Down to Ash (#Dirtysexygeeks Book 2) (15 page)

What the fuck did that even mean? He couldn't wrap his head around it or anything else, and especially not if she'd still want him around after the conversation. Ash didn't do serious.

Victor pulled his fingers through his hair and tugged. On some level, he knew that he was suffering from an emotional shock—words his former therapist might have used—and soon, the sharp edges of the day would lodge themselves into his chest like a knife. But that was a problem for later. He had to first keep at least one promise to Porter.

Ash sprawled on the couch, her teeth worrying her lip as she stared at him, waiting for the confession.

The quiet expectation only made him want to pace, so he did, and she let him while taking liberal sips from her glass. Absently he noted the game consoles beneath her TV, and any other time...

Finally, she muttered, “I'm starting to think you murdered someone in cold blood with all the...” She gestured to where he was wearing a hole into her carpet.

He sighed, stalked to her coffee table, and then sat. Her knees were within reaching distance, but Porter was right. Victor shouldn't have been there with her and, yet he still couldn't force himself to walk out the door.

Victor ran his thumb down her leg then stopped to ball his hand. “My last tour was bad. Real bad. We walked into a trap. An IED took out half my team.”

He grabbed her cup then took a long pull. Didn't even feel the burn of whiskey. A numbness had washed over him as he tried to recite the story. Revisiting those memories as if they were fresh wounds wasn’t an option. He'd sewn those wounds shut and refused to let them bleed anymore.

“I’d decided that was going to be my last tour. Contract was up soon, anyway, so I didn't re-up.”

She frowned at him, an anxious tension bristling off her. “I know that.”

“I had nightmares. I kept seeing... Half my fucking team and I was close enough to...” He swallowed, not wanting to get into the graphic details. She didn't need them to get the gist. Bad enough she kept swallowing—a sign of fear. “I kept seeing them die every time I closed my eyes. And you have to understand the enemy would target us. We could take out the IEDs. So they'd leave out decoy bombs while the real one blew. Other shit, too, all to scatter us in that fucking wasteland of a desert.”

She reached for his hand and squeezed. “Breathe, Vic.”

He pulled away from her touch. She flinched.

Shit.

He downed more booze to dull the guilt from that. His head felt like a spinning top, but not from the liquor. The wounds were bleeding out anyway. His lungs squeezed just like every muscle in his body. He clenched the glass in both hands.

She pressed her fingertips together and slid closer to him, touching him in the only way he'd let her. “Vic, please, just breathe for a moment.” Fear laced her words.

Shit.

He was scaring her. He didn’t want to scare her, so finally he listened. Breathed. She sat there patiently while he locked his emotions down and stuffed them away until he could finally speak again.

“So I got back from Iraq. Everyone came to visit. I was fine. Then...everyone went back to their lives.”

She'd stopped by to see him and he'd been a shit to her. She hadn't visited again, not even with Porter. He shrugged, trying to shift that guilt around. She broke his gaze, probably remembering the same thing.

“I'm sorry about that, Ash. I wasn't—I knew something was wrong with me. I didn't want you anywhere near me.”

“Hey, Ash. Nice to see you, but for your own safety you should leave?” She raised her brows as if to say communicating it would have been that simple.

He snorted and set the glass down beside him. “Now if I had said that, would you have listened? Would you have left?”

A smile tugged at her mouth for half a second. “No to both questions, but you're getting sidetracked.”

He shook his head and rubbed his hands together. “Anyway, I hadn't slept in like three or four days so I probably looked like shit warmed over, twice. Porter should have called the police for a 5150 hold. I was out of it. Convinced if I shut my eyes, the insurgents would come after me.”

Ash scooted to the end of the couch and took his face in her hands. “Dammit, Vic. I'm so sorry you had to go through that.”

He ignored the words, the touch. He had to in order to plow his way through the past. “He stayed at the end of my bed holding a gun because I wouldn't sleep until he stood guard. He did that for a week. Then he moved in.”

It had been more than that. So much more, but the details wouldn't paint the picture any clearer. Porter had stood guard, asking no questions, wanting nothing. Except one damn thing. The same thing he'd always asked for.

Vic balled his fists and pressed his knuckles into his thighs. “And what did I do? I slept with his sister.” He scoffed, filled with disgust at himself.

She leaned in until her forehead rested against his. “Is that all?”

“All?” Again, he pulled away from her. Her touch was too comforting. He'd forget why he was here, spilling his guts. The least he could do was keep his word. “Did I sleep when I was here last week?”

She blinked. “Didn't you?”

“
You
went to sleep.”

She tilted her head, her gaze filled with understanding. Her nod was so slight he barely caught it.

“And you watched me?” she asked. “Is that what makes you dangerous? That you'll bore holes into my face with just the power of your eyes?”

“Ash,” he said, exasperated, but he laughed.

He picked up the cup and handed it back to her. She clasped her palms around it as though in prayer.

He stood and strode a few feet away. “Maybe a month or two after I was home, I had a girl over. I wasn't ready but didn't know it. She stayed the night. I'd forgotten. So I woke up and someone was in my room. Didn't know where the hell I was. I pulled a gun on her.”

She set the glass on the table. “And Porter knew?”

“She screamed bloody murder. He was in the next room. Kind of hard to keep it from him.”

She showed no outward worry at his confession. Her eyes were just kind and so damn understanding. “Have you done it since?”

He balled his fists until a sting of pain rose from his palms. “Yes, just as extreme.”

Ash ran a finger over her brow. “I swear, men. No one thought to take your weapons at this point?”

Again, Vic had to laugh and that emotion made it easy to sit back down in front of her. “No, no one did.”

She nodded then asked, “The last time you had an episode?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“When?” There was steel in her voice that surprised him.

“A little over a year.”

She nodded again. “Okay, now I know.”

She should be heading for the hills, but maybe the prospect of waking up with a gun in her face didn't seem real. He should press on the issue. Give her the graphic details just to make his point, but hell, he was a coward. He didn't want her gone. He was starting to feel like he needed her just so he could breathe. And that need was selfish.

He unfurled his fists and caressed the bruises he'd left on her arms with his thumbs. “I was too rough. When my guard is down—Ash, run. Jesus. And don't look back when you do.”

A smile flirted at the corner of her mouth. “So that means you want me beyond reason or common sense? Finally, you're being good for my ego.”

“I'm not joking.” He grabbed hold of her shirt and tugged her closer. “I can hurt you. It's almost guaranteed. I want you too damn much. Even now I want to strip you, taste you. Pin you to the floor and fuck you until you can't breathe.”

Her breath hitched. “I'm trying to see the downside.”

“I've already left bruises. What more do you need to run?”

She glanced down, a sigh spilling out of her mouth. “A real threat, Vic.” Ash looked up and met his stare. “If I ever think you're going to shoot me, maim me, choke me, hurt me in any way that's not about sex—that's not
consensual
—I'll head for the hills. Until then, we have to see this to the end. No matter what that looks like.”

“I'm no good for you.” And yet he was pulling her forward, because Ash was willing to stay. He wanted her to.

She brushed her mouth against his. “Then be bad.”

He shut his eyes, clenched his jaw. It wasn’t the time to take her like he wanted. Victor was on the outs with Porter. The rest of his friends would follow, because he'd broken the brotherhood code. He was cornering the sleazebag market, and she nipped at his bottom lip, straddling him.

He could admit that the soft bite made more than just lust burn through his veins. If she asked, though, that would be the lie he told.

“Listen,” she said, cupping his face. “You haven't had an episode in more than a year.”

His back tightened, uncertain where she was going with this. “Yeah. So?”

“You didn't sleep with me for years because of some archaic and irrational promise you made to my brother. I think you'd go to extreme measures if you thought for one second you'd hurt me.”

The words burrowed in his gut. He wanted to believe her. “Why is this your argument?”

She rocked into him and he groaned. “You look like you need reassurance before you ravish me. And just so you know, the military has nothing on me. I will put you down if I have to.”

His dick twitched. “I shouldn't be turned on by that.”

She smiled. “I know you think I'm some kind of PollyAnna, but I only have faith in a handful of things. One thing I know in my gut—my heart—is that you'd never hurt me.”

Victor clutched her to him, dragging her closer.
Let it be true.
“Ash.”

She kissed her way to his ear. “Enough. Let's talk about something really important.”

He shivered, and need sluiced down his spine, probably making him stupid. “Like what?”

“You owe me.”

He was struck by the memory of her bare ass. Her wet, tight pussy. Her arms pinned down. Fuck, he had wanted to smack her ass and then spill his seed on the tender skin. He wasn't a caveman—all the time—but the image spoke to his primitive side. He'd wanted to mark her in the most basic way, and he shouldn't have gotten hard just at the thought that he could have. His dick disagreed, but that wasn't a surprise. They weren't seeing eye-to-eye lately—not when it came to Ash.

“Do I, now?” His voice was a horny rasp.

Fuck. He was so far gone.

Ash sucked his lobe and he couldn't remember what else he'd planned to say. He tugged at her shorts, working his fingers beneath the material. “No underwear, Ash?”

She trailed her tongue over his pulse and his mind blanked. “No, because you owe me.”

He turned his head, skimming his mouth over her breast. Her nipple beaded against the thin material. He loved that. Her body was so responsive. He always felt like it was telling him “
Good job
.”

Yeah. He might have been twisted, but she didn't seem to mind, and he loved that more than her body being responsive. So he caught the nub between his lips, then sucked her through the fabric to make her squirm.

She arched into him, closing her hand on his nape. “I meant lower, Vic.”

He chuckled and only switched breasts, cupping the soft globes together because he knew she loved that sensation. Didn't take long for her to tug at his hair, gentle at first, then harder as he introduced teeth.

She rocked into him, moaning.

He knew begging would come next, and that topped his list of shit he loved that Ash did during sex.

“Vic.”

Close enough to a beg that his dick went brick hard. Satisfied at her reaction, he admired his handiwork. He could see her nipples clear through the fabric now. Perfectly round, dark brown, and damn hard.

Using one hand, he held her still on his lap and, with the other, yanked her shirt over her head. She w
ent for his mouth as soon as the shirt cleared her hands.

He could drown in the taste of her. Die just a little with every moan that feathered over his tongue. Wanting her like that couldn't be good for him. She damn sure had dropped an atomic bomb on his world already, and he couldn't care at the moment. He just wanted them skin to skin, her soft breasts a cushion against his hard chest. Her mouth on his. Ash pleading for his everything. He'd give it.

His hands tightened around her waist.
No. Don't lose it.
She already carried his marks. She deserved something softer than that rough side of him.

Victor rose, lifting her with him. He knew his way to her room, and it didn't take long to have her beneath him on the bed. It wasn't fair to strip her down to her toenail polish since he’d only chucked off his shoes, but he didn't care about that either.

Ash wasn't panting yet or begging. Fuck, she wasn't completely shameless in bed yet. He loved all that more than the curve of her hips or how her pussy tasted after she'd come.

She raised her hands above her head, stretching out in a languid sprawl. The picture she made could drive any man insane.

He shook his head. “Do we need to talk again about your safety?”

Her gaze traveled down to his cock pressed hard against his jeans, leaving a thick bulge. “Sure. You can talk.”

She sat up and popped the button on his denims, then undid the zipper.

He could only watch her delicate hands at work as he stood beside the bed. He knew what came next would make his brain dribble out of his ears. She was a master at touching him just right.

She caressed him through his boxers and he had to hold himself still to keep from fucking her raw.

But he was losing his hold and fast. He climbed onto the bed with her.

“When I tell you to stop, stop,” he said.

Her eyes were bright but attentive. “Okay.” She squeezed the head of his cock.

A pounding noise rose in his ears. “If I'm hurting you, tell me.” He gritted his teeth to hold back the soft groan.

“Yes.” She pulled his dick from his boxers. Her tongue feathered over her top lip. “What else?” Ash moved like lightning, rising from the bed, pushing him until he was on his back.

He let her. He was too far gone already.

She slipped between his legs and knelt. “Do I need a safe word?”