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AFTER I FALL: CHAPTER 14
Parker
I close my eyes the moment his lips slip over mine. I can’t get used to the softness of his beard against my skin, no matter how often it brushes gently against my cheek. I love the taste of this man. The feel of being surrounded, consumed. He nudges me, urging me to open.
It’s a simple request. One I’m all too happy to grant.
It was a gamble, moving so close to him. Daring him to deny what has been burning between us since that first night.
Daring him to turn me away, and hoping, praying that he wouldn’t do it again.
I need him in this moment. I need to forget about my father and the rest of this afternoon and the rest of my life.
I need to lose myself in this kiss. This touch. This breathless moment that sweeps me up and tears me apart.
Because if I lose myself in this kiss, in this moment, maybe he’ll forget the question he just asked. Maybe, if we’re both distracted enough, we can forget about the outside world for a little while. And just be together like two normal people. Ones without screwed-up baggage and messed-up families that have to be perfect in every way.
Oh, wait. That’s just my family.
He leans back, then, nibbling on my bottom lip a moment before creating space between us. “What?”
I lower my forehead to his, his beard soft beneath my palm. “You’re too good to be true,” I whisper. Because that is the single, most honest thing I’ve ever said to him.
“Everything has a catch,” he says softly. There is darkness in those words, cloaked in mystery. I can’t figure him out. This man who said no to me the first time I asked him to do dark and dirty things to me in a dark and dirty place.
His palm is warm on my cheek, comforting and sexy. Maybe now, maybe this time, he will finally touch me where I want him to touch me. Where I need him to touch me.
Maybe once, just once, he will slide his fingers over my skin, whispering words that make no sense, filling me with sensation that blocks out the things I need to forget.
“What’s the catch with you?”
He shakes his head. “We’re not talking about my secrets right now. We’re talking about yours.”
I smile thinly. “The only secret is what I want you to do to me.”
He laughs. Not exactly the reaction I was going for. “That’s no secret.” His voice is low and deep. He’s watching. Waiting. “I’m waiting.” He brushes his lips over mine. “Trust me enough to talk to me.”
A feral thing pretending to be civilized.
I want. I want to dig my fingers into those broad shoulders. I want to feel his powerful hips between my thighs. I want to pretend for one damn moment that I’m a normal person who gets to pick who she sleeps with and when and how often.
I’m denied even that.
I don’t have the words to tell him about Davis. About my father. I can’t push them from the place inside me that’s lined with shame and give them life in the world.
Just like that, something cold washes over my skin, erasing the warmth from his touch. It’s always about what other people want. Always about their needs. Their feelings. Their fucking campaigns and their reputations.
My lungs close off with sudden, frustrated anger.
“Never mind.”
I’m on my feet and out the door before I think he knows what hit him.
Part of me hopes he’ll follow me. Part of me hopes that he’ll be that fantasy that stops my flight and begs me to stay.
I am disappointed. Yet again.
It’s an odd feeling to be angry and disappointed and unbearably aroused.
Money. People kill for it. And yet in this moment, the only thing I want, money can’t buy.
I’m not sure where I’m going. Just away.
Down the gentrified streets of Durham where the New South is pretending the sins of the Old South are long forgiven. Past the gluten-free bakeries and the trendy tea and coffee shops.
It’s all bullshit. All of it. You can’t erase the sins of the past by covering it up with a coat of paint. The memory of the blood in these streets is still there, captured in the stone.
“How long are you going to walk for?”
I keep walking, despite the tiny skip of my heart at the sound of his voice.
“Until I’m not angry anymore.”
He falls into step beside me. “Going to be a while, then?”
He’s not even breathing hard.
That pisses me off even more. I’m quite possibly being irrational. And I really don’t care. “Probably.”
He says nothing for about two blocks. Maybe more.
The sky is darkening overhead. Thunder rumbles in the distance.
“Storm coming in.”
“You can head back. So you don’t get wet.”
“I’ve been caught in the rain before. Lots of times.”
I start down a hill, the broken cobblestones shaded by an ancient tree. I don’t want him here.
“I’m quitting when we get back to The Pint.” The words are out before I really think about them. I can’t do this. Not with him. Not anymore.
“Any particular reason?”
“Pick one.”
He stops me then. Grips my upper arm and halts my rush to nowhere. “Why don’t you start with telling me what set you off back there? I’m pretty good at reading people but I’m not a fucking mind reader.”
I shake my head, the fury still a latent thing in my bloodstream. Dormant now, instead of pulsing, frustrated anger. “Why do you care? I’m just some unfuckable chick you hired out of some failed sense of obligation.”
Something flashes in his eyes. Something dark. Something wild. Like the storm overhead.
He steps into my space. His fingers are hard on my jaw. “I don’t ever want to hear those words come out of your mouth again.”
My rebellion is fierce and not entirely thought out. I yank away before he finishes speaking. “You really don’t get it, do you? You’re giving me orders just like everyone else in my life, and I’m so damn tired of it.” I back away, hoping my voice will stay steady for a moment longer. “I’m done. I’m so done with all of this.”
My voice betrays me. Cracking as the sky above opens up and unleashes freezing hell over both of us.
I turn away, walking into the rain and the fog and the cold.
It’s a small act.
But at least it’s my choice.
Eli
I’m not the smartest guy in the world but as I watch her walk away, I can suddenly see the roadmap of every way I’ve fucked up since Parker walked into my life.
Refusing to do what she wanted. Demanding she open up when I’ve refused to do the same.
In that instant, I know everything about her. And it is achingly clear just how badly I’ve screwed everything up.
She needed me to be different. To let her take control. And instead, I did exactly the opposite.
My skin is cold and wet, matching the ice that fills my lungs with every breath.
I don’t know how to fix this.
But I can’t leave her alone. I can’t let her walk away into the fog and the rain and hope she makes it home okay.
I catch up to her easily, falling into step next to her.
She says nothing. Her head is down, her hair pushed back off her face even as her shoulders are slumped against the downpour.
“I have this problem,” I say after a moment. “I can’t let people walk away mad.” I swallow, not wanting to say the next words but knowing that she needs to hear them if she has a chance of ever seeing the real me. “Because I might not ever see them again.”
She swipes her hand over her cheek, sliding her index finger beneath each eye.
“That’s incredibly sad,” she finally says.
It’s also the most honest thing I’ve ever said to her. But I don’t tell her that. “You asked me once why a bar. Why here?” I rub my hands over my beard, pushing my hair out of my face. “I was alone. I missed my tribe. My soldiers. My friends.” I swallow. “I lived my entire adult life for one purpose: leading soldiers. And I didn’t have that anymore.”
“So you made your own tribe.”
It’s amazing how easy the words are right now. In the rain and the fog and the cold. The outside matches the inside, and the words have no barriers now to stop them. “Yeah. Deacon was the first. Then Noah and Josh. Kelsey.”
“I like Kelsey.”
“She doesn’t trust easily. But she trusts us more than anyone else.” I hesitate, not sure how much this talk of tribes and family made by war and not blood might alienate her. “She is as much a part of my tribe as any of the guys.”
Parker keeps walking, her head down now, her movements less angry.
“I wish I knew what that feels like,” she whispers, so quietly I almost can’t hear her over the rain.
“What?”
“That kind of trust that has you hiring complete strangers based on a shared experience and nothing more.”
I want to reach out. To pull her close and let her lean against me. To feel her body mold and shape against mine. “Most people don’t.”
“That’s really a shame. That you have to be willing to kill someone in order to even come close to it.”
Her words catch me off guard. She’s right but that doesn’t make her words any less sharp. “Si vis pacem, para bellum.”
She pauses then, looking up at me through the rain. “To secure peace, prepare for war.”
I smile faintly. “I’m mildly impressed right now.”
“Had to learn Latin in high school.”
“Hell of a high school.” I have a sudden fantasy of her in one of those prep school uniforms with the short skirt and knee-high socks and sweet baby Jesus I’m going to embarrass myself. “You don’t agree with the sentiment.”
“Which one? High school or war?”
“Either?”
She looks away then and starts walking. She hasn’t been paying attention but I’ve been steering her back toward The Pint and relative warmth.
“I’ve never encountered a situation that calls for war.”
I stop her then. Right there in the cold rain. I touch my thumb to the faint yellow around her upper arm, all but healed. “The man who did this to you is a coward.” I brush the pad of my finger over her skin gently. “That’s worth going to war over.”
“Be that as it may, I still have to marry him.”
Her words are an ice pick to my heart, but I keep my expression blank. This is the first time she’s said anything about her life. I can’t fuck it up again. “You have a choice.”
She shakes her head. “I really don’t.” She turns her face to kiss the palm of my hand. “But it’s nice to pretend for a while that I do.”
I open my mouth. I want to argue with her. To tell her to fight back. To prepare for the war she needs to secure her freedom. But I don’t.
Instead, I lift her face to mine, capturing her lips in a soft, warm, and wet kiss. She opens for me, her tongue touching mine in the sweetest caress. I could stand here forever, tasting her, living in the moment of just feeling her breath mingle with mine.
Her fingers twine into my hair, her nails dig into my scalp as she pulls me closer, taking what she needs. I am content just to be needed in that moment. The fire of her touch burns away the cold and the rain and the wet, leaving only the sensation of her skin against mine, her breath filling me.
She shivers against me, the tremble running through her body and into mine.
But neither of us moves, caught in the moment between sensations. Unable to break the connection and return to the real world where she is trapped in her past.
And I am trapped in mine.
