Page 22 of Three to Fall

The bruises around his neck had already started forming though, the angry red marks already deepening. His throat was going to be a mess for a while.

Despite knowing I shouldn’t, I crawled onto the bed with him and laid my head down on his shoulder. There was no doubt in my mind he’d saved my life today. Risking his own in the process. My heart couldn’t ignore that.

His breathing changed from the deep, slow breaths of sleep. His arms came around me, and his lips touched my head. “Hi.”

“Don’t try to talk. It must hurt.”

His voice was croaky and soft. “It’s not too bad.”

I lifted onto one elbow so I could gaze down at him. “I’ve heard doctors make the worst patients.”

He winced on a laugh. “Probably true. But I really am okay.”

Despite his reassurances, I couldn’t stop staring at his neck. “I thought you were going to die,” I whispered, matching the quiet tone of his voice. Relief swirled inside me, climbing its way up my throat and turning into a ball of emotion. “Dammit, Grayson. Why would you do that? What if he hadn’t backed down? What if you’d actually died? You didn’t know for sure he was going to let me go.”

“No. I didn’t. But what was the alternative?”

“The alternative was you stay safe.”

“And just let him kill you?” He breathed out softly. “That was never an option, Kara. Not for a single second.”

The emotions of the day got the better of me, the remaining adrenaline mixing with relief and fear and so much more. I couldn’t help myself. I pressed my lips to his, kissing him gently, until gentle wasn’t enough. My tongue stroked against his lips, seeking an entrance, that ball of emotion in my throat disappearing little by little, every moment we touched. Wrappedin his arms felt safe and warm, and intoxicating. I basked in every trail of his fingers, every shift of his muscles against me, my body unconsciously seeking out his until I was lying on top of him, kissing him until we were both breathless.

A pool of need opened up inside me, an aching, greedy desire to have all of him.

But it wasn’t right and it wasn’t fair. I forced myself to sit up, legs straddled either side of his hips. My voice was breathless. “I’m so sorry. You just found out a lot of things about your wife, and you need time to grieve her.” I realized I was essentially sitting over his dick and was horrified by how forward I was being. It didn’t matter what he’d said to me in the heat of the moment earlier in the day.

Trigger had opened up a portal to his past and dumped a whole load of secrets out on the table for everyone to see. Grayson would need time and space to work through that. I swung my leg, trying to get off him.

He caught it, his fingers digging into my thigh as he settled my knee back where it had been, digging into the mattress beside his hip.

His gaze locked with mine.

He slid his hands up my legs, and to my hips. His eyes turned molten, and his chest rose and fell too quickly as he guided my hips, rocking them over his private area.

I let out a tiny murmur of pleasure when he got hard beneath me, the ridge of his erection rubbing at my clit through my panties.

“Everything Trigger said about my wife makes sense. I just didn’t want to see it. We brought out the worst in each other. All she ever cared about was money and position and power. I don’t know why I didn’t notice what she and her sister were doing right beneath my nose when Trig did. All I can blame that on was that I was young, and so focused on making something ofmyself so I never had to live in a shitty house in Saint View with no food, and rats crawling over us while we slept,” he shared softly and closed his eyes. “I can’t even think about the women my wife hurt because I was too selfish to see what she was doing. How many lives did she destroy, just because she wanted to drive a nice car and live in fucking Providence? She was a foster care graduate as well. Came from nothing. We were so fucking proud of how far we’d come. I hate myself for wanting those material things too. Jesus fuck, Kara, I enjoyed the money she made! Until I was licensed, all our nights out, all our belongings, everything was funded by her.”

The pain in his eyes was unbearable. He gave up rocking my hips and used his hands to scrub at his face.

I tugged his hands away, hating he was beating himself up over something that hadn’t been his fault. “Her choices weren’t yours.”

His gaze changed from heat to anger. “I’m not mourning her again. I’ve spent years doing that, and she doesn’t deserve it.”

I leaned forward and kissed his mouth. “No, she doesn’t. But nobody would blame you if you mourn her anyway. She was a big part of your life. And the woman you knew wasn’t the woman she actually was.”

He shook his head and then grabbed my hand, pulling my fingers to his mouth. “I put you in danger, trying to avenge a ghost. I’m so fucking sorry.”

I shook my head. “You have nothing to apologize for.”

“Kara, he had a noose around your neck!” His gaze shifted to my left and fixed, like he wasn’t really seeing anything. “I’ve never felt anything like the fear that filled me when he tightened that cord around your throat. That was the moment I realized Annette and I had never been real. Because the idea of losing her had never felt like losing you… Shit, I don’t have the right to say that. You aren’t mine.”

“What if I want to be?”

The words were out of my mouth before I could stop them. They were words I didn’t have the right to say. But I didn’t want to take them back. Leaving Saint View without ever truly being his felt like a fate worse than death.

I’d always be left wondering what he felt like. What he tasted like. What I would feel if I just let him in.

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