“No.”
“You can make everything better.”
He sounded so lost and my heart broke for him. He was a guy who was never going to have a chance at a typical life. There was never going to be a desk job in his future, no simple road with redemption at the end. He was always going to be a guy who had a criminal record, was too wild, too rough not to have a reputation that went along with his ragged persona. He was equal parts Bax and Shane, one was never going to exist without the other, and he was just going to have to find the balance between the two. I didn’t mind helping him figure it out, as long as he didn’t destroy me in the process.
“So can you, Bax, but if you do this, I’m done. There is no going back.”
His eyes flashed at me and my hands were suddenly free and he was levering himself up off of me, the muscles in his arms and shoulders shaking.
“Isn’t that the point?”
He was going to run, I could see it clear as day. He didn’t know what to do next and he was going to bolt. He wanted to make me be the one to do it, so that his conscience was clear, but I hadn’t cooperated and now he was going to go out and unleash all that turbulent emotion on an unsuspecting city. I was tempted to let him.
“Bax . . .”
I thought he was going to get up and head for the door, but he surprised me by twisting at the waist and trapping me back between his stripped torso and the bed. This time when he kissed me, it was for real. His lips moved across mine with force, but not in a way that was punishing. When he demanded entrance this time, I let him have it, and even went as far as to wrap my arms around the strong cords of his neck. His tongue danced with mine, his teeth scraped with the intent to arouse not to punish, and his hands were shaking when he used them to push all my hair back off of my face. His black eyes burned into my own, and I saw an eternity of regret and remorse flood the dark pools.
“You’re a nice girl, Dovie. You should be anywhere but here with anyone but me. This shit with Race and Novak, your old man being the scum of the earth . . . you deserve so much more than all of it. Your life should look different than this, and sooner or later you’re going to hate me.”
I put my thumb on the center of his bottom lip and sucked in a breath when he pulled it into the moist cavern of his mouth.
“Or maybe the opposite of that.” His eyebrows shot up and he used his tongue to swirl around the edge of my thumb before letting it go with a pop.
“Don’t do that, Copper-Top. It would be the worst mistake you ever made.”
He was the second person today to tell me that exact same thing, only I wasn’t sure it wasn’t already too late. There was just something about him, something there that made me want to believe that in the long run, all the bad that made him who he was could be dealt with, could be loved, as long as it came with the fleeting glimpses of good like he was showing me now.
“I’m only twenty, Shane. I have a lifetime to make good decisions. Might as well get the bad ones out of the way now while I still have time to learn from them.”
He caught the hand I had put over his heart and looked at the pale skin that had faint red marks circling it in the shape of his fingers. He put his lips to the center of my wrist, right where my pulse was hammering in time to his.
“I hurt you and made you cry.”
I sighed because I knew he was right. “You also protected me, stood up for me, and made me feel beautiful and secure, which is a lot more than I can say for most people in my life. With you, taking the good with the bad just goes hand in hand.”
He shifted so that his big body was braced above me. He bent his head and placed a whisper-soft kiss on my collarbone. My body reacted instantly. I ran my hands along the ridge of his rib cage, careful to avoid his still-raw knife wound. He was so solid, all parts of him real and strong. When he wasn’t being his own worst enemy, he was the most rigid and stable being I had ever encountered in my life, which was in contradiction to the restless and careless way he lived his life.
“Is that why you call me ‘Shane’ every time I take you to bed?” His mouth landed on my breastbone. I think he was purposely ignoring the begging, plump peaks of each breast. How we had shifted gears so fast I wasn’t sure, but like with everything that came with him, I just held on for the ride.
“I call you ‘Shane’ because you’re different when we are together like this—softer, less scary. I feel like all day long Bax is who you have to be to survive this life you’ve chosen to live, but Shane is who you choose to be when you let your guard down and leave it all on the streets.”
I ran my fingers over the prickly softness of his shaved head, taking a second to rub the smooth surface of his scar.
“I’m not going to pretend I don’t like it when you’re Shane better, but Bax has his place and I can deal with him, just not in bed.”
He moved lower and kissed each one of my hipbones where they jutted upward as my belly hollowed out at the contact. He dipped his tongue into the little indent of my belly button and put a kiss that left a mark on the path of freckled skin that trailed to the apex of my thighs. He was still lying between them, so there was no cover, no protection from either his burning gaze or his questing mouth and hands.
“It’s just me, little Dove, no more and no less.”
His breath hit the damp slit that was getting achy and ready for him to take things up a notch. It made me shudder and my fingers dug into the side of his head, which had him grunting in response.
“Just you is a whole hell of a lot more than most people bring to the table anymore.”
His head dropped and everything else fell away. He had the ability to make time stand still and all the awful things that swirled and invaded everyday life just evaporate into thin air with the stroke of his tongue and the scrape of his teeth. It wasn’t the first time he had used his mouth to make love to me, but there was something in it this time, something in him that made it different. He was trying to apologize, trying to make amends for purposely trying to freak me out earlier. He was reverent, he was sweet, and oh, good Lord, was he thorough and intently focused on making sure I felt what he was doing in every other part of my body. I was so emotionally strung out that I almost shoved him away, but it felt too good and I knew there was no way he was going to let me go anyway.
He sucked hard on my clit and used his fingers to mimic what I wanted him to do with that erection that only moments ago had been insistent against the side of my thigh. When he swirled the flat of his tongue around that tightly wound-up bundle of nerves, I knew it was going to be over before he even really started. He was relentless. He was ratcheting me up so high and so tight there was nothing I could do but scream his name as I broke under the tension. I felt everything inside me let loose and I went limp as he continued to run his tongue along saturated folds and oversensitized flesh. He pulled his fingers out and used them to trace random patterns across my knee and upper thigh.