Shattered: An Extreme Risk Novel (30 page)

Besides, from the beginning she’s always seemed to know what to do with Logan. Maybe she’ll have some insight this time, too.

The shower curtain slides open without warning, and I freeze as images of the infamous
Psycho
shower scene run through my head in startling, terrifying detail.

I whirl around, hands clutched over my body and a scream frozen in my throat, only to realize that it’s just Ash standing there, a wicked grin on his face.

“God, Ash! When I gave you the extra key to my room, I didn’t think you’d use it to scare the hell out of me!” I drop the defensive posture, but keep one hand pressed against my still wildly beating heart. “Don’t you know better than to sneak up on a woman in the shower?”

He leans forward, presses a line of hot kisses across my collarbone. “Actually, I always thought that was the
perfect
time to sneak up on a woman.”

“Yeah, well, it’s not.” I pout at him. “Hitchcock ruined that for men everywhere.”

“Huh. That’s too bad.” He shrugs out of his shirt. “I was thinking maybe I could join you in there.”

I start to make some teasing comment, but when I look closer, I see the tightness in his jaw, the stress around his eyes. “What’s wrong?” I demand, reaching for him despite the fact that I’m soaking wet.

“Later.” He unbuckles his belt, slips off his jeans. Then steps into the shower behind me. “I just want to hold you for a minute.”

I smile at him before turning back toward the spray. “I think that can be arranged.”

His arms come around me from behind, and I nestle back against him, my ass against his thighs, the back of my head resting in the crook of his neck. He feels good, really good, and I concentrate on that instead of the worry that’s started niggling away at me. If he wants a few minutes to get his head together before we talk, I’m more than willing to give him that.

“You feel amazing,” he tells me, his hands skimming lightly over my skin. He’s touching me everywhere—my shoulders, my back, my stomach, my hips, my breasts—and it feels good. So good.

At the same time, I can’t help being nervous because this is the first time we’ve ever made love in lights this bright. The first time he’s really seen my body without the camouflage of shadows and I’m a little nervous. Not because I think Ash will say anything to hurt me—he’d
never do something like that—but because I know I’m not what he’s used to.

I’m still too skinny, still too weak, and in a lot of places, my bones are visible beneath my skin. My ribs, my hips, my collarbone. It won’t be like this forever—it normally takes me six to eight months to gain the weight back after chemo and radiation—but I don’t look my best right now.

Plus, there are the scars. Yes, he’s seen the big one from the port, asked about it the first time we made love. But there are little scars, too. Lots of them. From all the biopsies and the tests and the IVs that were in my body so long that the needles marked me permanently.

I’m not ashamed of my body—how can I be when my heart is still beating, even after all the abuse it’s taken in the last ten years—but that doesn’t mean I’m ready to flaunt it yet. Or ready for the questions that I’m afraid will come, questions Ash has every right to ask.

He doesn’t ask them though, doesn’t say anything at all about the marks on my back, my arms, my legs. Instead, he just holds me with his strong, calloused hands, his touch soothing me even as it turns me on.

“You’re so beautiful,” he murmurs as he presses hot kisses to the sensitive skin behind my ear.

“I’m not,” I tell him, and I try to turn so that I can look him in the eye. So that I can show him that it doesn’t matter. That he doesn’t have to lie to make me feel better.

But Ash’s arms are steel bands around me and he doesn’t let me turn. Instead, he keeps my back to his front as he presses hot, open-mouthed kisses over my cheek and jaw, down the side of my neck.

“You are,” he murmurs. Now he’s licking drops of water off my shoulder. Kissing his way down my arm.

“I love your eyes.”

“They’re hazel. Just boring hazel.”

“They’re beautiful and they’re never the same color twice. One minute they’re green, the next brown, the next gray. I spend way too much time thinking about what color they’re going to be when you wake up or when you smile at me. Or when I’m inside you.”

His words make my already too-fast heartbeat pick up even more. “Really?”

“It slays me that you don’t know.” He’s licking at my spine now, small, tender little swipes of his tongue that make my knees a little weaker with each second that passes.

“I love your hands,” I tell him, taking hold of one where it rests on my hip and bringing it to my mouth. “How big they are, how strong. How the callouses feel rough against my skin when you touch me. How easy it is for you to pick me up with them.”

I slide one of his fingers into my mouth, swirl my tongue around it and then start to suck. He groans a little in the back of his throat and I can feel him growing even harder against my
back.

“I love your mouth,” he tells me, his voice harsher than it was just a minute ago. “I love the color of your lips, the way they get darker when I kiss you. I love the way your smile is always just a little crooked because your lips go up more on the left side than the right one. And I am fucking crazy about the way you taste—like vanilla and sugar all the time.”

It’s a sweet description, one that has me working his finger a little faster, a little deeper, in reward. And because I like the way his breath is coming faster, the way his hips are moving in short, little thrusts against my own.

He wants me. He really wants me. I think that’s the best part. That he sees me—not the sick girl, not the girl who needs to be protected—but me, Tansy, the girl who is too skinny and too awkward and who has no idea what she’s doing most of the time. And he wants me anyway. Almost as much as I want him.

“I love your biceps,” I tell him when I finally release his finger.

“My
biceps
?”

“Hell, yeah. They’re
really
good biceps.” I turn my head, kiss the area in question, pressing my lips gently against the kanji symbol he has tattooed high up on his inner arm. “You never told me what this one means. It’s beautiful.”

“It means sorrow. I got it—” His voice breaks. “I got it after my parents died.”

My heart breaks for him and I kiss the tattoo again, gently, sweetly. Ash is shaking a little now, and it’s not from cold—I can feel the heat of his body pressed firmly against my own. And when he presses his face into the curve of my neck and just breathes me in, I want nothing more than to hold him. To curl myself around him and take away all the pain, all the guilt, all the
sorrow
that lives inside of him.

He’s so good, so kind, so generous, that it kills me to see him like this. Eaten up from the inside over a tragedy he didn’t cause and can’t change. I want to tell him that, to make him understand that sometimes bad things happen to good people and there’s no reasoning it out. No understanding it.

There’s only acceptance.

God knows, I’ve spent most of my life trying to find that acceptance and now that I’m healthy, now that I’m cured, I’m looking for a different kind of understanding. One that tells me why
I
got the winning lottery ticket. Why
I
get to live when so many others have to die.

But now isn’t the time for my issues. Not when Ash is trembling against me, shaking apart right here, right now, and he won’t even let me hold him. Won’t let me put my arms around him and kiss his lips and tell him that I love—

The thought breaks through the protective layers I have wrapped around me like a jackhammer, shattering me—and everything I thought I was doing here—into so many pieces.

I can’t love him. I just can’t.

This thing between us—it was supposed to be about fun. About losing my virginity. About having a good time. It wasn’t supposed to be about anything serious. He has too much going on right now to be in love with anyone and I—I need to just concentrate on being healthy for a while. On figuring out who I am and what I want. Loving Ash, no matter how wonderful he is, has no part in that.

Except, it obviously does. Why else would my heart feel like it’s breaking under the weight of Ash’s pain? Why else would I care so much about what he’s feeling, about what he’s going through? Why else would I want so desperately to make him smile?

To make everything okay for him again?

But I can’t. There’s no way to fix what’s happened to Ash. To his parents, to his brother. To him. No matter how much I want to.

And I do want to. Oh, God, I want that so bad.

He’s still shaking against me, but when I try to turn to face him, to hold him, he locks his arm around my hip. Keeps me in place. Keeps me facing forward.

It breaks my heart, shatters me just a little bit more. But I understand. I know how vulnerable he feels, how wide open his sorrow makes him feel. Something was bothering him even before he got into this shower—I knew it and let it go because he asked me to. But whatever it is hasn’t gotten better while he’s been holding me, kissing me, touching me. It’s only gotten worse and I can’t handle that. Any more than I can handle not being able to do something for him when he’s in this kind of pain.

Wanting to give him as much comfort as he’ll allow, I sag back against him. Press my back to his front as tightly as I can. He shudders a little at the extra contact, presses hot, open-mouthed kisses against my neck and shoulder, and I pretend the wetness I feel against my skin is all from the shower.

I don’t know how long we stand there, Ash kissing and touching and holding me.

Long enough for the bathroom to completely steam up around us.

Long enough for my skin to start to prune.

More than long enough for my heart to break wide open for him.

And still he doesn’t seem ready to let go.

I can’t stand it anymore, though. Can’t stand the agony wracking him. Can’t stand the sorrow that throbs in the air around us. If he won’t talk to me, won’t share with me, maybe there’s another way to break down all the pain.

“You know what I really love about you?” I tell him, reverting to our previous conversation as I turn my head to press more kisses against his arm.

He clears his throat. “What?”

“Your dick.”

“What?” he asks with a startled bark of laughter that has his chest rumbling against my back and his hand loosening its death grip on my hip.

I take advantage of his amusement and shrug out of his hold. Then I’m turning to face him, dropping to my knees in front of him.

“Tansy, baby, you don’t have to do this,” he says, but his hands are already tangling in my hair and his voice is so deep it’s almost unrecognizable.

“I don’t
have
to do anything, Ash.” I lean forward and press a soft kiss to the tip of his cock, relishing the way it twitches just a little against my lips. If he won’t let me comfort him, at least I can make him feel good. Or I hope I can. This is still really new to me. “I want to.”

Bending down, I slide my hands up the back of his legs to his firm, toned ass. Cup it in my palms. Then I lean forward and pull him slowly, carefully, into my mouth.

It’s new to me. Ash and I have made love numerous times in the last couple of days, but I’ve never done this to him before and I want to. I really want to. I just don’t want to make a mistake and hurt him. I want it to be good for him.

Ash’s hands tangle in my hair as I suck him slowly, slowly, into my mouth. “Tansy, baby, that feels—”

He breaks off and I nearly stop to ask him what he was going to say. Good? Bad? It feels what? But the way he’s urging me on, one hand stroking my jaw while the other tugs at my hair, makes me think that maybe I’m doing an okay job of this.

Determined to make it good for him, I lick at him slowly, circling my tongue around his cock even as I gently suck. He groans, his fingers tightening, so I do it again, then again.

But I’m curious. Now that I’m down here on my knees, I want to explore all of Ash. I want to learn what he likes and what drives him absolutely crazy. So, letting instinct guide me, I go lower, licking my way across his balls with gentle flicks of my tongue that have him arching and pleading with me for more.

I have to admit, I like it. Like the sounds he makes, like the feel of him moving against my mouth, like the needy way that words are falling from his lips. I want to do this forever, want to feel like this forever. Desirable. Powerful. Tempting.

“Baby, please,” Ash gasps. “I’m so close already. Please …”

Because he asked nicely, and because I’m just as anxious as he is, I lick my way back up to where he wants me. As I do, I notice there’s a drop of pre-ejaculate on the head of his cock and I feel myself grow hot and wet at the sight. Curious to know what it tastes like—what Ash tastes like—I lean forward and lick it off.

Salty. Earthy. Rich and warm, like Ash.

He groans, tugs at my hair some more. “Tansy.”

It’s a warning and a plea and though I’m enjoying my newfound power, I also have no desire to torture Ash. Not when I get so much pleasure from giving him pleasure. So leaning forward, I swallow him whole, sucking him all the way inside my mouth. I use my lips on him, use my mouth and tongue and throat to learn as much of him as I can.

He groans, thrusts against me, and I lightly, lightly, scrape my teeth along his length, just to see what he’ll do.

“Fuck, Tansy!” He loses it then, goes careening over the edge I hadn’t even known he was close to.

With a hoarse shout, he arches forward, thrusts again and again against my mouth. He’s in control now, fucking me, but I’m okay with that. Ash has given me so much these last few days, has given me everything, and I want to do the same for him. I need to give him the same pleasure that he’s given me over and over again.

“I’m going to come,” he mutters, thrusting once more into my mouth before trying to pull out.

But I don’t want that. I want all of Ash, want him to come in my mouth if he’ll enjoy it. So I tighten my grip on his ass, hold him firmly in place as I once again take control. I suck him deep, then pull back, polishing the head of his cock with my tongue while he curses over and over again.