Fistful of Roses (What a Woman Wants, Book 1) (17 page)

“I couldn’t believe I’d hurt you, baby. So precious, so beautiful, so fragile, and I’d
hurt
you. It was unacceptable that it was my arms, my hands, that had caused you pain when all I found myself,” he laughed harshly, “still find myself, wanting to do is cherish you.”

“Ryan, don’t—”

“Listen to me, Sophie. I have to get this out. You need to hear this.” His voice was rough as pain ripped into him.

She placed her hands on his cheeks, her eyes bright. Her pain mingled with his, and it was almost more than he could handle. His body roared at him to take her, ease her hurting with his touch, but his mind reined him in.

“I couldn’t hurt you again. I had to get you away from me, but your eyes, they offered me forgiveness I didn’t deserve. I wondered if I’d hurt you again if you startled me, and the thought was a spike in my chest, Sophie. I had no choice but to get you as far away from me as I could.”

“Ryan, don’t—”

“
Sophie
. Listen. What you saw with Gloria, that wasn’t me wanting her, that was desperation. I had to get you away from me, and in that moment it seemed the best way. She was there, and I took advantage of it.”

She hung her head then and dropped her hands. He wanted to snarl at the loss of contact, but he pressed closer, their bodies touching now, his need to bellow calmed somewhat.

“When I saw—”

He winced. “Don’t finish that thought, Sophie. Let me speak. Let me get this out.” He waited until she looked up at him again. “She’d come to my office to ask me why I wasn’t answering her calls, why I’d left her high and dry the night of the benefit. It was you. I’d left her because of you, but then I’d hurt you, and she was there. She made a move toward me, and I heard you coming down the hall, calling my name. I pulled her down on my lap and I—”

Her fingers on his mouth stopped his words. Tears pooled in her eyes, hovered like sparkling gems, and then fell onto her cheeks.

“I can’t do this. Please stop,” she begged him.

“I have to tell you. That wasn’t me wanting her. I haven’t wanted another woman since I met you six months ago, Sophie Hanson. I haven’t been with another woman since you walked into my office and interviewed. You’ve kept me up at night. I don’t sleep right, and I want, Sophie. I
want
. You—under me, on top of me, against me, around me. Any way I can get you, I want you.”

Her mouth opened, but nothing came out, and he pounced. The ache of hurting her, the look on her face when she’d seen him holding Gloria, it all congealed. In that moment, he did what every other man in the history of time has done; he tried to ease her pain with his body. He dived into her, taking her mouth and letting her take his mind.

*

His pain stole her breath. She wanted to tell him she’d known he hadn’t meant to hurt her that morning, but then he’d done something that had damn near destroyed her. Hearing the pain in his voice and seeing it on his face, feeling his pain as it mixed with hers was overwhelming.

His mouth touched hers, and she gave him absolution. Her head screamed to go slow, but her heart rushed at him, offered itself up and sighed when his tongue stroked hers. She was lost to this man.

His hands clenched on her hips, and she pressed into him, her own hands finding purchase on the flexing muscles of his back. She may have sighed aloud, or maybe it was a groan. Her body demanded she get closer. He grabbed her ass, lifted her against him, and she did groan then.

“Please,” she begged.

“Yes,” he responded, and his voice sent tremors through her body. Her womb flexed, and need pooled low and hot in her abdomen.

“Touch me, Ryan.” A command, a plea, it was all the same.

“Forgive me, Sophie,” he whispered against her lips as his hips pushed against her own.

“Love me, Ryan,” she whispered right back.

“I do.”

She gasped. Then he used his body to show her all the ways that was true.

Chapter 15

“We’ve been here before, haven’t we?” His voice was hushed in the dark room.

She yawned and stretched, her body settling into the curve of his with an ease she accepted rather than fought.

“Well we haven’t been here, exactly, but I think I know what you mean.” She laughed, and it was husky to her ears.

He shifted against her, his dick deliciously hard at her back. His hand glided over her hip, up her side, and cupped her breast. She drew in a quick breath and moaned. He could quicken her body with little to no effort. She recalled the first time she’d ever seen him.

She’d walked into his office after going through initial preemployment testing, and she’d been struck dumb. He’d been large behind the gray slate desk that dominated a corner of his office. Light had been streaming in behind him from the windows, highlighting his broad shoulders, but it had been his ice-blue eyes that had made her feel like a butterfly pinned to a wall.

Her body had responded instantly, and she’d known she was in trouble. She’d taken the job never realizing those first feelings of danger and attraction would smolder and flame into what was between them now.

He’d loved her through the night, and outside, while the lights still twinkled in the trees, the black of night was lightening to gray.

“It’s snowing.” He punctuated the words with a kiss at her shoulder.

“I’m not sledding.” She chuckled.

He laughed. “You promised, naked and everything.”

“You’re not funny, Mr. Locke,” she whispered and turned on her back, lifting her arms to drape them around his neck.

He wasn’t smiling, and her heart stopped.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you, Sophie. I won’t ever do it again.” His voice and eyes were solemn.

She pressed a finger against his lips, stilling his next words. “Shhh. Promises can be broken. The only way you couldn’t hurt me is if I felt nothing for you.” Her gaze searched his face. “And the truth is I feel way too much for you to be able to keep that promise.”

“Goddamn, you undo me.” He slid a hand to the side and came back with a rose. Red, beautiful.

“I’d like to try,” she said as his lips descended.

He placed the rose next to her head, and as he kissed her, stroked her, loved her, peace settled in her soul, and she gave everything she was to him. She sighed as he entered her, whimpered as he shifted and flexed, building the fire until it could go no higher. She exploded with him, his name the last thing from her lips as she floated back to earth.

Something whispered against her skin, and the smell of roses permeated her nostrils. Awareness was slow. How long she’d slept she didn’t know, but the feel of silk on her skin and the sound of her name in the silence of the room brought her fully awake.

The room was lit now by dull light, and she turned her head, seeing snow falling fast from a gray sky. It looked cold outside, but inside, warmth was all along her body. Her lips curved as she shifted and spread her legs. Ryan settled between them, his flesh a steel prod against her softening womanhood. Her hips rose, seeking. His pushed forward as his head fell to her chest.

“I can’t stop. Your body calls to me.” He lifted his head and gazed at her intently.

“I don’t recall asking you to stop,” she returned with a smile.

She turned her head and noticed that all over her body and all over the bed were rose petals.

“Ryan?” The question was there. Would he answer?

“This is one promise that involves no pain.”

Heat spiraled through her. “What promise?”

“All the nights I’m going to spend deep inside you, Sophie. This is the second beginning of those.” He kissed the tip of each breast and rose above her. “Look at me.”

She responded to the demand. “Yes?”

He entered her slowly, moving until he was seated to the hilt, their pelvises aligned. He fit her perfectly. She drew in a shuddering breath.

“Always, Sophie. You’re mine.”

His arms flexed as he held himself above her, and she grabbed his shoulders, threaded her fingers through his hair as she closed her eyes and acceded to his claim. She didn’t know if he needed the word, but she did.

“Yes.”

* * * *

“I grew up in a house that was literally hell.” He pulled her closer into the curve of his body. Nothing separated them. She fit him—her back to his chest, her hips snuggled against his, one of his thighs between hers. She rested on one of his arms but the other was wrapped around her.

Sophie didn’t say anything, but she’d opened the dam in his soul and deserved to know what he’d told no one else. She deserved to know what she was getting.

“One of my earliest memories is my mom crying softly as he hit her. Looking back, I know she didn’t want me to hear what he was doing to her. He would grunt as he hit her, and as a grown man now I know he was throwing everything he was into those punches.” His voice was ragged.

She reached for his hand and entwined her fingers with his.

“My mom was a tiny woman. I was a tiny boy. He was a big man, Sophie, huge, like I am now, and she was smaller than you. Just so fucking tiny. I can’t see how she ever loved him. My memories are flavored with the sounds of her cries, but my nightmares are colored with his face. I see it every time I close my eyes. As many hellholes as I’ve been in, as many firefights and desperate situations I’ve encountered as a soldier, and it’s my father that haunts my nightmares.” He took a deep breath as a strange sort of fire started in his belly.

But it was tempered with Sophie’s scent and her warmth. Her body against his brought a sweet relief to the agony he was reliving. She seemed to realize he needed her silence for this telling. He’d have to thank her later. Maybe with more rose petals. But now was the time for purging.

The thought of more roses caused shock to circle through him, pierce his heart.

“I used to give her flowers. He’d beat the shit out of her, and I’d run into the backyard and pick dandelions and little purple flowers. I’d pick as many as I could fit in my hand and take them to her when he left for work.” He inhaled, and the pain of that memory was intense. “I just remembered I used to do that. She’d take them and act like they were the most beautiful things in the world. He caught me one time and snatched them from her, told me they were just weeds and to get the fuck out of their room.” He laughed bitterly.

She squeezed his hand again. It was enough.

“I was seven when he beat her to death in front of me. I didn’t say a word as the life faded from her eyes. She’d begged me to always stay quiet when he hit her. She said, ‘Ryan, stay quiet, baby, or he’ll come after you and Mama can’t protect you. Don’t you say a word, baby. He’ll stop and we’ll leave this time.’ So, I did what she asked.” His voice was thick. It surprised him; he’d thought himself long over this story.

Sophie turned in the cage of his arms. She placed her hands on either side of his head, but he couldn’t risk looking at her right now. He was locked in the telling now.

“And he beat her to death, right there in the hallway between the kitchen and the living room. He hit her long after her body had stopped twitching. I loved her, and he’d killed her. Mercilessly. Then he stood and looked at me, and there was a dare in his black eyes. I hid, but I promised myself that one day, one day I’d kill him.” He could still see that broken-down house, feel the cold that never seemed to go away. Someone was calling his name. He shook it off.

“I managed to stay out of his way for the next year. The cops came, but he told them mom fell. That she had vertigo, and she’d fallen, hit her head. The police bought it. They didn’t even question me, sons of bitches. But I could only stay out of his way so long.

“He caught me one day. He’d gotten a call from school, I wasn’t doing so hot in reading and he came at me. “No boy of mine’s gonna be a dumbass,” he yelled, and he hit me. I was still small for my age, and he hit me until I went numb, my face, my back, my stomach, he hit me everywhere. I did manage to run out of the house, but he followed me, and somebody called the cops. He was still hitting me when they pulled up.” He took a deep breath, the pull of the past lessening. She was shuddering against him. But he had to finish. Then he could comfort her.

“They took me to the hospital, and then I went into foster care. I met Hayden a year later and we became inseparable. Eventually, I grew up, big and tall, but my father’s legacy never left me. Do you understand me, Sophie? He’s still inside me somewhere, and I worry about being like him. That’s one reason I felt I had to get you away from me.”

“Ryan, look at me,” she ordered, and the note of authority in her voice had him doing just that.

Her brown-green-blue eyes were shiny with tears. Ah, hell, he’d hurt her again. He closed his eyes.

“Look. At. Me.” Another demand he obeyed. “You are not like your father. I startled you, Ryan. You would never hurt me like that intentionally, ever.”

The conviction in her tone had him hoping. “How do you know that?”

She took his hand from where it clenched at her hip and placed it over her heart. “Because my heart knows. I’ve never been afraid of you physically, only what you could do to my heart.”

“But—”

“No buts. I could never love someone who would hurt me,” she whispered as she kissed his chest.

He went stock-still. Even his blood stopped flowing. “What did you just say?” he whispered.

She pulled back and stared up at him. Her brow wrinkled. “I said you wouldn’t hurt me.”

“No. The other thing.”

Understanding was quick to dawn over her beautiful features. “I said I love you.”

He buried his face in her hair and shook. She stroked his back, his hair, his chest but she never stopped murmuring, “I love you.”

Several moments passed as he replayed what she’d said.

“I don’t deserve it, Sophie. I don’t deserve you,” he said on a deep breath.

“It’s not about deserving, Ryan. Sometimes it’s just what the heart wants, and mine seems to want you.”

He pulled her as close as he could without absorbing her inside him, and he held her there until their hearts beat in tandem. Long moments passed as he tried to come to grips with what he’d relived and her acceptance of his past. She loved him?
Fuck
. He could conquer the world now.