Page 91 of Don't Let Go

"No?” Then I shook my head. “I’m not fishing for compliments, I’m trying to be real with you…”

“I believe you,” he said, then pressed a soft kiss to the tip of my nose. “You’re beautiful, dedicated, and devoted. You’re also incredibly loyal. The people at fault are the ones who abused your loyalty, Fallon. The ones who put you in a corner and forced you to make the decision to excise yourself so formidably.”

My mouth opened then closed again. When he put it like that…

“Choices were made. You did the best you could with what you knew at the time. You made that choice to serve when you started working there. You made it again when you pulled yourself out. You did one more time when you set up to become an operator…”

He feathered a hand down my face.

“What I see is a fighter, who took them with everything she had and has been kicking their ass from the beginning. You’re going to destroy them and I get to help. I know everything I need to know.”

That playful smile of his returned.

“Well, everything except one thing.” He gave me such a serious look, I didn’t know what to do with it.

“What?”

“Your favorite flower.”

“I—” I frowned at him and then laughed. It dislodged all this rubble that had been weighing me down. The memories were there. Everything that happened. Every moment of “meeting” them and then discovering that they’d come to find me.

“You?” He added another kiss to the prompt and I forgot about the question, savoring the contact as he massaged my lips with his.

“I don’t know what my favorite is going to be now…” I slid my hand back down to his nape. “I barely know who I am going to be now. But I want to find out. I want to make them go away, then I want to find out.”

“What do you need?” He stroked my cheek with his thumb, then pressed another kiss to my forehead.

“You,” I said, tugging him back down. His mouth crashed into mine, drowning out the broken voices in my head. Heblanketed me, answering every demand I made with equal fervor.

His clothes were in the way and pushing at his shirt, I had to break the kiss to get him to pull it up and over. I stopped at the criss-crossing scars over his chest. There were marks that looked like knife wounds. Puckered ones that had to be bullets.

Of course they had scars. McQuade had them too, I’d felt them but I hadn’t really had a chance to explore them. There was a small cluster of bullet scars near his left shoulder. Over his heart…

“Someday—will you tell me?” I didn’t want to pry but I wanted to know everything.

He caught my hand and pressed a kiss to my palm. “That was another life, but if you need to know, then yes, I’ll tell you.”

When he nudged up my tank top, I wiggled to pull it up and off. As though mirroring me, he explored the scars littering my chest and my arms. “I can tell you?—”

That snapped his gaze up to mind. The featherlight caress of his fingers sent goosebumps over my skin. “You remembered?”

I nodded slowly. “Yes.”

“Are you all right?” Concern bled through the passion in his voice.

“I think by definition of the phrase? No? But…yes?” It didn’t make sense to me and at the same time… “It’s weird. I remember it and it all happened to me. I remember being afraid. I remember fighting. I remember the conversations I heard and the pain. But I wasn’t giving in and I wasn’t going to. I know everyone breaks eventually, but the more pain they put me in the less I could help them.”

I let out a little laugh and his brow furrowed. “That’s not funny, Patch. Your pain is never something to laugh at.”

“Maybe not, but I won.” Petty? Probably. But I didn’t give a damn. “Right now? I’m still winning. I got away. They can’t take back from me what I took with me and I’m not alone anymore.”

“No,” he said in a voice that seemed to swear an oath. “You arenotalone.”

This time it was his hand around my throat and his mouth devouring mine that ended the conversation. He alternated between exquisitely gentle and demandingly sensuous.

All at once, he pulled away and shoved the blankets back. A bump in the road shuddered through us and he caught himself with one hand on the wall. Laughter swelled up through me.

We were in the back of a rig, on a highway, on our way to wage war and we were making out like teenagers. When the ride smoothed again, he reached for my leggings and peeled them down.

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