him, heal him the way he does me. “Don’t let me go.”

“I’m not,” he vows, framing my face to stare down at me, his voice sandpaper rough as it shivers down my spine and into my soul. “I can’t, and I can only pray you don’t wish I would have.” He claims my mouth, and it is as if he is claiming me again for the first time. I offer all that I am to him.

His tongue presses past my lips and teeth, finding mine and stroking, and I feel him everywhere, the heat of how much I need him burning away the cold night. Everything fades away but the two of us touching, kissing, melding our bodies together. I am blinded by passion, by the relief of his return, by his body next to mine. Time stands still and somehow my blouse is gaping, my bra open, and I’m pressed against the tree with Chris suckling and licking my nipples. My skirt is at my hips and I stroke the thick ridge of Chris’s erection, nearly desperate to feel him inside me, craving the connection I thought I’d never experience again.

“Chris—” I pant and yelp, the bark cutting into my back, penetrating the haze of desire overcoming me.

“Ah. The tree.” Chris pulls me from the tree, kisses me hard on the lips, and then shrugs out of his leather jacket, spreading it on the ground. He skims my jacket from my shoulders, spreading it on top of his. I shiver in a gust of wind and he takes me down to the ground, his big, warm body blocking out everything but him. Protecting me. He’s always protecting me, even from himself.

Our breath mingles, teasing me with a kiss yet to happen, with the depths of passion I feel for Chris expanding within me. Still, he doesn’t kiss me. He caresses my skirt up my hips again, his touch leaving goose bumps on my bare skin that have nothing to do with the night air and everything to do with the man. I reach for his waistband; that craving for him inside me reignites, becomes urgent. He echoes my silent plea, shoving down his pants, and I moan with the feel of the hard length of his cock thick between my thighs.

On his elbows, he pins me in a sizzling stare as he enters me and it’s as if my soul sighs when he is finally buried deep in the depths of my body, stretching me, filling me.

“I thought I’d never be inside you again and it almost killed me.” His voice trembles with a vulnerability that means even more than his confession.

He begins to move, a slow, sensual slide of his cock followed by another, watching me, me watching him, and we are making love, impossible and breathtaking lovemaking. We sway and meld together in a sweet, arousing dance, but it’s not the harmony of our bodies that reaches deep and claims me, it’s what passes between us as we stare at one another. He is as much a part of me as skin and bone, and it terrifies and completes me.

Chris dips his head and touches his lips to mine, teases my tongue with his, trails his lips over my jaw, over my shoulder, to my nipple. Every lick and taste, and tease, is tender, gentle, a contrast to the hardness of the past week and the man who’d been tied to those poles in the club. Suddenly I need him to know that I see both, I love both.

My hand slides into the silky long strands of his blond hair. “Chris,” I manage hoarsely through the delicious friction of his tongue against my nipple, my sex clenching around his cock. “Chris.”

His mouth comes down on mine, harder now, more demanding, a raw, hungry need in him rising to the surface. “You belong to me,” he growls. “Say it.”

“Yes. Yes, I belong to you.” His mouth finds mine again, demanding, taking, drawing me under his spell.

“Say it again,” he demands, nipping my lip, squeezing my breast and nipple, and sending a ripple of pleasure straight to my sex.

“I belong to you,” I pant.

He lifts me off the ground with the possessive curve of his hand around my backside, angling my hips to thrust harder, deeper. “Again,” he orders, driving into me, his cock hitting the farthest point of me and blasting against sensitive nerve endings.

“Oh . . . ah . . . I . . . I belong to you.”

His mouth dips low, his hair tickling my neck, his teeth scraping my shoulders at the same moment he pounds into me and the world spins around me, leaving nothing but pleasure and need and more need.

I am suddenly hot only where he touches, and freezing where I yearn to be touched. Lifting my leg, I shackle his hip, ravenous beyond measure, climbing to the edge of bliss, reaching for it at the same time I’m trying desperately to hold back. Chris is merciless, wickedly wild, grinding and rocking, pumping.

“I love you, Sara,” he confesses hoarsely, taking my mouth, swallowing the shallow, hot breath I release, and punishing me with a hard thrust that snaps the last of the lightly held control I possess. Possessing me. A fire explodes low in my belly and spirals downward, seizing my muscles, and I begin to spasm around his shaft, trembling with the force of my release.

With a low growl, his muscles ripple beneath my touch and his cock pulses, his hot semen spilling inside me. We moan together, lost in the climax of a roller-coaster ride of pain and pleasure, spanning days apart, and finally collapse in a heap and just lie there. Slowly, I let my leg ease from his hip to the ground, and Chris rolls me to my side to face him.

Still inside me, he holds me close, pulling the jacket up around my back, trailing fingers over my jaw. “And I belong to you.”

The unexpected vow does me in. Tears spring from my eyes, trickling down my cheeks. “I thought . . . I thought . . . I can’t go through this again.”

“Shhh,” he murmurs, kissing away the droplets clinging to my cheeks. “We’re together now.”

I shake my head, rejecting an answer that promises only one moment in time. “I have to know that the next time you get like that, we deal with it together, no matter what that means, Chris. I have to know.”

“I won’t get—”

His denial spikes through me and I try to push away from him, but he holds me. “Sara, wait.”

“You will go there again. You will. I’m not about to pretend otherwise. It’s all or nothing, Chris. All the dark, hated places you go, you go with me. You have to trust me enough to love that part of you as much as I do the rest.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

“It’s not a question. It’s not even close to a request. This is how it has to be.” His lashes lower; his struggle is palpable, and I soften instantly, hurting as he hurts. My fingers find his hair, stroking tenderly. “Let me love what you hate. Let me do that for you.”

He presses his cheek to mine, his whiskers a welcome rasp on my cheek. “God, woman. I can’t lose you.”

I close my eyes and whisper, “I’m not going anywhere.”

For a time, we huddle together, neither of us ready to move or to leave, almost as if we both fear that the real world will steal this newfound rein we hold on our future. And then we start to talk about Dylan, about the nightmare that has been Chris’s week, until the chill of loss collides with the chill of the night, and we can stay no longer.

Chris helps me to my feet, and I do the best I can to clean up and pull myself together. Remarkably, my heels are still on my feet, but my skirt has not weathered the reunion well. I have a rip up the side, and as I try to close my blouse, several buttons have gone astray. “I’m a mess. I can’t walk into the building like this.”

“I never let the valet park my bike. We’ll head in through the garage.” He hands me my helmet and his voice softens. “Let’s go home, baby. Our home.”

And I dare to believe that it really is. I dare to bet on us again.

Chris and I are walking toward the elevator, our fingers laced, my shoes dangling from my free hand, when Jacob steps out of the elevator and heads toward us with determined steps. “So much for my discreet entry,” I murmur, appalled at my ripped skirt and thankful the leather jacket I’m wearing is zipped.

“Something wrong?” Chris asks as Jacob joins us.

“I was about to ask you the same,” Jacob comments, giving me a once-over.

“Sara’s first trip on a motorcycle was eventful,” Chris replies.

Jacob looks like he expects more of an explanation, and when it doesn’t come he casts me a puzzled look before glancing at Chris. “Blake’s been trying to reach you.”

Chris checks his cell phone. “So he has. Any idea what it’s about?”

“Mary and Ricco were arrested trying to leave the country.”

“What?” I gasp.

“Mary and Ricco?” Chris repeats, sounding as stunned as I feel. “Are you sure?”

“Completely,” Jacob assures us, “but beyond that I know nothing. Apparently, Sara asked some questions and spooked Ricco. Blake wants to explain it all himself. He said to call him since you quote ‘won’t answer the damn phone.’ ”

Chris punches in Blake’s number. “On it,” he promises, and we step onto the elevator.

I desperately try to make out the conversation, but Chris mostly listens. It drives me insane. “And Rebecca?” Chris finally asks.

Yes! What about Rebecca!

“I see,” Chris replies to whatever Blake says. “Yes. Not a problem.”

“Well?” I demand as we enter the apartment and he ends the call.

“Let’s talk while we start a hot shower.” He laces his fingers with mine and leads me toward the bedroom. “Turns out Ricco was not only jealous of Mark and Rebecca’s relationship, but furious that Mark took advantage of Rebecca. He wanted to bring down Riptide as payment for hurting her. Mary went along for the ride for the money and because she was angry Mark didn’t give her more opportunities.”

“Is Rebecca involved?” I ask as we enter the bathroom.

Chris removes his boots and opens the shower and turns it on. “Not according to Ricco and Mary.”

“Then where is she?”

“That’s the big question. Ricco insists Mark had to have done something to make her run.”

“So, do the authorities think she’s in hiding?”

“They don’t know where she is, but if Mary and Ricco, or Mark for that matter, know, I’m confident Blake will find out.”

“There’s still a concern that Mark is involved?”

“Blake doesn’t think so. He thinks Mary and Ricco know where she is, and that they’ll break under questioning.”

“I just can’t believe Ricco knows where she is. But then, I wouldn’t have believed he was a part of this, either.”

Chris scrubs his jaw. “You and me both. I don’t have a high opinion of Ricco but I didn’t have this low of one, either. Oh, and Blake wants you at the police station tomorrow to go on file formally with what you know.”

“Right.” I grab my purse off the counter and remove my phone. “I guess I should text Mark and tell him I won’t be in.” Chris’s shift in mood is instant, his expression turning stormy, his jaw clenching, and I quickly add, “Maybe not ever again.”

He goes still. “What are you saying?”

“That I want all or nothing so I have to be willing to give the same.”

He closes the distance between us, his arms caging me against the counter, searching my face. “You’d give up Allure for me?”

“Yes.” It’s a decision I didn’t fully realize I’d made until this moment, but after tonight it’s inevitable and right. “But I need my own career and independence. Those things are important to me.”

“I’ll support you in any way I can, baby.”

“But not by doing things for me, Chris. Me earning success because I’m me. I need that.”

“I understand.” He brushes my hair off my shoulders, his fingers resting on my neck in that familiar way I’ve missed so much these past few days. “We’re going to make this work this time.”

The conviction in his voice makes me believe him. “Yes, we will.” I text Mark and drop my phone to the counter, not caring what the reply is. Not when Chris’s fingers are tugging at my blouse.

He slowly strips away my clothing, tenderly kissing my shoulders, my neck, my lips. We step under the blissful heat of the hot shower, washing away the chill of the night, and with it the bitter cold of all we have been through these past few days. Resting my head on Chris’s chest, being in his arms, I feel as if I’ve been lost and found again. But Rebecca is still lost, and I fear the worst for her.