Skeletons of Us (Unquiet Mind Book 2) (30 page)

Fury surged through his veins like poison.

He had her. He had been so close, everything had been so perfect. She had been within his grasp, the perfect moment for him to show her what they had, to start their life together.

God himself had been smiling on him when she left the gates of the community she’d escaped to. He had more trouble gaining entry to this one, the guards were more aware and the police presence was higher. Plus, the biker was here now. All of them trying to keep them apart. He had been patient, waiting for the perfect time.

You couldn’t stop fate. Destiny. He’d been ready to meet his, to finally show her theirs. Then that fucking biker turned up at the cemetery, ruining everything. First, he’d thought it was another act of fate, putting him within his crosshairs, but then he’d missed. The perfect shot and he’d missed.

Now he had to flee from her. Because of that biker.

He would pay.

Then he’d take what was his.

He couldn’t look at her. That was hard, considering the jet they were flying back to L.A. in wasn’t big, but he managed it. He couldn’t because he was afraid his fury might get the best of him at seeing her pale, fragile face and he’d say something he regretted and might scare her.

His fists clenched on his knees. But fuck, she needed to be scared.

It chilled him to the fuckin’ bone how close he’d been to losing her. If he had gotten on a later flight, taken a couple of minutes more to get himself to the cemetery… He shook himself to try and get free of those thoughts. Those demons.

That shit didn’t happen. He got to her in time. In time to see the ghosts behind her eyes, to feel pain from the vision of her agony. He had been cruel, he knew. And he had continued to be so for the time they’d spoken to the police and finally gotten on the private jet Mark had chartered to get them back to L.A.

The entire time, his fury hadn’t dampened; it had increased. His traitorous hands itched to comfort her while she’d made her statement to the cops then gathered her things from the hotel room in silence. She looked so small. So fuckin’ broken.

But so was he. And she didn’t even know it, but she was the only one who could put him back together, that held his future in those tiny hands. She’d almost thrown it away in that cemetery.

“You need to forget me.” Her small voice barely rose above the dull roar in the cabin.

The emotion in it drenched him. He looked up, not saying anything, the pain and fear on her beautiful face silencing him.

She held his eyes. “You need to forget me, because you almost died today because of me and I can’t live with that.”

At her words, he surged off his seat, moving across the space between them. He knelt in front of her, grasping her neck. “You think I can forget you?” he bit out. “I’d sooner forget oxygen. I’ll never forget you, freckles. And you’ll never forget me either.”

He didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t want one. There’d been too many fuckin’ words between them. So he kissed her, not gently, not slowly. It was brutal, urgent and full of all of that anger he’d been holding on to. That fear.

He had to taste her lips to make sure she was right here with him, to chase away his demons.

She made a delicious little moan at the back of her throat that had him harder than he already had been the moment her skin came into contact with his.

He couldn’t stop at this. Not now. Not since he’d been inside her that night of her show, felt what it was like to come home.

So he jerked up, never moving his mouth from hers, pushing her back into the sofa of the jet, covering her body with his.

He was half mad with the need to get inside her, to feel the sanctuary of her velvet clenching around her. Killian continued his assault on her mouth as he ran his hand up her smooth length, thanking all that was fucking holy that she was wearing a dress.

She gasped when he reached the edge of her panties. “Killian,” she murmured, her mouth leaving his. His cock pulsed at her saying his name in that throaty voice while he ran his fingers across her wetness. “What if someone comes in,” she protested weakly. She didn’t make any move to struggle; instead, she arched herself against him as he pressed two fingers into her.

“No one’s gonna come in,” he growled back. The crew had been banished to their cabin on his instruction. Not that he had this in mind, but he’d fuckin’ hated strangers witnessing the shit Lexie had been going through.

He took her mouth once more, freeing himself from his jeans and removing his hands so he could replace them with his cock.

Lexie screamed into his mouth as he put himself where he belonged, as he entered his sanctuary. He planned on going slow, on loving her with the gentleness she needed, she deserved. But the moment she clenched around him, the second she screamed against his mouth, running her nails along his back, he lost all control.

He thrust into her hard and fast, his demon freed from the confines of his soul and taking him over, making him give into every carnal instinct. First he was worried if this was too much for her, his gentle Lexie, but then she showed him she wasn’t his gentle Lexie, not anymore.

“Harder,” she rasped against his mouth, meeting him thrust for thrust.

He growled against her mouth and met her commands, every inch of him threatening to explode with the intensity of their coupling.

“This is where you belong,” he declared roughly. “Where you’ve always belonged.”

“Yes,” she hissed, her eyes wild.

There were no more words after that. Neither of them could speak through the demands of their bodies.

I stared blankly at the roaring waves, searching the darkness beyond for answers. For something. It was times like these I missed Ava. Every day I missed her and Steve both. The ache of loss never went away. But here in the darkness, amidst the swirl of my emotions, I craved her counsel with an intensity that was hard to breathe through.

I’d talk to Mom, but I wasn’t too hot on the idea of piling my crap on her shoulders. She had a toddler and herself to worry about. I was a grown woman. Trying to be anyway.

I feared I was failing spectacularly.

After confronting ghosts at the cemetery, it seemed I’d opened up a stream of consciousness I’d previously locked tight. Memories filtered through the night air, of when I was seven and I witnessed Steve storm out of the house and leave Ava crying. It was the first time I’d seen them have any kind of argument. It had terrified me.

“Are you and Steve going to break up?” I asked Ava in a small voice as she patted her face with a silk kerchief.

She glanced up at me, her red eyes still twinkling, despite the sadness in them. She reached forward to squeeze my hand. “Of course not, my little bug. Why would you think that?”

I looked to the door Steve had slammed shut. “You fought. He was angry. You’re hurt,” I surmised.

She smiled and, to my complete surprise, laughed. “We had a disagreement, sweetheart. That’s part of life. Real life. Not the stuff you see on TV. Sometimes it’s not pretty, or flowers and hearts. That doesn’t mean it’s not beautiful.”

I screwed my nose up. “But you’re in pain.” I didn’t get it. Wasn’t love meant to be great and make everyone happy all the time?

“Right now, I am,” she agreed. “But I’m lucky to be feeling this pain. Because it means I care about Steve enough to give him the power to hurt me. Now, he hardly ever does this, first time in years in fact. But that’s what love is sometimes, pain. You just have to learn what the right kind of pain love is. The person that has the power to hurt you but will give you a thousand days of happiness and only a second of pain. I think that’s worth it. Don’t you?”

“You’re sitting on a beach alone in the middle of the fuckin’ night?” A furious voice tore my memories away and shocked me back onto the beach.

I jumped and scrambled up, my eyes focusing on Killian’s large form in the dark moonlight.

“I needed space.” My voice was barely a whisper above the waves.

After everything that happened in the past twenty-four hours, I couldn’t breathe in that house. Everything had been a blur since Killian had taken me in that plane, claiming whatever snatches of my soul had escaped his brand after the show.

I hadn’t had a moment to grasp what happened on that plane. Seconds after he’d fucked me, rattling my entire world, the static voice of the pilot ordered us to fasten our seatbelts for descent.

I’d scrambled out from under him as quickly as humanly possible, expecting the crew to enter the cabin and see Killian inside me. I’d done it to escape what he’d awakened, what I couldn’t ignore anymore.

Us.

Everything between us. It couldn’t be forgotten. He was right, it was impossible.

As soon as we’d landed, he’d taken me by the hand, kissed the ever-living shit out of me and taken us down the stairs of the plane. Mark and the boys had met us at the airport. I got a multitude of hugs and curses from everyone.

“You run away and get shot at again, I’ll kill you,” Sam declared the moment he saw me. Then he’d yanked me into his arms, ripping me from Killian’s grasp.

The boys hadn’t left my side since and Killian hadn’t said a word. I knew he’d watched me the entire time. Throughout yet another interview with the LAPD, throughout the debates with Sam about moving to Australia. All of it. His gaze had burned into me so hot I couldn’t stand it anymore. I’d told them I was going to bed to sleep. My exhausted body craved oblivion, but my unquiet mind hadn’t given it to me. Killian’s furious intensity pulsed through the walls of the bedroom I tossed and turned in.

“You needed space,” he repeated, his voice flat. There was a long, loaded pause. “Are you fucking
insane
?” he bellowed, the fury in his voice giving the roaring waves a run for their money.

Suddenly, he was in my space, right in it. “You’ve got a fuckin’ psychopath after you,” he hissed. “You don’t get fuckin’ space. Once I’ve put a bullet in his head, maybe not even then. But now? You don’t get it.”

I ripped myself from his grasp. “I was suffocating in there,” I screamed, pointing toward the house. “I couldn’t stand being in there another second, not without going insane.” Only after those words came out did I realize the ‘bullet in his head’ comment. It rippled through my brain and I jolted when it registered. Killian didn’t notice this. He stepped forward once again, the moon illuminating his face in the shadows.

“Normally, your sanity is of upmost importance to me, but making sure you stay breathing, stay beautiful and un-fucking murdered trumps that. Will every time. Once you’re safe, I’ll set to putting your mind back together. Right now though, I’m going to make sure every inch of that beautiful body stays unharmed. We’ll worry about the equally beautiful mind later.”

I froze at his words. “Why are you here?” I asked, realizing this question probably should have been asked the moment I saw him in the doorway of that hospital waiting room what felt like one hundred years ago.

He grasped my neck. “Think I just explained that, freckles,” he said, voice softer.

I blinked at him, trying to see him clearer yet trying to hide myself from his gaze. “No, why are you here? After four years? After everything?”

His hand flexed. “I’m here to keep you safe,” he replied simply.

“Anyone could have done that. Multiple professionals with a variety of bad-ass qualifications are being paid a lot of money to do just that,” I argued. “You don’t need to be here. What’s in it for you?”

“You. You’re in it for me,” Killian growled. “I’m here because that phone call chilled me down to my fuckin’ bones when I realized that there might be a possibility of a world without you in it. I couldn’t live in that world, freckles.”

I couldn’t do it. Couldn’t even look at the shadows of his face after that. I glanced out to the waves. Taking a breath, I looked back. “So you want what? What comes of this? You ride in on your Harley, save the day, break my heart again and leave?” I asked, my voice cold.

Killian pulled me close. “That’s the bones of it,” he murmured. “’Cept the leavin’ part. Don’t plan on doin’ that again. Not ever.”

His words hit me like a physical thing. They were the words I’d dreamed of for years. I ripped myself from his hold once more. But dreams had no place in my world. To protect my heart, I had to cling to the reality I’d been living for four years.