“I sure as hell never have. Not like that.” He was half on her, half on the mattress beside her, so his full weight wasn’t crushing her. More amazingly, he was still lodged deeply inside her, and from what she could feel, still hard. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Say nothing,” she murmured, the heaviness of exhaustion and satisfaction pulling her into another state of consciousness. “Talk later. Sleeping time now.”
She let her eyes drift shut. Time passed. Could have been minutes, could have been an entire ice age. All she knew, or rather felt, some unidentifiable time later, was her body being readjusted on her bed, then the soft down of her comforter coming over her shoulders, wrapping her in warmth, and the solid wall of Sean’s body wrapping up behind her, pulling her in so that she was fully cocooned.
And in that safe bubble of sexual gratification, love, and trust, she fell into a deep, blissful sleep, with the thought of her past, or what was yet to come nowhere on her radar.
* * *
Sean lay on Ivy’s bed, one arm behind his head, the other stretched out, which Ivy had taken as an invitation to use as a pillow. He’d lost feeling in it about an hour ago, and he’d made no attempt to move it. He didn’t want to do a single thing that might disrupt this moment.
It was long past midnight, and he was lying awake, processing the information he’d just learned. Stories like Ivy’s were all too familiar.
He’d grown up in a family of love, and his parents did their best with what they’d had. But the neighborhood they’d lived in had normalized violence. Domestic abuse, gang wars, sexual assault, the list went on.
Desensitized was too harsh a word to describe how he’d come to cope with his surroundings, but it was safe to say there wasn’t much that phased him.
Tonight had, though. Tonight had phased him right into insomnia. Ivy’s words were on repeat in his head. Her voice, her story, her memories playing out like a film in his brain. Every scene unfolding in his imagination as vividly as she’d told it.
He wanted to hunt those motherfuckers down so justice could be served. And not wishy-washy police justice, where a rich offender could pay off a judge or a ferocious lawyer could discredit a survivor in court.
No. The only justice he craved was the street type from his past. Jordan. Jordan would know what to do.
Thoughts of his brother led to thoughts about the phone calls he’d been avoiding. The short, to-the-point messages saved on his voicemail. Messages about a newfound freedom and Jordan wanting to spend some of that freedom visiting Sean.
Now more than ever, Sean realized what a bad idea that would be. He’d like to believe that Jordan had reformed, and maybe he had. From all accounts, it sounded like big brother was trying his damnedest to get back on the right track. But Jordan had run with some seriously violent gangs back home. Gangs that Sean had made the mistake of tangling with himself before he’d come to Portland. Not trusting his brother, and avoiding him on top of that, caused a pitch fork of guilt to stab at his stomach.
He wanted to give his brother the benefit of the doubt, but now that he had Ivy, now that hekneweverything Ivy had gone through and was still going through emotionally and psychologically, there was no way in hell he could risk allowing even a whiff of violence back into her life.
And Jordan was more than a whiff. He was a full-on arctic airflow. Where he went, trouble followed. Every damn time. Sean couldn’t take a chance like that with Ivy. She was too precious.
There was no decision, really. He’d abandon his brother again. And fuck, that felt horrible.
Holding Ivy like this, he was overcome with emotion. How many times had she fallen asleep on his shoulder or lap during their Netflix nights? How many times had she wandered over to his apartment with an excuse to see him? She’d run out of cream for her coffee. She needed a chocolate fix and hid her stash at his place so she wouldn’t binge eat it. She wanted to know his class schedule for the next day, even though she could damn well check it online instead of coming to him.
It wasn’t only her being drawn to him. He’d moved across the hall from her for a reason, damnit. The primal part of him had to be close to her, had to be within arm’s reach if she needed anything, if she needed him.
Precious. She was so fucking precious. He couldn’t let her be hurt in any way. Never again.
He wrapped his free arm around her. He couldn’t lose her, and he wouldn’t be a threat to her either.
Jordan would understand.
CHAPTERTWENTY-FOUR
Ivy sat on a Swiss ball in her office rolling her hips one way, then the other, looking over her last file of the day. It was Friday afternoon. Fight night. Gala night.
She’d said goodbye to her last client and was closing her clinic early so she could go home and beautify for the evening. And by beautify she meant Hope was coming over armed to the teeth with her make-up case and hair irons.
Dolling herself up so she met the standard of acceptable date material had suddenly become important to her. Tonight was a big night for Sean, and she wanted to be there for him in the way he’d been there for her so many times in the last few years. She wanted to act and look the part.
Caring about superficial things like hair and makeup wasn’t her typical personality. Her parents had abandoned her to chase the glamorous, jet-setting lifestyle, so she’d been turned off at an early age. But Sean had never abandoned her. He’d been one of the most steadfast people in her life. From the first moment, he’d given her whatever she needed, however she needed it. And tonight, she wanted to give back to him.
Almost a full week had passed since the night she’d revealed everything to him. And instead of being left vulnerable and raw, she was filled with a renewed sense of empowerment. Her story was hers to tell, and she’d told the one person she’d grown to love and trust despite all the odds. If the bond between them had been connected by an invisible string before, it had fused now, into something stronger, more durable.
At leastshethought so. Sean had acted mentally preoccupied all week. Which made sense, considering the upcoming fight, and the tense final days training his fighters. This was the night that the training, the stress, the hours, the effort, all came down to a few minutes in the ring. She understood focus. So she’d tried not to overthink his slight aloofness.
Besides, he wasn’t ignoring or avoiding her. The opposite, in fact. He’d been intensely protective the last week, had gone with her on her early morning runs, made sure she had a safe way of getting to work and waited for her when she had a late client so he could take her home himself. When she’d made the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that he add her to the Find Friends App on his phone, he’d immediately done just that—then took hers and done the same, so she’d know where he was if she needed him.
