Page 19

CHAPTER NINETEEN

DEACON

I’m breathing hard in the guest bathroom.

There’s a shard of wood, a half an inch thick, sticking out of my upper thigh. It must have happened when I fell into the shattered table with Ryland. I didn’t notice it until I was sitting in the truck beside her. It doesn’t hurt. It’s more of a dull pain and tingling shock.

It’s not bleeding, but the wound is swollen around the wood. It just hurts like a motherfucker.

I strip my shirt and unfasten my belt. Pain ripples as I peel the fabric of my work pants off the wound, letting them fall to mid-thigh.

Jesus, it looks fucked up.

The skin is traumatized, puffy around the puncture. Blood laces the edges, crusted. Maybe it’s longer than I think it is, because every time I take a step, it feels like I’m being stabbed.

I take the first aid kit from under the sink and pop it open. Working quickly, I set the alcohol and gauze up and wash my hands. Then, I take a rubber handled toothbrush and put it between my back molars. There’s metallic phlegm seeping from my sinuses that tells me I need to check my nose for breaks when I’m done.

I take a breath, bite down, and wriggle the wood from the soft flesh. My vision flashes red and yellow .

Fuck, that’s a shot of adrenaline.

I take the toothbrush out, spit blood and snot into the sink, and put it back in. Working quickly, I push the tip of my finger into the outer edges of the wound, searching for splinters. I should take myself to the quick clinic, but I don’t have time tonight. Maybe I won’t go anyway. It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve put myself back together.

My entire body aches as I turn on the shower and step in. Hot water pours over me, making the nicks and bruises sting as I wash up. I’m slow to turn off the faucet and limp back to the sink to dry off.

Rubber between my teeth, I clean the wound and sew it back together with two stitches. Normally, I wouldn’t sew a puncture wound, but it’s ragged at the edges. The wood tore me up going in and out. Finally, I pack gauze over it and tape it down.

Good enough.

There’s a man in the mirror, looking back at me, kicked to shit. The corner of my mouth turns up. I really threw Freya into the deep end. It wouldn’t surprise me if, once she’s had a night to sleep on it, she decides she wants nothing to do with me.

Not that it will keep me away.

Aching inside and out, I pull on sweatpants. My nose doesn’t feel broken. I think it’s just beat up, so I leave it alone. In the dark, I go down to the kitchen and take a couple of Tylenol and wash it down with a shot of moonshine. The sharp taste, a bit like apple flavored paint remover, puts some life back in my veins.

What am I so afraid of showing her?

The kinky shit? Or the ugly, self-destructive shit?

Maybe both.

The house is so quiet. The weight of everything that happened settles on my shoulders. Today was one of those days there’s no coming back from. Jay might have been able to negotiate his way out of the easement, but not now. I’m not worried about assault charges. I know men like Aiden, and he won’t hide behind the law.

That’s all I can say for him—he’ll throw down before he whines about it .

All this leads right back to the woman in my bed. She knows what I did today. I can’t hide who I am anymore.

Maybe all this pretending I’m not a fucked up asshole isn’t worth it. I think I want her to see me for who I am—my violence, my recklessness, how my brain struggles to produce the fear chemicals I need to keep me from doing stupid shit. Even what I did to get Ryder Ranch.

The floor creaks up above. She’s not sleeping.

My mind goes back to her curvy body hanging over the anvil in the blacksmith shop. My hands grip the counter edge. In my pants, my cock goes rock hard, despite the beating my body took today.

Something cold that I don’t let out unless the proper barriers are in place rises in me.

She wanted me. She begged to have me tonight. Maybe I’m not as good of a man as I hoped.

I’m halfway up the stairs before I realize what I’m doing, but I don’t stop myself because I’ve done this dozens of times. I know I can control myself. I’m an expert at dipping into the worst parts of myself and using that to meet my submissive’s needs but never going over the line.

I open the bedroom door.

She pulled the armchair from the hearth to the window, and she’s curled in it, cheek resting on her hand. Her pale eyes are fixed on the sky.

“Freya,” I say.

She looks up. Her dressing gown is gone—she’s in just her slip with nothing underneath. I’d get kicked to shit all over again for a night with a body like hers. And yet, somehow, for some reason, she’s offering it to me for nothing.

“Deacon,” she whispers.

“Come here.”

She comes, and I gather her hair up, wrapping it once around my hand. She gasps as I draw her head back.

“You wanted me,” I say .

Her throat bobs, her lips part. Her mouth is full, so soft, like a pale pink flower. I bend and kiss it—vanilla and velvet petals, hard, harsh, open. I want to drink her down, to breathe only the air from her body.

“All of me?” I say hoarsely.

She nods, not hesitating. Something is different. Her walls are down and she’s vulnerable.

“If I do anything you don’t want, you say red,” I say.

Her brows knit together. “You mean…like a safe word?”

I nod. “Exactly. Like a safe word. We’ll pick a different one later. For now, say red. And if you can’t speak, tap my side. You got that?”

She backs up a step. Her throat bobs. My eyes trail down over her full breasts and the swell they make over her hourglass waist. Her hips flare out, her smooth legs tapering down to delicate feet. She’s the whole goddamn package.

She lifts a hand and pushes the straps of her slip down until it hits the floor.

God, I’m dying.

“I’m gonna go hard on you, sweetheart,” I say, my voice rough. “You have to use your words if you want it to stop.”

She nods, eyes huge.

“I can say red,” she whispers.

Stepping close, I wrap my hand around the back of her neck and drag her against me. “Good girl.”

Her spine arches, her lips part. She offers them to me, and I kiss her hard enough that our teeth clash. My head goes empty. My cock throbs, sensitive against the inside of my sweatpants. I lift her easily, spreading her thighs to wrap them around my waist. Her arms slip around my neck, her curls spilling around us.

We fall to the bed. She looks up at me with wide eyes.

“You’re hurt,” she says.

I glance down at the gauze coming up over the waistband of my pants. “It’s nothing I can’t handle,” I say.

“Maybe you should rest. ”

I almost shake my head, but something flickers over her face. It looks like…a little bit of fear. That stops me in my tracks. I don’t want Freya to be afraid of me. She’s clearly aroused. Her nipples are hard and I can smell how wet she is between her legs, but that doesn’t negate the fear.

“What’s going on in your head, sweetheart?” I say.

She shakes it. “Nothing.”

I place my hand on her throat, holding it so she can’t turn away. “Talk to me.”

She swallows beneath my palm. “Aiden fights like you. I have a lot of feelings inside me right now… I’m grateful you saved me, but I don’t like what you did. It was violent.”

She spits out that last word like it’s poison.

“Aiden had that coming,” I say.

“I know,” she sighs. “But I don’t like it.”

I open my mouth to answer, but she clears her throat. Her eyes meet mine, and her lashes glitter.

“Do you know how terrifying it is to be a woman in a house with a man who can’t keep his temper?” she whispers.

My mind goes back to Phil and Amie, and I almost say that I do, but I realize at the last minute that’s not right. I take a beat and think it over.

“No,” I say. “I don’t.”

I release her. She takes a shuddering breath. “Aiden hit the tables, the walls, broke the glasses until I gave up and we drank out of red plastic cups. When the factory closed, he put a chair through the window. Bittern fixed it, but we had plastic over the window all winter.”

My stomach sinks.

“But you’re sure he never tried to hit you?”

She shakes her head. “He didn’t need to. I’ve seen what his fists can do. He hit Ryland, Bittern, and Wayland—Bittern more than the others.”

“What do you mean? Like beat them? ”

“No, he’d fight with them,” she says. “He said he needed his sons to be able to take a punch.”

I’m quiet. It’s no wonder she’s frightened by what I did tonight.

“I didn’t mean to scare you, sweetheart,” I say. “As much as I’m happy to give another man a beat down, I’ve never raised my voice to a woman.”

Her lips part. “What stops you?”

“Never had any desire to,” I say honestly. “And I never hit a motherfucker who didn’t deserve it.”

She fixes her eyes on the ceiling. There’s a long silence. Then, she clears her throat again.

“Sometimes, I feel like I’m in a washing machine, just churning through the same cycle over and over again,” she whispers. A tear etches out and slides into her hair. “Aiden hits people because his father hit people. My mother ran from a drunk and ended up with somebody worse. Lady did the same thing.”

“Who’s Lady again?” I ask.

“Aiden’s first wife. Bittern, Ryland, and Wayland’s mother,” she whispers. “Well, he never married her officially, but he called her Lady Hatfield. I didn’t meet her, but Bittern talked about her a lot. Aiden ran her off when she threatened to take his sons and split up. It wasn’t too much later that my mother came along. She was…really young. She didn’t stand a chance with Aiden.”

Her voice is flat, like everything is just trickling out of her mouth and she can’t stop it. I clear my throat, because it’s time for me to be honest.

“The people who adopted me had similar problems. I saw him, and I swore up and down I’d never make any woman’s life hell the way he did,” I say.

She turns to look at me, her big eyes glimmering with tears.

“And that just…fixed you?”

“Sometimes, all it takes is for one person to make that choice,” I say. “I want a family. A wife who’s happy, kids who aren’t scared of me. Turns out, it’s pretty easy to not hurt your girl if you never fucking started in the first place. ”

“But…did you ever get hit as a kid?”

I nod. “Yeah, sometimes. Not by women.”

“And you just never hit anyone back?”

“No, if I’m being honest, I fought a lot. I learned pretty quick that if you’re being abused, one good punch can shut that shit down forever. But I have the privilege of being six and a half feet tall. And a man. Not everybody can protect themselves.”

She’s quiet. I stroke her hair, wiping the tears from her temples.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to cry,” she whispers.

“Cry all you want, sweetheart,” I say. “I’ll just sit here if that’s what you need.”

Her hand darts up to wipe her eyes. “Did you get in that one good hit that shut it down?”

“I did.”

“Can I know what happened?”

I shake my head. “Not tonight.”

She doesn’t protest. Instead, she shuts her eyes, chest heaving as she takes a deep breath. There’s a long silence. I let her take all the time she wants, because I don’t have anywhere to be but here with her.

“I just… I lived on eggshells my entire life. I don’t know how to get off them,” she whispers. “Even when I’m with you, it takes so much for me to forget and feel comfortable.”

“Look at me,” I say gently.

She drags her eyes to mine. There’s so much hurt in there. Deep down, there’s no doubt in me that I’ll make Aiden pay for what he’s done to her. She won’t have to know about it. All she has to know is that, if she stays with me, she never has to be afraid again.

“Stay here, with me,” I say.

“I want to, but it’s more complicated,” she whispers.

“Why?”

Her lips tremble. “Bittern got hurt in the coal mines. He’s not ever been the same since. He coughs and he can’t do much. Sometimes, he feels like a little baby animal. I can’t just leave him.”

I should shut the hell up, but I can’t bite my words back .

“Bittern is a thirty year old man,” I say. “He doesn’t need his little sister looking after him.”

She blinks, tears welling up again. “Bittern looked after me when nobody else did. As well as he could…considering how bad off the accident left him.”

The last thing I want to do is make her cry. I wipe her cheek with my thumb.

“I get it, sweetheart,” I say. “I get it.”

Her lip trembles. “Part of me can’t blame Aiden for some of it. What’s the point of even trying to be anything when there’s nothing to try for?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, there was nowhere for men to work but the factory. No step up, nothing to look forward to. It hurt everybody. Aiden’s father prepared him for it by being the first person to hurt him—before life could, I guess. So he did the same to his sons. He was never into wearing rose colored glasses. He told me he didn’t want a daughter because I could get pregnant and he’d be stuck with another mouth to feed. I think Aiden was sick of feeding people. But he did keep food on the table no matter what. Aiden’s awful, but he’s never been a deadbeat.”

She sounds so guilty and desperate. I release her, pushing my body up to sit against the headboard, and lift her to sit under my arm. She lets her cheek rest on my shoulder.

“I want more,” she says brokenly. “Maybe that’s selfish, but I want more than just food on my table.”

I curl my arm around her, pressing my lips to the top of her head.

“I know,” I say. “And it isn’t selfish.”

She closes her eyes. The mounting emotions of just a few moments ago are gone. Gently, I stretch my throbbing leg out and lean back. She’s in my arms for tonight. Tomorrow, I don’t know what that brings, but I know I’ll keep trying until, one day, she doesn’t want to leave .

At first, I thought I was the one dragging my past in like dirt on my boots, but it’s Freya I needed to be worried about. She has pain clinging to her, seeping from her skin.

And yet, in her pain, I see a path forward.

I’m a rough man. I’ve done my time in a holding cell and thrown enough fists to last most men a lifetime, but I’ve never raised my voice like that in my home. I’ve never put holes into the walls or broken dishes out of rage.

It took me a while, but I have the dark parts of me bridled.

I know what I want. She knows what she doesn’t. Right here is the place where we can meet in the middle.

“Look,” she whispers.

I raise my head to where she’s pointing through the windows. The clouds have parted, and the Milky Way is a glimmering river across the sky. Sometimes, I forget to look up. I’ve lived on this ranch so long, but there’s nothing like viewing it with her fresh eyes.

“You ever seen anything like that before coming here, sweetheart?” I ask.

She nestles down, her head on my stomach. Her eyes are so heavy, they’re barely open.

“No,” she whispers. “I’ve never had anything like this.”

I stroke her hair until her breathing deepens. Her body slumps. I pull the sheet over her and rest my hand on the swell of her hip. There’s a lot more I need to say to her. I have a feeling she’s got a lot more to talk through with me. That can wait.

Every time she comes here, I pry her open a bit wider, and out spills pain with a little starlight to keep it company. I don’t mind; I think she just wants somebody to see it too, maybe to tell her it’s alright to feel hurt.

I do, I see her clearly, and because of that, I can’t let her go.