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  I sat next to him though, got close, shoved my shoulder into him and started wiggling it so he had to put his arm around me. When he did, I pressed even closer. He got kinda stiff for a second then he relaxed and his arm curved tight around me so I rested my cheek against his shoulder.

  But I didn’t say anything. Sometimes, when I was trying not to cry and someone said something, it’d make me cry.

  So I just pressed close.

  We stayed this way a long time. It wasn’t comfortable but it was warm and it still felt good.

  Finally, he said something.

  “You know, I lost him too.”

  “I know Tu… I mean, Creed.”

  “She acts like she’s the only one.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s been years and I still find her drunk, smellin’ bad and passed out on the stupid couch with a stupid bottle, booze drenched in the carpet, his picture in her hand.”

  I pressed closer.

  “I lost him too,” he whispered.

  “I know, Creed.”

  He pulled in a loud breath.

  Then he said quiet, “You gotta get home.”

  I didn’t want to but I agreed, “Yeah.”

  We got up and he took my hand as we walked back to the gate. He stopped me like he always did outside. Then his eyes dropped to my throat, his hand let mine go and he lifted it and twitched the pendant there.

  He looked back at me and grinned. “You’re always wearin’ one ‘a those.”

  I nodded.

  “Even if they don’t match your outfit,” he kept talking.

  I grinned back. I liked it that he noticed. It felt good.

  “I like them,” I said. “And they’ve never turned my skin green.”

  He shook his head, still grinning and told me, “You’re a goof.”

  I shoved his shoulder and told him, “You’re a goof.”

  He shoved me back and replied, “You’re a bigger goof.”

  I smiled big and said, “Yeah.”

  “Go to bed, goof.”

  “Okay. You go home, goof.”

  He shook his head again then opened the gate for me.

  I started to slide through but turned back and looked up at him.

  “Creed is the best name ever,” I whispered. “I always thought so. Always. I’m glad you’re Creed but you always have been, you know.”

  I heard him pull in another breath.

  Then he whispered, “Go to bed, Sylvie.”

  I grinned up at him. “Okay, Creed.”

  I slipped through the gate, hearing it latch quietly behind me.

  Then I stole through the yard, the house, took off my warm clothes, changed my nightgown that had mud stains on the knees and seat, hid the dirty one under my mattress and I went to bed.

  Chapter Nine

  You Can’t Breathe without Me

  Present day, four days later…

  My eyes opened and all I could see was Creed’s tattooed back in front of me.

  The last four days I woke up alone to Creed making breakfast in the kitchen. Clearly, he was an early riser. I was not but did it for Charlene, though I got up at the last possible second.

  Last night, though, we went out. I got a shade past tipsy and when we came home, I attacked. It had been energetic, or more energetic than usual. It had lasted a long time, or even longer than normal. And it only stopped when we both passed out, or when I did.

  I must have done him in. Now, he was out.

  Sleep slowly leaving me, recent memories moved through my head.

  These were mostly about working and spending time with Creed. Learning he wasn’t good at his job, he was very good. He was a good partner, communicative, amusing, alert, sharp. Working with him was a lot like working with Ron, my dead partner. I could trust him because he knew what he was doing. We worked shit through, planned our moves, broke stuff down and when we did, he listened to me. I wasn’t just another gun, someone he was putting up with or a liability. I was a colleague. He treated me with respect, wasn’t overly protective and never acted like I was a girl.

  A couple of nights ago, he’d shared in my back room over beers, takeout cheeseburgers and onion rings that he’d had more experience than me, falling into the work within months of moving to Michigan. I’d shared that I’d started my training with Ron when I met him at a gun shop and range when I was buying my first gun about a week after I moved to Denver. I also shared that Ron offered to teach me how to shoot and, shortly after that, he took me on, we became partners and he’d taught me everything I knew.

  I further learned about Creed that, whatever happened sixteen years ago, he was a decent guy or good at playing one.

  He went with me every day to Charlene’s, even over the weekend, and there were no more donuts or Cocoa Puffs. Eggs and bacon that he made. Pancakes. Oatmeal. He was good with the kids and especially Adam.

  I knew this when, two days before, Adam had broken a figurine, kinda went weird about it and before Charlene or I could wade in, Creed did, calming Adam and then going so far as cleaning up the figurine.

  He also took them to lunch on Sunday then to the park while I went to Ron’s grave giving Charlene the house to herself to clean and then relax. It was a cool thing to do. They had to be a hand full but they came back excited and intact and Charlene called me that night to say they all were dead to the world within seconds of their heads hitting the pillows.

  With all this, and more, it was coming clear there was a lot to this new Tucker Creed.

  He did dishes. Put his towel on the towel rail. Rinsed out beer bottles before he recycled them and not only took out the trash but asked when trash day was and hauled the bins to the curb. He even went beyond the call of duty and, Saturday, took time out to mow mine and Charlene’s lawns.

  Truth be told, I was a little worried about this. Worried Charlene would get used to the extra help and then Creed would go to Arizona and there’d be no one to fix her car or mow her lawn.

  If I admitted it to myself, which I didn’t, I also worried about the fact that I really liked working with him and more, I liked having him around. And, needless to say, I freaking hated mowing my lawn so I liked not having to do that.

  I missed Ron. I didn’t mind working jobs alone but there was no denying it was better to work them with someone else. It wasn’t the additional brainpower and firepower, it was the company. Knowing you weren’t in it alone even when you were separated. I missed that. I’d been alone a long time and the only times since Creed left I didn’t feel alone had been when I was working with Ron or spending time with Knight or Charlene. It was cool to wake up knowing your day would include someone else in a way that was integral to life.

  Creed read all my open case files, sat down with me, made suggestions, we planned and we worked my shit together as well as Knight’s. Work got done and it shifted easily from me on my own to us working together. Life fell naturally into an order that was solid, comfortable. It was good. Too good.

  Last, it was also good getting it steady and abundantly and it was better since that “it” was so fucking great.

  I liked sex once it was about what I wanted and not what someone was taking from me. I lost myself in it. I was able to move total concentration to the good shit my body was feeling which meant I had no space to concentrate on the bad shit that was always at the edge of my mind.

  It was better with Creed.

  I couldn’t get enough of him. He couldn’t get enough of me. We jumped each other frequently, sometimes to fuck, sometimes to grope, sometimes just to kiss… and hard. He didn’t leave my presence, not even the room, without hooking me behind my neck, pulling my mouth to his and kissing me deep. I returned the favor. We’d done it on the couch in the back room (again), on the floor of the hall, in the shower and in my bed.

  It was wild but not abandoned. This was because I sensed him letting me guide it. I didn’t explore the boundaries of this power he was willing to give me by making him do some
thing he didn’t like, not again. He’d demonstrated he’d do that for me once, it touched me in a place I was denying so I didn’t push it because I was unwilling to go there again. That didn’t mean I didn’t feel him handing the reins over to me.

  He took, absolutely. He flipped me when he wanted the top, he adjusted us when he was ready for a new position, he took my mouth when he wanted it. But there was always an underlying alertness and if I gave the barest indication something wasn’t working for me, he backed off and did something else.

  It wasn’t gentle. It wasn’t making love. It was fucking.

  But, because of what Creed gave me, it was more. It skimmed the edge of making love because fucking was fucking but when you gave even a hint of more, which he did every time, it was something else.

  And it was dangerous.

  I knew it but I was powerless to stop it. This was not because it was Tucker Creed (or I was telling myself that). This was how I’d lived my life when I got free. I played with fire. I didn’t mind getting burned. It was a reminder that I was alive and it was a way to bury shit that, if it surfaced, would destroy me.

  So as the days passed, I was finding it harder to hold him distant. I was finding it harder to convince myself he didn’t mean anything to me. I was finding it harder to deny that the new Tucker Creed wasn’t getting to me.

  Right then, that tattoo nearly all I could see, my sleepy brain filled with all I’d experienced with him recently and waking up for the first time in my life beside him, I lost hold on all that. I lost control of my ability to separate the Creed that used to be from the Creed that was sleeping beside me. I lost the stranglehold I had on me.

  I had my head on the pillow but my body was close to his, my side brushing his, my eyes level to his shoulder. His head was turned away from me.

  We were both on our stomachs, his leg crooked, my leg crooked with his, the inside of my thigh resting on top of the back of his other leg which was straight. I had my arm curled around his back.

  Yes, me cuddling Creed (kind of).

  The sheets were over our legs and when I lifted my head slightly and looked down, I saw they were mostly over Creed’s ass but I could see the top of it wasn’t covered. None of mine was.

  My eyes moved up, my arm shifting and I caught the flowered “Sylvie” in the dent of his lower spine.

  Seeing my name inked in that vulnerable dent in his spine, a vulnerability surrounded by the power of his defined muscles, the beauty of the image of our place, my body moved before I told it to do so. My mouth hit his back at the lake then it glided down. His body twitched, shifted and I put my hands to him, one between his shoulders, one at his ass and pressed down lightly.

  “Sylvie.” It came out as a sleepy growl and went straight between my legs.

  My lips kept moving down his back, over his waist, soaking in the tat, soaking in our place, soaking in us. Then my lips moved up the curve of his ass. Pushing the sheet down, I bared my teeth and nipped his flesh.

  “Fuck,” he whispered, his big, powerful body shifting again.

  Against his skin, I murmured, “Stay still, baby.”

  “Fuck,” he whispered again and I shoved my hand between his legs, curled it up and found his cock.

  It was hard.

  Yes. I loved that. I wanted it. Needed it. Already.

  My mouth drifted up and there I was.

  Sylvie.

  In flowers.

  On our pier.

  Slow, so fucking slow, taking my time, my hand wrapped tight around his hard cock, I traced my flowered letters with my tongue.

  I got to the “i” and Creed was done.

  He rolled, disengaging me, knifed up, grabbed me, pulled me over him, his hand at his cock. He slammed me down, impaling me.

  My head shot back.

  Yes. Just what I needed.

  Exactly what I needed.

  His hands slid up my back, his fingers curling around my shoulders holding me down as his forearms pressed deep, holding me to him.

  He felt good, hard, big, filling me.

  I was gone. Seriously gone. Already close. I had to move.

  I righted my head and looked at him. “Gotta move, Creed,” I whispered.

  “What’d he take from you?” he whispered back.

  His tattoo in my head, our place still on my lips, my name in his skin on my tongue, all I was learning that was him filling my head, his cock inside me, I worked against those odds and tried to bury it.

  I failed.

  Still, I breathed, “Don’t. Let me move.”

  “Tell me what he took from you. I’m giving it back.”

  Shit.

  “Creed –”

  His hips bucked up and my breath hitched.

  God, that felt great.

  “You wanna move, baby, tell me what he took from you.”

  “Don’t wanna, gotta,” I whispered, pressing my breasts into his skin and dragging my nails lightly down his back, two things I knew, fucking Creed copiously the last few days, he liked. A lot.

  It didn’t work.

  “He held you down, Sylvie, I’m gonna hold you down. I’m gonna show you it’s good. You can trust it. You can enjoy it. I’m gonna give you that back.”

  “Please –”

  “He tied you down. I’m gonna tie you to the bed, baby, and you’re gonna love it.”

  Fuck.

  I needed to move and his words, the heat behind them, the determination weren’t helping matters.

  “Baby –”

  “When I’m done, you will fear nothing. Never again. I’m gonna give that back to you. Now, what else did he take from you?”

  “Creed –”

  His hips bucked up and it pulsed through me.

  “What did he take from you?”

  I shoved my face in his neck and ground my hips into his.

  “Sylvie –”

  “My ass.”

  His fingers at my shoulders dug in.

  “He took your ass?” he growled.

  “Yeah,” I breathed then, on a plea, “I need to move.”

  “Didn’t make it good for you?”

  “That shit’s not good, Creed.”

  “That shit’s fuckin’ awesome, Sylvie,” he returned, his voice rumbling through me. “I get you ready, you’ll come so hard with me up your ass, you’ll think you’re comin’ out of your skin.”

  Serious to God. I didn’t know how, that was not my gig but the way Creed was talking about it, it was not helping.

  “I need to move, baby.”

  “What else did he take?”

  “Creed –”

  His hips bucked up and I whimpered.

  “What else did he take, Sylvie?”

  “He hit me.”

  Creed’s body stilled underneath me and it did this so completely it felt like all the air in the room stilled with him.

  “What?” he asked.

  “He hit me.”

  “While he was fuckin’ you?”

  His anger wasn’t slithering through the room and the room wasn’t stilled anymore.

  It was vibrating with fury. Every fucking centimeter.

  I lifted my head but before I could look at him and answer in the affirmative, I was on my back and Creed was pounding into me.

  Finally!

  I opened my mouth to speak but didn’t say a word because his slammed down on mine.

  He fucked me hard and kissed me harder. Then he fucked me harder and I kissed him deep. Then I lifted my knees high, wrapped my calves around him and groaned down his throat as all he gave me washed over me.

  He didn’t break the contact of our mouths even while I came, while he kept thrusting hard and deep or when his heavy grunts drove down my throat with his own release.

  When he was done, coming down, he slammed up hard and planted himself so deep, I swear, it was like he wanted to fuse with me.

  Then his mouth slid down my cheek to my ear and his voice was gruff with his orgasm and emotion
when he whispered, “My tat means to you what it means to me.” I closed my eyes tight, mentally kicking myself for giving that away and moved my hands to his shoulders but he pressed his entire body into me, negating my shove before it even began. “Kept you close every day, every night, right with me and now you know it. You just don’t know what to do with it.”

  Shit, how did I let this happen?

  Shit. I just had to wake up to him and I was open, bare. Fuck!

  “Get off me,” I whispered.

  He lifted his head and his face, harsh and intense, looked down at me. “And you won’t know what to do with it until you talk to me.”

  “Sex, work, food, beer then you’re back to Arizona, partner,” I reminded him.

  “I’d move here. I’d move to the goddamned, fucking moon to wake up to you in my bed.”

  Holy shit!

  “Just came inside you, Sylvie, no condom. That was just you and me, nothing in between. Nothing. And you know exactly what I fuckin’ mean,” he remarked and I blinked.

  Shit. How did that happen?

  Shit!

  He pulled out, rolled off and I closed my legs, turned to the side, curled my knees up and tried to sort out the ten thousand thoughts crashing in my head. The priority of which was Creed’s badass sperm, likely Olympic-class swimming with pinpoint accuracy, inside me and whether I was up-to-date on my birth control pills.

  Fuck!

  Letting my mind wander to heretofore, unknown unsafe sex was a mistake. I was doing that and therefore not processing the fact that he was prowling to my mirror. I also didn’t process the fact that he snatched a long scarf I had dangling on it and was prowling back, twisting it and doing something with it in his hands.

  But I processed his knee hitting the bed and his hand capturing my arm.

  I shot up and tried to pull away.

  “What the fuck?” I clipped as he looped the scarf over my hand, it tightened at my wrist and, even as I pulled and struggled, before I knew it, he’d tied the other end to my headboard.

  My eyes shot to him and rage shot through my system.

  “You fucking fucker!” I screeched.

  “Look at my hand, Sylvie,” he ordered, calm as could be, the fucking fucker!

  “Fuck you!” I yelled, my other hand going toward my wrist tied to the bed but he batted it gently away. My eyes shot back to him. “Let me untie it!”