The Fight for Us (36 page)

Isaiah’s fingers kept stroking, and when she finally drifted off to sleep, she didn’t wake again until her body was being shifted. The girls were gone, and Isaiah was lifting her in his arms. He carried her back to his bed, laying her down and pulling the covers up. He changed into his flannel pants, and he crawled in beside her.

“I love you, Joss.”

“Then don’t do anything to get yourself hurt.”

He was silent for a moment. “Trust me.”

Chapter Thirty

When Isaiah woke the next morning, he was alone in bed and it was only barely getting light out. But he wasn’t actually alone at all. He rolled over and found Joss curled up in his reading chair with a blanket over her. Her eyes were staring into the distance out over the water. He watched her, knowing he should say something but unable to figure out exactly what the words should be.

Her eyes never closed. She wasn’t sleeping at all or even trying to. She just stared, and he did too, wondering if she was going to get through this. He needed her to, because he couldn’t lose anyone else in his life. He was done letting his complacency destroy the people he cared about, but for all the fighting he was willing to do for her now, she was going to have to do her own fighting. The same could be said of his daughter he supposed.

He was going to do his best to take out the monster that was threatening his world, but Nat and Joss had to decide how to move on from here. Nat had Harper, and Joss had him, but Isaiah wasn’t sure that would be enough. Nat hadn’t had any nightmares that night—at least none that had woken him before Harper could step in. Joss, on the other hand, had tossed and turned, moaned and whined in her sleep, and whimpered until he’d actually brushed his thumb under her eye to see if she was crying.

He’d wrapped his arms around her, and she’d snuggled into him, humming contentedly for a moment, but before long, the uneasy dreams had returned, and she’d tossed and turned some more.

Now, she’d obviously given up on sleep, and her eyes stared deadpan out into the early morning snowy world beyond. He stood and walked to her. Her eyes barely glanced at him as he looked down at her. Her feet were pulled up, and she was sitting sideways with the blanket around her. She looked entirely too small and fragile sitting in his chair, and as he sat on the ottoman, he reached under the blanket and let his fingers grip her foot, kneading it gently.

He pulled her foot onto his lap, and before long, he had both of them in his lap, and she was facing him. Her eyes watched him now, and he pressed his thumbs into the soles of her feet.

“I couldn’t sleep.” She offered.

“I assumed.” He stayed quiet for a moment. “I need the girls to go to Steph’s for the day—at least Harper. If Nat’s up for it, I’d like her to go to. I might just owe Steph a salary for the amount of time she’s helped out with them recently.”

He pulled her legs to stretch out at his sides, and when he leaned toward her, he scooped her up and planted her on his lap to straddle him. “It’s important.” He whispered it against her ear. She rested her cheek against his shoulder, and he relaxed as he felt her breath against his neck.

“Okay.”

When she lifted her head, he didn’t expect her to kiss him. It wasn’t why he’d moved her to his lap after all, but she did kiss him. It was gentle at first, but then her tongue pushed past his lips and into his mouth. Her lips pulled and her tongue thrust, and her kisses became desperate quickly. He was gripping her hips, trying not to let his own inappropriate need get away from him. But she was taking the lead, and whether he pulled her hips against him with his hands or not, she was pushing herself harshly into him. He moaned, trying to quiet his need to conquer her. He forced himself to release his hold on her hips, and he let his palms slowly and hesitantly move to her bottom. This couldn’t possibly be okay.

She pulled from his mouth to strip her shirt over her head, and he gaped at her for a moment. After she tossed her shirt to the floor, she pulled her chest to his, and he held her against him with his arms under hers and his hands clamped down on the tops of her shoulders. He could feel her hard nipples pushing against his pecs, and he groaned as he gave in to this.

He kissed down the side of her neck to the place she enjoyed so much just behind her ear. Her breath caught in her throat as his tongue swiped slowly up the backside of her ear, and then she dug her nails into his back. She was warm, even through her pants, against his crotch, and he wanted to touch that warmth to see how wet it was so much he had to clamp his hands down even harder on her shoulders to keep his fingers from wandering. It needed to be on her terms, and he couldn’t fathom she was ready for this yet. At the same time, he wasn’t going to push her away either.

Her body started moving, rolling her hips in that exceptionally seductive way she had, but she didn’t even try to pull back from him. She clung to him as she panted against his neck. The pressure on his cock was exquisite, and he cursed quietly against her ear. Her hips tightened, and she locked her legs around his waist.

He needed to be inside her so much he could hear himself begging in his mind, and the rolling of her hips set the pace of his internal pleas.
Please…please…please…please.
Every time her cloth covered cleft stroked him the word ran through his mind until he became delirious and bit into the side of her neck to keep his mouth from uttering it. He simply needed to reclaim her and make her his again. It was barbaric he was sure, but it’s the only thing he could think about at the moment.

But her own quiet, aroused whimpering and mewling slowly turned from need to desperation and finally to all out frustration. What had been whimpers of pleasure soon left tears on his shoulder, and he ended up holding her hips still and shushing her as she sniffed through her silent sobs. He couldn’t say he fully understood why she’d pushed them in this direction, and he was even more stunned now that she was panting and sniffling against his neck. Eventually she was quiet, collapsed against his body as he held her in his arms, rubbing her back as he tried to reassure her. With a final deep steadying breath, she stood and walked away to his bathroom without a word.

He watched her leave, his hand covering his mouth as he tried to come to terms with what had just happened. His fingers stroked the stubbly hair on his jaw as he studied every footfall of her retreat from him. His Joss was exceptionally sexual, exceptionally seductive in her own way, and exceptionally intimate. He knew full well she’d been trying to recapture that part of herself, and he also knew she’d failed. Of course she had. She wasn’t ready. Sadly he was well aware that that failure was eating away at her at the moment. Right now, she couldn’t seem to figure out how to be herself. He wasn’t surprised. He was just damn depressed.

He found her in the shower ten minutes later. She was standing facing the shower wall with her hands braced on the wall and her head down. She looked as incredible as ever, and he quietly studied the body he’d gotten to know so well, feeling a bit like he knew nothing about it at all anymore. He didn’t bother joining her; he was quite certain his hard-on was inappropriate at the moment, and so, he busied himself shaving and brushing his teeth instead.

He waited for her to finish showering before hopping in himself, and when he finally emerged, he found her curled up on the bed. She’d made the bed, and she was wearing a clean T-shirt and nothing else. Her cell phone was in her hand, and she set it down as he walked in.

“Steph says she’ll get the girls as soon as the plow makes it down her street. If Nat’s up for it, she was thinking manis, pedis, late lunch, and a movie. If they need to stay the night, she said that’s fine too.”

He sat down on the bed next to her. “I’ll get the snow blower out and get the driveway clear. But how about I go steal a pair of jogging pants from Nat for you?”

She nodded.

“Can you handle breakfast while I’m outside?”

“Sure, as long as it doesn’t have to be edible.”

“Maybe just stick with cereal.” He pecked her quickly on the forehead, and then he watched as her focus drifted away in what looked like embarrassment. He didn’t need to be a genius to figure it out, and he leaned to her, pulling her chin and her attention back to him. “It’s okay. When you’re ready, I’ll be ready.” He kissed her quickly before he left.

Within two hours, the girls were gone, and he was reasonably certain his daughter was even happy to be going. He was also reasonably certain she could make it through this—not alone, perhaps, but with the small little team they’d amassed, he was feeling confident at least in her. Joss was another story. She was lying on the couch, and he was sitting in the armchair watching her. There was some random football game on, but he couldn’t concentrate. He was just biding his time at this point, and every time he moved, Joss instantly looked at him. She seemed suspicious of him, and the way she glanced at the clock every time he did, said she was waiting for something to happen as much as he was.

When she yawned, he tried to subtly suggest she take a nap. She shook her head, glaring at him with the same suspicious expression she’d been eyeing him with all day, but when he offered to lay down with her, she finally agreed. He watched her as she slowly fell asleep. It felt like an eternity. He never minded watching her sleep, but on this day, it was maddening. His heart was racing as he waited, and when her breathing finally slowed and he’d given it an extra ten minutes just to be sure, he crept from the room to the living room.

He grabbed her cell phone, and as his fingers trembled, he looked in her text message history. She’d not exchanged a text with the man for months, and even those she had exchanged before Isaiah had been in her life were difficult for him to read. Todd was good at not incriminating himself with his words, and Joss’s responses were loaded with frustration. Isaiah knew full well the level of shame she felt for what she’d allowed, and it showed in every word she’d sent to Todd. She’d felt trapped. She’d felt alone. And she’d had no one there to fight for her. She wasn’t ever going to feel that way again. His fingers started moving.

I know you had something to do with Natalie.
He waited for a response.

The heifer?

Isaiah’s fingers curled against the arm of the chair as he fought the rage that was welling up. He cursed under his breath, forcing his response to be more calculated than the dad in him wanted to be.

Yeah, well, thanks to you, Isaiah’s pissed at me, Harper’s avoiding me at Steph’s…

He paused, running the scenarios in his head. It couldn’t appear that Todd had been baited, and if the question arose, it had to be refutable.

…and I’m packing up an entire home by myself.

Isaiah read and reread the response. The present tense,
I’m
packing
worried him, but he needed it to be enough to spark Todd’s attention. When he hit send he took a deep calming breath. He didn’t have any idea if it would give him the results he wanted or not, but he thought he’d been cryptic enough to avoid insinuation of entrapment. As he waited for a response to that one, he stood in front of the window, pacing back and forth. And when her phone vibrated in his hand, he sucked in a quick breath.

Poor baby. Have fun getting your shit out of my house.

He paused for a moment, slipping into his coat as he grabbed Joss’s keys out of her purse, and when he returned to her phone, he typed out his final response quickly.

It isn’t fun at all.

He put her phone back on the table where he’d found it, and he left the house through the front door. Her car didn’t handle nearly as well as his did in the snow, but he still sped the entire way to her place. He parked her car in the driveway, scanned the streets before he climbed out, and walked carefully up the front sidewalk. He kicked and scattered the snow as he stepped, covering the foot tracks and making it look as though she’d been perhaps lugging a bag or some other random large item, and when he let himself in, he looked quickly back behind him to make sure none of his larger foot tracks were visible.

His pulse might be spastic and his adrenaline was certainly soaring high, but each step he took was deliberate and quick. He ran to her room, packing a bag of clothing—at least this part of the mission was actually valid; she did need clothes. He grabbed a week’s worth of underwear, three pair of jeans, a pair of slacks, four shirts, and a couple bras, and once he’d stuffed it all in a duffle bag he found on her closet floor, he turned the CD player on in her room and turned the sound up. He left the lights on and the door open when he left.

He packed a similar bag from Harper’s room, but when he left her room, he turned the lights out. Then he headed back downstairs. He closed the kitchen curtains and left the lights off, and when he entered the living room to wait, he kept the lights off in there as well. He sat in a chair that faced the hallway that led from the front door to the kitchen, and he waited. He wasn’t visible from any exterior window, and as he focused on breathing steadily, he imagined what the man looked like. Todd.

Chapter Thirty-One

Joss stretched and rolled toward Isaiah to find his side of the bed empty. The house was silent, and it was dark outside, aside from the faintest pink tinge still retreating toward the west. It would be pitch black out any minute, and as she rose from bed, she found the house oddly quiet and dark. She could hear a clock ticking from the living room, and when she turned the light on, the room was as empty and as quiet as the rest of the house.

“Isaiah?” She called out, but her voice just echoed through the rooms.

A light on her phone was blinking, and as she sat on the couch and snatched it up, she looked around the room in confusion. She swiped her finger across the touchscreen, and when the screen lit up, her blood chilled in her veins.

Like I give a fuck.
From Todd.

She stared at the screen, confused for a half a second until she opened up the text message history, and then she gasped as she read a conversation she’d apparently had with him that afternoon. Oh, holy fuck.