Chapter Seven

Chapter Seven

Cal tried to tell himself to move. To get off the bed and away from June—but he couldn’t. It was as if his arms were attached to someone else.

He’d had gallant plans to move to the floor as soon as June fell asleep, but just when he was getting ready to slip out of the bed, she let out a small whimper, as if she was having a bad dream.

Cal had moved before even realizing what he was doing.

He’d hated turning his back on her last night after getting in bed, but it was for his own sanity. For the first time in years, he’d masturbated in the shower. The second he’d stepped under the hot water, he’d thought about the fact that June had been in that very space earlier. Naked, standing in the same spot he was right then.

His cock had hardened so fast, it was almost embarrassing. He’d touched himself without thought, groaning at the pleasure that coursed through his body. Ropes of come were shooting from the tip of his dick after he’d barely begun stroking, as if it had just been holding back, waiting for the right woman . . . the one lying so innocently on the bed on the other side of the wall.

He’d quickly washed up, then stood in the loo for a while, donning flannel pants and a long-sleeved T-shirt, refusing to look in the mirror. At home, he slept nude. It was the only time he felt comfortable enough to go without clothes. He had no mirrors in his room and only a small one in his loo, so he could shave without cutting himself to ribbons.

He’d wanted to give June time to fall asleep. But when he’d finally gotten up the nerve to go into the room, he instinctively knew she was still awake. He’d had to turn his back on her because he was seconds away from pulling her into his arms, and he didn’t want to pressure her in any way.

Not only that, he didn’t want to get used to June being around. Once she was on her feet, she’d see how broken he was. She’d eventually find someone who was much better for her than Cal. Someone who was as good and kind as she was.

He was not that man.

It took a while for her to fall asleep, and when he finally felt he could move without waking her, that whimper belayed his plans. He’d scooted closer and wrapped his arm around her waist, pulling her into the cradle of his body. She’d made a contented noise in her throat, grabbed hold of his arm, and hadn’t let go . . . all night.

Now it was morning. The big truck parked outside their window had woken him up when the lights had shone into the room around the blackout curtains he’d pulled shut before dinner. His nose had been buried in June’s hair, her body nestled perfectly in his arms.

Surprisingly, he’d slept well himself. He had nightmares frequently and almost always woke up at least once a night remembering the pain of knives tearing into his flesh. Some nights, when he couldn’t go back to sleep, he’d pace his house for hours trying to get the images out of his head.

But last night, he’d slept like the dead while curled around June.

He’d been right; the more he was around her, the harder it would be to let her go. He knew that, but still he couldn’t bring himself to leave the bed.

“What time is it?” she mumbled.

“Not time to get up yet,” he told her. “Go back to sleep.”

The truth was, Cal had no idea what time it was. But he didn’t want to move. It would only take around four more hours, depending on traffic, to get to Newton, and he wasn’t quite sure what would happen when they did. For sure, his alone time with June would come to an end. He’d already called April last night to see if she could find a place for her to live. Then he’d be alone with his tortured thoughts again.

“Okay,” she said without hesitation, then shocked the shit out of Cal by turning in his embrace. Instead of pulling out of his arms, she snuggled into his chest as if she’d done it every day of her life.

Turning onto his back, Cal held her against him. Her hair was tangled in his fingers, and he could feel her warm breaths against his chest even through the shirt he wore.

Then he suddenly froze.

During the shift to his back, his shirt had risen up slightly . . . and June’s hand eased its way to the bare skin of his belly.

He released a shuddering breath and closed his eyes. His torso had taken the brunt of his captors’ rage. They’d taken great joy in carving into his body. In pushing their knives into his flesh hard enough to make him wonder if they were finally going to do it, just plunge a knife into his heart and kill him right then and there. But for reasons he couldn’t fathom, they never did.

The scar tissue was so thick in places, he could barely feel anything. But at this moment, the heat of June’s hand felt as if it was scalding him where it rested on his abs as she slept.

He felt desperate to grab hold of her hand and wrench it away from his damaged skin, but he also didn’t want to wake her. The longer he lay there, the scent of the hotel’s shampoo in her hair and the slight weight of her body against him, the more Cal eventually relaxed.

He remained in bed for probably another hour or so before she began to stir once more. Her fingers flexed, nails digging into the skin of his stomach.

Cal sucked in a breath and closed his eyes.

He hadn’t been touched intimately since well before he was a POW. Honestly hadn’t wanted to be touched this way again. But inexplicably, he felt the urge to put his hand over June’s and press it into his skin, not letting her move.

June stirred again. “Um . . . maybe I should . . .” Her sentence trailed off, and she sounded unsure and embarrassed.

When her hand began to slide away, Cal’s eyes shot open and he did exactly what he’d been thinking—put his hand over hers and held her still. “Stay,” he ordered gently.

She stopped trying to move away, and they lay silent for a minute or two before she spoke.

“I’m sorry if I crowded you. If I am crowding you. I don’t . . . I haven’t . . . I mean, I haven’t slept with anyone before.”

Cal turned his head to the side, trying to see her face. He was shocked to his core. How the hell was this woman still a virgin? Were all the men she’d met morons?

She could clearly see his expression because she huffed out a quiet breath. “No, I mean I’ve . . . done that. You know. But I haven’t slept slept with anyone before.”

Her explanation didn’t exactly make him want to revise his opinion of the men she’d known in the past. “Why not?” he asked softly.

She shrugged against him. “They weren’t interested in anything but sex? I had to get back to the house before I was missed? I could probably come up with a hundred reasons, but basically . . . I didn’t want to.”

Cal could understand and respect that. “You weren’t crowding me. I was the one who took you in my arms first,” he admitted. “I’m drawn to you, June. There’s something about you that I just can’t resist. Honestly, it’s confusing.”

“I feel the same,” she confessed against his chest.

A fifty-pound weight seemed to lift from his shoulders at that admission, but in the next moment, it settled back down. He shouldn’t be here. Shouldn’t be quite so truthful. The last thing he wanted to do was get her hopes up that anything might develop between them. Not because he didn’t want her—Lord, he wanted her more than he’d wanted any woman in recent memory. Maybe ever.

But she could do so much better. She could have a man who wasn’t screwed up in both mind and body, like he was.

Despite that ever-present mantra in his head, he couldn’t make himself let go of her. For the first time in years, he felt . . . normal. As if he wasn’t a scarred mess of flesh under his clothes. An unwelcome surprise waiting for anyone who dared to get close. He definitely wasn’t Prince Charming; he was more like the Beast from Beauty and the Beast. Unfit to be seen in normal society. Grumpy. Broken. Cursed.

“We should get up, get some breakfast, get on the road,” he said after a moment, making no move to escape the bed.

“Yeah,” June agreed, seeming to burrow into his side further even as she said it.

Cal’s lips twitched, but he didn’t complain, only tightened his hold a little. After a moment, he felt her thumb start to move back and forth on his belly. He instantly tensed but forced himself to relax. It felt more like a little tickle than anything else. He couldn’t feel much of the slight touch.

“They’re the assholes, you know,” she said quietly.

Everything in him froze again.

“Anyone who takes pleasure in hurting others has no soul. I don’t care if they were born that way, or if they learned their beliefs while growing up. There’s no excuse to hurt others, to look down on them, to take away their free will. I don’t understand a person’s need to have power over someone else. To tell them what they can and can’t do. To rule a country and its people with an iron fist. It makes me sad. We’re all in this together. Trying to get by, day after day—to figure out where we fit in the world.” She sighed.

“And I’ll never understand the need of some people to hurt others to get what they want. My dad taught me that the only way to reach your goals is to work hard. To help others along the way. To be nice. And I know that concept is completely foreign to a lot of people. They feel as if they have to step on others to get to the top. But why would anyone want to be up there anyway? Seems like it would just be a lot of stress and loneliness . . . people lying and taking advantage of you to get what they want. I’d rather stay at the bottom, happy and content, than have to deal with all that.

“Crud, where was I going with this? Oh right . . . what happened to you wasn’t your fault, Cal. Your scars shame them, not you. They’re proof of your strength. The fact that you’re here is a testament to your inner fortitude, your tenacity. Feck what others think about you. Your friends know the truth—that you took the brunt of your captors’ hatred to protect them.”

She wasn’t saying anything his friends hadn’t told him throughout the last three years, or that the psychiatrists he’d gone to see hadn’t said. But somehow, lying here with her in the quiet of the morning—knowing she had no agenda, that she was as good and as transparent as anyone he’d ever met—her words struck a chord deep within him.

They didn’t take away the shame. Didn’t change the past and didn’t make it any easier to look at his body . . . but they did ease the burden he carried on his soul just a tiny bit.

“Did I use that word right?”

He blinked in surprise. “What word?”

“Feck.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, princess, you did.”

“I’m not, you know,” she said after a moment.

“Not what?”

“A princess. I’m about as far from a princess as you can get. And honestly? I don’t think I’d ever want to be one. Too much pressure. I’m just . . . me.”

She was right. She wasn’t a princess. The royal life would chew her up and spit her out. Change her into a cynical person. Make her wary and distrustful. And Cal didn’t want that.

“Don’t change,” he whispered. “Be who you are. Who your dad raised you to be. And feck anyone who doesn’t see that you’re perfect exactly the way you are.”

She lifted her head and smiled at him. “What other British swear words can you teach me?”

“I’m not sure I should be teaching you dirty words,” he said with a small smile.

“Oh, come on. Please?”

He couldn’t resist this woman. Not for a second. “Okay, let’s see. There’s arse, as in arsehole. Blimey, which is pretty mild, used as an expression of astonishment. Bloody is really common, made somewhat famous by Gordon Ramsay, who says ‘bloody hell’ all the time.”

Cal was a little disappointed when June slipped her hand out from under his and sat up next to him. She crossed her legs and leaned toward him eagerly. “What else?” she asked.

Cal pushed himself to a sitting position and, without thinking about it, put his hand on her knee. When he realized what he’d done, he stared at his hand as if it belonged to someone else, thinking he should move it. But it was June’s turn to put her palm over his, keeping him in place.

“Bollocks means nonsense, and it’s another word for a man’s testicles. A wanker is a detestable person or as a verb can mean someone who’s drunk.”

“Is it gender specific?” June asked.

Cal couldn’t believe he was having this conversation. “Not really,” he said with a shrug.

“So I could say that my stepsister is a wanker?” she asked with a grin.

Cal chuckled. “You could.”

“Cool. What else?”

“Shite is a variation of shit, a plonker is an annoying idiot, manky is worthless or disgusting. It’s a fairly mild descriptor. A cock-up is a screwup. And one of my personal favorites is bugger. It can be used in so many ways, kind of like how Americans use the word fuck. It can be a noun for jerk or a verb meaning to ruin. Or it can be an expression of annoyance.”

June’s eyes sparkled. “Cool!”

Cal grinned. “Your dad is probably rolling in his grave knowing I’m teaching you all these,” he muttered.

“Actually, he’d be just as excited as I am,” June countered. “He was wonderful. Funny and sarcastic but also loving and tenderhearted.” She sighed. “I think that’s how he ended up with Elaine. She probably fed him some sob story about being a single mom and he bought into it hook, line, and sinker.”

“How’d he pass?” Cal asked gently, squeezing her knee lightly.

June ducked her head. “Heart attack. Which makes no sense because he was pretty healthy. He weighed a few extra pounds because he loved to eat, but he went to the doctor every year, didn’t have high blood pressure or anything, and worked out regularly. I didn’t understand it then, and I don’t understand it now. One day he was there, and the next, he was in the hospital dying.”

The hair on Cal’s neck stood up, and his gut rolled. He hadn’t known June long, or her stepfamily for that matter, but if what he was hearing was true—if her father had been healthy—something seemed incredibly fishy. “What did the autopsy say?”

June looked up at him with a frown. “Nothing. There wasn’t one. Elaine said she didn’t want to desecrate his body.”

The sixth sense that had saved Cal’s life more than once was screaming now. Reminding himself to make some inquiries, or at least to get a friend or two with more clout than he had to look into the situation, Cal changed the subject. “You hungry?”

She gave him a small smile. “I could eat.”

“Okay. But one more thing,” he said before she could move.

“Yeah?”

“You’d be an amazing princess. One any nation would be honored to have. You’d care about your people first and foremost. You’d put their well-being above all else. You’d fight for them when necessary, and cheer for them when they did great things. You’d be the kind of princess with statues erected in your honor, and you’d earn your people’s deep and abiding loyalty. And you’d accomplish all of that without being anyone other than exactly who you are. The world would be a better place if there were princesses like you.”

Cal wasn’t normally very good with words. He was used to holding his tongue, letting his family speak for him. And while he didn’t like the tears that sprang to June’s eyes at his little speech, he didn’t regret anything he’d said. Every word had come from his heart.

“Go ahead and use the loo first. I’m going to check my emails and let my friends know we’ll be there later today, check in with April and see if she’s had any luck finding you a place to live.”

“Okay.”

To his surprise, she leaned forward and kissed one of his cheeks, then the other.

It took every ounce of strength within Cal not to grab her neck and pull her back to him as she moved away.

“Did I do it right?” she asked shyly. “You know, the kissing thing?”

He almost blurted that, no, she’d missed his lips. Instead, he forced himself to nod. “Yeah.” He wasn’t about to tell her that most people didn’t actually touch their lips to anyone. They gave polite air kisses when they greeted others formally.

The skin on his body might be scarred, with so many nerve endings damaged, but his face had long since healed from the abuse it was subjected to . . . and the warmth of her lips lingered.

“I won’t take too long,” she told him with another small smile, turning to swing her legs over the side of the bed. She disappeared into the loo after grabbing a change of clothes from her suitcase, and it was only then that Cal dared to breathe once more.

He’d known her just days, and she was already the best thing that had ever happened to him. He didn’t know what her future held, but he’d cherish every minute in her presence until she decided that Newton was too small. Too remote. That she wanted to move on, do big things in her life somewhere else. He had no doubt that she’d realize her potential sooner rather than later now that she was out from under her stepfamily’s thumb.

Thinking about Elaine made him scowl. He’d known she was cunning, but after hearing about the death of June’s father, he feared her depravity went deeper than even he suspected.

He was out of his element with murder . . . the little he’d learned came from watching the random crime show here and there. He’d need to call someone who knew what they were doing, see if an investigation was warranted. If nothing else, having to answer questions about her husband’s death might take Elaine’s attention off the fact that her stepdaughter had left without a word . . . with the man she’d hoped would marry her real daughter.

Thinking about Elaine and Carla left a bad taste in Cal’s mouth, and he refused to ruin a perfectly good day worrying about them. He reached for his phone on the nightstand. He needed to check in with JJ, make sure Jack’s Lumber was holding its own, email Chappy about the details of his wedding, and ask Bob about gift ideas for the happy couple.

The ceremony was a rare chance for Cal to make a grand gesture. Lord knew his friends had refused to use his money to get their business off the ground or to buy any of the gear they’d needed. Yes, he’d chipped in a decent portion, but JJ had insisted on getting a loan and not letting Cal fund the entire operation.

But there was no way Chappy could refuse a healthy donation made in his wife’s name. Cal knew without fail that anything that might make Carlise’s life easier would be accepted without too much grumbling.

Cal owed his friends so much. Without them, he had no doubt that he wouldn’t be here today. They’d kept him sane and fighting for his life while they were prisoners. He would’ve given up if they hadn’t been there, if it hadn’t meant their captors would’ve just turned their knives on his friends. He would have given his life for them and knew they would’ve done the same.

He hated what had happened, hated how he felt about himself now, but he wouldn’t change anything if it meant his friends being hurt in his stead.

Cal paused while reading his emails, smiling at the sound of the water in the bathroom. June had admitted never sharing a bed with a man, and he’d never shared a hotel room with a woman. It was intimate . . . and with June, at least, he certainly didn’t mind.

The best part about the day was that he had another four or more hours alone with her as they continued north. He had no idea where their conversations would lead them, but he knew he wouldn’t be bored. He was eager to learn more about her, but first, they’d check out and eat some breakfast.

And he’d worry later about what would come when they reached Newton.