Her eyes were bright. “I know. I just hate this part.” She smiled. “Let’s go see if Edie convinced Damian to let her dance."
We walked back into the living room, and my feet would carry me no farther when I saw the leather cuts and the man in the middle of them.
“Who are they?” Thea asked.
Just then, Brock’s shoulders tensed, before he turned, and those gray eyes found me, warming slightly.
My past and present collided; my two paths intersected. The first boy I loved and the last man I’d love, hopes and dreams crashing into survival and second chances. My whole life summed up in the two men who stood on opposite sides of the law. Both prepared to go down a road they may not come back from because, despite what side of law and order they were on, evil was evil. I’d already lost so much, but I still had so much more to lose.
Thea was looking at me expectantly, so I whispered, “Brock, my first love.”
“Oh,” Thea said and then it sank in. “Oh….”
I spent the night helping make food, cleaning up, playing with the dogs, anything to keep myself distracted because, though, I knew what the plan was, it was settling in that they were really going to do this, they were really going to walk right into danger. I understood how Thea felt in the kitchen, what I didn’t understand was how she wasn’t more freaked out. I couldn’t handle Killian putting himself in danger all the time.
Edie and I had been coloring. She was a beautiful child and so much like her mom. She reminded me of me, too, at her age, another who went to the beat of her own drum. I had an idea, so when she fell asleep, curled up in a pile of dogs, I started sketching, a line of clothes for kids like Edie and me.
I didn’t know how long I sat there, but I had sketch after sketch, my fingers flying over the pages. I didn’t realize I wasn’t alone until a shadow fell over me.
“Designs not intended for unimaginative sheep.”
My eyes closed as pain washed through me at the reminder of what could have been. I looked up, but the man who looked back wasn’t the same Brock who had said those words once upon a time. His arms were covered in tattoos, his body hard and scarred, but it was his face that had changed the most, closed off, cold, but there was a little bit of the boy I knew looking back.
“Edie reminds me of me.”
He hesitated, before he settled on the sofa next to me. “Cupcakes,” he said.
I smiled, even as tears burned the back of my eyes. “Yeah.” I looked down at my sketchbook. “We’re not the same people, and we can’t go back….” I turned my head to him, touched his leather. “But we are family. The only family I have left.”
Pain swept his face, his jaw clenched.
“I know you did what you had to do, but I could lose you again. That’s not acceptable.”
He glanced at me, and there was my Brock.
“We’ll never be the same, but we can move on, still be involved in each other’s lives. I don’t accept that you’re going to walk off into the sunset. From the minute I walked into that fort, we were bound. You know it as well as I do. We aren’t where we thought we’d be, but we are connected. And I refuse to continue living a life where I’m missing part of myself.” I didn’t realize I was crying until Brock wiped my tears away.
He studied me; his lips tipped up on the one side. “You’ve gotten bossy.”
I had no reaction, at first, and then I laughed, out loud, because what a ridiculous thing to say.
“You can’t walk out of my life again, Brock. I know your life is on the fringe now, but I live in the woods, and I have connections with the law.”
He looked down; his jaw clenched again. “It’s not that easy.”
“It is.”
His head tilted to me.
“It is that easy. We survived before, we’ve been surviving, but it’s time we live truly live. And I want my life to include yours. We were friends long before we were lovers. I miss it, I miss us.”
“I can’t make any promises, Cedar,” he said softly. “But I miss us, too.”
“So we get through this shit and then figure it out.”
“Yeah, we figure it out.”
I looked at my sketch then glanced back at him. “Did you bring Tom?”
Took him a second before he grinned. “The turkey?”
“Yeah.”
“No, but Babe, turkeys only live about five years.” He studied me before he asked, “Why?”
“I could have sworn I heard a turkey in the woods near my house.”
He had a thought on that, but kept it to himself.
I wasn’t sleeping when Killian came to bed. The door locked, his focus on me. I never realized how much could be said without speaking a word. He grabbed the back of his tee and pulled it off, his jeans followed then his briefs. My eyes traveled over him, from his wide chest and shoulders, to his six-pack, his thick thigh muscles and settled on his cock. I pulled my lower lip between my teeth. My gaze drifted to his face when I crawled across the bed to him. Kneeling, I held his hot stare and fisted the base of his cock, ran my hand up to the tip, twisted a bit and dragged it back down. His abs tensed. I pressed a kiss there, then moved my mouth lower, tasting the salt on his skin, before I reached his cock, looked up at him through my lashes and took him into my mouth. His focus never wavered, that look only intensified. I pulled him in deep and sucked hard, ran my tongue along the underside of his shaft, twirled it at the tip, sucked him deeper, finding a rhythm. His fingers threaded through my hair, his hips moving in time with me, a moan falling from his mouth, followed by a groan as he fucked my face. My fingers were digging into his ass, the heel of my hand pressing into the sac between his legs, as I fisted the base of his cock and took him deeper.
“Fuck,” he growled, taking over until he came, filling my mouth. I swallowed and he moaned.
He dragged me up his body, slammed his mouth down on mine, kissing me hard. Then he studied me. “You okay?”
“I will be when this is all over.” I touched his cheek, this man who was putting his life on the line for a stranger, hell for someone he didn’t even like. “Why are you doing this?”
He ran his thumb along my lips, held my stare and whispered, “For you.”
Oh my god, this man. “I love you.”
He wrapped his arms around me, climbed on the bed and dropped me on my back. “You better.” Then he showed, without words, just how much he loved me.
Chapter Twenty-Seven