Fearless: Complicated Creatures Part Three (31 page)

“I take it you don’t have too many men coming around to ask your permission for Samantha’s hand in marriage?” Jack replied.

Grant didn’t bat an eye. “That what you’re doing?”

“I have to get her to forgive me first, but yes,” Jack answered honestly. “That’s the plan eventually.”

“What does Sam need to forgive you for?” Grant asked, moving to sit down in the one of the leather chairs. He gestured for Jack to do the same.

He met Grant’s eye as he took a seat across from him. “I didn’t stand beside her when she needed me,” he confessed honestly. “Right when she needed me the most, I let go.”

Grant swirled his whisky idly. “I’d bet money she pushed you right out the door.”

“Actually, she walked out of it,” Jack clarified ruefully. “I was just too goddamn stubborn and stupid to follow.”

Grant’s brows came together. “Sammy doesn’t need anyone to fight for her, Jack. She’s tougher than a dozen men put together. I should know. We raised her that way.”

Jack met his eyes. “With respect, Grant, I disagree. Samantha may have been conditioned all her life to go it alone, but she deserves to have a partner who stands beside her no matter what comes at her.”

Grant nodded sagely. “Sam’s been put through the ringer more times than anyone can count, Jack.”

Jack’s eyes flickered to the photos in the glass cabinet—the remnants of her family. He thought about the scars on her body that she wouldn’t tell him about. He recalled the paper cranes hanging eerily from the room she kept locked in the penthouse in Chicago.

“I want to be the man she trusts enough to let in. I want to be the man she allows herself to lean on when she needs it,” he told Grant openly. “If Samantha ever wants for anything—I want to be the one to give it to her.”

“She won’t ask you for help, even when she needs it the most,” Grant told him after a moment.

Jack met his eyes. “That’s a wall I’ve already butted up against.”

“Then here’s a nickel’s worth of free advice. Sam doesn’t need a white knight—she never did. Not even when she was little. She just needs to be loved for who she is, to be accepted by a man who is secure enough to love her through anything. If you’re not that guy, Jack—if you even have a sliver of a doubt inside you—then there’s the door.” Grant said, nodding toward the arcade that led back outside into the white-hot heat. “Don’t let it hit your ass on the way out.”

“I think you missed the part about how if I hurt her, you’d draw and quarter me with your horses out there,” Jack added dryly.

Grant bit back a smile. “Don’t need to worry about that, Jack. Sammy will hurt you far more than you could ever hurt her. All you have to determine is if you can take it.”

Could he?
Maybe Dr. Carmichael had been right. Samantha was a high so good he didn’t mind the punishing addiction and the excruciating withdrawals. The euphoria of being with her was worth the agony. He’d lived on both sides now. He knew what being without her felt like, and he didn’t want his old life anymore. It wasn’t enough now.

Grant stood slowly. “You and I never had this talk,” he said, finishing his whisky.

“What talk?” Jack replied, getting up too.

“That’s exactly what I was wondering.”

Jack turned, his heart skipping at the sound of her voice. “
Tesoro
—”

Grant moved passed him to where she stood at the door of the library. “I’ll be in the ranch office if you need me, baby girl,” he said, squeezing her shoulder with a large hand. And with that, Grant disappeared through the doorway, the sound of his boots muffled as Samantha closed the door behind him.

Jack stared at her—he couldn’t help it. She looked like an apparition, nearly waifish from the weight she’d lost in her ordeal. Beautiful but haunted, a shimmering mirage of the woman she’d been in Chicago.

Samantha stared back, taking him in silently, cataloging the changes in him too, her dark eyes missing nothing until he moved forward, pulling her into his arms without asking. Because she was there—and she was
his
.

*

April—Same Time

Wyatt Ranch, Texas

S A M A N T H A

Touching Jack again—being
held in the circle of his strong arms—was both relieving and electrifying. He gazed at her like she was the only person he wanted to see, his bright silver eyes glowing like a frozen fire, his handsomeness nearly prodigal despite the hints of dissolution marked by the hollows of his cheeks and the subtle shadows beneath his eyes. Being so close to him after so much time, the startling relief of the confining pressure of his grip—it was all too much, too fast. A sudden, surprising onslaught of emotion nearly caused her to unravel, and Sam felt the telltale tremors running along her body like a live wire.

“I missed you,
tesoro
…” he whispered fiercely. “I missed you so goddamn much.” He sounded as shaken as she felt.

She wanted to bury her face into his neck and breathe him in. Her arms rose, her hands finding the solid, reaffirming musculature of his back, the wide expanse of his shoulders. She could feel the difference in him as he held her close, whispering words in a torrent of Italian against her hair. The strength was there, but the hard length of his body had been whittled down to muscle and sinew by grief and discipline.

Sam made to move, but the tensile strength of Jack’s arms denied her feeble attempt at escape. One hand cupped her head up to him as the other drifted gently down her back, fingertips running over her spine as he touched each disc and vertebrae through her soft knit shirt like the keys of a saxophone. He found the edge of her top, tugging it up without asking, revealing the private skin of her lower back, scarred as it was. Sam made a sound, attempting to push away, but Jack held fast, his eyes glittering as he looked down at her.

“I need to feel for myself that you’re okay,” he told her gruffly, touching the ridges of her scar before she could elude him, inarticulate in her protest.

“Please,
tesoro
—” He ran his fingertips along the raised areas where she’d been stitched back together again, his silver eyes incandescent with emotion.

The work was top-notch, but the damage too considerable to hide under a plastic surgeon’s blade. Sam didn’t want the work done anyway. She had seen enough of hospitals to last a lifetime. But that didn’t mean she didn’t still have a woman’s ego. She didn’t want to see the look in Jack’s eyes when he saw the extent of her imperfections.

“I’m fine, Jack.” Sam shifted back, but he captured her, refusing to let her go as his fingertips charted the braille of her injury. He surprised her into silence when he lowered his mouth to the vulnerable crevice of her clavicle. Jack grazed the smooth skin with his lips just as he pressed his hand full against the flat of her back, urging her against the hard terrain of his body.

“You’re not fine,
tesoro
. But you will be,” he murmured against her skin, his tone certain and reassuring, his breath searing and soft.

Sam blinked in a confusion, trapped somewhere between comfort and disbelief. How could Jack make her feel so vulnerable and revealed with a few whispered words and simple touches? How was it that she wanted so badly to be held by him—and to hold him in return? Jack held her securely against the reassuring rise and fall of his chest, leaving her steeped in the permeating deliciousness of his heat. When Sam finally let herself relax in his arms, he lowered his mouth to hers.

The frustration, anger, and betrayal she felt toward him gave way to the deeper feelings she had for this beautiful, maddening man. For all their months of separation, she hadn’t allowed herself to miss him fully—much less crave him. In the privacy of her dreams, Sam had relived Jack’s kisses, the heat of their chemistry waking her more than once, hot and bothered by unspeakable desires and the phantom of her own memories. But even her most vivid imaginings paled in comparison to the intense sensuality of Jack live and in person.

Sam relinquished her worries for a brief moment, allowing herself to feel and only feel, thinking nothing, aware of nothing—just absorbing the moment, lost in the need, yielding to his lush, rapacious kisses that tasted like need and hope and love wrapped into a single, addictive confection.
God, I missed this
, she thought to herself, hands rounding his shoulders like they’d been made to do just that.
I missed you, Jack. Just let me have this. Let me have just a moment of uncomplicated feeling… to love and be loved…

She lost track of time, allowing herself the pleasure of touching Jack again, lips and tongue and teeth until it suddenly felt too intimate, even more than the sex they’d had when they were still together. The immensity of her feelings for Jack pervaded the physical gratification, threatening to overwhelm her. She wasn’t conditioned to an excess of emotion, having spent the majority of her adult life building walls that helped her remain devoid of sensations like this. Sam pulled back, staring at him. Jack looked back at her with all his feelings in his eyes, transmitting all the emotions he hadn’t been able to say to her into the space between them. Breathless, Sam saw what he was doing—or trying to do. Jack held her like he could put the broken pieces of her back together—as if his love were enough to save her from her circumstance—from herself.

“Jack—
no
. Stop,” Sam forced him back, pressing a hand to her forehead. “This isn’t why I called you here.”

Jack relinquished her begrudgingly. “Tell me you called me here because you missed me,” he said as she turned from him, trying to get her composure back. “Tell me you called me here because you know just as well as I do we’re not over.”

She put the desk between them to give herself some space to get her shit back together. Jack was too cracklingly magnetic, too tempting, too insightful. She’d given herself extra time to get her game-face on, and he’d devastated it within seconds. Jack Roman was like her version of walking, talking kryptonite. From the moment she’d laid eyes on him in Chicago, she’d known he had what it took to be her downfall.

“I didn’t ask you here for any of those reasons,” she countered, struggling to keep her voice even. “I’m looking for the truth, Jack, and you’re the only one who can help me get to it right now.”

“You’re awfully good with words, Jack,” she said, relieved the desk was between them.

“I’m awfully good with my mouth in general, but then, you already know that,” he shot her an intimate look that made her face feel hot.

“Yes, you are.” Sam opened the desk drawer, seeking equilibrium in getting down to business. “You have a particular talent for lying with that talented mouth of yours.” She tossed a manila folder in front of him. A folder full of secrets. A folder he’d hidden from her for months.

Jack leaned back, recognizing what stood between them immediately. “I can only apologize for that,
tesoro
. I shouldn’t have accepted that damn file, much less read it,” he admitted. “My only defense is that I was half-crazed with worry over Jaime at the time, and I was so far outside of my element, scorching the earth felt like the only conceivable relief.”

Sam considered him for a long moment, weighing his words against the sincerity of his expression.

“And the drugs?” she asked finally. “When did that start?”

“It was an inflection point to disintegration,” Jack admitted slowly, shame making his face heat. “I started using again after Jaime was shot in Rio, and we ended.”

Her eyes narrowed. “Are you seriously going to stand there and pin your shit on me?”

“No—
yes
.” Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. “If we’re being honest, then I have to admit our relationship has been a trigger. Or rather, how I’ve felt outside of it. At first, I was looking for some kind of relief, and then I just wanted a substitute.” Jack sighed in frustration, pushing his fingers through his hair. “It wasn’t about the drugs—not really. It was about you—about
us
.”

“This is irrefutable proof that I’m bad for you, Jack.” Sam crossed her arms. “We’re bad for each other. Everything we’ve had to-date has been about habit-forming dependencies, withdrawals, and lies. That’s not a relationship, Jack—it’s a goddamn Greek tragedy.”

“
Est quaedam flere voluptas,
” he quoted in a bid at morbid humor, knowing she’d recognize the old quote. “There’s a certain pleasure in weeping sometimes—don’t you think?”

“Ovid—how appropriate.” Samantha sank down into the leather desk chair, her back burning from exertion. “We haven’t even begun to discuss your taste for peril. You put yourself at tremendous and unnecessary risk buying out Leviathan and taking on Lightner,” she chided softly. “If that’s not some kind of death wish, then I don’t know what is.”