Nobody's Perfect (44 page)

Not now. Later.

He held her closer, as much to calm himself down as to console her.

"Who did it?" He wanted to be sure he got the name right, before he tore the fucking man's balls off with his bare hands.

"My father gave the orders."

The man would pay as surely as Damián knew he'd take another breath tonight.

"
Querida
, I don't know where you found the strength to survive all they did to you, but you are a survivor. You're one of the strongest people I've ever met, stronger than some of the Marines I served with."

"I wasn't strong. I was terrified. After they did that, I just wanted to die."

"Being scared doesn't make you any less strong. You should have seen how terrified I was in Fallujah and after…"

Slipping her hand outside the blanket, she reached up and stroked his cheek. "Oh, Damián. I'm so glad you came home safely."

Safely, maybe, but far from whole. But this was Savi's aftercare, not a time to talk about his past. "Tell me about the branding."

Her hand lowered, and she gripped his vest as if it were her lifeline.

"Breathe, Savita."

She took a deep breath, continuing to hold onto his vest. "It happened just a month before I met you. It was the final degradation." A sob caught in her throat, and he held her tighter.

"I've got you. You're safe. That's far in the past." As if something like that could ever completely be relegated to the past.

"I can't erase it."

"All of it will stay with you, whether mentally or physically, but we're going to keep working on redirecting those things so they don't have the same power over you. We've already made good progress in a short time, but this process can take many months, even years, to complete."

After a moment, she took another deep breath. "I planned to end my life the night you first saw me in the restaurant at the hotel, before Lyle and the sadists took me upstairs. That was going to be my last time to be abused by Father's clients."

Jesús
. They'd both come so close to ending their young lives when they'd thought there was no hope for a future.

She choked on her sobs. He'd help her find a way to shed the tears she'd kept inside so long.

"That's it,
bebé
. Let it out." If he could cry, he'd have done so now himself—for his sweet, tortured Savannah.

Realization dawned. He'd thought before that Marisol had come close to not knowing her daddy, but she'd almost not been born at all. The world would have been a much bleaker place without Savi and Marisol in it.

After a while, her body stopped convulsing from the sobs. "I changed my mind."

Dad and Marc had changed Damián's plans, when he'd come within a day of putting his sidearm into his mouth and pulling the trigger. "What's changed?"

She played with the edge of his vest, her cool fingers touching his chest. He willed his dick to behave but wasn't sure he could do with her in his lap like this. He wasn’t about to let her go anywhere, though.

"Well, I'll admit that I didn't figure out right away why I couldn't go through with it. That day with you was so beautiful that I had a glimpse of something better out there. But that first night…I…was too weak from the beating I got for running away that day."

Damián raged inside at the thought of her being punished because he'd run off with her—and brought her right back to the monsters who had done such horrific things to her. If he hadn't come into her life in that penthouse, would she have followed through and killed herself?

"Then I thought, maybe I could find you and you could take me away."

She'd looked for him?

"Did you get any of the messages I left at your gate? I gave you my phone number and address."

She pulled away from him, blinking away her beautiful tears. "You came back?"

Fuck
. She hadn't turned her back on him; she just hadn't gotten his messages. "
Dios
, Savi. I came back almost every day for weeks. I even staked out the hotel in La Jolla, hoping to catch a glimpse of you, but security told me to beat it, or they'd have me arrested for trespassing."

She smiled. "You came back for me." The awe in her voice ate away a piece of his heart. "I didn't think anyone wanted…" A new wave of tears filled her eyes.

He brushed the tears away from her cheek as they spilled. "Savi, I'd never met anyone as special as you. After I took you home that night, you were all I could think about for months." Years, to tell the truth, but he couldn't admit that to her, because she'd wonder why he'd given up looking for her.

Now he wondered that himself. Pride. Dad had said pride comes before the fall—and man, had it ever. He'd never thought a girl like Savannah would want to have anything to do with a jobless, wounded Marine like him. But that was later. Being a jobless Chicano hadn't kept him away until one of the Gentry household's cleaning staff had found him at the gate when she came to work one morning. The woman had told him he needed to leave immediately; Savannah didn't want anything to do with him.

Soon after that, when he'd lost his Harley and was close to being evicted, he'd joined the Marine Corps. In the back of his mind, he thought maybe if he were a war hero, she might give him a second glance. Then he'd gotten his fucking foot blown off. A wounded Marine wasn't worth anything to a rich girl like Savannah. Pride, pure and simple, had kept him from her. He wouldn't pursue her as half a man. He was too busy plotting his own demise and feeling sorry for himself to go after her.

As a result of his foolish pride, he'd missed out on being a part of Marisol's life from when she was a baby. He should have been there to take some of the burden of parenthood off Savi.

Realistically, even if he'd wanted to pursue her, he'd never have found her. She'd changed her name when she'd moved away from home.

She reached up and stroked his cheek. "Just think how different both our lives would have been if we'd run away that night after the beach." The sadness in her eyes probably mirrored his own, but they both knew it was too late to go back.

"Everything happens for a reason."
Oh, yeah
. Tell someone who'd been tortured a good portion of her life shit like that. Dad would know the right words, but he wasn't here. Still, one thing he knew for certain. "We are who we are because of all those circumstances—good and bad."

Savi's gaze lowered to his mouth and he wondered if she was waiting him to continue. Hell, that was about as philosophical as he ever got.

Then she surprised him by letting her fingertip trace one side of his mustache, sending electric jolts to his groin.
Control yourself, Chico.
With her on his lap, there would be no hiding a hard-on.

Savi smiled and surprised him by sliding her hand around to the nape of his neck and pulling his face toward her to meet her lips.
What the fuck?
He held himself still, waiting to see what she intended. She was in aftercare, vulnerable; he wouldn't take advantage of her but his body's involuntary responses might make her think the wrong thing.

Gently, she brushed his lips with hers, igniting a flame that was totally wrong in this moment. His balls tightened as if they hadn't figured that out yet—or maybe they'd gone OFP on him.

He should stop her. She wasn't thinking clearly. She was still coming down off the endorphin high. She didn't know enough about a man's libido to know what kind of signal she was sending out.

Besides, he'd waited this long to kiss her again. He could wait a little longer, until she was ready.

Aw, fuck
that
shit
. He was a Dom. He could stop once she came to her senses. Just a matter of showing some self-discipline. He
had
control; he was
in
control, no question. He also had limits, and this was pushing him close, entirely too close to the line he should not
, would not
cross.

Right now, though, he'd lost control of the lower half of his body as his tongue traced along her closed lips. When she didn't pull away, he slipped the tip of his tongue inside her mouth, testing her.

She moaned and brought her other hand out of the blanket to grab onto his neck—or maybe just to hold on. Needing no further invitation, he grasped the sides of her head to hold her steady. His tongue delved farther inside, prodding her teeth to part for him. They did, with no resistance. His tongue pressed against hers, waiting to see if she wanted more. When hers sparred playfully with his, he had his answer. He tucked a finger under her chin and tilted her head back, opening her mouth wider for his tongue to explore. She held on more tightly to his neck as he pulled her body close enough to make her feel secure. His hand slid down to cup her breast expecting it to be covered by the blanket, but it had fallen when she'd moved her hand.
Mierda
. He pinched her nipple, not too hard, but enough to get her cute little ass to squirm against him.

She grew still.

Aw, fuck. Don't stop now, bebé. We were just getting to the good stuff.

She pulled away and looked at him. "I'm sorry. I don't know what got…"

"I'm not sorry in the least. I've dreamed about kissing you again for years."

"I think I'd better go."

"You live here."

"Oh, yeah. Then I think you'd better go."

She was adorable, all flustered from their first kiss in fucking forever. Damián reached up and brushed a strand of hair from her eyes. He missed her being a blonde. He missed having her and Marisol living with him.

"You know, we can remedy this confusion about where you live. You can come back home to my place tonight."

She swallowed hard and blinked a couple of times, but she didn't say "no" outright.

"
Bebé
, it's just not the same there without you and Marisol. I'll still sleep on the couch and give you two the bedroom."

Still no response, but she seemed to be sorting something out in her mind. When she looked down at her lap, he figured she'd tell him to "take a hike."

Better to beat her to it. "Never mind." He nudged her to indicate it was time for her to get up off his lap and helped her sit up. "Why don't you get dressed? I'll take you over to pick up Marisol. I want to see how she's doing. You can ride back over here with Angelina."

She reached up and brushed the tip of her index finger over his lips, which were still wet from their kiss. His dick sprang to life as if she'd touched him there.

Her eyes grew round. She'd definitely felt that, too.

He kissed her finger and she pulled it back. Oh, well. One step forward. Two steps back.

"Damián, I think that's a good idea."

She'd just short-circuited his brain so badly, he didn't even know which particular idea she was talking about. He'd had a lot of ideas in the past couple of minutes she probably wouldn't think were all that good.

"Mari wants to live in your apartment. She asks me every night when we're going back. She's missing Boots…and you."

He grinned. He'd take second billing to a kitten if it got Savi back under his roof again.
Fuck, yeah
. It was a start.

"What about you?"

She nodded. "Adam and Karla have been wonderful hosts, and there's lots of room here, but…I think Mari and I both felt more at home at your place."

He hoped he wasn't making a mistake. He'd already involved himself more emotionally with her than with any other bottom he'd ever worked with. He should man up and do the right thing; tell her she needed to stay here—for her own good.

Hell, who was he kidding?
He
wanted her to come home to him, too. All he'd wanted since she'd left for Dad's was to have her back. He hoped he wouldn't start wanting more than she could—or should—give him. She wasn't ready for sex, that's for damned sure. Maybe he wasn't either, although he had let her see his stump. That was a huge step for him; it made him fucking vulnerable to her, but she hadn't been repulsed by him.

Savi had her own body-image issues. She was as hung up on her brand as he had been about revealing his maimed body.
Madre de Dios
, if she only knew how much he wanted her, just the way she was.

He could continue to live without sex; he hadn't been with a woman in more than a year now. The objective with Savi wasn't sex, but intimacy. He needed to let her know how fucking sexy and desirable she was. To change the way she interpreted those messages rattling around in her head. And to let him inside those incredible walls she'd erected to protect herself from pain and emotion.

Time to plan another scene.

"Let's go pack your things. We're going to see if Angelina can watch Marisol again tomorrow, because we have a boulder to shove out of the way." He paused. "It's time for you to let me see the brand, Savi."

She grew tense. "No, Damián, I don't think…"

"I do."

She pulled at the skin around her thumbnail and he placed a hand over hers to still them. She often drew blood when she picked at her hands nervously. They were worse than ever today. After several moments, she looked up at him, blinking rapidly to fight back the tears. Damn. She was shutting down again.

"I'm scared."

He held her quivering chin. "Savi, you've hidden that damned thing so long, you've let it rule your life."

She pulled away from his hand.

"
Bebé
, that brand doesn't define you or anything about you. How can I make you see that what makes you special to me and a lot of other people isn't your body? It's what you think and feel that counts, and that's what we're going to continue to work on getting you to see, even if it takes us months. You've made a big difference in a lot of people's lives—especially Marisol's and mine. That's why I…"
Fuck
. He'd almost said he loved her. He wasn't ready for that any more than she was. "It's what I find so damned attractive about you."

The frown on her face told him she didn't buy any of his speech—and she wouldn't, until she let go of the hold that fucking brand had over her. He probably should strap her down on the gyno table again now and get this behind them, but she hadn't relinquished her tight hold on that hard limit yet. If he forced the issue, he'd be no better than the men who had abused her in the past.