Page 94 of No Good Fight

“No.” Her fingers dig into my shirt before I can give her more room. “Don’t let go.”

I stay.

For a while, that’s all we do. The flashlight throws pale light across the ceiling. Rain works at the windows. The generator finally catches, and one monitor flickers to life with a dull blue glow before going black again. I want to get up and fix it. I don’t. Alex is shaking in my lap, and the system can wait.

“He used to do this at night,” she says.

Every violent thought in me goes quiet enough to listen.

Her voice is muffled against my shirt, the words scraped thin from having to come out. “Cut the power. Take my phone. Sometimes he’d just turn off the lights and sit there, waiting for me to panic so he could tell me how dramatic I was being.” She shifts her grip from my shirt to my shoulder, like she needs somewhere stronger to put the memory. “If I got up, he’d tell me to sit down. If I cried, he’d laugh and hit me some more. If I got quiet, he’d say he was proud of me for finally learning.”

I keep my hand moving over her back. Not too slow. Not too soothing. Just enough to remind her this room has a different body in it now.

“He called it helping me,” she says, and I feel the words hit her before I hear the next part. “The sex part too. He liked having me in the dark because I couldn’t see what he was going to do or when he was going to stop. He’d get me close to an orgasm and take it away until I was begging, then act like I should thank him because edging was supposed to be hot.”

My eyes burn from holding still.

“It wasn’t edging,” I say.

“No.” Her face lifts from my chest, and the weak light catches the tear tracks before she wipes them away with the heel of her hand. “It was him making sure even my own body had to wait for permission. He took everything from me, Ryder. Every single thing that I ever thought would be mine. And then, when I finally got away, I wasn’t even strong enough to take it back.”

I want to say a hundred things. Most of them are useless. A few would scare her with how intense they are. So I cup the back of her head and bring her forehead to mine, letting her feel the words where they leave me.

“He never deserved you. And you deserve every ounce of good and peace that you could ever want.”

Her breath shakes. “I know.”

I believe her. I also know knowledge doesn’t strip a memory out of the body just because the mind acknowledges it.

Alex shifts in my lap, and the movement changes the air between us before either of us says anything. Her thigh slides against mine. Her hand moves from my shoulder to the side of my neck. It isn’t accidental. Neither is the way she watches my mouth in the dark.

My hand stills at her back.

She catches it instantly. “Don’t.”

I keep my palm where it is. “Alex.”

“I need you not to stop because you’re afraid.” Her voice is quiet, but there’s nothing uncertain in it. “I’m afraid too. That doesn’t mean this isn’t what I want.”

The storm rolls over the roof again, lower this time. I stay where she put me, hands on her, breathing through the line between helping her and taking from a moment that already has too much pain in it.

She presses closer, her knees bracketing my thigh now, her hands sliding into my hair. “Help me take back one of the pieces of me that Preston stole.”

That breaks the last of my hesitation.

Because I’m not afraid of kissing her, or touching her, or even fucking claiming her. I’m afraid that Alex is going to see that I am too much.

I kiss her carefully, but she doesn’t let it stay careful for long. Her mouth opens under mine, warm and angry and alive, and when her hips move against me, I keep my hands on her waist instead of using them to hold her still.

She sets the pace at first. I let her find it, let her use the pressure of my thigh and the grip of my hands while the room stays dark around us and the flashlight glow trembles across the ceiling.

She pulls back to breathe, her forehead against my cheek. “Don’t make me chase it alone.”

“You’re not alone, Allycat. I’m here. Always here for you. Take what you want and trust me to give you the rest.”

My hand slides beneath the hem of my hoodie, over bare skin still chilled from fear and the remnants of the dark trying to force its way in. I wait there, palm spread across her lower stomach, and she covers it with her own before pushing me down so that my fingers meet the sensitive nerve bundle of her clit.

There’s nothing unclear about that.