Defy (Brothers of Ink and Steel Book 3) (17 page)

“But most of all, I did. He called me son more than he ever used my name. I couldn’t have asked for more good-hearted people to take me in than him and Betty. She’d get so infuriated when he took me out on cases. Maybe that’s because society told her I was too young. By the time I was fourteen I was a crack shot, and I’d traveled to every state with Chief on assignments and rescue missions. We’d also hunt for cadavers after disasters.”

The next thought sobers me. “It all changed when Betty passed away from cancer. Losing her annihilated Chief. He changed everything—he wouldn’t let me go out with him on missions and kept me sheltered and locked up in the house as much as he could. When I fought with him about it, he pulled rank.” I’m overwhelmed by it all again in this moment—the way I felt so powerless, completely unable to reach Chief when he needed me most.

“For a few months after her death he’d get drunker than hell and talk about God and what kind of afterlife there might be. It consumed him and became the ultimate puzzle he couldn’t solve. It was like he had to break that veil and get back to her.

“Then one morning, out of the blue, he woke up and promised me no more drinking, promised things would go back to the way they were and we’d go back to working cases together. He took a couple days off and we rode bikes through the red rocks of Arizona. It was the last weekend we’d ever have together. That Monday, Chief went on a case without me—I later found out the guy was facing a lot of jail time. Chief never came home. The perp shot him.”

“Jesus, I’m sorry.”

“It’s okay to talk about today. It actually feels . . . relieving to let it go . . . and let you share it.”

During the course of our conversation we’ve moved back together again on the bed, and she’s resting her head on my shoulder. Her touch is thoroughly comforting.

“When he died I lost my fucking mind. He was everything to me—my dad, my Chief, my boss, my best friend—and I went over the motherfucking deep end. I ran away from social services and every group home they placed me in. They tried forcing me to go to school to graduate. I was obsessed with finding Chief’s killer and exacting justice, but to this day he still eludes me. I was consumed with the understanding that I was absolutely and completely all alone on this big fucking earth—like I was the last one of my people alive. Two sets of parents had died and orphaned me—left me here, or so it felt. I was eaten up inside. I developed a major death complex—instead of being afraid to die, I taunted death—I took ridiculous risks to defy it. I wanted to hurt it like it hurt me; I wanted to deny it and take away its power the way it took everything from me. So I fought back, and I hated, and I shut everyone out who tried to enter my life.

“When I was seventeen I got shipped off to Minnesota to a place called North House for troubled kids—the house-parents, Cade and Debra, and the other kids there saved me from a serious path of self-destruction and helped me to forgive myself—but I still just didn’t care. In fact, I never cared much about living life again until I met you.”

Fuck.
I can’t even look at her at this point. I can’t believe I went through it all—I just let everything spill. Not only does she know
how
I feel—about important things like life, death and
her
—she’s going to start psychoanalyzing me with her know-it-all textbook bullshit. And she’s going to want to talk! We do not have time for that! For all three of us to walk away even minimally unscathed, I have a lot of fucking work to do.

I maneuver away from Farrington without even glancing at her expression and sit at the table, powering up the laptop.

I shouldn’t have done that. I shouldn’t have exposed myself that way—especially to Farrington, who’s already so goddamn vulnerable. I have to keep this professional.

From now on, business only.

Then if we survive . . .

I can’t even go there.

Son of a bitch.

I yank up my phone, about to call Briggs—we need to be accessing search engines and every database we’ve got ASAP. And I have a hunch that just may get her through this.

Her hand lilts onto my shoulder. “Thank you, Ryder.”

I can’t help but go still. That’s all she says before she walks away from me and goes into the bathroom. A moment later I hear the tub water running.

I lean forward over the laptop. “Miguel, you’re going to wish you never fucked with her.”

Rachel

He sits in the other room, face forward towards the computer, and all I can do right now is escape into this teeny bathroom and steady my breathing and try to rein in my heart, which is galloping out of control.

I get it now. I get it all.

When hot tears rise between my lashes, I’m not surprised.

I can see the sweet young boy, the turbulent and damaged teenager, all rolled up into this incredible, powerful protector of a man.

I know I’m unequivocally in love with him. And that I want to go out there and show him how much. I want to hold him in my arms until all of the fury and pain and fear he keeps hidden and caged inside of him condenses, becomes vapor and is diffused into the immensity of the atmosphere.

He doesn’t want anyone to see the pain he bears, the weight on his shoulders. He stands so tall and tough so as not to allow anything in this world to take the pain away—it’s how he survives—with it—with them, all of his dead.

He’s become comfortable with the shrapnel buried in the depths of his soul—removing the shards will be agonizing.

Ryder would hate for me to be thinking this way. He doesn’t want me to see anything besides what he wants projected to the world—that he is unbreakable and fearless.

I listen to him talking with his partner Briggs, his voice rising in frustration as he pushes the pieces of what he has left to work with to get us all out of this alive.

Stepping into the streams of pulsating hot water that pump hypnotically through the showerhead, I tilt my head back, stretch my neck and allow the water to rush like fingertips over my scalp. It tickles down my back and dampens my thighs.

I want him.

I want every part of him—the boy, the man, the love, the pain. I want the bravery and the power.

I need his steel to my silk, his power to my weakness.

I hunger and ache.

As I wash and these thoughts are crowding out every last bit of doubt or restraint that I may have possessed, I realize I must be more like a demon to him than a woman. I’m taking him to a new level of hell—another tier to compound his pain and rise up in the center of his internal inferno. Another person that has touched his life, no matter how briefly, and will soon be transformed into one of his ghosts.

Another haunting ghost of someone he couldn’t save.

I wonder if I’ve become important enough to deserve a tribute in ink somewhere on his body.

I’m torn between the selfish nature of the thought and the wishful plea—the hope that someone else will carry me in their soul and not let go once I’m gone.

Isn’t that the sum of all human desire—to be remembered, immortal, unforgotten?

But it’s more than that—my mom and sister will keep me in their hearts.
It’s him
. It’s
Ryder
who I want to remember me. If I could be kept in his soul and immortalized in his heart, it would feel like a piece of me was still living. Like a part of me survived.

Because his love would make it that way.

I rinse and shut off the water. I dry my body then squeeze the hotel lotion into my hand and smooth the cold cream over my hot skin. It smells good.

It’s fitting that I prepare myself—like a funeral rite.

After I run the comb through my wet tangles, I do something extreme and bold. I step out of the bathroom and into the hotel room completely naked.

Each breath labors through my chest—I’m so scared, so fucking scared.

“Ryder.” My voice is barely audible.

He doesn’t turn, and I steel myself to be braver. “Ryder.”

He turns—beautiful and brilliant. “Farrington.” My name is but a breath on his lips. His eyes widen, and even with all my degrees and knowledge of the human mind, I can’t read what’s behind them.

His expression is full of anguish and distress.

I don’t know what I was expecting, but that wasn’t quite it.

“No. Jesus Christ, Farrington, NO!” Ryder rips the blanket from the bed and quickly wraps me with it. As he covers my naked form, his throat makes a strangled sound and his green glass eyes gloss over. “It’s not going down this way,” he growls angrily. 

I don’t understand what he means, but I do understand that for me, the hourglass is almost empty.

“Don’t you find me attractive at all?”

“How could you even ask that, Farrington? Of course I do!” He sounds furious.

“Then make love to me.”

He pulls the blanket tighter. “You’re coming back from this.”

I shake my head. “You don’t know that, Ryder. No one knows when death will take them. And I’ve been too close too many times now to think I can defy the reaper again.”

Ryder crushes his eyes closed as he gathers the edges of the blanket into his fists and pulls me closer towards him until his forehead rests on mine.

It’s our first real intimate physical exchange, and I relish it—a moment of silence that suspends us over the situation and binds us together in the face of our impossible odds.

“I don’t want to feel like I missed something special in this life. And if I die without having kissed you it will be my greatest regret.”

Ryder breaks.

The seam of his thick, full lips presses over mine. I close my eyes—as I’m swept into the raging storm of his passion and his torment.

My eyes fall closed while my mouth opens and my lips part to receive him. His mouth takes my lower lip, slowly, purposefully.

A moan escapes me, a cry of desire, a plea for more.

“Farrington.”

“Rachel.”

Ryder stays tethered to the blanket he has knotted in his hands as a moment of silence slices between us.

But instead of pulling back, he closes the distance.

“Rachel.” The sound of my name spoken in the sexy, rough, resonant gravel of his deep voice with yearning hunger overwhelms me—it was well worth the wait.

His fingers loosen on the fabric twisted over me, and the blanket tumbles from my shoulders, landing in a pile at my feet.

Everything that is Ryder, everything inside of him, everything that has molded and shaped his life looks back at me through the soul of his eyes.

“Oh God, I can’t hold you like this.”

“I want you to.”

“I don’t belong in your arms. I’m not the one you need.”

“I can be the judge of what I need. And I need you, Ryder.”

“My life . . . is cursed. I’m a curse.”

“No, you’re not. You’re my hero, and it doesn’t even matter whether or not you can pull off a daring rescue tonight. What matters is this moment.”

He touches my face. “Rachel.” My name caresses his tongue like an oath.

“Let me touch your ink.”

Without a word he keeps his soulful gaze locked with mine and strips the charcoal fitted t-shirt over his head. Out of the corner of my eye I see the shirt hit the floor behind him.

I allow my right hand to hover mere inches from the heat of his flesh. In another time or place, I would have been shy and timid to reach out and lay my hands over the corded, sculpted muscle. I would have second-guessed what I was doing, if this were the right thing, what he’d think of me tomorrow . . .

I don’t have such luxuries any longer.

I don’t feel any of that; instead I experience a reverent awe as I stroke the tips of my fingers along the edges of the ink that enshrines his body and follow the contours and lines that form Ryder’s silhouette.

I’m acutely aware of my bare breasts and the erratic breath overcoming me that causes them to heave and dip.

It’s almost impossible that he’s real—he’s made of the stuff of myth and legend—but he’s true flesh, ink, blood and bone.