“Don’t.” She tried to pry his fingers off her wrist with her damaged left hand.
He kept hold. “Tell me.”
She looked surprised—at his strength, his need, it didn’t matter. Her secrets made a wall between them. Tearing at the wall wasn’t going to get her to drop it, but it was the only way he knew to feel close to her. He needed answers. He needed to know how to save her.
“I’m done with this talk,” she said.
“You like it because you disappear.”
“Fine.”
Too easy.
Something more was there. “You don’t feel.” He waited for the giveaway in her voice, her eyes. A little waver.
“This is stupid and boring,” she said.
“You don’t feel ashamed in the shadows,” he guessed.
Her gaze changed. A click. She pulled and he tightened his grip.
“You feel ashamed.” Things fell into place the second he said it—how she didn’t like being on display or in front of cameras, why she preferred the shadows. “I made you feel even more that way. Flawed. Bad, ugly somehow.”
“Like I care what you do,” she said hotly.
The click. “I know I’m right.”
She spoke through gritted teeth. “Want a medal?”
“No.” He was furious at himself for making her feel like that. At the outrageousness that she could ever see herself as ugly and flawed. He was aware of her yanking. She struck at his bad shoulder, not quite at the wound, but that was coming next. “Fuck you, let go.”
“No, fuck you,” he said. “Fuck you for trashing on yourself when you’re a warrior, and amazing and beautiful.”
“Let me go.”
He hauled her up, hauled them both up to the mirror with strength that surprised him. He held her wrists with one hand and her hair with the other. He shouldn’t be using that arm—he might tear his stitches, but he was beyond caring. This simply couldn’t be allowed to stand unchallenged. He said, “I didn’t go in there and fuck everything up to rescue somebody who isn’t beautiful and good and brave. That’s not how this works. You’re not seeing right.”
“Stop it.”
“Not until you see yourself right.” He gave her a shake. “Look at yourself. Look!” This was destructive, but he couldn’t stop it.
“Let go,” she said, looking anywhere but the mirror.
“No, you are going to stand here and look at yourself and see yourself how I see you if it takes the next ten hours.” She tried to wriggle out of his grip, but he wouldn’t let go. He’d make her see what he saw—he didn’t care that this was the wrong way. Her idea that she was flawed and ugly was wrong. He’d rip it down no matter what. He would pull them both down into the fire if he had to. “Look, dammit.”
Her dark lashes were matted with tears. “I don’t want to.”
“Come on, baby, you’re crazy. You’re perfect.” He tightened his grip on her hair. “I felt you in there like an ally. Like someone beautiful and brave and masterful. You don’t need to hide in the shadows. You’re better than that.”
He pressed closer to her and she stiffened. “Stop this, Cole.”
“Then look!” He was acting like a madman now. “Look at yourself. See yourself.”
She’d look anywhere but the mirror. “Let me go.”
“Just try—it’s so obvious.” His voice grated with desperation. He was putting her on display, exactly what she hated. He was crossing so many lines, he’d lost track.
“I mean it.” She wriggled, then tried to stomp his foot. Unsuccessfully. “God, Cole!”
“You won’t see yourself right.”
“And you can’t make me. There are some things you can’t solve with your fucking equations.” She jerked and his shoulder blasted with pain. Stitches ripping. Like he cared.
He redoubled his grip. “Try harder.”
“You can’t force me to feel good.” She spoke through gritted teeth. “To see myself new. You can’t.”
“But I
want
to.” He tightened his grip.
The silence stretched long.
His was the grip of a man holding a lifeline now.
“I need you to see,” he said finally.
“No, you need to stop pushing.”
He tipped his forehead to her cheek. He was suddenly so tired, so
fucking tired
. “I can’t stop it,” he whispered.
She softened, then, there in his arms. She whispered, “I know.”
All the strength went out of him then. Her wrists pulled from his hands, her silky hair slid from his fingers.
She was turning in his arms and he was letting her, like water, like beauty, as if in a dream. “I know, baby,” she said, facing him now, pressing her soft hands to either side of his face.
No equation had ever told him anything real, he realized. Like why people had holes in them, or why the best woman he’d ever met could feel worthless or flawed or ugly. Or why two people would die chasing pleasure and leave their only son alone in the world.
“You have to let some things and some people be fucked up,” she said.
“How?” he said.
“You just do,” she whispered.
And she kissed him. Suddenly all the air and fight was out of him, and there was only her. “Don’t solve me. Just be with me,” she said.
He didn’t know who or why or what she was, but he felt this softness come over him, like an epiphany. Things could be okay anyway. Nothing was under control. Nothing ever would be. He could love her anyway.
She pulled close to him, gripping the back of his head now. His cock felt like steel against the softness of her belly.
“Let me love you,” he said.
She pulled away and looked him clear in the face. The word, so loaded, wasn’t so much a declaration as a signal balloon sent up through the darkness.
“Yes,” she said.
He drew a finger down her cheek, watching her eyes with the curious sensation that he knew her and that her secrets were endless.
He kissed her then, relishing the quiet softness of her lips. He usually tore into women like a devouring fire, but he wanted to feel her, not consume her.
He pulled off his glasses and tossed them onto the other bed, then pressed his tongue thick into her mouth, finding hers, circling hers like a slow dance turning gradually electric. Need surged in him and he pressed up flush to her. He felt a shiver go through her, as though her body was his own.
“Angel,” he said.
“Say it again,” she said. “Just like that.”
“Angel.” He kissed her neck, her collarbone, movements becoming more furtive. “Angel.” He started unbuttoning her shirt. Dimly he became aware of more sharp pains in his shoulder, but he didn’t care about his stitches. He cupped her ass and lifted her body, setting her up onto the dresser.
Everything was different. His stitches were ripped to hell and his heart was open wide—dangerously wide, vulnerable to everything. It was okay. His open heart was a good wound.
She lay back a bit on the dresser, propped back on her elbows, and she wrapped her legs around his waist.
“Love me, then.” The request was a dare and a plea, and it was the hottest thing ever because it was a little bit brave, because she was letting herself be on display to him.
Him.
He finished unbuttoning her shirt. The sides fell apart to reveal her lacy bra. He grabbed the tops of the cups and pulled her up to him, belly to belly. He didn’t like her apart from him. He lowered the cups down under her breasts, letting his knuckles graze her hardened nipples, and he lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, trawling light fingertips along the undercurve of her breast, getting lost in her. He dragged his whiskery cheek along her skin, as if to mark her with sensation, with his body.
She gasped as he took her nipple into his mouth, sucking, palming her other breast, pinching the nipple to a hard peak, enjoying the way she clutched at his back. He felt laid out before her, like a sacrifice, but also like a god, surrounding her, pressing his fingers into the delicious softness of her skin.
He tore the rest of her shirt off. Her breath sped as he pushed down her pants. Feverishly, she helped him, kissing him everywhere. He was vaguely aware of her hot breath in his ear, her teeth on his earlobe, biting down just enough to make him crazy. She slid her fingers into his back pockets and kissed and bit his shoulder, his neck. It was sweet and dirty and he loved how her bites sharpened as he caressed the outsides of her thighs.
He pulled his hips back enough to press his hand down between them, working his fingers over the outside of her silky panties, over her heated core, then he found his way in and drew his fingers along her slick folds, enjoying the increasing raggedness of her breath as he found where she was most sensitive.
Her fingers closed over his ass inside his pockets. He stroked her and rocked and rocked, and she breathed harder. He felt lost in her.
“Angel,” He pulled away. He had to get her panties off, and all the rest of her clothes, too. She laughed at the furious tangle of their movements.
“Your friend…”
“I know,” he said, heading to the bathroom to grab a condom from the box that was in the toiletries Macmillan had brought over. Crass of Macmillan to leave them there. Crass and inspired.
She had taken her bra off. She was completely naked. He stalked back to her and placed a hand on her thigh and slid it up to her hip, gazing into her eyes. He liked just to touch her.
“Come here,” she said.
He stayed. “You are so beautiful.” She began to protest and he put his fingers to her lips. “You are. Just take it.”
“So come here.”
He smiled and lightly ran the corner of the foil package up the inside of her thigh.
She drew up a little at that. “Cole.”
“Yeah?”
“Just that,” she said.
He drew the foil packet back down toward her knee, pin-soft, staying with her eyes, feeling they were sharing sensations, as though they were linked, as though in looking at each other they’d opened to each other. It stunned him that looking could feel so unbearably intimate. He felt suddenly unsure what to do with all the honesty. He was used to being on the outside looking in, scribbling his equations, trying to solve everything.
She snatched the condom from his fingers and ripped it open, watching him playfully. “How about I do this.” She extracted it from the foil and rolled the condom over his hard cock, then raised her eyes to his, grazing her knuckles over his washboard stomach. “Cause you know I need a piece of this, baby. It’s all I’ve been thinking about.”
He laughed and grabbed her hands and kissed them, and then he placed them on his stomach. “Enjoy.”
She bent forward and kissed him there, and stupid as it was, it made him feel magnificent. He stroked her hair, loving how they’d found this lightness together. There was everything to find with her.
He half thought she might suck him with the condom on, but it would taste like latex and chemicals, and he didn’t want that for her, so he grabbed her hair and pulled her up, looked clear into her eyes.
“Break out the ABBA, darling,” he said. “Cause it’s time to fuck.”
“Cole.” The laughter in her eyes turned to heat as he guided himself into her. Pressed into her.
Her eyes drifted closed, and she let out a breath, as if his cock was so giant that it pushed air out of her lungs. Her heat gripped him like a silken glove, and she clung to him as he thrust into her.
He stilled, kissed her lips. Her eyelids. “Open your eyes, baby,” he said.
She opened her eyes and he fucked her slow and sure, watching her, letting it build. She grabbed his ass, wanting to speed things up, but he wanted it to last. He wanted to make her feel better than diamonds.
“Pull my hair,” she said.
“This isn’t that kind of fuck, Angel.”
“I want you to, though.”
“Sorry.”
She sat up, kissed his chest. “Come on,” she whispered. “Please,” she breathed.
He grabbed her hair, wrapped it around his fist, but didn’t pull. “I think you’re just using me for my jerky personality.”
“No,” she said, “not just that.”
“Not just that?” He pulled her hair then, playfully. “What else?”
She panted, on the verge. She liked that. He liked it, too, and the slow fuck was out the window. He slid a hand around to her ass, gripped her hard. “What?” he demanded, just to demand something.
“You’ll never know,” she panted.
His hunger was like the hunger of fire, never sated. Being inside her only made him want to consume her more. His strokes became relentless.
“What else?” He pulled her hair harder, exposing her neck, grazing the tender skin with the rough of his whiskers.
He let his strokes go slow and commanding. Relentless. She broke apart under him. He sucked in an uneven breath, savoring the way she felt as she came, pussy milking him.
He tried to make it last, but the need was taking him over and he thrust into her once, twice, and then exploded inside her, holding her. His orgasm spun him higher, on and on. When it was over he stayed.
He couldn’t believe it, just the miracle of her, inexplicably, unknowably perfect.
Angel stretched out on the bed, dressed only in a sheet, feeling drowsy and happy. “Stay like that,” he’d said.
She loved being with Cole. She loved everything about him. He wasn’t merely her type. He was the original, the ultimate, the man she’d been looking for all along.
She could love them but she could never save them—
that’s what she’d always said about her type
.
A chill went over her. It didn’t have to be true.
The furious sound of ripping bandage wrappers came from the bathroom. Cole, re-patching himself with butterfly bandages from the kit.
He hadn’t wanted her to help, to see him all bloody. As if she would care. And then he came out, naked except for his glasses and the new white bandages. He gave her a roll of tape. “Can you tape the back one better?”
“Of course,” she said.
He sat on the side of the bed. She scooted up, ripped off a piece of tape, and pressed it over the side of the gauze he’d affixed to the back of his shoulder. She ripped off another bit of tape, kissed him on a new spot, and put the tape over it.
“Thanks.” He turned to her. “Thanks,” he whispered again.
“Anytime.”
She could love them but she could never save them.
But just because something was in the past, it didn’t mean it had to be in the future.