“No,” I admitted softly, “I know you didn’t.”
A sigh drifted from his lips as he pressed them to the crown of my head. It was only then that I realized he’d been braced for bitter words that would have burned like acid, and I sighed as, hesitantly, I placed my hand to his stomach and rested it there.
His was the only man’s body I knew well. That I knew how to tease and how to taunt. How to torment and to tantalize. But approaching him was like approaching a lion and wondering if you’d get bitten. He might not maul me, but he could destroy me all the same.
My defenses, my walls, were barriers that protected me.
Not only from him, but from everyone.
The world.
“What’s going on with you?” he asked as he tilted me into him so that I was leaning against him too and he could settle his chin on my head.
What the hell was I supposed to say to that?
How about the baby we’d given up for adoption years ago was turning seventeen in four days’ time and, as a birthday present to myself, I found out I was pregnant again?
How about the fact his dad wanted to die?
How about Bear wanted Rex to do the job for him because he couldn’t?
My tension levels were on the rise when he continued, “Jesus, something really is wrong. I expected you to jump off the bed and slap me, not start shivering in my arms, Rach.”
I gritted my teeth. “I don’t do violence.”
“Liar,” he taunted.
“That was one time.”
He snorted. “Lies.”
“I regretted it the second I did it.”
“I didn’t.”
I blew out a breath. “I didn’t—” I started again. “You shouldn’t—”
“Stop stuttering.”
Pissed, I jerked out of his arms and shoved him in the shoulder. “Don’t be a dick.”
“I’m just lying here,” he retorted, his gaze calm. Much like it always was. “I’m not being a dick. And what was this about not being violent?” He rubbed his shoulder. “You pack a mean punch.”
“Bullshit,” I spat the word at him as I clambered off the bed and started pacing back and forth, well aware that his eyes were on every step I took.
My problem was that I liked being at the center of his attention.
My problem was that he was the only man who could ever get me mad, and who could calm me down.
“Why didn’t you tell me about Kade Nunez?”
I jolted to a halt. “What?!”
Why in the hell was he asking me about the Long Beach Butcher now?
He folded his arms behind his head. “You heard me, Rach.”
“I did, but I want to know why you’re asking.”
His focus was measured, but as I took him in, every inch of him, I wobbled.
Torn between the past and the future, stuck solidly in the present, I wasn’t sure whether to stare at him or glare at him.
Mind reeling, I rubbed a hand over my face and muttered, “Why do you think?”
“Wouldn’t be asking you if I knew, Rach.”
I squinted at him. “It was an interesting case.”
“And you take on every interesting case that comes your way?”
“Since we agreed, yes.”
His mouth tightened at that, just a sliver. Enough that I knew he was still pissed at how I’d checkmated that agreement out of him.
He didn’t like that I worked for anyone but the MC.
To be precise, him.
I refused to be controlled.
A compromise had been struck after I’d decided to be persuasive. Once I’d paid off my debt to the MC, I’d started making demands of my own, ones he’d eventually conceded to. That was when I’d started my charities and when I’d begun accepting clients who paid me partly in donations.
“Why are you asking about the Long Beach Butcher? That was last year.”
He shrugged. “He’s gotten himself a fiancée. It was in the National Enquirer.”
Snorting, I countered, “Since when do you read the National Enquirer?”
“Something to do when I can’t focus on work or a book. Those fucking beeps in the hospital ward are starting to get to me.”
My throat tightened at that. “It’s called alarm fatigue.”
“I know.” He yawned. “There’s an interesting study about it. This ex-musician was in the ICU and she wanted to create a kind of—” Rex broke off to yawn again.
“You’re tired,” I pointed out unnecessarily.
“Not too tired to talk to you.” He held out a hand. “No fighting. Not today.”
Guilt speared me to the quick.
Arguing was my default. Our default. It made it easier to keep distance between us.
Bracing myself, I stepped over to him and slid my fingers into the clasp of his. The calluses on his palms should have been unattractive, but they weren’t. I knew what they felt like against my body, knew what it felt like to have him brush the tips down my cheek.
I swallowed at the thought and swallowed again when he urged me onto the bed to lie by his side.
As he curled around me, I rolled back into him and let him take my weight.
God, that felt good.
I shuddered as his heat hit me once more and shivered when his hand moved over my stomach.
He had no way of knowing I was pregnant. No way whatsoever. But that he’d hold me there, that he’d unknowingly rest his hand against the place where his baby slept… God help me.
I closed my eyes as tears burned them.
“Will you ever tell me who hurt you?”
The words drifted into the silence of the room. Hell, not only the room, the house.
Much like everything that had happened in the last twelve or so hours, the answer I would ordinarily give him didn’t match my response, “It’ll serve no purpose.”
His tension surged. “So, you finally admit that someone did?”
I let him take even more of my weight, let the flat of my feet press against his shins. I wished he weren’t wearing jeans, so I could feel his body heat directly, but this was better than constantly feeling cold.
“A long time ago,” I told him softly.
“You’re my girl, Rachel,” he rasped back. “Long time ago doesn’t cut it. Can’t cut it.”
“You can’t kill someone who’s already dead,” I pointed out blankly, careful with my phrasing.
His nostrils flared. “Was it brutal?”
I thought about the three men who’d hurt me and I smiled. “Yes.”
He fell quiet again. “One day, when you’re ready, I want answers.”
“Maybe I don’t want to give them to you.” I didn’t bother to tense up, not even when he growled under his breath.
For the first time, wrapped up like this, I was warm and comfortable enough to sleep.
For the first time, a gentle truth registered with me—I wouldn’t need that gun under my pillow if he was in my bed.
It would be under his pillow.
And there’d be a knife somewhere too.
He’d keep me safe.
My eyelids blinked dazedly from exhaustion and I whispered, “Can we go to sleep now?”
“You’ll have nightmares if we sleep like this.”