Page 57 of Deceive Me
The death grip on her wrists loosened the slightest bit. Deacon shifted his hips, pushing her thighs out until it was the most natural thing in the world to raise her legs, hook her knees around his waist. Hold him like he was holding her.
She kept her eyes closed.
“I was born dirty, Deacon. You can’t understand what that’s like. What he did to her just to conceive me…it was…ugly. I’m ugly.”
A soft brush of his breath on her skin, then his mouth against her neck. “You could never be ugly, Ell.”
Her body clenched around his cock when he whispered her name.
“I can never be clean,” she argued. “But I could pretend…if no one knew.”
Deacon lowered his arms, taking hers with him. At her hips he released her wrists, his hands moving down, down until he had her ass cupped in them. She opened her eyes when he lifted her away from the lockers.
The dark brown depths of his eyes drew her in, drowned her. Nothing else registered until he settled on a bench, his back to the door. The shift allowed him in deeper, if that was possible. Elliot moaned at the back of her throat as the base of his cock pressed against her clit.
Deacon held her steady, a hand at her lower back, one at her nape. His grasp wouldn’t let her hide her face, wouldn’t let her do anything but stare up at him as her body grew wet and his shaft pulsed inside her.
“You don’t need to pretend, Ell.” His lips brushed hers. His tongue stroked into her mouth, then withdrew, but he didn’t. His words were spoken into her mouth, into her soul. “Nothing he did can make you dirty any more than it made your mother dirty. You’ve been clean since the moment you were born. You’ve been worthy. You’ve been a gift. He can’t change that. Only you can. Don’t give him that power.”
And then he tipped her backward, arching her spine to bring her breasts to his face. He sucked a nipple right through her clothes.
Elliot lifted toward the touch, needing it, needing him.
They both groaned at the slick slide of her up his cock.
“Again,” Deacon muttered, then sucked her harder.
Elliot did it again, lowered, lifted, beginning a slow, rolling rhythm as she stared at the bright fluorescent light over her head, blind to everything but Deacon—his mouth, his thrusts, his gravelly curses. And her tears. Deacon was shattering her, breaking apart everything she was, and afraid or not, she wanted it. So much. So she kept going, kept moving, even when it felt like the coming explosion would leave nothing of her behind. Even when it felt like she’d never be put back together again, she continued. Again and again and again.
And finally, when she stood on the edge, looking out over the precipice toward the unknown, she clutched him to her and prayed.
Then let herself go.
22
Elliot came home with them. After forcing a few more details about the afternoon confrontation from her tight lips, Dain had handed over pain meds and water and lapsed into silence. Elliot thanked Dain, then went back to staring out the window with the eye that didn’t have an ice pack over it. Deacon watched her, trying to get it, trying to wrap his head around what he’d seen, what she’d told him. He had witnessed her sparring session with Dain, had seen her in the ring tonight, but the reality of her injuries—he’d only seen men out in the field ignoring injuries like that. And yet, other than a slight stiffness to her movements, Elliot didn’t show it.
She was a fighter, no doubt about that. And yet the vulnerability she’d shown in his arms had wrecked something inside him. She’d handed him her innermost secret, trusted him in a way she’d never trusted anyone else except, perhaps, Dain. The question was, did he trust her?
Elliot’s intel on Mansa made so much more sense now. If a killer might be tracking you, you’d make certain to know everything you possibly could about their movements, their associates, their business. But Elliot had not only been protecting herself; she’d been tracking her mother’s murderer as well. And she didn’t do anything half-assed.
No, it really wasn’t about trusting whose side she was on anymore. It was about trusting that she wouldn’t lie to him again.
Two black SUVs were parked in the drive outside the house when Dain pulled up. One belonged to the backup team Jack had sent out this afternoon. Mark and T.C. and Christopher were all good ole boys with laid-back manners, but Deacon had interviewed each and every one of them carefully, could read the quality in them just as he had with Dain’s team. Sydney hadn’t taken to any of them, though, asking repeatedly when Elliot would return, clinging to Saint or Dain when Deacon wasn’t available. Hopefully with Elliot’s return, his daughter would calm.
Dain nodded at the second vehicle as he put their SUV in park. “Jack’s here. He wanted a strategy session as soon as we were all together.”
“Does he know?” Elliot asked quietly from the back.
“He knows.”
Dain was done with holding anything back apparently. Deacon exited the SUV and moved to open the back door for Elliot, noting that the blank expression she’d worn when they first entered the locker room had returned—well, until he held out his hand to help her from the car. The look she gave him then was full of disgust.
Stubborn woman.
“Stop glaring at me and let me help. You’re too short not to jar those ribs getting down,” he pointed out. “Save your fortitude for when Sydney slams into you in a few minutes.”
“Good point.” Elliot wrapped an arm around her ribs and placed her free hand in his, easing carefully to the ground. When she would have let go, he refused to release her.
