Page 17

Chapter Seventeen

Sutton

“ D r. Nilsen.” My heart launched into my throat when I entered Tynan’s cabin and saw the doctor packing up his things. My eyes flicked around the cabin wildly until they settled on the closed bathroom door, realizing Tynan must be inside.

I’d been in the garage for most of the day, my mind working through a tangle of thoughts as I cleaned the dirt and dust and blood from Tynan’s motorcycle. I had to tell him the truth. There was no way around it. Not only did I owe it to him, but it would be better this way. To rip the Band-Aid off before things got more complicated.

The way I figured it, it would be easier now to lose something I never had.

“Sutton.” Dr. Nilsen’s chin dipped.

“Is everything okay?” I was surprised to see him. Worried. I’d assumed when he’d told me I’d have to change Tynan’s bandages today it meant he wasn’t going to stop by.

I adjusted the two paper bags of groceries on my hips and walked toward the kitchen, noticing then that the rolling bed Tynan had been recuperating on was gone, too.

“Decided it was time for the bandage to come off. I put a different sealer over the wound so he can shower now.”

“Oh.” My lips didn’t fully shut after the sound, imagining Tynan’s naked chest in the stream of a shower. Imagining all of him naked in the shower.

Dr. Nilsen zipped up his tool bag and slung it over his shoulder, the motion jarring me from my thoughts. “Still need to take it easy for a little bit yet, but no concerns on my end.”

Tynan reappeared then, his body going unmistakably stiff when he saw me. He collected himself, thanking the doctor a second later, who then nodded and offered a low goodbye before leaving the cabin.

“Where were you?” he asked low, the faintest hint of displeasure in his voice as he approached the counter.

A hot shiver ran along my spine, relishing for a single second the sharp edge of possession in his tone before burying the warm feeling.

“Washing your bike,” I answered and began to unpack the groceries onto the counter. “It was a little dirty after our ride over here.”

He frowned. “You didn’t have to do that.”

My throat tightened. “I know.”

“What’s all this?” Tynan rumbled, his gaze scanning everything on the counter.

“You said you liked ramen.” I grabbed a pot off the rack and filled it with water, setting it on the stove on high.

“You’re making dinner?” he drawled low and folded his arms.

I wasn’t kidding when I said my cooking skills were nonexistent, but for him—for what he’d done for me, I’d try.

“Are you worried I’m going to poison you?” I lifted my brow, taking a frying pan out next, dousing the bottom with some olive oil, and setting it on the stove.

Tynan made a low laugh and took a seat at one of the counter stools. “You could try.”

Our eyes connected longer than they should have, and I quickly looked away, grabbing a cutting board, a knife, and the closest vegetable waiting to be chopped. It was a carrot.

“Poison wouldn’t be my preferred method,” I said and let the knife fall, lopping off the stem end of the carrot in a single blow.

His eyes blew wide. “Touché.”

I grinned, the warm ease we’d had in each other’s company before finding its way back for a few seconds until the unmistakable weight of guilt returned to his features and reminded me of my own.

“You don’t have to do this, Sutton,” Tynan said, his voice huskier as he leaned into the chair, offering a full view of his bare chest and corded muscles.

He was wrong. I grabbed the peppers and onions, using all of my concentration to dice them in silence until I couldn’t take the tension any longer.

“You’re injured, and it’s my fault. Plus, how many nights have you cooked for me?” I blinked rapidly, assuring myself it was the raw onions that made my eyes burn to the brink of tears.

“I cook for everyone,” he grunted.

“Exactly,” I said with feigned lightness, dumping the vegetables into the sizzling fry pan. “When was the last time someone cooked for you?”

There was a hefty pause.

My eyes lifted, connecting with the depths of his like a pebble sinking into the embrace of a bottomless ocean. One that was sometimes as still as the sky and other times churned with the ferocity of a thunderstorm.

My tongue swiped along my bottom lip, and lightning struck in the center of his irises.

“A long time,” his voice croaked.

This was the part of him my soul found kindred. The part that had never been taken care of either. Not in the way he should’ve been. Not in the way he deserved.

“Exactly.” The huskiness in my voice was new but not unwelcome. “So, sit back, relax, and be my guest.”

The reference was a mockery. This was no fairy tale, and if it were, he would be the brooding beauty, and I would most certainly be the beast.

When the vegetables began to sizzle, I dumped some soy sauce into the pan and stirred the mixture. For a minute, I wasn’t sure if he was still watching me. Or maybe I’d just gotten accustomed to the electric heat of his stare.

It was the latter.

“Add some rice wine vinegar,” Tynan said a minute later. “And a little balsamic.”

I paused mid-stir and then caved. I didn’t want it to taste like shit, so I took the advice, finding both bottles in the cabinet next to the stove.

“Sometimes, I think you just enjoy ordering me around.” I uncapped the balsamic and sprinkled some over the sizzling vegetables.

“And if I do?” His thumb twitched where it rested on his bicep, like he could hardly hold his stillness together.

Our gazes tangled for another second as I splashed the second vinegar into the pan, the hissing and sizzling coming from more than the liquid burning off.

“Anything else, Chef?”

His steely silence rang as loud as any verbal syllable.

As the seconds ticked by, I started to wish he’d given me further instruction because every moment only seemed to add to the tension between us. It popped with every breath, sizzled with every stray glance. It made my mouth water and my insides clench…and it was only a small miracle that I had the food I was cooking to blame.

The water started to boil violently, and in my rush to throw in the ramen noodles, I sent scalding hot water spraying from the pot and on to my arm.

I hissed and brought my wrist to my mouth at the same moment as Tynan jolted on his chair, his big torso tipping forward like he was ready to lunge across the counter. Like it was his job to kiss it better.

“I’m fine,” I said quickly and started to stir the noodles, his stare still trained on my wrist and the slight red mark from the scorch of water.

Like before, it was only a couple of seconds until guilt twisted his emotions like a flame to metal, bending and warping something that seemed so inflexible until it was unrecognizable.

“Sutton—”

“Who does the other service number belong to?” I blurted out, desperate for a distraction. For anything to rip the guilt away from his face. “I know the one is my dad’s. What about the other?”

“If I tell you about mine, are you going to tell me about yours?”

My lips peeled apart. My skin was marked not as a diary or design but as commandments. Just as surely as if I’d walked to the top of a burning hill and been handed them carved in stone, my commandments were chiseled cell by cell into my flesh. The wasp. Dad’s tag number. The scorpions.

Be no one’s prey. Be tactical when facing any enemy. And give no mercy.

“Maybe,” I croaked.

Tynan’s jaw pulsed, pain having buried a heartbeat at the angle of his jaw.

“His name was Ryan Henry,” he said, his tone so familiar, the one of a good man raked over the hot coals of guilt. “He was the youngest of us—of Harm’s unit. The…lightest, you know? Always joking. Singing. Raving about my cooking.”

I let out a sound that was a shadow of a laugh and heard myself say, “Mara was like that, too. Well, not raving about my cooking.”

Mara was the softer of the two of us. Everyone could be harsh. Everyone had sharp edges. But Mara’s never cut quite as deep. I remembered thinking sometimes that she went along with my rebellious ideas only because she believed in me—in our friendship—not because she believed in them.

Maybe now she did.

Tynan grunted and then stretched his fist open in front of him like he had to physically pry the last of the memory from his stone grip.

“Our last mission, we were compromised. Betrayed by an informant and then ambushed. Ryan was the only one who didn’t make it home.” Air expelled from him in a low hiss. “He was too young…he should’ve made it home.”

My throat knotted up. The heaviest grief was a life cut too short. A string snipped at the middle before life had a chance to gently and fully untether it. It wasn’t the same situation at all, but that was what I feared about Mara. That she’d gotten involved in all of this because of me, and if she wasn’t okay at the end…

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. We all get used to carrying the weight of the past; it’s the price of having a future,” he drawled, and for a moment, I found it harder to breathe.

The timer went off, and I jumped at the grating sound.

The ramen was done, and the vegetables had cooked down into an aromatic, soy-glazed mixture in the pan. Neither of us said anything as I drained the noodles and split them into bowls, layering the vegetables and sauce on top. I passed one across the counter to Tynan and carried my own to the seat next to him.

“Smells great.”

“Well, at least it has that going for it,” I murmured, hardly taking a second to cool off my first bite before shoving the ramen in my mouth. And then I instantly regretted it. “Hot,” I warned, gasping and fanning my mouth. Tears blurred my vision, and then a water bottle appeared miraculously at my lips.

Tynan.

I whimpered in relief when the cold water hit my tongue. My hands reached for the bottle and landed on top of his in the process. I relished the contact. The relief on all my senses.

“Why don’t you wait and let it cool off?” he growled, pulling the water back.

I turned to him just as he reached out and gripped my chin, his thumb swiping away the drops of water that leaked free.

“Because my mom ate so fast when I was little, and if I didn’t finish by the time she did, she’d take my plate away even if I wasn’t done. She didn’t want to wait, and she didn’t want to clean up twice,” I told him, feeling the pad of his thumb slide across my bottom lip. Not because there was any water left on it but because he couldn’t stop himself. And I didn’t want him to. Maybe that was why I kept talking. “And then in juvie, eating fast was a boon.”

There wasn’t any bitterness in my tone, just the answer to his question, but that didn’t stop shame from softening his frustration and pity flooding his features.

Instantly, hot anger rushed from my bones.

“Don’t do that,” I warned and yanked my head from his hold, twirling another bite of food on my fork.

“Do what?” he rumbled. “Care about you?”

“Pity me.” This time, I’d either cooled it enough or my mouth was so scorched it didn’t hurt when I took my next bite.

Tynan backed off for a few minutes, the two of us eating in silence, but that didn’t make it any better. The truth loomed over me like the blade of a guillotine. Tynan knew enough—knew more than most about my past, but even still, he looked at me like something fragile. Like there was some part of the little girl he’d first met that he could save. The truth would cut off that hope in one fell swoop.

“How is it?” I broke down and asked, desperate to say anything but the words knotting in my chest.

“Really good.”

A molten shiver coursed through me. His praise sounded sincere—looked sincere. And the way he devoured the rest of the bowl in a short amount of time attested to his sincerity. But then again, when had Tynan Bates ever not been sincere?

Meanwhile, I’d been nothing but a liar.

“I don’t pity you, Sutton,” he said hoarsely.

I swallowed my last bite of food, feeling the sudden coldness flowing through my veins. “Good, because you shouldn’t.”

“And should I not want better for you either?” he growled, his fork clacking into the empty ceramic bowl. “Should I not care what happened? Should I not want you to trust me?”

My lips parted, my breath breaking through them like a hot, heavy wrecking ball. I shouldn’t want any of those things, but I did. I dangerously did.

I went to the sink and flipped on the faucet, taking a deep inhale. The air wasn’t as heavy when there was some distance between us.

“What difference does it make?” I asked and turned to reach for his bowl, only to find him standing right beside me.

“It makes a difference to me,” Tynan answered, his tone rumbling like thunder. “It makes a difference because you’re running around exacting reckless vengeance without any idea what you’re up against.”

“And what should I be doing? Trusting my white knight to do it for me?” I asked like he didn’t deserve it and like I didn’t already trust him more than I was willing to admit.

“ With you,” he corrected, his eyes glinting. “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat.”

Dammit. I glared at him for turning one of my strengths into a weakness. How could I argue with Sun Tzu’s tenets that I’d already committed to my mind as though they were holy?

Tynan crowded me until I had no choice but to let him in front of the sink.

“What are you doing?”

“Helping you wash,” he grunted, and I sucked in an audible breath. His head snapped toward the noise, his eyes smoldering as soon as he realized what he said. The water hissed in the background, the steam rising from the basin. Everything crackled and popped like the foundation of our relationship that had already faltered once was on the very brink of collapse. “Helping you wash the dishes,” he clarified the second time around and snapped his focus back to the task.

He dumped a pile of dish soap onto the sponge and began to scrub; it was the same lemon scent he’d brought to the townhouse.

My arm brushed his. His wet fingers slid along mine. I felt every strained inhale of his breath just as surely as he must’ve felt every fierce shiver that ran through me. Every touch built something in the silence, electricity cracking simply from the heat and heaviness between us.

“I’m going to take a shower,” he said when we finished, then adding with a slightly sterner tone, “You can take the bed. I’ll sleep in another cabin.”

“What? No,” I protested as he faced me, the angle of his jaw locking tight.

This was his cabin—his house. I’d stayed here to make sure he was okay—to make sure nothing happened these first couple of nights, but now that he was doing okay, there was no reason he should be the one to move out.

“That’s not necessary. Rob said I could stay—” I broke off when his big hands cupped my face, realizing I’d been shaking my head in the negative as I spoke, and now he held me still.

“You’re staying here.”

It was the most commanding command I’d ever heard, and my insides warmed traitorously.

I swallowed, watching his eyes flick to the bob of my throat. “Fine. I’ll take the couch, and you can stay?—”

“No.”

His right hand slid from my cheek, lower until his palm covered the front of my neck, a collar of the hottest skin.

“Why not?”

And then my back was to the counter, my front just barely touching his when I tried to inhale. In an instant, we were back in that bubble. The one where he had me pinned down to the bed and fucked me with his fingers.

“Because I’m taking care of you,” he said, the strain bleeding into his low voice.

He was taking care by making sure temptation wasn’t close enough to touch.

But I didn’t want that. Not now. For days, all I’d wanted was for Tynan to be okay—for him to heal—and that had trumped the deeper, stronger ache of simply wanting him. But now I could see the man in front of me with his hand around my throat was just fine…and the need I had for him consumed me like a blaze.

No one ever took care of me. No one even promised. Yet Tynan showed up time and again, proving I could unload the layers of bent and blemished armor and feel safe…for once.

And that night when he’d held me at the mercy of both his punishment and his pleasure had been the first moment I’d felt…free…in longer than I could remember. Free to submit. To not be strong. Free to physically want without worry. And free to trust that Tynan would take care of me.

“Are you?” I murmured, my voice sounding raw as I shifted, moving my thighs closer together to try and ease the tightness in my core.

“Yes,” he said low, his hold on my neck tightening just enough to make my mouth part.

This was the most reckless I’d ever been—the most in danger I’d ever felt. Not because I ever remotely thought Tynan would hurt me, but because I was afraid of the harm wanting him would do.

“I can think of better ways for you to take care of me.”

His pupils blew out, his ragged groan washing over me like though his wound was healing, there was another injury that was only getting worse.

“Don’t,” Tynan warned like I couldn’t feel how his cock made him a liar.

His hard length thickened in his sweatpants, pushing against my stomach and bridging the gap between us. Like no matter how much restraint he had to keep his hands from touching me, he couldn’t stop the rest of his body from reaching for more.

And then the fantasy of pleasuring him—of seeing him lose control—took over my mind like a merciless tyrant.

“Fine,” I murmured, sliding my tongue out and over my lips, wetting them before I begged, “Then let me take care of you.”

His sharp inhale pained me because I watched it enter him like another knife to his chest, and in the flash of torture on his face, I saw all his broken pieces come together into a picture of a man too haunted by his past to let anyone care for him. And it was like staring into a mirror.

“Sutton—”

“Who takes care of you?” I pushed into his hand, trying to bring my mouth closer to his, but he tensed up instantly.

“Fuck,” he swore softly and dropped his hands, taking several steps around the counter away from me.

The sudden loss of his heat made my skin ripple with cold. Meanwhile, my throat worked like it had forgotten how to swallow—how to breathe—without him holding me.

When he faced me again, it was like the last several minutes hadn’t happened.

“You’re staying here. That’s my decision,” he ordered. “I’ll come get you when I’m done in the shower.”

“Anything else?” I folded my arms, enjoying the hot dart of his attention to my chest.

“That’s it,” he said, his eyes flicking to the door like he couldn’t wait for me to go so he could deal with the massive bulge tenting his sweats that he tried to hide behind the counter.

“Fine.” I tipped my head. “I’ll sleep in your bed if that’s what you really want.”

I caught the flare of his nostrils before he spun and stalked into the bathroom, slamming the door behind him.

I should’ve obeyed and left. I almost did. But I kept seeing the pain on his face. Not just the want in his eyes but the heartbreaking ache when I’d asked who took care of him.

He didn’t back down when I tried to push him away…and neither would I. No matter what kind of truth it cost me.