Beautifully Damaged (25 page)

He was silent for a minute; his thoughts were his own before he offered softly, "In a few months, she'll turn twenty-six. She should be dating, maybe married with a child of her own, and instead she's perpetually an eight-year-old with the joys, the sorrows and also the limitations."

"Trace, did you ever consider, if you and Chelsea had not left your house that night, that you and Chelsea would have died, too."

In response to my words he just sat there, stock-still, and I knew, from his reaction, that he hadn't thought of that. I squeezed his hand before I added, "Perpetually eight is a far cry better than being perpetually dead, Trace. You saved her, and in more ways than one."

Trace brought me back to Trent's and parked his motorcycle at the curb before he walked me to my door. I hesitated to go in because I wasn't ready to leave him but at the same time the past two days had been so emotional that I needed some time to process it all.

"Thank you for coming with me to see Chelsea."

"She's lovely, Trace. I was very happy to meet her."

His eyes held mine as he reached up and ran his finger along my jaw. "Could I see you tomorrow?"

"I would really like that."

"I'll pick you up around noon?"

"I'll be waiting."

He leaned into me and brushed his lips over mine before he pulled back and grinned.

"Goodnight, Ember."

I leaned against the door and practically sighed, "Night."

When I entered the apartment, Trent was waiting for me with a glass of wine. He didn't even wait for me to drop my keys on the table before he asked, "Do you want to talk about it?"

I smiled as I walked over to the sofa and settled next to him, reaching for my glass as I did.

"You know me so well."

"How did it go?"

"It was wonderful. His sister is beautiful and sweet."

Trent settled back on the sofa and grinned. "Start from the beginning."

The next morning, I was just finishing getting dressed when the doorbell rang. I walked out into the living room just as Trent opened the door for Trace. I noticed the tension and understood it. Trent was a good friend.

"Trent." Trace said and then his eyes found mine as a smile touched his lips. "You look beautiful, Ember."

I blushed which only had Trace's smile turning a bit wicked.

I moved to the door and reached for Trent's hand and squeezed. "I'll see you later."

"Have fun," Trent offered before he brushed a kiss on my cheek.

"Thanks."

Trace and Trent shook hands just before Trace followed me out into the hallway. We were halfway down the hall when Trace reached for my hand. I looked down at our joined hands prompting Trace to ask, "Is this okay?"

I looked up at him and saw that he was actually nervous making me all warm and gooey inside.

The smile was completely involuntary before I replied, "Absolutely."

He grinned as he held my hand even tighter. We reached his bike before he placed the helmet on my head. Moments later we were driving down the street as I tightened my hold on Trace, resting my cheek against his back. I felt the shudder that went through him in response which pulled a smile. We drove for a while before reaching our destination and when I saw that we were at Nathan's, I felt love burn through me. Trace followed me off the bike as a grin tugged at his mouth.

"One hot dog with everything on it."

"You remembered!"

His palm cradled my cheek as he lowered his head and pressed his lips to mine. He reached for my hand and pulled me up to the ordering window.

The following day, a package arrived for me and I knew that it was from Trace. I hastily opened it to reveal the most beautiful Steiff teddy bear. The note that accompanied the package simply read:

I owed you one. Love, Trace

In the week that followed, I spent every day and most evenings with Trace but he always brought me home at the end of the date, leaving me at the door with a goodnight kiss. One night, he took me back to his apartment where we ate popcorn and watched Christian Bale as Batman. Another night, we just strolled through the Village, talking.

I knew what he was doing: trying to reconnect, trying to bring us back to where we had been before he pushed me away. The thing was, I didn't need any of it. As much as I loved every second that I spent with him, I understood why he acted as he did. I loved him, never stopped, and more I needed him. I wanted him to hold me, to touch me, to love me.

We were at dinner, a small Greek place, and were just finishing our main courses when I reached across the table for Trace's hand.

"Trace?"

"Yes, love."

I leaned closer to him so no one else would overhear. "Trace, if you don't make love to me, I think I might go insane."

His reaction was so fun to watch. Just like that his demeanor changed to that of sex. His eyes burned like fire and I could all but see as his body started humming from want. "Are you sure?"

"God, yes."

"Check!"

We made it outside of the restaurant before Trace pulled me to him and kissed me so wickedly that my stomach flip-flopped with desire. There was no doubt what was on his mind as he reached for my hand and practically ran us to his bike. We broke several roadway-laws to make it back to his apartment in under ten minutes.

As we entered his apartment, he stepped gentlemanly aside waiting for me to precede him. He closed the door behind us and I turned to him to find him leaning against the door watching me. The look in his eyes burned desire through my body. I knew he wouldn't make a move; he wanted to but was following my lead. I wanted him to touch me, I wanted to touch him, so I held his gaze before I whispered, "Make love to me, Trace."

That was all it took. He walked across the floor and pulled me into his arms. His mouth fused to mine as his hands sought the hem of my shirt, pulling from me only long enough to discard the garment. My hands were eager for the feel of the hard, smoothness of his skin as I ran my fingers over his heated back causing those muscles to bunch and cord in response. He lifted me into his arms and started walking down the hallway to his room as my mouth pressed to his neck, sucking the blood to just under the surface of his skin, before I bit him causing him to growl low in his throat. He tossed me on his bed and as I bounced up and down on the mattress he stripped, the beauty of his body causing desire to burn through me, and then he pounced, caging me with his aroused, hard body.

"I can't wait, Ember. I need to be inside you." His hands lifted my skirt, and pulled my panties off. He filled me in one long, hard stroke and I gasped as I stretched to take him in but I lifted my hips at the same time to take more of him.

"Oh god, you feel so good." He growled as he started to move, slowly at first, as each stroke caused the delicious tension to build until I felt as if I was being torn apart from the pleasure that ached to the point of pain. I gripped his most excellent ass as I urged him to go deeper, harder, faster and when he did, I came apart, screaming out his name. I felt him tense and with two more powerful thrusts, he closed his eyes, threw his head back and roared with release.

When he collapsed on top of me, I was weak and very sated until his hand closed over my breast and he rolled my pebbled nipple between his thumb and forefinger. Just like that the tension started to grow again.

"Trace, we couldn't possibly."

When his head lifted with desire and lust burning in his eyes, I knew we could and, in fact, did.

That night I was having trouble sleeping so I lay there for a while watching the gentle rise and fall of Trace's chest and was happy that his dreams seemed to be untouched by the horrors of his childhood. After an hour of sleeplessness, I decided to make myself some warm milk, climbed from bed, pulled on Trace's t-shirt, and padded down the hall. As soon as I entered the kitchen, I saw a bottle of wine on the counter and opted to have a glass of that instead.

I took my glass into the living room and settled on the sofa, pulling my legs under me, before looking out the window as my thoughts fired randomly in my brain.

Trace and his sister were sexually abused as children and the thought of those two precious souls having been violated enraged me in a way that I'd never felt before. Tears filled my eyes thinking of him -- both of them -- as young, helpless children in a situation that they had no control over. In Trace's case, it explained his behavior as an adult: the plethora of single-dated women, the sex, the fighting. Everything that he did in his adult life, he controlled. Never was the control taken from his hands.

His father got off lightly. He should have been made to suffer the pain and helplessness that he had inflicted on his children. And his mother, what the fuck was her problem? How the hell could a woman bear children and then sit back and allow harm to come to them?

I wiped my leaking eyes but was thankful that Trace finally was able to share his hell. The fact that it was with me touched me and made me feel a connection to him that no one ever had. Maybe, having spoken of it and facing it, he really would begin to heal.

It disturbed me that his parents died, were murdered and possibly at the hand of someone close. Was the motive to help the children or was it for personal gain? And his uncle? Was his interest in Trace really to uncover just how much he remembered from that night? We were going to need Uncle Josh after all.

I was so lost in my thoughts that I didn't realize that Trace had joined me until he was standing right in front of me. Thankfully, he had pulled on his boxer-briefs, though actually it was a bit more of a tease than if he had been standing there naked. My God, he was beautiful: from his wide shoulders, to his muscled chest and six-pack abs, and lower still to that delicious 'v' of muscle that disappeared beneath the waistband of his briefs and down to his incredible thighs and calves.

Before I even realized what I was doing I was sitting there fanning myself while taking repeated sips of my wine trying to quench my suddenly parched throat. When I finally managed to lift my eyes to his, it was to see him grinning at me.

"I'm sorry but you are gorgeous, Trace. Really, I could look at you all day."

He hunched down just in front of me and reached for my glass to place on the coffee table before he rested his hands on my legs. "I like that you're looking."

He ran his hands up my legs and under his shirt that I was wearing before lifting it slightly so his fingers could trace the tattoo on my hip. His eyes followed his movements and then locked onto mine. His voice was hoarse when he said, "You have no idea what this does to me: to know that you marked yourself, that you made me a permanent part of you, that you thought me good enough to do so."

"Trace."

He touched my lips with his finger before he continued, "I've never had anyone in my life treat me like I was worth anything. I was usually just an annoyance, an amusement or a piece of ass but not a man worthy of respect or love, until you."

He knelt in front of me and framed my face with his hands before brushing his lips gently over my face in a touch that was both reverent and deeply moving. I felt his lips move against the delicate skin under my jaw when he whispered, "All that I am, Ember, this very damaged and unworthy man, is yours."

"Trace." He moved back and met my gaze and I knew that, in mine, he could see how much I loved him. Seeing the same emotion looking back at me had tears pricking my eyes as I reached out and ran my hand down his cheek. I savored the feel of him as I silently thanked whatever higher power brought him into my life. "You see yourself through very tainted glasses, Trace, but I see you for you and you are absolutely worthy."

His mouth covered mine stealing the last of my words as he kissed me with all the emotions burning through him. A little while later he pulled away from me but he didn't seem to want to lose all contact as his thumb reached out and rubbed over my lower lip as his eyes held mine.

I reached for his hand and pulled him up to join me on the sofa as I shifted to curl myself into his lap. I wrapped my arms around him, pressed my lips to his neck and blushed as I saw that I branded him with my love-mark. Trace noticed the color that rose on my cheeks and grinned, a big, wide happy grin.

"You marked me, Ember, I like it."

"You've marked me, too, you just can't see it."

I heard the hitch in his breathing as he wrapped his arms around me and held me tightly against him.

"The first time I saw this and realized what it was, I was drawn to it and you," I said as I trailed my fingertips over the tattoo on his arm before I looked up to meet his heated gaze. "I know why you chose this and I wish there was a way to go back to erase that part of your past, but the man who lived what you lived through, the one who managed to pull himself from that hell and learned to control his demons instead of allowing them to control him, he's the man with whom I fell in love. I'm big on silver linings and maybe, at the risk of sounding arrogant, that could be yours."

His palm cradled my cheek as his eyes burned with love before he whispered, "And I am profoundly thankful."

"We need to look into your parents' deaths, Trace."

"I know."

"My uncle is a private investigator and he is very discreet."

He ran his fingers through my hair and the feel of those strong fingers caressing my scalp almost had me purring.

"I'll call your dad tomorrow. I need to speak to him anyway."

I looked up at that. "Why?"

His grin was positively wicked before he pressed a kiss on my nose. "That's for me to know and for you to find out."

"Really, there are ways to make you talk."

His eyebrow lifted ever so slightly at that. "How?"

My fingers dug into his side as I attempted to tickle him but the man wasn't at all ticklish and then he lifted me from his lap and dropped me on my back as a devilish gleam lit his eyes.

"Oh, love, you shouldn't have done that."

He was like a Jedi master in tickling. I was laughing so hard that I couldn't catch my breath. When he finally relented and stilled those wicked fingers, I had tears running down my cheeks from laughing so hard. He was looking down at me with a combination of humor and desire.