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different. You can’t change or save me.”
Rylie swallowed hard at the intensity in his blue eyes. “I’m not trying to save you, but I don’t believe that’s all you are.”
At her soft admission, his nostrils flared, and he stared at her lips. “You should go.”
“But you need to come to work—”
“Right now you are sitting on my lap, you feel really good, and your mouth is too close.”
She blinked at him. “Are you saying you want to kiss me?”
His blue eyes turned nearly black and her thighs clenched in reaction to that look. Lust. Dustin wants me.
“Yes. Yes, I want to kiss you. Everywhere.”
Rylie’s heart slammed against her breastbone and she found herself tempted. Oh so very tempted.
Then she remembered the girl sneaking from his house this morning and she pushed herself off him, putting distance between her traitorous body and his.
“You are a pig. You really can’t keep it in your pants for more than a few hours?”
He leaned back on his hands with a grin, but she refused to look down. “It seems to have escaped your notice, but I’m not wearing pants.”
“Oh!” She picked up her broken shoe and limped out of his room.
The unbelievable nerve of him. Propositioning and teasing her. And she’d started to think he might be a decent guy.
“See you at work, sweetheart,” he called after her.
Rylie grit her teeth, resisting the urge to turn around and throw her broken heel at his head. She was going to have to call the realtor and find something else to rent. There was no way she could stay here anymore and not kill him.
* * * *
A half an hour later, Dustin stood in his shower, letting the hot water rain down on him as he stared at the tile floor, emotions churning in his gut.
God, he was a dick.
He really hadn’t meant to be, but when he’d first come awake to find her hovering over him, he’d been on alert. He knew she could probably see everything.
His ass. His back. The scars.
Dustin’s hand came up to finger one of the raised lines on his shoulder. They weren’t his scars; he wasn’t claiming them. They belonged to his dad.
He’d never told his mom or his brothers about them. He’d wondered if his brothers shared similar marks across their skin from the buckle of their dad’s belt, but he didn’t ask. Like the nights his mom had screamed and cried from his parent’s bedroom, it wasn’t something they talked about.
He’d refused to break for the old bastard though. There had been a couple times that he’d prayed his dad would just kill him. That was something his dad couldn’t make them cover up or hide and at least his mom would be safe.
Women didn’t ask him about the scars and if they did, they were not so politely asked to leave.
The one therapist he’d gone to had asked him why he didn’t blame his mom for the abuse, and he didn’t have an answer. His dad had never hit him when she was home. He often wondered if she knew, or if his dad had done it this way to hide it from her, knowing that Dustin wouldn’t say anything. It had started at twelve, and he’d been too old to go crying to her, especially when he knew she got it worse.
But when he was fifteen, he’d had enough. He’d shot up six inches and put on about fifty pounds of muscle over the summer. One afternoon, his dad had come after him for mouthing off, and he’d been ready.
Only he’d almost put the old bastard in the hospital he’d beat him so bad. Dustin had told him the next time he touched him or his mom, he wouldn’t get back up off the floor.
His father hadn’t had him arrested, maybe because he’d known that his dirty secrets might come to light. His father had taken off to their beach house in Mexico and when he’d come back several weeks later, Dustin had moved into the guest house. He’d spent the last three years he lived there barely speaking to his father.
If he had continued to hurt Dustin’s mom, Dustin had never seen it, so she’d either hidden it well or his dad had taken his threat to heart. Dustin didn’t talk about what happened with anyone, so when Rylie had stood over him, watching him sleep and seeing his scars, he’d been struck down with a vulnerability he’d never known. And he’d hated it. He’d felt powerless and he’d wanted his power back.
