Rebel woke with a feeling of accomplishment. She’d gotten through to Po yesterday, and they’d progressed with what-the-fuck-ever they had going on. It wasn’t quite a relationship, not a romantic one. Like, she wasn’t running around calling him her boyfriend or anything.
But she’d broken through whatever wall he’d erected to keep her away from him.
It had cost her. She’d never told a soul about killing Cecile, and the memory cut deep.
With a sigh, she rolled out of bed, feeling sore in all the right places. She needed to shower, and now that they were talking again, she needed a few answers.
“Tell me again, in a way that I can handle, why I can’t go to Dr. Pedigrew’s club thing.” She walked down the stairs, seeing Po on the sofa, sweaty after a workout. Rebel softened her voice, trying not to sound as angry as she was. “Don’t just say no. Tell me why.”
Arms spread across the back of the couch he’d gloriously fucked her on yesterday, he was magnificent. A light sheen coated his skin, curling his hair at the ends, and his chest moved. She must have just missed the workout.
She’d seen him without his shirt a couple of times. But this time, she was actually looking at his tattoos. She couldn’t help it. He was absolutely covered. Like, there weren’t any on his face. Or his hands.
But holy shit. They were everywhere else.
She examined them and the muscles they covered, wanting to draw them with her fingertips.
Her mouth went dry, and she had to force herself to focus. Did he just purposely flex his pectoral muscle? She was pretty sure he was distracting her from all inquiries about this with sex.
“You want to know why I won’t let you go into a madman’s den of iniquity?” He lowered his arms from the sofa, a very deliberate movement, and stood slowly. “You want to know why I don’t want you to put yourself in danger?” He walked toward her, one slow step at a time.
Well, walking wasn’t the right word.
He slithered. Gliding toward her, it seemed like the closer he got, the less air she had in her lungs. By the time he got to her, she was gasping for air.
“Because I like you. Your laugh makes me feel things I didn’t think were possible.” He dipped his head until his nose was at her collarbone, and then he inhaled so deeply she was sure the sensations of his breathing on her were going to make her combust. “Your smell is a goddamned drug. Better than anything I’ve ever taken.” His hands squeezed her hips where they gripped her hard.
She didn’t really have words to respond to that. It wasn’t at all what she’d expected from him. Ever.
Sure, she knew there was a chemistry between them, but he’d made it seem like it was all the drugs Pedigrew had given them. Sex. Chemicals. Fake. Or just a one-time thing.
For him, anyway. Granted, she hadn’t given him many opportunities to, but it was his damn house. If he’d wanted to talk, he should have done it.
When he lifted his head from where her shoulder met her neck, his dark eyes were intense. Full of heat and desire.
“He doesn’t deserve to lay eyes on you ever again, Rebel. That’s why I don’t want you to go. I want you off his radar altogether, so I can kill him. You don’t need to see that.”
His face hardened as he spoke, and she wondered at that. She’d seen death. Lots of it. But she didn’t want that to be the first option. She’d seen more senseless deaths than most. But this would be different.
“Are you so hell-bent on revenge for Daisy that you wouldn’t let the justice system do what it’s designed to do?” His scoff had her spine straightening, rigid, even as her hand reached for him to soothe him.
“What justice system?” His hand gripped her wrist. “The one that would let one man have so much power? He can’t be touched.” He twisted, enough for it to hurt. “Besides, where was the justice for Cecile?” The hand not gripping her wrist snaked around her neck, pushing her into the wall by the stairs.
His words had her gasping, jerking her hand back. He’d found her name. He’d dug around in her past and figured out details about the fire she’d never told a soul. “That was an accident,” she managed to wheeze out between the fingers on her throat.
“Manslaughter.” He squeezed her throat for effect. “You said yourself, you were distracted. It was an accident you caused, and you didn’t let her family have justice.” His eyes were cruel, and it pissed her off. She tried again to jerk out of his grasp. He only tightened his hold until she could barely breathe.
She managed to squeak words, and the more she spoke, the more he let her. As if he wanted to hear what she had to say. Or give her enough rope to hang herself. “He would receive so much more punishment in prison. A public trial where his peers judge him. It would be all over the news. The humiliation would be worse than a gunshot to the head, right?” She was desperate to get this back on the right track. She never should have told him about the accident, not if he was going to throw it back in her face.
His eyes were hard as he continued to grip her wrist, not answering her. He didn’t believe a life behind bars would be worse than a quick death. Or even a slow one.
“You’ll eventually have to make a choice. Be a murderer and get your revenge or be the bigger man and get redemption.” She didn’t say the words, unwilling to give him the ultimatum. But one of the choices would include her, while the other would make her leave.
Rebel didn’t think she could choose to stay with a murderer. A nurse, one who saved lives regularly, choosing to stay with a man who could take one so willingly. No matter how sexy he was.
She didn’t want to leave him, though. Not that he’d given her the choice. As far as this was concerned, she still wasn’t sure where she stood. But she was unmistakably drawn to him.
“You’re being a hypocrite,” he said simply, still gripping her, pushing closer. It was almost like this turned him on, her faults. “We are the same.”
“Please make the right choice.” Her words had no effect on him. She sighed. “I was a kid. You’re not. You know better.” She knew he felt things for her. She felt more for him than she did a year ago, when she’d been crushing on a picture of some made-up guy she’d fantasized about. Now that she knew him, she wanted him. All of him. “Look. I know you’re not a relationship guy, but there’s something here, between us. If you even feel a fraction of what I feel right now, you won’t do this. If you ever want to be with me in any way, you won’t kill him.”
There. She’d said it. He looked like she’d slapped him, but his eyes quickly shuttered away all emotion. But she’d seen it. The surprise. The disbelief. A touch of awe. Then it was gone.
She would table the conversation for another time, but this was important to her. She didn’t want to get in deep with Po if he was seriously going to bring Cecile back every time she said something that made him mad. Besides, she’d worked her entire adult life to put it behind her, to come to terms with it. He was making it sound like she was playing ostrich about it all and just ignoring it.
That couldn’t be further from the truth. If he was just going to be killing people willy-nilly, that was important for her to deal with.
Not that he’d made any indication he was going to change for her and decide to start something real with her, but she wanted him to. She wanted him to change.
For her.
As stupid as that was.
**
She twisted out of his grip, stalking away from him, and he watched as she went to the kitchen area. He’d gutted and redesigned the warehouse space himself, wanting an open feel where he could see any part of it from anywhere else.
So she couldn’t hide from him, as much as she wanted to.
He knew he’d made her angry; the flashing in her eyes was enough to warn him away. It didn’t work though. It only served to take his mind places he wasn’t sure she wanted him to go. Po didn’t know Rebel well, but he’d already figured out that when she thought something was right or wrong, she wouldn’t let it go until she’d made sure reparations had been made. She wanted Pedigrew to rot in jail.
Fair enough, but if he had his way, he’d kill the fucker.
But right now, she was going to give him the silent treatment, and he wasn’t down for that. She’d turned him on with her little display of anger, and he wanted to pursue that avenue.
Stalking slowly toward her, he changed the subject.
“Do you think all of his drugs have had a chance to get out of my system yet?” She looked up from the sink where she’d been getting a glass of water, a mix of surprise and curiosity in her eyes.
“I suppose most of them have. Why?” She hopped up on the countertop of the island, swinging her feet nonchalantly.
“I wanted to know if how I felt about you was still the mind-altering effects of the drugs. I was out of my mind with wanting you.” He kept his voice low as he gripped her thighs to spread them and step in between them. “I still am out of my mind, but things are different. More real, if that makes sense.” She nodded, her mouth open. He supposed that was a fair reaction. He hadn’t really been super open about his feelings with her. “With my past, it’s hard to tell what’s really real though.” His breath ghosted over her lips as he spoke.
“Don’t live in your past.” Her words came out a choked whisper.
“Our past defines who we are in the present.” His mouth was a hair’s breadth away from hers, and he gripped her thighs hard, drawing her attention to him. He was in her space, wanting to share the same molecules of space. He wanted more of her pain, more of her sadness. The story before was great, but he needed more. “Tell me about your parents.”
She blinked at him, her mouth snapping shut. “What?”
“There’s a sadness in your eyes, it’s ever present, even when you’re laughing. Tell me why. Tell me about your childhood. It’s a sadness that you don’t even know you have, it’s so ingrained in you. It has to be from childhood.”
“Po—” She moved to jump off the counter and walk away again.
“Tell me.” He caged her in, dropping to his elbows and reaching around her to settle his hands on her ass. His face even with her breasts, he turned his head to the side and rested there, inhaling her sweet scent deep into his lungs.
She breathed hard and slow, her heartbeat pounding in his ears.
“My mom was a drunk who left when I was a kid. Like, four. Dad always said she left because she didn’t love us. So he remarried, and my stepmom was… less than.” He felt her shrug, so he looked back up at her, urging her silently to continue. “They had their own kids. None of her friends ever really knew about me until they met me; it was always, ‘I didn’t know you had a daughter!’ And she would laugh and then call me a stepkid. Not a bonus kid or a happy surprise or anything like that. She was very clear that I wasn’t her child, that my brothers would always take precedence in her affection, and my dad let her.”
Her pain was exquisite. The tears welling in her eyes were an exact match to the sadness that permeated her gaze the first time he’d laid eyes on her. Her voice held the pain, ebbing and flowing with her brief soliloquy.
It was beautiful.
He could just imagine it. The awkward stepchild, forgotten in the needs of the “real” family. She probably had to stand on the other side of her dad during family photos, maybe even off to the side a little, family photos she would have to look at hanging on the wall for everyone to see. Was she even invited to get-togethers now? Had she written off her family altogether? Another one of those words… Family. What the hell did it even mean? Worthless letters strung together and assigned meaning.
He was hard as a rock, just from looking at her and hearing her voice. The pain was palpable, in the tense set of her shoulders, even through the nonchalant way she spoke. Clearly, stepmom had hurt her enough in childhood; she wouldn’t let her continue to do it in her adulthood.
But he wanted her to relive the pain, wanted her to give it to him.
“You’re seriously weird, aren’t you?” She gave him a watery smile as his erection rubbed the apex of her thighs, the counter being the perfect height.
He didn’t answer her rhetorical question, figuring his desire was obvious.
“You get me talking about the most horrific aspects of my past and then look at me like you want to fuck me sideways.” Her voice was a bit breathless, and he gripped her thighs harder, his thumbs pressing into the meaty flesh.
“Words mean so much more than what you’re actually saying. I can eat them, gain sustenance from them. Words like home and safe, they’re just words, but the meaning behind them is so much bigger. Abstracts that nourish. Words are powerful.” It was the best explanation he could give for why he needed her anguish to get off. “You get me hard with your words. Now, it’s my job to get you there.”
With those words, his hands slid under her thighs and he lifted her into his arms. She obliged by wrapping her body around his and clinging to him as he strode up the stairs and laid her on the bed.
He started kissing her then, a deep soulful kiss that he hoped would express his meaning more than his words could.
“God, the things I want to do to you.” He broke the kiss to say those words, even as his hands roamed across her body, feeling the soft curves he wanted to bruise, the unmarred skin he longed to turn red.
She gave him a devilish smirk, the one he fell in love with weeks ago.
“There it is…” he murmured as he looked so deep into her eyes, he didn’t know which way was up anymore.
“What?” she asked, the quirk of a sad smile on her lips.
“That look you give me sometimes. The one that tells me you want me to do all the dirty things I’m thinking of doing to you. The one that tells me to hurt you, to fuck you, to make you scream. To break you and put you back together again. To ruin you.”
“I won’t break, Po. And you’ve already ruined me.” She arched her back, tilting her pelvis into his. “Just fuck me.”
“Get a condom out of the nightstand.”
**
Rebel was hornier than a goat, ready for whatever Po would bring to the table, despite thinking about her painful past, when she opened the drawer to the nightstand, fishing around for a condom.
He held her hips still, so she was twisted at a weird angle with his fingers pressing into her hips, while his mouth on her tits was distracting her with its pulls and suckles on her nipples.
But she found a framed photo instead.
Why she didn’t just push it aside to find the condom, she would never know, but she didn’t.
She pulled it out.
And looked at it.
It was the picture.
The picture of Daisy and Po at the fairgrounds, the lit up Ferris wheel behind them, both of them with goofy grins on their faces.
A sob at the sudden reminder broke free and she lay back on the pillows.
His suckles intensified, his hips grinding into her pelvis.
“Stop,” she said through the tears.
His eyes were closed, and he didn’t stop. He simply grunted, one of his hands going under her thigh to raise her leg up.
“Po, stop.” He finally opened his eyes and saw the picture she was looking at. His erection made of steel, he finally let go of her hip and leg and slid down a little bit. But he was still very visibly turned on. His cheeks flushed, pupils dilated, breaths coming in ragged gasps, he wiped his hand down his face as if trying to erase it.
Her eyes went back to the picture, and she was hit with a pang of longing and regret. Her own libido snuffed out completely, she wanted to curl into a ball and cry for her lost friend.
Again.
“Tell me,” Po demanded.
She simply stared at him. Was this how he really was? He couldn’t get off unless the other person was in so much pain they just wanted to cease existing? And then he could fuck them?
“I can’t do this. Not now.”
Would they always be like this? Not that he’d ever promised her anything remotely like that, but she could do kinky; however, this was on another level.
She could tell him about her past, but Daisy was too fresh. Too recent.
She rolled out from underneath Po and stood to go to the bathroom. She needed some space from his intensity.
“I don’t know how to make love, Rebel.” His voice sounded broken and tortured, but she didn’t turn to him.
“I never asked for that from you. I know who you are, but this is too much. I can’t do this.” If it turned him on to talk about his sister’s death, then she couldn’t do it.
Not that she couldn’t do him per se, and not in the sexy way, but she couldn’t live a lifestyle that involved her having her fucking heart ripped out every time he wanted to have sex.
She walked to the bathroom to splash some cold water on her face and breathe without him being in her space.
She understood that he needed pain to get turned on. Apparently, it didn’t matter whose pain; he just needed it floating in the air, its tendrils reaching out to all parties involved. Maybe she could get used to it, and maybe she couldn’t.
Something told her she wouldn’t be sticking around long enough to find out.
If it involved her reliving Daisy’s death for Po to get turned on, then she was okay with not sticking around.