Surrender (12 page)

Chapter Twe
nty-one

G
unner and
Avery left sometime after nine p.m. Dare walked them to the dock and watched them move away nearly silently before heading back to the house. He checked the perimeter first. None of the alarms had been triggered, save the silent ones he himself tripped walking them down to the water.

He reset them, checked for tire marks beyond those of his own truck’s and, satisfied, went back inside.

Grace had showered and was sitting in the kitchen wearing his shirt and a pair of his jeans, rolled up a million times and belted. Her feet were bare, and he grabbed her socks and bent down to put them on her even while she protested.

“You’re supposed to rest and stay warm.”

“It’s like a thousand degrees out.”

“You’re arguing, so I know you’re better,” he told her. “Are you hungry?”

“Not yet. First I want to go see my house.”

“It’s not safe.”

“Nothing in my life is, Dare.” She stared at him. “The man who killed Marnie . . .”

“I took care of him.”

She nodded, like a part of her knew that already. “It had to be Rip. It’s always him.”

Unfortunately, he couldn’t disagree. “Gunner said you knew the man who broke in.”

“He’s one of Rip’s associates. Head of security. He’s a nasty man and he’s good at what he does.” Her tone was bitter but firm. “Please . . . I need to go back there one last time.”

He knew he should say no, but the guy was long gone. Gunner had set up surveillance cameras at Grace’s and they’d seen no one come back and no signs of anyone else’s surveillance.

Trashing her house had been a message. She’d received it, loud and clear. And by the look in her eyes, she was ready to send one of her own. The least he could do was help her.

* * *

Grace’s house was
n’t close enough to the water to risk taking the boat and walking through the dark bayou. Instead, Dare drove in a seemingly aimless pattern for a while, took the back route and parked far enough away so they could see if anyone was near the house when they got close. According to the security button cam Gunner had installed, no one had gone inside since the initial break-in.

Grace couldn’t go inside at first. Instead, she circled around to the front, since the back still looked pristine, the greenery she’d used to pretty up the wild tangle still intact.

She knew it would be the only thing that was.

When she got to the front yard, it nearly broke her, that something as simple as a destroyed garden could make her feel that way after everything she’d been through. But to see the grasses, the herbs and the flowers trampled and slashed and pulled purposefully out of the ground . . . she was sick with grief and hate.

“We don’t have to go in,” Dare told her.

“I do.” She pushed past him through the already open front door, and without stepping inside, she saw the wide swath of damage.

Everything she’d cultivated, cared for, tended to, inside and out, was destroyed. It wasn’t the first time that Rip had done something like this to her.

“I should’ve known better. He taught me better than this.”

You don’t get attached to people or things. If you don’t, you’ll never be hurt. No one, nothing can touch you if you follow those rules.

He hadn’t realized then that he’d given her a battle plan for survival.

He must’ve realized he was teaching her to be exactly like him. That was the worst possible outcome; that could hurt her far more than a decimated living space.

She could still smell Hal in here, the same heavy aftershave—an expensive brand—he’d always worn. She’d hated smelling like him after he’d touched her—and he did so purposely, like the scent would brand her.

She pulled Dare’s shirt over the lower half of her face so she could smell only him instead.

She forced herself to walk through the rooms, her borrowed sneakers crunching on broken glass and ceramic, strewn clothing ruined with bleach. She memorized every inch of broken space and tucked it away into that place where vengeance brewed, hot and harsh, waiting until the time was right to seek retribution.

When she turned back toward the door, Dare was waiting there, watching the perimeter and her at the same time. His face wore a haunted look, but his stance was all warrior, ready to strike if necessary.

For you.

He was on her side, their connection a far cry from everything that had happened between them the night he’d dragged her away from here and her then blossoming, beautiful garden. Deep down, she’d known it was the last time she’d see it as it was, which was why she’d danced in it at midnight. She didn’t know if that was her gift at work or pure intuition, but either way, she’d been right.

She walked through the garden, bent down and ran her hands over the earth. She grabbed some dirt in her fist and squeezed, as if making it a part of her.

“I’ll plant you a new one,” he told her, his voice rough. She looked up at him and then down at the ground again, until she found a stone to her liking, small, polished white with age. She opened her palm and brushed the dirt off, took the stone with her instead.

“Burn it all to the ground,” she told him.

“Grace—”

“I want the last word.”

He didn’t argue further. And as she watched from the safety of the truck, at his insistence, she saw the flames purify the area, burning away Rip’s touch and his hold on her forever.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but she knew the earth would recover and flourish. Someone else would live there, maybe even happily ever after. But it wouldn’t be her.

* * *

Dare had grabbed the
matches from his car and siphoned some gasoline from the tank. Then he’d walked up to the house and he’d goddamned tried to breathe.

Every fire he’d had to start since that night in the jungle made him flash back badly, sometimes when he was awake. He couldn’t afford to let that happen here—not when he had to stay on guard for Grace.

Now, as he stood apart from the flames, he closed his eyes and felt the heat, knew this burning was symbolic for both of them. Strangely enough, this time, it was easy for him to stay in control, the same kind Grace insisted on. He controlled this fire, and when he thought of it like that, he was able to open his eyes and not see the scene from the jungle in front of him.

Fire purifies and fire destroys.
Grace had taken control of the situation, and maybe he should follow her lead, burn the past. Except the man he was fighting was both past and present. Dare just had to make sure Powell wasn’t the future.

He watched as Grace’s house and garden burned. All that beauty, destroyed. But it was transient. The most important part was in the car, safe and sound.

He knew the police might come out eventually, but this area of the bayou was already so deserted, half-destroyed by Katrina’s fury, that he wasn’t worried about an immediate law enforcement presence.

He had the hose, wet down the perimeter to deter that fire from spreading and watched to make sure the fire didn’t spread any farther than it needed to. He waited until the house was down to the studs, Grace’s belongings unrecognizable ash, before he began to douse the flames.

She wanted the last word because she knew Powell’s men would come back to check at some point. He didn’t doubt it. If Powell knew where she’d been living, it was time to get the hell out of the bayou and Louisiana—and soon. Powell’s men might never find Darius’s house, but the wolves were circling—and he needed a plan for fighting back.

He had a feeling that the answer lay in brute force.

When the last of the embers were wet and cold, he dropped the hose, shut off the water and walked away.

When he got into the truck, Grace kept her face turned toward the side window even after they’d driven away.

* * *

Grace squeezed her h
ands together tightly and tried to tell herself that none of this hurt, that if she pretended hard enough and long enough, it wouldn’t matter that everything she tried to build was consistently destroyed by a man claiming to be her family.

As she’d done in the past, she had the final say—destroyed before they could destroy her further. She’d long ago realized that nothing was as important as taking control and never letting it go.

But she’d handed some of it—a lot of it—over to Dare. And he hadn’t disappointed her. He’d taken care of Marnie, of the house . . . of her.

And she didn’t know what to do now.

She’d developed survival instincts that had worked well for her up until she’d met Dare. Now all the rules had changed completely, and she felt the need to hang on to the closest immovable object with both hands.

And the closest immovable object was Dare.

“You saved me,” she told him finally, when Dare pulled the truck up alongside his house. She turned and faced him. “I would’ve been there and they would’ve taken me . . . or worse.”

“Yeah, I should get a goddamned medal.” He got out of the truck, but he didn’t slam the door, and then he opened her door, got them back into the house and locked inside.

She sat at the table with a pad of paper and a pen and wrote quietly for the next hour. When he finally sat across from her with a cup of coffee for each of them, she pushed the paper his way.

“It’s everything I remember from Rip’s. Layouts. Codes. Names. Numbers. I’m sure things have changed, but Darius said you were good with patterns.”

“I am.” He fingered the pages. “I’ll have to ask questions.”

“I know.”

“But not tonight.”

She looked at him, surprised, but when she looked into his eyes, she knew his intentions.

“Is something wrong?”

“Not wrong, no,” he murmured. “But we don’t have a lot of time before Avery and the others come back here. And we’ve had too many stops and starts between us already. Tonight, I’m not stopping what’s been happening between us, unless you say your piece first.”

She watched him rise from the chair and walk the short distance to her. Instead of answering him with words, she stood to meet him.

He gathered her even as she stood and wrapped her arms around him. She pressed her lips to his, and then he walked them both into the shower, fully clothed. She appreciated the sentiment—a fresh start, stripping away the past—and as everything dropped to the floor under the spray, Dare buried his head against her neck and just held her tightly for a long moment, even as his erection pressed into her belly.

He moved the wet clothes away as she began to soap him up, shushing him when he insisted he wanted to do this for her.

She soaped his hair with shampoo, rinsed it until it shone nearly blue-black, washed the smoky residue and smell from him, and then he did the same for her.

The bond that had already grown between them cemented at that moment. Dare would never hurt her, but she would need to convince him to use her the way he’d planned to before they’d met.

The way she’d always known it would have to be.

She let her fingers thread through his hair. She’d wanted to touch it like this since he’d grabbed her, and she moaned her approval against his mouth.

There had never been anyone for her like this—not even close—and for someone as open about her sexuality as she was . . . it was the first time she’d
felt
. Before this, she’d forced herself to be numb during sex. Frozen her heart, refused herself pleasure other than from the power she gained from each encounter.

That had all changed.

“What do you want from me, Dare?” she murmured, fear spiking her heart because she knew the answer. Didn’t know if she could actually handle this, but she’d come this far.

Pushing forward was the only thing to do.

“This is what I want, and it has nothing to do with pity, or simple need. It has to do with you, Grace. Because I’ve wanted to be inside of you, making you cry out my name, since I first laid eyes on you in the garden, dancing in your bare feet under the moon.”

His honesty took her breath away. She was mesmerized by his skin—it was tawny, with both white and reddish pink scars on his chest and arms. Scars from battles new and old.

She wanted to scar him with her fingernails still, rake them down his back, make him hers. But the desire to control him wasn’t as strong as it had been earlier.

She wondered if she could truly let him in and decided she couldn’t. But he wouldn’t know that.

As if rising to her challenge, he lifted her, pressing her sex to his arousal. She responded by wrapping her legs around his waist, arms around his broad shoulders as he carried them, both still dripping, to his bedroom.

The quilt was already off, as if the bed had been prepared for them. The cool air combined with the water on her skin felt heavenly.

When he pressed her into the sheets, his hand found her folds while he suckled her nipple. She jolted at the burst of arousal that speared through her like a fast-blossoming flower in springtime. She was clutching his shoulders, knew she was babbling—a cross between begging and moaning. When he began to kiss his way down her stomach, she began to panic.

It had never been like this—never been all about her. She’d never let it be. Men had always made it about their pleasure.

Dare was making it all about hers.

He won’t hurt you.

The only person she could hurt now was herself, by stopping this. She screwed her eyes shut as he parted her legs.

“Grace—look at me,” he told her. He ran a finger along her wet sex, and she shuddered down her entire body. “Look at me.”

She did, watched as he knelt between her legs, then bent forward, lifted her hips a little and kissed her in the most intimate way possible. His eyes didn’t break from hers. She felt herself flush with embarrassment, and then the sensations of complete and utter pleasure made her not care. His tongue stroked her, probed, and she was helpless to do anything but enjoy it.

And she did.

His tongue was wicked, her nerve endings snapping with white-hot flashes as he refused to stop. She threaded a hand in his hair as if to keep his head there, although part of her wanted to pull him away, to stop the runaway train so she could step off and flee.