Page 24 of Edge of Ruin (The Edge Trilogy #3)

“Were you one of those girls with spiked hair and safety pins?”

I snorted. “Not quite. I did have thigh-high lace-up black leather boots, though.”

“Really?”

“Oh, yeah. They were the centerpiece of my wardrobe. I wore them with ripped fishnet stockings and a purple velvet miniskirt.”

“My God,” he said, with feeling. He reached down to slide his thumb tenderly into the top of my labia, circling around my clit. “Do you still have them?”

I writhed against him, gasping with pleasure, eyes shut. “Have what?”

“The boots.”

My eyes popped open, and I started to laugh. “Ah…I don’t think so,” I said. “Maybe in a box in Lucia’s attic. It was a long time ago.”

I giggled at the wistful look on his face, and he frowned at me. “What’s so funny?”

“You,” I said. “I thought you would disapprove of my slutty boots. Brian hated them with a passion. You surprise me, that’s all.”

“Brian was a sick, evil fuckhead. Don’t compare me to him. Of course I want to see you in those boots. I’m a normal guy, okay?”

“You’re not a normal guy, Jack.”

He kissed me fiercely into silence, and lifted his head some time later, when I was dazed with lust. “Besides. You’re a fine one to talk about normal. Barbed wire and broken beer bottles, for God’s sake.”

“Oh, shut up,” I murmured, and kissed him back hungrily.

A moment later, I reached up to touch his cheek. “Jack?” I asked, tentatively. “Would you do something for me?”

He froze, eyes guarded. “If I can,” he hedged.

“I want to try something,” I said hesitantly. “I want for you to, ah ... hold my hands down.”

He jerked up onto his elbows, rocking me back. “Why, for fuck’s sake? After what he did? Why would you do that to yourself? Or me?”

“Shhh,” I soothed. “Nothing sick about it. I really think that it would be okay, with you. Hot, even. But I can’t know until I try.”

“But I’m the one who feels like dogshit if it doesn’t work out!”

“Please, don’t get mad,” I pleaded. “You don’t have to, if it makes you upset.

I just thought, well, I don’t want all these dead zones and ‘danger, keep out’ signs in my head.

I want to feel free. And if anyone in the world could do that for me, it would be you.

Believe me. I would never ask such a thing of you if I didn’t trust you. ”

Even though you don’t trust me back. I held the thought at bay with great difficulty.

He stared into my face for a long time, as if trying to read my mind. “You’re sure about this,” he said carefully.

I nodded, swallowing hard.

“And you won’t blame me if?—”

“Not in the least. I swear it.”

In one swift surge, he rolled us both over, pinning me beneath his weight. He folded my legs up high, hooking them over his shoulders, and grabbed my hands, pinning them beside my head.

He waited, staring fiercely into my face. Gauging my reaction.

I gave him a tremulous smile. “I’m okay,” I whispered, stretching luxuriously against the ballast of his hands. Undulating beneath him. “Feels good.”

He leaned down and kissed me, deeply, possessively. His tongue thrusting and twining boldly with mine. “Look into my eyes,” he said. “The entire goddamn time. Or else I stop. Got it?”

I nodded. My throat was quivering, and my heart felt full as I stared into his face, but I wasn’t panicking. No stabs of fear, no numbing black fog, no clench of tension. My heart was pounding from pure excitement, not from fear.

He was not gentle, nor did I want him to be. His body challenged mine, pounding deep and hard, and his face looked angry, eyes burning, mouth grim.

Except that I knew him now. I could feel his concern, his tension, his need. His intense awareness of me.

And I was aware of him, too, on levels I’d never known before. I sensed that the conquering, dominant pose excited him, and his excitement fed mine in a confused, muddled, delicious feedback loop of emotion, sensation. There was no play-acting. My surrender was as real as his conquest.

I gasped for breath, jerking up to meet his thrusts. Staring with wide, tear-blinded eyes into his face. Struggling voluptuously against the implacable strength of his beautiful body, his steely arms, his gripping hands.

I could go there with him. All the way. I could go anyplace I wanted with him, as far as I could dream of going, always knowing that he would carry me back, completely safe, all in one happy, sated piece.

Afterward, we lay tangled together, limp and damp. We roused ourselves at last to take a long, lazy shower, washing each other. Jack’s tireless cock rose to full salute, but I just laughed at him. “Dream on, big boy,” I said. “I’m all done for the night.”

He toweled me off, with his usual passionate attention to detail and herded me toward the stairs. “Food, then,” he said, resigned.

We made sandwiches in his kitchen. Devoured the rest of Margaret’s latest batch of cookies. When we could find nothing else that was quick and easy to eat, we went back up the stairs into Jack’s bed to twine our naked bodies as closely together as we could.

We talked, carefully. Long, tentative, groping conversations about our pasts, our histories. Circling delicately around forbidden topics.

But I didn’t want dead zones and “danger keep out” signs in our conversations, either. I sat up, pushing his hands away when he reached to pull me close again.

“I have a question, Jack,” I told him.

“Ask away,” he said, his face now hidden in the shadows.

“What happened after the bust?” I let my hair curtain my face.

Jack took my hand, squeezing it. “We’re having a beautiful time,” he said, his voice halting. “Don’t ruin it by asking me questions like that.”

“I’m not picking a fight,” I said gently. “I just need to know. Did you go to one of your other family members?”

He shook his head. “I couldn’t reach any of them. My mother was in India, meditating with some guru. My aunt had moved on to some other boyfriend. They hadn’t stayed in touch.”

“You just took off all alone?”

“It wasn’t so bad at first. It was summer, and there was fruit and corn to steal. I ate a lot of hot dogs. And became an excellent shoplifter.”

I laughed, incredulous. “You?”

“Yep, me. I was unbeatable. I told you, remember? Fasting makes me crabby.”

He fell silent, and I reached out to stroke his shoulder. It was rigid. “And then?”

“I lasted about eight months,” he said flatly. “I found the places where the runaways crashed. But the winters get cold. One night, I was in this flophouse in North Portland. Some guys picked a fight with me. It ended badly.” He touched the scar on his forehead. “That’s where I got this.”

I leaned down, and kissed his eyebrow, his forehead.

“That was it for me. I found a phone. Called Margaret, collect.”

“Margaret? You mean, you knew her then?”

“No. But Freddy knew her,” he corrected. “From when he was a kid. He’d told me about her. So I gave her a try. The operator asked if she’d take a call from Freddy Kendrick’s nephew, and she accepted the charges.”

“Wow,” she whispered. “So you went to live with her?”

“For a while,” he said. “She was good to me. I was lucky to have landed with her. I joined the military as soon as I was old enough. Didn’t want to be a burden to her.”

I ran my fingers through the sable texture of his hair as I thought about it all. “You think I’m like them, right?” I said softly. “Like your family? That I’ll run out on you?”

He rolled over, clapping his hand over his eyes. “Oh, fuck, Viv. Don’t.” He sounded exhausted. “It’s so beautiful. Don’t wreck it for me. Just let it be what it is. Please.”

“But I just want you to?—”

“Let me have this, okay?” He sounded angry again. “For however long as it lasts. Can’t we just stay in the moment?”

I hid from the revealing shaft of moonlight that illuminated the quilt.

There was something to be said for staying in the moment, hard though it was.

But I was a normal, flesh-and-blood woman.

I craved the usual reassurances, promises, declarations of trust, faith, love.

And I wasn’t going to get them from him. Period.

But so what? That did not mean that what he gave me instead was not precious. Or that I shouldn’t cherish it anyway.

After all. Suppose we stayed in the moment, for, say, thirty years? Forty? Fifty? Maybe when he was a grizzled old man, he would give in and laugh at himself. And finally admit that it had been love all along.

I slipped back between the sheets and into his embrace. The idea made me smile, but my eyes were wet.