Chapter 13

CHAPTER 13

RORY

“Your bruises are looking better by the day,” Mace’s mother, Kendra, says while pulling my shirt back in place. “And you said your ribs aren’t hurting as much?”

“Yeah, I can breathe again without any discomfort,” I tell her, nodding.

In the past week, I somehow allowed Mace to convince me to see his mom. She came by twice already and again today.

“That’s good. You still need to take it easy until you’re fully healed, but I think it’s safe to say you’re getting better. Give your wrist another few weeks, and we’ll take the cast off. I want to make sure it’s good before we do so.”

“Okay.” I nod, wishing I could take it off. I hate looking at the damn thing. I scoot to the edge of the gurney and hop off. “I appreciate all that you’ve done for me.” I did. She’s been a God-send. She made me feel comfortable while she took care of me. Sure, Mace did a good job, but I wasn’t totally comfortable with him. He’s a guy. Worse, he’s a guy who saw me when I was most vulnerable.

All of the guys did, if I’m honest with myself.

“It’s not a problem, honey,” Kendra states, patting my arm. “You’re doing all the leg work in getting better. I’m just making sure nothing else goes wrong while you do so. Now, how about we go and see if Jade and Rosemary need any help with dinner?”

My stomach tightens at the mention of joining the other women. I’ve spent some time with them, but mostly stuck to myself in Aries’s room. Cordelia had taken off for a job in Colorado, and I couldn’t be happier for her. It was just a simple one taking pictures of the mountains for this time of year, and I knew she’d be back. She had to take care of business. It just sucked she left me all but alone without her.

But isn’t that what I wanted in the first place?

I’m not so sure anymore.

I miss her.

I’d been with her since the day I escaped from my Roger. It became the two of us against the world, and now, I find myself stuck here without her.

“That sounds like a good idea.” I don’t want to go against Kendra when she’s been nothing but nice. Nor do I want to keep hiding from Jade and Rosemary.

Both women have been just as kind as Kendra. They’ve invited me to join them. Even asked if I wanted to go shopping with them. It was nice of them, but I couldn’t do it. I didn’t want to get to know them, befriend them, only for them to turn their backs on me when Aries finally finished whatever he started by refusing to let me leave. Befriending Kendra was different, she’s a doctor and was only there to make sure I was okay.

Together, Kendra and I make our way from the clinic the club has set up for Mace to the kitchen. I find myself stopping when we get to the main room and find the guys are all huddled up together. But what catches my attention is that Aries is among them.

He’s back.

His eyes were on me.

I swallow down my nerves, wishing I could run and hide.

“You coming?” Kendra asks, getting my attention.

I look at her to see she’s glancing back and forth between Aries and me. Clearing my throat, I take a step back. “Sorry, I’m just going to go lay down. My head is starting to feel funny.”

Pivoting on my toes, I rush out of there, getting as far as Aries’s room before I find myself caught in the middle. Without looking behind me, I know it’s Aries. His warmth is unlike any other. The smell of his cologne is enough to send me into a daze.

“Where you think you’re going?” he murmurs, his breath stroking the shell of my ear.

My breath hitches, my chest rising and falling in place. If I don’t get control of it, I’m sure I’ll start hyperventilating.

“Let me go.” I finally manage to say.

Aries ushers me into his room and closes the door, but what he didn’t do was let me go.

“Aries,” I start, only for him to interrupt me.

“We’ve got a lot of shit to talk about, Scamp, but I want to start off with tellin’ you I’m sorry for leaving the way I did.”

Oh my.

Holy monkey nuts.

Did he just apologize to me?

Aries spins me around, keeps his hands around my waist, and holds me full frontal to full frontal. Having him this close is screwing with me. More so with my breasts pressed up to his chest and him smelling as good as he does like leather, wood, and spice. It’s a heady combination.

“Why are you doing this?” The question slips past my lips on no more than a breath. I immediately wish I could take it back when his arms tighten around me.

“Doing what? Apologizing? Holding you? Refusing to let you go?”

“All of those.”

I needed the answer to all of those. I’d spent a lot of time thinking this past week, and he’s been the center of it all.

“I’m holding you because I want to,” he explains. He starts walking, guiding me backward as he continues. “I’m refusing to let you go because I don’t want to. I want you right where you are. And I’m apologizing . . .” My legs hit the edge of his bed, and my body goes back, Aries following, coming over top of me. “I’m apologizing because you deserve it and so much more.”

My breath hitches, and tears burn in my eyes. It’s all I can do to fight them back. I will not cry. I won’t. I’ve done enough of that lately, and I refuse to be subject to them any longer.

I try to twist away, to not look at Aries, but with the way he’s caging me in, I have nowhere else to look except at him. His beautiful dark eyes gleam with tormented emotions, and I don’t know what to think about it. When it comes to him, I don’t know what to think, period. I’ve missed him. I’ve hated him. I’ve loved him for so long I don’t think I could feel any other way. Could I? I traded my own life for his, and he doesn’t even know it.

So, how could he think I deserve an apology?

“I don’t understand you.”

“You don’t have to understand me.”Aries shifts, his lower half grinds into me, and I find it hard to keep from moaning. There was no way to bite back my moan at how good it feels with him being right where he is. My breath catches as he dips forward, his nose brushes against mine. “The only thing you need to understand right now is that there is no running away from me anymore. No rushing away. No lying. No hiding.”

“You can’t be serious right now,” I scoff, not wanting to be having this discussion, or laying here with him over me like this. I mean, who does he think he is? Shaking the thought away, I shove against his chest. “Get off me, Aries.”

Instead of getting off me, Aries drops down farther. Not enough to squish me, but enough that he has my full attention. Granted, he already had that, but this way, there’s no way for him to be denied.

My breath catches, and I struggle to just find it in me to take yet another one and then another. What makes it even harder is all I can smell is the scent of his cologne, and it’s driving my libido into overdrive.

It’s like my body is screaming for him. Just the very thought of feeling him inside me has my body growing excited. He was the one who took my virginity. To teach me the pleasures that I could feel at his touch. Never have I felt anything else even close to the pleasure I ever found in his arms. Even his kiss.

I’d do just about anything to have him kiss me one more time.

Okay. Wait a minute. I don’t know about that one. Yes, his kisses could be intoxicating back then. I’m almost afraid of what they’d be like now.

“You been through hell for a long ass time because of me, Scamp. None of it you should have been done. What you should’ve done is gotten word to me and told me what was going on,” Aries murmurs, his lips brushing over mine.

“Aries, you need to stop this,” I utter. A shiver goes down my spine as our lips continue to brush with each word that leaves my mouth. “I can’t do this.”

“You can and will,” he growls and slants his head, lips pressing firmly to mine.

My lips open on their own accord, allowing him the access he needs to be able to slide his tongue right in. The kiss is mind-consuming. I have no control over my actions when I wrap my arms around his neck, holding on to him as the kiss deepens and becomes overwhelmingly heated. The way my body arches upward into his, and he grinds himself into me . . . yeah, it’s a beautiful feeling. The best.

Just as quickly, Aries rips his mouth away, groaning and breathing harshly. “Fuck, Scamp, I’ve gotta say I’ve missed the way you kiss me.”

“Aries.” His name is no more than a breath on my lips.

“As much as I want to keep going with what we were just doing. We’ve got other things to take care of right now.”

“We do?”

I swear this man is out to confuse me more than he already is.

“Yeah, we do.” He grins and shifts off me, rolling me to face him at the same time. “We’ve got things to get sorted between you and me.”

“There’s nothing to get sorted between the two of us,” I tell him, getting a good idea of where he’s going with this.

“My tongue in your mouth says otherwise.” He smirks, glides his fingers over my side and up until he’s cupping the side of my face, his thumb stroking my cheek.

I can’t stop myself from closing my eyes and savoring the moment. There have been plenty of times when I’ve done nothing else but dream of him doing just this. Laying with me. Touching me. Making me feel safe in a way I haven’t felt in a very long time.

Aries kisses me again, and I find myself longing for him to deepen the kiss. Needing him to kiss me deeper. Hold me closer. Like nothing else matters, but this very instant.

Unfortunately, Aries doesn’t keep kissing me. Nor does he allow me to escape into the moment. He simply peppers a kiss to my nose as he used to do and draws away.

“Why did you allow Roger to draw you into his games rather than come to me? And don’t tell me it’s because of what he was threatening you with. It’s bullshit, and you know it.”

I blink, uncertain I heard him correctly. “Pardon?”

“Rory, you heard me, and I’m not repeating myself. Now, answer my question.”

Shifting, I jerk away from him and jump off the other side of the bed, getting to my feet. I huff out a breath, plant my hands on my hips, and level the best glare I can muster.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about. What I did wasn’t bullshit, nor were his threats.”

“Scamp, you were grieving the loss of our kid, and Roger took advantage and threatened my life.”

“That’s not how it happened,” I grind out, shaking my head. “You don’t know what it was like. What happened . . .” I release a shuddered breath and squeeze my eyes closed, my casted arm pressing into my chest. “Roger made sure I miscarried, Aries. He was taking everything in my life that meant anything to me. He stole that baby. Just as he was going to have you killed. He wasn’t going to stop there. Roger intended to kill Cordy, Tempest, Fox, even Kevlar to force me to heed him. It wasn’t just you he threatened, but everyone.”

“And your mother didn’t say anything about any of this?”

I flinch at the mention of my mother. “She didn’t know any of this happened, but she’s thrilled that Roger has me with him everywhere he goes. She likes the idea of him being happy with me. My feelings don’t count.”

“Because she’s blinded by him. Always has been. Always will be. Roger could do no wrong.”

Aries is right about that. To my mom, he couldn’t. His father was the same way. I guess I was lucky that I’d been able to have the freedom I did before Roger got his hooks in me.

“So, he threatened all of us and you think it’s okay to just let it be and not reach out to me and tell me? You thought I couldn’t handle him?” He scoffs.

“But I did tell you,” I whisper, taking a step back. “I told you in the letter.”

“Bullshit,” he growls, closing the distance between us. “I know exactly what that letter said, and you didn’t tell me jack shit.”

“I told you what we had was a child’s love, and I’d found a man who I was meant to be with. That you need to leave the past in the past. That I never truly loved you,” I utter, feeling my stomach tighten, my nerves threatening to clog my throat. “Do you remember what I told you before you left for basic?”

“No,” he grinds out.

“I told you that I’d never love someone as I loved you. That you needed to make sure to come back to me because you were the man for me. Why would I say that and not mean it?”

I did my best when I wrote that letter to him. Telling him what I told him. I hoped that when he got it, he’d know it was a warning rather than what it was written to be. Just goes to show my luck that he didn’t read between the lines. He saw it as it was written and not as I’d wanted him too.

Slowly, I lift my gaze to meet Aries’s gaze and see the battle he’s fighting to keep control of the anger raging in those dark orbs.

“All I wanted to do was protect you,” I utter. I slowly stretch my arm just enough to press a hand to his chest, clenching his T-shirt in my hand. Tears spill freely down my cheeks. “Everything I did was to keep him from doing what he threatened.”

Unable to stand it any longer, I collapse into him. If Aries didn’t move quick to catch me, I’d have fallen at his feet. Instead, he scoops me up and pulls me into his arms. Tears streamed steady down my cheeks, soaking his shirt. I didn’t want to cry anymore. I was tired of crying. I just couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.

But this time, instead of crying alone, I was in the arms of the man I never wanted to let go of. However, I can’t keep either. The past will always be between us.