"You did this for me," I whisper. "You don't even know me."
"How well I know you is irrelevant. No one should go through what he has put you through."
"You could have walked away. Last night, in the car, you could have agreed with me. Found someone else. Someone without—"
"I don't want someone else."
The words stop me. They settle into the space between us like something solid. Something I can lean against.
I look up at him. His face is serious. Bruised. Tired. Beautiful in a way that has nothing to do with angles or bone structure and everything to do with the fact that this man heard the worst thing about me and his response was to drive through the night and destroy it with his bare hands.
"You're beautiful," he says. Simply. Like it's a fact. Like it requires no emphasis or argument. "And you owe no man anything. Not Kyle, or your father, or the Bratva and the stupid bloody council." He pauses. "Not even me."
I reach up, take his face in both my hands, and kiss him.
He goes still for exactly one heartbeat, where his whole body is rigid and he lets me choose this. Then his hands find my waist pulling me into him as he kisses me back. Hard. Deep. A kiss that tastes like coffee and copper and something that feels dangerously like the beginning of everything.
I pull him inside and kick the door shut behind us.
Rafferty
Her hands are on my face, fingers pressed against my jaw, and I can feel the tremor in them, softer than last night but still there. She tastes like orange juice and toothpaste and something underneath that's just her, warm and real and alive. I know I should stop this. I've been awake for over twenty-four hours and my knuckles are screaming and this woman has been through hell and the last thing she needs is…
She pulls back just enough to look at me. Her eyes are wet, her lips are swollen. Her chest rises and falls against mine in quick, uneven breaths.
"Upstairs," she says.
It's one word and it rewires my entire brain.
"Nadia."
"I know what I'm doing." Her voice is steady. The steadiest I've heard it since I met her. "I know what I want. Please don't make me beg for it."
I search her face for hesitation or doubt. For the faintest sign that this is adrenaline or gratitude or anything other than exactly what she says it is. I've spent my life reading people, and the woman standing in front of me is the clearest thing I've ever seen.
She takes my hand and pulls me toward the stairs.
I follow her. Past the hallway with the family photographs I don't look at and doors I don't open. Up a staircase that creaks on the third step and the seventh. Her hand is tight in mine and she doesn't let go. She pushes open a door at the end of the hallway and pulls me through it.
Her bedroom is small and clean. A bed with white sheets, a dresser, a window with sunlight pouring through it. There's a bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and a glass of water on the nightstand. It smells like her. Like shampoo and clean laundry and the faintest trace of something floral underneath.
She turns to face me and the sunlight catches her cheekbones, her throat, the hollow at the base of her neck where her pulse is hammering.
I cup her face in my hands. My split knuckles look brutal against her skin. Swollen, bloodied, and wrecked. She doesn't flinch. She turns her head and presses her lips to my palms, and I feel it all the way through my chest.
"Tell me if you want to stop," I say. "At any point. For any reason."
She nods. Then she reaches for the hem of her sweater and pulls it over her head. She's wearing a plain white bra underneath. Simple. Cotton. Nothing designed to be seen or flaunted. She's the most beautiful thing I've ever looked at.
She reaches behind her back for the clasp.
"Wait." I close the distance between us and turn her gently. I undo the clasp myself, slowly, and push the straps off her shoulders. I press my mouth to the back of her neck and feel the shiver race down her spine.
I turn her back around. She lets me look. Her arms stay at her sides. She doesn't cover herself. She doesn't apologize for the weight she has lost or the way her body looks and I love it.She stands in the sunlight in her jeans with nothing else and lets a man see her body for the first time since she was made to feel ashamed of it. She is reclaiming herself and I’m the lucky bastard who gets to witness it.
"Beautiful," I say again. Because she is. Because she needs to hear it from someone who means it and expects nothing in return.
Her breath catches. She reaches for my jacket and pushes it off my shoulders. Her fingers find the buttons of my shirt and she works them open with trembling hands. I let her set the pace. Each button takes longer than the last because her fingers are shaking harder the further down she gets.
