Page 48 of Ruthless Reign

He shook his head, a dark laugh coming from his mouth as he looked up at me through hooded eyes. “Want to know the most fucked up part, Vixen?”

I took his hand and held it but he didn’t hold mine back.

“In the nightmares it’s not my Ma on the floor. It’s not Hardin with that knife. It’s not seeing my Dad with the light leaving his eyes. It’s this?—”

He pushed a palm roughly into his own chest with anger in his eyes. “This fucking feeling. And it’s that same feeling I felt out there in the woods. It’s just me and I’m there, alone, and the blood is on my hands, but it’s not my Pa’s blood. No. It’s the blood of this baby deer that I had to?—”

His voice tightened, the words constricting until they choked off and I could have died inside at the look on his face.

“Oh Kaleb…”

“It’s the feeling though,” he said, sniffing as he tipped his head back to look up at the ceiling. He tapped his chest. “More than anything it’s the feeling. Like I’m four foot five again. Just this little piddly ass kid alone in the dark. It’s like…like hopelessness. I felt helpless. Useless.”

“That’s not?—”

“I just made a bad situation worse. Like I always do.” He scoffed. “Not much has changed.”

I grabbed him by the face, forcing his dark eyes to focus on mine. “That’s not true, Kaleb. And you can’t blame yourself for something that happened when you were just a kid.”

He tried to pull away.

“You were a kid,” I repeated. “Kids get scared. And you had every right to be terrified in that situation. Any kid would’ve run or at the very least pissed himself or passed out. It’s insane to think you should’ve just walked in on what you walked in on and been totally fine. That is insane.”

He reached up and gripped my wrists, gently but forcefully tugging my hands down from his face to look away.

“And whatever you did—whatever you had to do out there—you did it because you wanted to survive. Honestly, the resourcefulness you would’ve had to have to not starve to death or worse as a kid lost for that long is…well it’s insanely impressive.”

He barked a laugh, but I could see the shift in his eyes. The way they narrowed, tracing over the messy blankets, and I knew he was at least thinking about it in a new light.

“It doesn’t matter now,” he said, and I picked up on his need to shift the conversation and made myself shut up. I had to hope that what I said would sink in, whether it was right now or next month. Maybe his next nightmare wouldn’t be so bad. Maybe he’d see his little ‘piddly ass self’ as what he was—a kid—and not the ten year old tank he wishes he could’ve been.

And then there it was. His brother was only a couple years older. He would’ve been, what? Twelve? Twelve years old and forced to defend his Mother and little brother against his bastard of a father to the point of murder.

Kaleb’s thumb stroked the soft spot on the underside of my wrists as he continued to hold them. He brought my hands to his lips and kissed each of my knuckles, making something clench low in my belly. “Thank you,” he whispered so quietly I almost didn’t hear him.

“For what?”

He thought about it for a second. “Listening, I guess. I’ve never really talked about it.”

The first rays of dawn brightened the room to a soft umber hue, just enough to properly see the expression on his face. To be able to trace the tattoos over his chest and down his arms. Kaleb caught me admiring him and when my gaze lifted again, I found him smirking. Felt the swell of his cock thickening beneath my ass in his lap.

“Take off your clothes, Vixen,” he said against my hands, releasing them enough to kiss each wrist before he slid me from his lap and stood.

“Where are you going?”

My pussy was proper awake now, and I bit my lip as I kicked off my sleep shorts, maybe a little bit too eager as I watched him cross the room to my side of the bed.

The way the shadows and light played over his muscled torso should’ve been criminal. No one should be able to look that good. Kaleb threw his hair back as he crouched low to riffle through my suitcase.

My pussy throbbed, remembering what he tucked away inside it.

“Told you I needed to see this,” he said in a husky tone, lifting the enormous black butt plug from where it was nested in my clothes. “Mmm, maybe this, too?”

He fingered a pair of handcuffs, holding them aloft, dangling from one finger.

I nodded and he grinned wickedly, rising back to his feet. Was he always so tall?

My throat went dry as he tossed the toys onto the bed next to me and leaned over my body, his shoulders rippling. “Thought I told you to take your clothes off.”

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