Page 63 of If You Fight

But all I saw were those fingers that had been stained with another person’s blood. It wasn’t visible now, but that didn’t matter. I saw it as clearly as I had back at the warehouse, and the memory made me want to run away.

My body tensed under his hand, and Ryder looked up at me with that same confused expression that had been in his eyes a few moments before. “What’s going on, Serena?”

I hung my head and turned away, unable to face him. “I can’t get the image of you hitting him out of my mind. All that blood…covering you and him…and then watching him limp away after you defeated him. All I can see is his blood on your skin.”

Ryder stood and kissed me tenderly on the lips. “Ah. Okay, follow me.”

He walked to the bathroom and stopped on the bathmat next to the tub to step out of his clothes. His body looked like it always did—beautiful, muscular, and hard with all those tattoos—and I knew what he planned to do, even though he’d obviously showered before he came home.

Stepping into the tub, he turned on the water and in seconds the steam fogged up the glass around him. I stood there wanting to show him it wasn’t him that made me pull away. It was the violence and the blood.

I couldn’t let him go on believing the very sight of him sickened me, so I undressed and stepped into the shower with him. He turned around and looked surprised for a moment before he set the soap down on the ledge and kissed me.

“I’m sorry, Ryder,” I said after he pulled back and smiled at me. “I didn’t mean to be so callous. That you’d do this means so much.”

“It’s a little soap and water. I’d do anything to make you happy, Serena,” he said in a low voice as the water ran down his face.

“It’s so much more,” I answered, hoping I would be able to explain how much this simple gesture meant to me. “I don’t mean to be like this. I know there are a million other women you could be with who wouldn’t have a problem with the fighting. They wouldn’t have tried to kill themselves and then when you saved them, they wouldn’t have been awful to you. I’m sorry I’m like this. I truly am, Ryder.”

His smile never faded as I ran through the list of things I’d done. He gently pushed my hair off my forehead and cradled my face in his strong hands, staring down at me with that look of intensity I so loved to see in his green eyes.

“Don’t ever be sorry for being you, Serena. I love you just like you are. I wouldn’t change a thing about you, so don’t think I would. I don’t want any of those million women. I only want you.”

I touched his hands and closed my eyes as my emotions began to overtake me. Hanging my head, I didn’t try to stop the tears. I didn’t know why I was crying, though. Was it because even after basically telling him what he did for us to be free sickened me, he still cared? Was it for how he made that man suffer while the crowd cheered for him like he was some kind of hero?

I didn’t know. I just knew it felt good to cry. Ryder held me to him, and as the water streamed down over us, I marveled at how wonderful he truly was to me. After everything he’d had to endure to just be with me, he still only thought of my happiness.

“It’s not so bad. Really,” he whispered against my cheek. “Even the guy I beat is safe and warm in his bed by now. It looked worse than it was.”

I opened my eyes and he looked down at me with that sexy smile that never failed to make me feel like I was melting inside. “I don’t think I’ll ever get used to it. I can’t bear to think of you doing that. I can’t explain it, but it physically hurts me to think of you in pain.”

“It’s just for a little while. Don’t worry. I’m built for this.”

“Don’t say that. Nobody’s built to be in pain, Ryder.”

“I’ll only do it long enough to make the money we need to get away and then I promise never again. Wherever we go, I’ll get a normal job so you’ll never have to worry about me being in pain again.”

I ran my fingertips over his chest and down onto his stomach. “Please let that be soon.”

“It will be. For now, I have something better in mind to focus on,” he said as he gazed down at me with hooded eyes and licked his lips.

His mouth covered mine and his tongue slid between my lips in a kiss that succeeded at least for the moment in taking my mind off all the things troubling it. He moaned low and pushed his hips forward to press his hard cock against my stomach.

“I need to be inside you, Serena,” he said in a deep voice as he slid his palms down my back to cup my ass.

Lifting me to waist-level, he gently pressed me back against the black marble tile wall and stared down at me like his every thought was of me. I moaned softly at the first touch of his cock, and then he thrust his hips forward to fill me in one incredible motion.

For a moment, he remained still, simply staring into my eyes with a look so powerful I couldn’t look away if I wanted to. I didn’t want to. I could have stayed right there looking into his eyes and been happy forever knowing I was the complete focus of this man.

I slowly dug my heels into his lower back, wanting more, though. I wanted to feel him slide in and out of me, fucking me like only he could.

He buried his hands in my hair and tugged, making pain skitter across my scalp, before he pulled back and plunged his cock into me hard and fast enough to take my breath away. Clinging to his neck, I held on, my hips seeking to match the rhythm of his as he fucked me.

“Tell me you still love me, even though you hate what I do,” he mumbled low in my ear as he pumped his cock into me.

I pushed his head away and kissed him long and deep, hating myself for how I’d made him doubt my feelings for him. “Always, Ryder. It doesn’t matter what you do. I’ll still love you.”

Over and over, he plunged his cock into my body, and over and over, I begged him to never stop, loving the feel of him fucking me as much there in that shower as I had from the first time he made me his.

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