Sweet Seduction Shield (34 page)

His eyes
opened and pure lust stared back at me.

"I can't fucking help it," he rumbled. "You make me
need
so much." It was almost a
plea.

"Then let me
give it to you," I whispered, holding his hungry gaze.

He nodded his
head. "Show me."

I started
slowly, a rock of my hips, a lift of my pelvis, a roll and swirl
when on my knees. Then stillness. All breaths silent. Then just
when I saw him crack, his arms shaking with the need to move from
behind his head, his hips starting to lift, I slammed back down
again.

He lasted
exactly four times on repeat.

Then came so
violently he bit into my shoulder to stifle the cry. His arms
wrapped around my waist, his cock buried to the hilt inside my hot
centre, pumping his release in warm bursts of liquid ecstasy. His
heart thundered through his chest, beating against my skin, sending
thrilling shockwaves of adrenaline throughout my body.

We shuddered
against each other, lost again, but anchored to the moment by
touch.

Then he pulled
back, sweat coating his forehead, and looked me in the eyes. One
hand came up and brushed my hair from my face, then cupped the nape
of my neck.

"Beautiful,"
he whispered, his eyes locked on mine, a connection between us that
felt like it could never be broken, could never be found anywhere
else.

I smiled. He
smiled back.

And then he
completely and utterly ruined everything, by saying...

"Marry
me."

"Marie, talk
to me."

It wasn't the
first time Ryan had asked that. He'd tried last night, after we'd
made, yet again, the most unbelievably fantastic love I'd ever had.
And then gone and ruined it all by asking me to marry him.

Was he
mad?

Yes, I'd
fallen in love with him, in a ridiculously short period of
time.

Yes, he'd
obviously fallen in love with me, in that same ridiculously short
period of time.

It wasn't the
length of time that froze me though. Life is short. Danger lurks
behind every corner. He and I know this. You grab what you can and
hold on for dear life. No, the ridiculously short time frame was
not the issue here. When you fall in love, you have no say on when
it will happen. It just happens. And I am not the sort of person to
think it couldn't happen in less than one week.

Love is not
logical. It is not ordered nor can it be placed in a box. There are
no set rules. For someone who thrives on order, who can only ever
survive with set boundaries, and hard and fast rules, I'm surprised
I've accepted the notion of loving Ryan so easily. But I feel it.
Inside. It is like nothing I have ever felt before. And a part of
me knows that it is not something I will ever feel again
either.

It thrills me.
He fills me. My mind. My heart. My soul. There is no room for any
doubt, it just is. An inexplicable, inescapable sensation of
completeness. He is the reflection of everything I long to be.

He is
mine.

But marriage?
Is he fucking mad?

I snatched the
toast up out of the toaster and slammed it down on the plate, then
proceeded to lather butter and jam all over the top. My eyes
constantly flicked up to Daisy's little form out in the garden, the
Hauraki Gulf as backdrop, Ryan's mother's garden as her frame. She
was so happy here, dancing about in the sunshine, singing at the
top of her lungs as she chased butterflies around the flowerbeds,
and then would suddenly stop and watch a gull dive and swoop
offshore.

Mesmerised.

My knife
scraped the china in a chilling screech which made Ryan frown. I
could see him, standing just off the the side, leaning against the
bench, watching my every move.

He'd watched
my every move last night too. While we made love. While we talked
in the shower. After he'd asked me to marry him and I'd clammed up.
I'm sure he watched me sleep too. Or watched me pretend to sleep
until finally sleep called me close to dawn.

Ryan watches.
He watches me as though I'll be stolen, taken away from him, and he
has only so long to commit my image to memory, to carry him through
the rest of his life.

"Marie," he
said, this time more forcefully. "Tell me what I did wrong?"

What he did
wrong. Is he fucking mad? Isn't it obvious?

I turned and
placed the plate down on the table, then pushed past him and called
Daisy from the back door. I waited for her to scamper inside and
then helped her wash her hands before she sat at the table and
practically inhaled the toast and jam.

Neither Ryan
nor I said a single word the entire time.

As soon as she
finished she asked to play outside again. All I could do was nod my
head, as I picked her dirty plate up and rinsed it off for the
dishwasher.

"Babe," Ryan
tried, taking a step closer.

I stilled.
Staring at the sink, watching the last of the water drain out.

"You know how
I feel about you," he said softly, his hot breath close enough to
feel against my cheek. "I know you feel the same way. Is it too
soon?"

I turned my head so I could look at him, but kept my body
mainly facing the sink. The division I placed between us was not
lost on him. He scowled down at my stance.

"Why'd you
have to go and ruin everything?" I whispered.

His eyes
flicked up to mine, confusion and hurt mingling there.

Ah, damn. I was being an utter bitch and it had nothing to do
with him, and
everything
to do with
my fucked up life.

"Can we
just..." I sucked in a deep breath of air, blinked a few times to
clear my head, then said, "Can we just pretend it didn't
happen?"

"No," he
replied, resolutely. "Not until you give me an adequate reason for
shutting me out since last night."

"I'm not
shutting you out now."

"Talking to me
again does not mean you've let me back in. What happened to
honesty? Embracing life? Real?"

I scoffed and
turned to face him, arms crossing over my chest. His eyes dipped to
the motion, but returned to my face immediately. He was pissed. I
could see it now. He was fuming and trying desperately to hold the
anger inside.

Ah, crap. Now
I was helping him create bad memories in a place that held the only
good memories of his mother, under the fucked up shadow of his
mother's killer.

This was going
so wrong.

I reached out blindly for the dishcloth and searched beneath
the sink for the bleach. I began spraying the bench and then wiping
it down furiously, determined to not miss a spot.
This
, at least, I could do
properly.

His hand
stilled over mine, cupping it, keeping it motionless.

"Tiger," he said, and that one word, that silly nickname he'd
given me, made my eyes tear up and my throat constrict. "Ah, Marie,
sweetheart," he whispered, pulling me into his embrace as the tears
flooded my eyes and coated my cheeks. "It's OK, babe. If it's too
soon, I can wait." He laughed. "We
have
only known each other less than a week." He shrugged his
shoulders, one hand smoothing down my hair at the back of my head,
the other wrapped around my body, holding me close. "I can get
carried away sometimes. But I know how I feel, and I thought you
were on the same page."

I'd thought we
were on the same page too.

We stood like
that in silence. The tears eventually dried up, leaving me a little
bereft. Clinging to his body while my ear pressed to his chest and
desperately tried to count his heartbeats. They were regular, not a
skipped one among them. It calmed me.

When Daisy was a just a wee baby, I'd sit beside her cot and
count her breaths. Making sure they were even. That they were fast
enough. That she didn't have sleep apnoea
or tachypnoea. It
became an obsession. I couldn't sleep for fear I'd miss something.
That I wouldn't be there if she stopped breathing. It was the first
sign of who I had become. It took three months of sleepless nights
and vigilant respiration checking for me to realise it wasn't
healthy. It wasn't right.

But I couldn't
stop it. I couldn't turn the need to count her breaths off. So, I
compromised. I allowed myself a count of one hundred. If she missed
a beat, sped up or slowed down, within that time, I would start at
the beginning.

Daisy was
three years old when I stopped rigorously counting, trusting her to
sleep through the night when I put her down.

Instead I sang
her a song, and while I sang the song and watched her fall asleep,
I'd just peek at her respirations, just a glimpse, a small rate
check I told myself, and that would be enough.

I still sing
Daisy Bell
to her each night. I still glance at her chest to
make sure it rises and falls. But I haven't actually consciously
counted her respiration rate for the past five days.

Since Ryan
Pierce walked into my world and turned it upside down in more ways
than one.

I let a long
breath of air out and pulled back to look up at his face.
Tenderness and concern stared back at me.

I swallowed
past a dry throat and said, "I have issues." No judgement, just a
soft nod of his head, an encouragement to go on. "I'm obsessive," I
admitted, he smiled. Yeah, he'd obviously got that one. "Compulsive
with the obsessions," I added. "I count things. Counting helps.
Your respiratory rate is fourteen breaths per minute right
now."

His eyebrows
rose up his face.

"Your pulse
was sitting at fifty-five beats per minute, but it's just gone
up."

A soft breath
of air got pushed through his lips. He blinked.

"I'm telling
you this so you understand what I am. What I have become since that
night. What I need in order to get through the day."

"OK," he said
quietly, as though he wasn't quite sure what to say to all of that.
Then, "So, is that why you shut me out? Because you needed to
count?"

I frowned and
let a burst of air out through my nose, scrunching up my face while
I was at it.

"Not
consciously. And it's not just counting. I clean too.
Obsessively."

"I had noticed
that," he replied gently, his hand lifting the cloth off the bench
and then putting it back down.

"I have
routines, certain paths I take to walk to work, certain paths I
have to avoid."

"Uh-hah."

"I don't
handle change well."

"You're doing
all right," he murmured.

I shook my
head. "No, I'm not." Another frown. "Or at least I wasn't."

"You
weren't?"

I shook my
head again. "That's beside the point. I guess, what I'm trying to
tell you is..." I hesitated. Having never really put any of this
into words, it was harder than I had anticipated.

"That you're a
little fucked in the head and don't handle surprises well," he
offered, the words light, but his gaze intense. "Hell, Marie. We're
all like that to a certain extent."

"Not like
me."

"No," he
agreed. "Perhaps not to the same level, but you've got to know I
have quirks too, babe."

I blinked at
him. He wasn't getting it.

"I have to be
the one to step up to the plate and help out. I can't say no to
someone in true need. I'll forgo sleep in order to see them to
safety. I'm constantly checking that the Women's Refuge has
everything it needs, twice a month, sometimes more. And when my
trust doesn't earn much money, I supplement the donation with funds
from my pay-cheque."

Silence.

"I married
once and it was a disaster," I rushed to say, the words tumbling
out after his own admission, as though him opening up to that
degree cracked my shield, unlocked my flood gates, and made it all
pour out. "I became OCD straight after. I've improved, but those
first few months, hell that first year, was hard. Too hard. I can't
go back there again. I can't. I just can't do that to Daisy. If she
saw me now, how I was back then, she'd think I was crazy. I can't
be a crazy mother. It's not fair. She's already got a dead criminal
father, she can't have the stigma of an institutionalised mother as
well."

Ryan just
looked at me, really looked at me. I couldn't tell what he was
thinking and after that horrendous verbal explosion I'm not sure I
wanted to know. I shuffled slightly on my feet and his hands came
up, cupping my cheeks, thumbs rubbing softly over my jaw.

"I won't let
you."

My mouth fell
open. He didn't dismiss my concerns. He didn't brush them aside. He
acknowledged them, and then gave me the only thing he could, that I
would be willing to accept.

I won't let
you
. I won't let you go back there. I won't
let you let Daisy down.

"So," he said
softly, still rubbing his thumbs across my jaw, still cupping my
cheeks. "It's not the time, is it? It's the act."

I nodded. I
was shit scared of marrying again and having my world fall apart
when it went wrong.

"OK," he
whispered. "I'm not giving up." What? "I still want to call you my
wife. I want to be Daisy's father."

"You can do
that without a marriage certificate."

"True. But I
want it all." He hurried on when I stiffened. "But I can wait."

"For
what
?"

He smiled. It
was one of his sexy smiles; all knowing, and mischievous, and a
little bad-boy inside.

"For you to
realise that you want it too."

I shook my
head and opened my mouth to argue, his finger pressed firmly onto
my lips to shut me up.

"Hush," he
instructed. "Trust me. I'm a cop." He winked. "Now that that's
settled." It is? "Let's grab a coffee, something to eat, and go sit
outside in the sun."