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“What?”
“I didn’t want to stop.”
“Fuck, me neither. You’ve got me harder than a steel pipe, Summer, just thinking about kissing you more, squeezing your big tits and eating your pretty little snatch. Christ almighty,” Boyd curses, his dark eyes skittering down my body then back up to my face. “But we have to stop, now, so don’t fucking tempt me any more than you already have.” I swallow, reticently looking up at his face.
When his gaze searches mine the way it’s doing, desperate, I nod. “I won’t.”
“Good girl. Now, tell me.” He quaffs the husk out of his tone. “Did that bruise come from the asshole you ran away from?” Boyd’s eyes beam down at me, pupils widened. When I don’t answer right away his nostrils flare and it’s clear I don’t have to say the words. He understands.
His fingers curl into his palms, stretch open, then curl again, tighter. “I don’t take kindly to men who lay their hands on women. And if that punk-ass motherfucker comes anywhere close to you while you are under my watch”—he leans in closer, nearly brushing his nose against mine—“I will kill him with my bare fists.”
My throat thickens. “Um. It…it happens, sometimes, when a person tries to venture past the Lights…” I start, then still. The words immediately die on my tongue. I’m all you have, Maggie. No one will ever love you like me. We are connected in a special way, Maximillian’s thinly veiled threats race through my head. Along with the less furtive ones. No matter where you are I’ll find you.
Sensing my unease, Boyd reaches over, and his hand engulfs mine. “How’d you end up there, honey?”
“It was a long time ago. I was with my family—mom, dad, sister. We were riding in one of those…those things. Like your motor bicycle, but with doors?”
“A car?” Boyd puzzles a face.
“Yes, that’s right,” I sort of remember. “My parents were arguing in the car. The road was curving this and that way. My stomach felt weak. And then, well I’m not sure, maybe it is all part of the dream—”
“The dream?” he repeats.
“The dream we all have…before we’re adopted. Before we start a new life inside the Lights.”
“Go on…”
I can’t. It isn’t an easy story to tell. I have never been asked to tell it.
Tears crowd my throat. I cut my gaze, reaching for the glass on the table. I bring it to my lips and punch it down in one gulp that stings my esophagus and wakes the rest of me right the fuck up.
I don’t know how I knew, but that was definitely the thing to do.
“There was a crash,” I say finally. “My family members would not wake up and I started to get hungry, cold. No one came for a long time so I went into the woods. I was so relieved when Maximillian found me. He…saved me.”
“He was no savior,” Boyd grits out, his chin hardening. The sinuous tendons connecting his shoulders and neck engorge with pressure, bloodlust.
“No?” I challenge. My fingers fold and unfold together in my lap. “What would have happened to me?”
“I don’t want to think about it. I can’t stand the thought of anything bad ever happening to you, ever, ever again,” he says, the air growing thick between us. “You’re mine now, Summer. Mine to look after. Mine to protect. Mine.”
“Yours?” I lift my eyes to Boyd’s. It’s undeniable; there’s a connection between us, a real one, and it vibrates like a tuning fork, making me keen to his every flexion. The twitch of his fingertips. If he exhales a bit too roughly, every hair follicle on my neck stands attentive.
What is this thing? What has this man stirred to life inside of me?
“Is there a chance these assholes are going to show up here looking for you? Do I need to be ready?”
“I-I don’t know.” I find myself quieting a thrum of desire. This strong, sexy, though semi-overbearing man, has my back and hot fuck if that doesn’t send my center of heat rollicking.
Maybe that’s it. Or maybe it’s just the nightcap stuff. Whatever is overtaking me it has courage filling up my innards. My fingers reach out to graze his arm. His round tanned bicep stone beneath my gentle caresses. “Thank you, Boyd.”
“You know, sweetheart. I never met my real dad. You’ve heard of that song, ‘my daddy gave me a name’?” he queries. I puzzle a look. “No, right, of course you haven’t. Well that’s pretty much it. My dad gave me a name and nothing else before he walked out on us. When I was five my mother remarried. My stepdad was a real winner, used to beat up on Mom all the damn time. And she never said shit. Not even when he pummeled the hind off of me too.”
“Oh, my god. Boyd. I’m sorry.”
“I’ll never let a man get away with that, ever again.” He reels his hurt in, and though there’s fury right at the surface, there’s a softening in his gaze. “Just know this. You can bet that sweet hiney of yours that whatever happened to you, whatever they did, won’t happen again,” and I know he means it.
And it dawns on me that this is the first time I’ve truly felt safe in gosh, who knows how long.
I nod, broke for words. He may not be a prince, but he is my prince. He’s my knight in shining armor. No. He is my king.
It’s too bad I can’t actually stay here with him, and with Topher. I know Boyd would do whatever it took to defend me but he would be outnumbered. Being here…I’m only putting him in danger, too.
I need to get a lot farther gone. So far gone that I disappear.
And no, I still don’t have a dang plan. All I know is I need to start over, over again.
