Page 48 of Truths

“Don't hide any part of yourself away because you're scared I won't want you. I want you to be you. Someone who tells me her fantasies and thoughts. The woman who wants to mount me in public because she can't get enough of me.”

She sighs. “I just want to make you happy, Chance.”

“It's time I work to make sure Kara's happy. But I do need one last thing.”

“What's that?”

“I have to pretend that whatever happened with the Kingsmen never did. Can we do that?”

“As long as I can pretend the girl you took in our bed never happened.”

He groans. “I'm sorry about that.”

“It never happened, right?”

“Never happened,” Chance mutters as her fingers unbutton his jeans to help free him. “Only us. Forever.”

Chapter Eighteen

Summerville

Lex

After Grayson and Ashley's wedding, Lex and Colt spent the next two days completely naked and wrapped in each other. It got to the point that Lex started to feel faint from lack of real food, and the two just finished burgers from the same place they brought Dani to before heading to the clubhouse.

Colt holds the door open for her, and they find a table near the bar. Rather than let Lex sit on her own seat, Colt pulls her onto his lap.

“I don't think I plan to stick around here long,” he says into her ear. “I need to take full advantage to having a child-free house.”

“You may want to get online and next day a wheelchair if we have too many more rounds within the next twenty-four hours. God, I forgot I had some of these muscles,” she says.

His fingers run through her hair, pulling her head to the side as his lips claim her neck. “You've been doing yoga again, haven't you?”

“How'd you know?”

“You are extra bendy.”

“I'm going to need that wheelchair,” she murmurs.

He gently nibbles at her skin, biting just hard enough to leave marks, and he whispers, “I think I'm drunk on you.”

Hushed gasps around them pull them from their little bubble of love, and both sober up quickly when they see Dani walk into the clubhouse with Dax. Even though she's been home for quite a while now, she still looks just as sickly and scared as the last time Lex saw her. They heard she was here a couple of nights ago, and she looks just as petrified as Everlee said.

“She doesn’t look good.”

“No, she doesn't,” Colt agrees, both keeping their voices quiet. “You'd think she was still locked in that basement. Jesus, poor girl.”

Even though Lex knew it would be an adjustment, part of her thought Dani would look more like the old version of herself that Lex once knew. Not quite back to the same, but not still the shell of a woman she had to coax out of a basement. It hits her like a ton of bricks, and it scares her. “That could have been me.”

“Lex-”

“It could have. If Melanie hadn't gotten out of the basement, that could have been me.”

Sure, the thought crossed her mind a few times, but seeing Dani like this really pushes the point home. What she would have been like had Scarface gotten her like he wanted looks nothing short of how Dani appears in Lex’s mind.

Colt's arms tighten around her protectively, and he nuzzles his nose against her neck. He hates talking about when she was kidnapped, and it's not on her list of favorite memories, either, but this could very well have been her. And Melanie, Autumn, and Heidi would be dead. It's a sobering thought.

Dax keeps reaching his hand out to Dani as she sits on the chair with her knees clutched to her chest by her skinny arms, and she moves away from his touch each time. There's no mistaking the devastation he feels at the rejection.

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