Acting Brave (Fenbrook Academy #3) (56 page)

“
Ryan!”
Jasmine screamed. She was clutching at my arm. “I don’t want you to be like him.
I don’t want you to be like him!”

I took three shuddering breaths and lowered the gun, then handed it back to Neil. We took off before the cops arrived.

Chapter 69

Jasmine

Back at the mansion, I took a long, hot shower and that helped. When I emerged I was still shaky, but I didn’t feel quite so cold inside.
I’ll be okay. Everything’s okay—

Then I looked at my wrist and saw Earl’s hand there, his bony fingers curled around it, and felt like I was going to throw up. I sat down on the floor and breathed until the nausea passed.

I’d thought, on some level, that the world I’d left behind in Chicago had ceased to exist when I buried Emma underneath Jasmine. But it hadn’t, of course. It had been right there waiting for me this whole time. Jasmine hadn’t been an escape route. She’d been a temporary reprieve.

I knew now that running away had been the wrong thing to do. You can’t hide from a monster like my dad. You either find a way to stop him, or you have to accept that he’s out there, waiting for you. The tears came, then, and I crawled on all fours back into the shower stall, turned the water on again and let it soak me, winding up slumped against the wall.

After a long time, there was a knock on the door. “Jasmine?” Ryan’s voice.

Jasmine’s dead,
I thought bitterly.

“Emma?”

I turned off the water so that I could hear him better, but I didn’t get out of the shower. I couldn’t face him. I sat there naked, my arms wrapped around myself. “I should have stopped him,” I said. “I should have stopped him three years ago.”

“You couldn’t.” His voice was close. I imagined his massive frame right outside the door, leaning into it, his mouth almost against the wood.

“I wasted three years,” I said. “I’m right back where I started.”

“Don’t say that,” he said, his voice so firm that it cut through the dark cloud in my head. “Don’t ever say that. Look at what you’ve done. Look at the friends you’ve made.” I heard him take a deep breath. “Maybe that’s what you needed. Maybe that’s what these three years were all about. Growing. Getting strong enough. You weren’t strong enough then. You are now. You can do this.”

My voice broke and caught. “You really believe that?”

“
Yes!”

I slowly stood up. My body was still wet and I shivered a little. I got out of the shower stall, found a toweling robe and wrapped myself in it, then opened the door.

He was standing there, just as I’d imagined him. I could see the pain in his eyes from worrying about me and my heart melted. He stepped forward but, as he came closer, my hand went up to the neck of my robe and pulled it further closed.

I looked up at him helplessly, my eyes filling with tears. I hadn’t really been aware of the effect the day had had, until that second. Not until he was looking at me, nearly naked.
Oh shit. Oh shit, oh shit.
I felt—

I shook my head.

“It’s okay,” he said softly.

I shook my head again.

He brushed my wet hair back from my face with one fingertip. “It’s okay,” he said again.

“No it’s not.
No it’s not!”
I tore away from him, clutching the robe tight around me. All the old feelings were coming back, horribly familiar. I felt—

Dirty.

Tainted.

My dad had known this. He’d known that seeing those men again would reduce me to a wreck. That’s why he’d sent them. Even if they couldn’t grab me and make me miss the trial, they’d leave me unable to testify.

Ryan folded his arms around me, making
shh-
ing sounds. He stroked my back.

“Why are you
with
me?!” I sobbed. “I’m a mess! I’m a—”

“You’re the greatest person I’ve ever known,” he whispered. “And I’ll wait a lifetime for you, if that’s what it takes.”

And then he just held me there, as steam from my hour-long shower wafted around us and my shivering body soaked up his warmth. Until my tears stopped and I could meet his eyes again.

He offered his hand and I hesitated for a moment, afraid that it would bring back the memories of Earl. But his grip was completely different, warm and gentle and loving, even in its massive strength. He led me across the hallway and into our bedroom.

“I—I can’t—” I started.

“We’re not going to,” he told me simply. “I’m just going to help you relax.”

He lay me gently on the bed and I stared up at him, my breathing fast.
Relax?!
How the hell was he going to do that?! I remembered that time in the kitchen, when I’d still been Jasmine, ready to pounce on him and give him The Full Jasmine Experience. We were a long, long way from there.

He bent down and kissed me softly, letting his lips rest on mine for a full minute as my breathing gradually slowed. “Turn over on your front,” he said quietly.

I turned over onto my stomach, moving the pillows and turning my face to the side. I actually felt more comfortable, that way, because I didn’t have to meet his eyes.
Don’t look at me,
I thought, still close to tears.

His hands closed on my shoulders and I gasped at the sheer size of him, at the way his powerful fingers made me feel tiny. His thumbs started to stroke across my muscles, then pressed in deep. The muscles were so taut they were hard as rock.

His thumbs started to circle and probe while his fingers worked at the front. I closed my eyes.

It was the perfect treatment. I couldn’t have talked about my feelings, not in that state. And I couldn’t have let him touch me, sexually. But this was like a secret door into my soul, calming me in a way I’d never have thought of. I could feel my heartbeat gradually slowing. The soft toweling robe scrunched against my bare skin, absorbing the last drops of water.

I felt as if I was sinking into the bed, everything from my shoulders down to my toes gradually relaxing. After several long minutes of this, I was no longer shaking and my breathing had slowed.

“Can I take the robe down?” His voice was low, a bass rumble that came from directly above me. He’d straddled me, I realized, his knees either side of me. When had he done that? I opened my mouth to speak, but I didn’t trust my voice, yet. I nodded.

He reached around beneath me, moving as slowly and gently as a veterinarian trying not to startle a spooked horse. I felt the belt of the robe loosen.

Then he was sliding it down off my shoulders, revealing my upper back. Immediately, I started to tense up again. But he didn’t push it any lower. He just left it there and went back to work on my shoulders, this time skin on skin, and now every touch was a healing caress, his strength flowing into me. I could feel his eyes on my body and, after a while, I stopped twisting inside at the feeling.

Without words, he pulled the robe lower. I moved my arms down to help him, letting it slip down to my elbows so that most of my back was bared. Another twinge inside.
Don’t look at me! I’m unclean!
But his hands went to work again, stroking me, kneading my muscles, easing me down into relaxation again. Telling me that it was okay.

He put his hands on my arms, ready to slide the robe the rest of the way off my upper half. But he didn’t do it—he waited for me.

I took a long breath. Then another. On the third breath, I managed to speak. “They—”

That was all I managed.

He leaned in close enough that I could feel the heat of his words on my naked skin. “What they did to you didn’t touch you where it matters. It didn’t touch your soul.” He lifted my wet rope of hair and kissed me high up on the back of my neck, then laid a slow trail of kisses all the way down my spine to where the robe started. “You are the most beautiful, most amazing woman I’ve ever known and nothing they did to you,—nothing anyone can ever do to you—will ever change that.”

I realized that the sheet under my face was wet with tears. They’d been silently rolling down my cheeks as I cried the pain out.

Then he spoke again and it was in a way I hadn’t heard before. A way that I suspected no one had heard him speak before, not even his girlfriends before me. It came from deep down inside him, from his soul. “They saw you were a woman and they thought you were weak. But you’re going to triumph over them because you are ten thousand times stronger than they can ever be.”

I shook my head softly against the sheet.

“
Ten thousand times,”
he insisted. “Than they can
ever
be.”

I sniffed and finally opened my eyes and twisted around enough to meet his eyes. He was struggling with the words but, at the same time, they were rushing out of him from a soul-deep need. I hung onto every syllable because I knew he hadn’t ever spoken like this before, and he might not ever again. He was opening up to me on a level I’d never seen.

“I have loved you,” he told me, “from the first time I set eyes on you. You are burned into my mind in furious fire that can never be put out.”

Hope was tugging at the hurt and shame, trying to pull it away from me. I turned the rest of the way around. The robe was gaping open at the front, my breasts exposed, and I didn’t care anymore. I stared at him and he stared at me.

“You are my everything,” he told me. And I finally felt the shame lift away.

I flung myself into his arms and we hugged tight, and then we were falling back onto the bed with me beneath him. He looked into my eyes and ran a hand experimentally down my naked side.

I nodded.

When you look at a guy as big and strong as Ryan, sometimes it’s difficult to imagine that there’s a gentle soul inside. Certainly, it’s difficult to imagine that he could understand a woman as well as he could—let alone a woman as fucked up as me. When I first met him, I’d made the same mistake. Now I saw how well he could read me—better than I could read myself. Given the choice, I’d have hidden myself away for weeks, months, before I dared to let him look at me again. But he’d known that he needed this
now,
before the wounds of the day could close up and turn into new scars. I needed to be healed before I was damaged again forever.

He kissed me on the neck and arched his back, pressing the whole length of his body against me, from shoulder all the way to groin, and it felt incredible. My breasts, still damp from the shower, were squashing against his chest, their wetness soaking into his shirt. My lower half was still covered by the robe but my legs had flopped apart a little and, between them, I could feel the start of a warm glow I thought would never come back.

He sat back on his knees and slowly pulled the belt of the robe out of its loops. He flicked the two halves of the robe apart and I lay there naked and trembling as he looked at me. The twisting inside had gone, now. I didn’t feel dirty, or tainted, or touched by them. I felt new. I just wanted to be his.

He moved down over me again, taking his weight on his forearms, and we kissed, slow and open-mouthed, his tongue tracing the shape of my lips and then darting between them. My breath came in deep, shuddering gulps, each faster than the last, and then we were kissing madly, hungrily, unable to get enough of each other.

He pushed one hand down between our bodies and cupped my breast, his thumb caressing my nipple until it stood hard and aching. He lifted off me a little and slipped the other hand down between us as well, but lower, down over my damp stomach and between my thighs and—

I broke the kiss to groan as his fingers began to play over the folds of my sex. My groin rocked up to meet him and I felt myself open a little to his touch. The heat inside me was building rapidly, turning to moisture.

He lifted himself off me enough that he could gaze into my eyes. “I want to see you,” he said. And he held my eyes as his hands went to work, one at my breast, rubbing and squeezing, the other down between my legs. His fingers stroked up and down, twisting and circling over my throbbing bud, using my own juices as lubrication. Then he was entering me with one finger, thickly wonderful and knobby, sliding slowly deeper. His eyes never left mine as I gasped and panted and arched my back in response.

He began to pump me like that, while his other hand played with my nipple. Tendrils of red fire were licking out from my breast and meeting the heat that flowed up from my sex, but the strongest heat of all was coming from his gaze. His eyes were burning into me, melting me from the inside out. He was drinking in my response, my every shudder and moan.

He withdrew his finger and replaced it with two and I bent my knees, sliding my feet up the bed. He started a slow, insistent rhythm and I bit my lip. The soft web of skin between his thumb and index finger was rubbing back and forth over my bud and I could feel the heat inside churn and spin like clouds pulled into a hurricane. I could feel myself getting wetter and slicker around him as his speed built. I wanted him inside me but he seemed determined to do this first, to watch me as he—

His fingers twisted and pushed and I sucked in my breath, electricity arcing up through my spine. I started to jerk my hips on the bed in time to his thrusts, my ass grinding in circles. Molten, liquid pleasure started to flood upward from my groin, filling my whole body. He was staring down at me, coaxing me on with his eyes, persuading me to let go and be his, utterly his. And finally, as the heat overtook me, I did exactly that.