Ice Cold (An MMA Stepbrother Romance) (16 page)

For a moment, in the bathroom, I had been ready to confess my feelings for Lex. She looked so small and vulnerable in the tub. I wanted to protect her. Pull her against me and promise that she’d never have to be afraid again. But then I remembered who I was.

I was dangerous. Unhinged. A killer.

Lex sat down on the coach. She looked like an angel sitting there in my favorite t-shirt with her hair flowing around her shoulders. I wanted to take a picture of her like this so that I could remember this moment forever. Somewhere along the way, I had fallen for Lex Carroll, despite the fact that I wasn’t worthy enough to even look at her much less touch her. She deserved far better than me.

I turned back toward the window. I couldn’t look at her as I unburdened this part of me that no one other than my dad knew. No one was supposed to know the truth. It was too horrible to be true. I could see her reflection in the glass as she waited patiently for me to be ready.

Finally, I had to start. I cleared my throat. “It was spring break. My dad was on a business trip, and I was home just for a couple of days. I was planning to meet up with some friends in Cobo. My mother had been more noticeably absent than normal, but I barely noticed. It wasn’t that unusual for her to disappear when my father was out of town. It was like she got a free pass to pretend like she wasn’t married.”

I looked back over my shoulder. I saw Lex’s raised eyebrows. “Oh, yeah. My mother cheated on my dad like crazy. I am pretty sure he knew about most of them. Her last one happened to be the same loser that was selling her drugs. Who knows? Maybe she thought she’d get a discount if she let him in her pants.” I felt the familiar ache of anger in my gut as I thought about how my mother seemed to forget that I even existed in the world those last few years. She had been a terrible mother. It took a lot of therapy for me to finally realize that it wasn’t about me, but all about her. There had been something missing and wrong inside of her.

Staring back out at the window, I let my thoughts drift back to that day. “I was getting ready to leave to go meet up with my friends when my phone rang. It was my mother’s number, and I was tempted not to answer it, but I did. Turns out, it wasn’t my mother. It was this guy she was fucking around with. He was hysterical saying something about my mom being passed out and how he couldn’t wake her up. He said I had to come get her.”

I paused as I remembered how disgusted I was as I made my way to the address the guy gave to me. One thing I had to give my mother credit for, she got her drugs from some pretty highly connected places. “He lived in a brownstone over in the Upper East Side. I remember how angry I was at her that she was ruining my break just like she ruined everything in my life.”

I stepped backward from the window. How many times had I wished that it opened up so that I could throw myself out of it and end it all? Too many times to count.  I continued my story. I had to get it out. “Turns out that whatever drug cocktail he gave her didn’t agree with her in a really bad way. I found her naked under the covers in another man’s bed. She was dead. Her body was already starting to cool. I went nuts. I started yelling at the guy, called him an asshole or something like that, and then he swung at me. It was his fault, but he was acting like it was mine. I shoved him. That’s all I did. A simple shove. But we were standing at the top of the stairs on the second floor.”

Lex gasped. I looked at her then. I had to tell her this so she could see the truth of it in my eyes. “It was an accident. Do you know how many times I’ve said that to myself? I see it over and over again in my mind, yet I have to believe that there was some small part of me that recognized how close he was to the steps. I was so angry at him that he gave an obviously confused and fucked up woman a bunch of drugs, and then when he knew something was wrong, he called me instead of an ambulance to save his own ass. If he had called an ambulance, she might have lived. As much as I had wished her dead, I didn’t want it to be like that.”

“Oh, Shayne,” Lex whispered. She stood up, but I put up my hand.

“No. That’s not the whole of it. I knew that I was in deep shit. I called my dad. I didn’t know what else to do. He cleaned it up like it never happened. The official story was that she OD’d, but in her own bed. I don’t know how he pulled it off, but he’s always had some friends in some high places. The next six months after that was a blur. I was supposed to go to college. I tried it for a year, but then I dropped out because I was failing every class. I wandered around for another year drinking and partying until I had blown through most of my savings. My father refused to give me any more money unless I did something with myself. There was an MMA fight on TV that night, and I decided I’d do that. Best case scenario, I’d get hurt so badly that I died. That was what this started as. My awesome career was built on my desire to get beat up to atone for my sins.”

There it was. My deepest, darkest secret was out in the open. Now Lex would leave, and I couldn’t blame her. I was a killer twice over. There was a part of me that wanted to believe that what happened with that asshole who pumped my mother full of narcotics was an accident. I had desperately wanted to believe it because to think any differently meant that I was some kind of monster.

That demon had been on my back for years. I thought I might have shaken it, but if anything, what happened that night with Lex told me that it had only been hiding. It was still there waiting for me to let my guard down.

When her arms slipped around me, I jumped. I felt her cheek press against my back as her arms around my chest tightened. I shifted, and she slipped around to hug me full on from the front. I didn’t touch her immediately because I felt like it would be too painful. She was going to tell me goodbye any minute. At least, she was being kind enough to let me down gently.

Then she looked up at me. I braced myself for the pity that I expected to see there, but that wasn’t the emotion I saw in her eyes. It was sadness and something else. I cautiously lifted my finger to trace the bruise that had formed at her temple. She had been hurt. I wanted to kiss all of that hurt away.

“Shayne, you were just a kid then,” she said. She reached up to touch my cheek, and I flinched when I felt her soft touch. It was unexpected, but there was a part of me that craved it. There had been far too little warmth in my life. “You aren’t a kid now, but you protected me. He was going to hurt me. He was going to kill me.”

I wanted to bare my teeth as I thought about that man touching Lex, but I managed to keep that emotion in check. I had taken care of that threat.

She continued, “He didn’t because you stopped him. He would have killed you, too. I saw him point the gun at you. If you hadn’t moved as fast as you did, you’d be dead instead of him.”

“I could have called the police,” I said. “I could have done something different.”

“After what happened with your mom, I understand why you didn’t want to do that,” she said. “I might not agree with the aftermath, but I am not judging you for any of it. Being with you makes me feel safe, and I need that right now. I crave that.”

I couldn’t help myself. I saw her lips part, and her tongue slid across them. They shone in the moonlight, and I found that I ached for her. Every part of her. I leaned down and gently touched my lips to hers. I wanted to claim them. Claim all of her as mine in every sense of the word. But I held back. She had been through enough.

Her body pressed against mine, and I groaned as I felt the way her soft curves melded against my skin. I wrapped my arms around her as I broke the kiss. “You should run, Lex. Run as far away from me as you can.”

Her hands slipped up to grip my shoulders. “I can’t run away from you, Shayne. Because being with you is the only place I feel safe, and no matter what you might say, I know you care about me. You proved that to me when you came for me. I could never run away from you.”

I was amazed. She had accepted me. Everything about me, and she was still here. I had no idea what I had done right to have this woman in my life, but I wasn’t about to let her go. I didn’t care what the world threw at me. I wanted Lex Carroll to be mine.

My fingers tightened on her hips. I kissed her again, more forcefully this time. Her lips parted, and my tongue swept inside. She tasted sweet, just like I remembered. It was a taste that I had become addicted to, just like her. “If you mean that, then if you ever did run, I’d find you. Wherever you went.”

She leaned her cheek against my chest with a sigh. “And then you’d bring me home.”

We stared out at the city. I felt a rush of emotions that I couldn’t remember feeling in a long time.

Peace. Hope. Maybe even the scariest emotion of them all. Love.

Shayne insisted on sleeping after that. My body had started to respond to him in a completely different way after his confession, but this complex, confusing man was suddenly insistent on being a total gentleman. He said that I had been through a traumatic experience, which was true, and he didn’t want to take advantage of my fragile state. I tried to tell him there was nothing fragile about it, but he refused to budge.

We compromised with him sleeping in his bed with me. I woke up curled against Shayne’s bare chest. His arm was wrapped around my body holding me tightly against him. I blinked at the bright light streaming into the room through the windows.

“Good morning.” Shayne dropped a light kiss down on my forehead as I smiled up at him. “How’d you sleep?”

I thought about it. I had expected to have nightmares or for it to take forever to fall asleep. Instead, I had slept soundly. “Okay,” I said.

“Just okay?” The corner of his mouth turned up.

I pushed up against him. “I might have slept better if someone had given me what I wanted.”

He groaned. “Believe me, babe. It was as hard for me as it was for you.”

Feeling bold, I reached my hand down between his legs. Immediately, I found his cock, and it was already hard. “I see,” I said with a small chuckle. I tightened my fingers around his shaft, and he groaned.

“Woman, that’s not what I meant. We should have your head looked at this morning.”

“Sssshhh,” I said as I did a shimmy against his chest. I nipped at his chin. “My head is fine. It looks worse than it feels. Words are for later. Actions are for now. If people are going around thinking that we’re a couple, then we should be doing more couple things.”

His head started to nod as I began to stroke his shaft, and then I moved my fingers down to slide the barest whisper of a touch across his balls. His head lolled back on the pillow, and his hips arched up seeking more. “Couple things sound like a very good idea.”

“I knew you’d start to see things my way.” I chuckled. I bent my head down and began to do a slow roll with my tongue around his nipple. When I nipped at it, I found myself flat on my back a second later with Shayne hovering above me. His eyes flashed that gorgeous silver blue as he yanked on the bottom of my t-shirt. I moved quickly to help him draw it up over my head and then watched as he took his fill looking at my naked body. I stretched out underneath him but squirmed under the intensity of his gaze.

“This is the first time I’ve really gotten the chance to see you like this,” he said. “All of you.” His voice was thick with lust. Then his head lowered to my neck, and it was with that simple connection, his lips set the nerve endings all over my body on fire. His fingers danced up my inner thigh, and I gasped when he found my folds at the juncture of my legs and slipped inside. I knew what he would find. I was wet and ready for him.

I arched my back as he found my clit and tweaked it. His mouth settled on my nipple, and I shuddered as his lips clasped around it and tugged it gently with his teeth. His other hand roamed down my side and then up to cup my breast. It wasn’t our first time having sex, but it was the first time that I felt the connection to Shayne in a way that I knew this was real. What he had done for me had solidified that for me.

This man. I stared down at his dark curls as he kissed his way across my chest to my other nipple, and I felt the swell of emotions inside of me. This man had come for me. Now he was claiming me in a way that would surely ruin me for any other man. Ever.

“I’ve been dreaming about you in my bed for weeks,” he said as he moved between my legs. He stared deep into my eyes. I felt as if my heart was going to explode. It should be criminal for him to look at me like that, as if he was a man drowning, and I was his only hope for survival. I reached for him and brought his lips down to mine.

His hips thrust between my legs, and he filled me. My mouth opened in a gasp, but his tongue swept me away. The dance of our tongues mimicked the dance of our bodies as they melded together. I couldn’t get him close enough to me, and I wrapped my legs around his waist to pull him in deeper. I shivered as my climax began to build inside of me.

“Come for me, baby. I want to hear you,” he murmured against my lips. I locked my gaze with his even as I felt him thrust even deeper inside of me, and then it was as if my world exploded. I was swept away on a warm wave of pleasure, and I felt Shayne’s last thrust as he moaned above me. I felt his seed fill me, and it occurred to me then that he hadn’t used a condom.

“Fuck, babe,” he said as if he read my mind. He dropped kisses along the side of my face. “I meant to grab something, but I’m clean. Don’t worry.”

“I’ve been on the pill for years,” I said as he twisted me up on top of him. He moved me around like was a rag doll, which reminded me how strong he was. I rested my chin on his chest as I looked at him. He stretched out an arm and put it under his head. “You look pretty pleased with yourself.”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” he countered. He pulled on a piece of my hair. “I have a blue-eyed angel in my bed. The sun is shining outside. I’m letting go of what’s happened to me in the past. That’s all over now.”

I smiled even as I pushed myself up to kiss him. This man would be my undoing, but I didn’t think I would mind it at all. I was pretty sure this is what it felt like to be in love.