This Is a Dark Ride (11 page)

Why are you here? You are just in their way. Quit looking at Sam, quit dreaming
. She should leave. Now. But the whole not having any clothes thing made it rather difficult to make a speedy exit. Maybe one of them had a pair of sweatpants or something she could borrow. She sat fidgeting on the sofa—
stuck
. That was it. She was stuck here.

There was something else. Something that made her feel funny. Immediately, instinctively, something about Sam drew her in. Something beyond his drop-dead gorgeous looks and those soulful, sad brown eyes.

“Nothing else happened between me and Brody.”

“Not yet, huh?” Sam said. “Poor Brody. He’s losing his touch. It never used to take him that long. He’s rusty, I guess. He’s been wasting away on fucking drugs for too long. He does women, you know. That’s okay. I mean, I never said he couldn’t, so if I’m what’s holding you back, don’t worry about it.”

“Actually, he asked me if I’d be with you.”

The color drained from Sam’s face, and Angel looked down at her raggedy nails.

“I told him I would…you know? Either of you. I pretty much owe him my life, so anytime you want, you just let me know.” She picked at a chip of nail polish, debating on whether or not to tell him the truth. He seemed so angry right now; maybe if he knew the truth, he’d understand. “The thing is…I can’t yet. That guy, last night…he didn’t rob me. I didn’t have any money on me. It’s all hidden at the place I was staying. Anyway…he didn’t rob me. He…”

“What’d he do?”

The sliver of polish broke away. “He raped me—and before you say anything sarcastic, no, I don’t mean he just fucked me and didn’t pay. I mean he hurt me.” Angel swallowed, determined not to cry.

“I need a couple of days maybe.” Angel looked up at him, feeling strangely shy. “I’m not trying to get out of doing it, just so you know.”

Sam shook his head. “I don’t fucking believe this!”

She looked away, not liking the anger in his voice.

“Look at me!” Angel met his gaze. There was rage in his eyes.

“Brody’s playing a game… Some kind of fucking head trip. The last thing I need is a charity fuck from a fucking whore. I’ve got enough problems.”

Though he spoke the truth, the words still stung. Fuck him. Fuck him.
Fuck him!

She got up and made sure she didn’t look in his direction as hot, angry tears formed in her eyes. “You can just keep that fucking coat.” She had been stupid to think he’d stopped to talk to her because he really wanted to. He was gorgeous, and she was…well, she wasn’t even pretty. And as he and Brody kept graciously pointing out, she was a whore. If Sam decided he wanted to screw a woman, he certainly didn’t need a whore. “I don’t want anything from you.” She clawed at the bottom of the shirt she was wearing. “In fact, here.” Angel jerked the shirt over her head and threw it in his direction as hard as she could. It landed next to him in a ball on the sofa. “There’s your fucking shirt back too. You might want to wash it before you—”

He stood and grabbed her on either side of her arms. His strong grip against her bruises made her immediately go still. Her arms ached to the bone, and the pain reminded her of last night. She looked at him wide-eyed, and she did not move, hoping he’d let go.

“Stop it, okay? I don’t want to fight with you,” Sam said. “I just… Damn. I can’t believe Brody… I mean I can’t.” He stopped talking, and his brows creased. His hands tightened on her upper arms, and the pain became intolerable.

“Please. It hurts.” Tears sprang to her eyes, but she tried to regain her composure.

Concern etched Sam’s face as he released his grip. His fingers gently traced the black-and-blue marks on her shoulder.

“He hit you,” Sam said. “What else did he do? The one who raped you?” Any anger he’d had was gone. Angel saw only tenderness and compassion in his face.

She shook her head violently. “I don’t… Please, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“I’m sorry.” He rubbed her arm as though he could erase the pain. She wished he could, wished she could just forget about Bobby and the things he had done. If only it was that simple.

Sam stared into her eyes, his head bowed toward her.

Her heart quickened a little at how close his face was to hers. His gaze was on her lips now, like he was thinking about kissing her. That would be nice. That would be really nice.

“Brody kissed you?” he said in a whisper. Sam’s face moved closer to hers. “Or did you kiss him?”

“I…I don’t know. Both, I guess.”

“Is that what you wanted?” She nodded, and stupidly honest words came spilling out of her mouth before she could stop them. “I’m sorry. I’ve never kissed anyone I liked. I thought it would be…I don’t know…kind of nice. I never kissed a single fucking person in my entire life because I really wanted to.” Her cheeks flushed, and she pulled back and looked down at her bare feet.

She’s said so much, confessed things she never had before. It was too easy to tell Sam the truth.

Angel forced herself to look back at his face. “I…I kind of want to kiss you.”

He smiled a little. “Kind of?”

“Just to see what it’s like,” she whispered.

His mouth immediately sought hers in a soft, wet kiss. Clumsy and timid, he didn’t kiss her like anyone else ever had. Angel closed her eyes as his tongue swept over her bottom lip. The tip touched her tongue, licking at her, until she stilled it by suckling lightly. He moaned in his throat as she pulled it into her mouth. Her heart ached with strange and unwanted emotions.

Sam had a delicious mouth, a mouth that teased and promised and took its time, gently and patiently—melting her.

So, this was what it was like…the reason girls in school would go to the movies and then not bother to watch the show because they were too busy kissing some boy.

She gripped the sides of his face, urging him to kiss her deeper. He obliged, his tongue pressing into her mouth, until she could scarcely breathe. As he kissed her, she felt his sadness and loneliness, a wave of anguish and need like she’d never felt in her life. She wanted nothing more than to hold on to him and make everything better for him. But she couldn’t. She could only make things worse.

Angel pulled back and looked up at him. Why did he hurt so bad? He had Brody. Were things between them really that bad? Brody might have problems, but she believed wholeheartedly that Brody loved this man. It was easy to see why. If she stared into those eyes too long, she was in danger of doing it herself.

“I shouldn’t have done that,” Angel said. “I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?”

“I don’t want to come between you…you and Brody. Brody loves you. You love him.” She rested her hand against his cheek.
How fucking unfair is this?
“The first man I ever really wanted, and he’s taken…taken by someone else I want.” She whispered the last several words, but she knew he heard.

“I didn’t—” His voice trembled. “I didn’t just stop because you didn’t have a coat on. I stopped because I had to.” He shook his head. “
I had to
. I keep thinking about you…dreaming about you. I can’t make it stop.”

He grabbed her hand tightly and pressed his lips to it. She heard him swallow.

“I don’t know how to make this stop,” he said, and then his voice broke. “I need it to stop. I don’t want to lose Brody. The dreams about you, the things I keep thinking about, I’m so fucking confused. Tell me how to make it stop!”

Fuck. What was she supposed to say to that?
She didn’t want it to stop. There was an ache in her belly and a knot in her chest that had never been there before.

“Brody loves you,” she whispered hoarsely, reminding him…reminding herself.

“And I love him,” Sam said, honesty evident in his voice. “I don’t know what this is.” He let go of her hand. “I don’t know what this is, and I don’t know how to make it go away.”

“I’ll leave.” Angel turned back toward Sam and Brody’s bedroom. “I just need something to put on and I’ll go.”

Sam grabbed her shoulder and turned her to face him once more. “Don’t. Please?” A quiver in the voice of a man so large seemed strange. He swallowed hard again, and she saw him struggling to regain his composure.

“I mean, where are you going to go? Back out there?”

Angel shrugged. “Where else would I go?”

“Your family? Don’t you have family? They are probably worried about you.”

She laughed in an attempt to cover the anguish she really felt. “My stepfather’s a dick. I only have my mother, and she probably doesn’t know I’m gone. She lives in her own world.”

“I’m sure she misses you.”

“She has her husband. And her booze…her pills. That’s all she cares about.” Angel’s eyes burned, and she blinked away tears. “She’d do anything to keep that piece of shit she married.”

Sam’s fingertips gently skimmed over the bruises on her neck, his eyes full of compassion and understanding. She should tell him. She could finally say it out loud to someone. Finally tell someone about what her stepfather had done.

“Sometimes people do stupid things because of drugs. It doesn’t mean you weren’t loved,” Sam said. “Maybe you should consider going back home.”

Don’t you tell him, bitch. Don’t you dare tell him.

Angel ignored the voice that screamed inside of her. She finally had a chance to say it out loud, to admit what had happened.

“My mother knew what he was doing to me. She even walked in once. Then she turned around and walked right back out. I talked to her about it. She told me I was a liar. She said she didn’t see anything! For years,
she fucking knew
and she did
nothing
!”

The image of bloodstained sheets and the silhouette of her stepfather sliced through her mind. Ugly memories that she’d buried deep inside all came flooding back. The sound of her bedroom door opening and his shadow there in the hall. Night after night, the smell of whiskey on his breath and his sweaty skin pressed against her. The night she’d tried to hide from him in her closet. He’d beaten her with a hanger before he raped her. Angel shook her head violently, trying to make the thoughts and the pain all stop.

“I’ll never go back there! It wasn’t my fault, Sam. Not my fault!”

“Shh, I know it isn’t your fault, Angel.” His voice was soothing. “You don’t have to go back there. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

Sam’s arms wrapped tightly around her. He should be pushing her away. He knew now. This almost total stranger knew what she’d never told anyone. The one thing she was sure would make everyone hate her. No one was ever supposed to know she’d always been dirty, always been nothing.

“I’m so sorry.”

“No. No no no! I don’t want you to be sorry. Sorry doesn’t fix it. It won’t change it. I’m the one who is sorry. I don’t want to be what I am. I never wanted to. I just don’t know what else to do. I don’t want you to be sorry; you can’t ask me to stay here because you’re sorry. You, Brody—you have enough problems. I don’t need you to feel sorry for me.”

“Shh,” he said, stroking her hair. “I won’t be sorry then. Don’t you be sorry either, because none of this is your fault.” His eyes locked with hers. “I really don’t want you to go. Don’t you want to stay?”

It took a tremendous effort to say yes, and the word came out sounding very quiet.

“Good. Because I wasn’t going to just let you walk out that door.”

“Why?”

“Because I want to know,” he said. “I can’t spend my whole life feeling like I missed out on knowing.”

“You want to know what?”

“What
this
is.” He ran his thumb gently over her lower lip and then traced his fingers up her jaw.

It was curiosity. What else would it be? Sam had never been with a woman. She couldn’t tell him she knew that, but she needed to make him understand that she couldn’t stay here and start feeling things for him just to be thrown back out in the snow when he was done finding out what it was like.

“Look,” Angel said. “I’m not some kind of case study or science project. I’m not going to stick around here while you two try and figure things out. I’ve got a life. My life. You and Brody might not like what I do, but it is what it is. I don’t much like it either, but I can take care of myself.”

“Like you did last night?”

“That was…”
Mean
. “That never happened before. It won’t
ever
happen again. I let my guard down.” It could happen again, and she knew it.

“How long have you been doing this?”

“Not very long.”

“And it’s already happened one too many times. The only way it won’t happen again is if you don’t put yourself out there. No more. You’re staying here, end of discussion.”

“Really?” Angel cocked an eyebrow at this new version of Sam.

“Yes. Really. Brody wants you to stay.” He paused for a moment. “And so do I.”

Her whole fucking life not being wanted and she suddenly had two men demanding that she stay. And Sam…he was different. Everything about him. In a different life, in a much different life, he could have been the one.

Hahaha! The one. You dumb-ass. Quit fucking daydreaming. He doesn’t want you. Neither of them do.

She looked at Sam’s concerned face, wishing he wanted her to stay for something besides the fact that he pitied her. That was what Sam didn’t know how to make stop: pitying her. The fact that if he let her walk out the door, she was going back to her old life. He didn’t want to feel like it was his fault if something happened to her again. Neither did Brody.

Charity starts at home. They needed to be worried about fixing themselves, not her. She was just fine without either one of them in her life for this long—she didn’t need to change things now.

Except Sam kissed her again, and it wasn’t quite like before. He still tasted sad, and he still tasted of that deep pain that she wanted to soothe, but there was something else.

Sam’s hand moved slowly down her back and then slipped lower. He cupped the swell of her bare ass and pulled her closer. Angel’s knees felt weak and rubbery.

His other hand rested against her collarbone. His thumb stroked gently at her throat. He kissed her even more deeply, taking ownership of her mouth and leaving her absolutely breathless.