Page 12 of Duke's Rescue
For now, it was enough.
FIVE
TRIXIE
Three days of hiding.
Three days of staying upstairs while Buck drifted in and out of the diner below me at different points throughout the day, his voice drifting up through the floorboards, muffled but unmistakable. The cadence of it. The warmth he put on for strangers, the easy laugh, the careful way he built a sentence so the person listening felt like the most important one in the room. I knew every note of that voice. I’d lived inside it for six years.
Rosie told me to stay upstairs or out back where he couldn’t see us, but I could still work. She’d come in and say “he’s here” and I’d take Ruby up and sit on the bed and wait. Sometimes twenty minutes whilst he grabbed a takeaway coffee. Sometimes an hour whilst he had lunch. Ruby would color at the little table by the window, quiet, patient, and I’d sit with my back against the wall and listen to the man I’d run from charm the town I’d run to. It made me feel sick.
The apartment that had felt like safety now felt like a cell. Four walls, a locked door, a window that looked out onto Main Street where I couldn’t stand too close in case he looked up. I’d traded one cage for another, and the only difference was the size.
Duke called on the third evening.
“Come to the compound tonight,” he said. “After he’s gone back to the motel. Rosie says she’ll look after Ruby. Just come, Trixie. Get out of that room.”
Ruby was thrilled at the idea of having a sleepover at Rosie’s house. She loved Rosie’s big chair, loved the pie-making, loved the orange cat that sat on the porch and tolerated her with the patience of something that had seen everything and decided none of it was worth moving for.
I drove out after dark.The road was empty, the mountains black against a sky thick with stars, and with every mile between me and the diner the pressure in my chest loosened. By the time I pulled through the compound gates I could breathe properly for the first time in three days.
Duke was on the lodge porch waiting for me. He stood when my headlights swept across the gravel, came down the steps, opened my car door. The sight of him in the dark, solid, unhurried, real, made something in my chest ache.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey.”
We went inside. The lodge was quiet, the brothers out or in their rooms. He took me upstairs, down the hallway, to his room. Sparse and simple. A bed, a desk and not much else.
He closed the door and the quiet settled around us.
He was watching me. Standing a few feet away with that steady focus, reading my face the way he always did, and I watched the moment he stopped being careful. It moved across his face like weather. The warmth shifting, deepening, the restraint he’d been holding for weeks finally giving way to something hotter.
He crossed the room. Put his hands on my face, tilted it up, and kissed me.
This was different from the mountain. The mountain had been tentative underneath the heat, both of us testing. This was a man who’d made a decision. His mouth was firm, hungry, his hands cradling my jaw, his body pressing into mine. He kissed me like he’d been thinking about nothing else, and the force of it backed me up a step and I grabbed his shirt to stay upright.
“Duke...” His name, breathless.
“I’m done being careful,” he said against my lips. “Tell me to stop and I’ll stop. But I’m done pretending I don’t want you.”
“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.”
His hands dropped to my waist, gripping, pulling me flush against him. He stripped my shirt over my head, unclasped my bra, let it fall. The old reflex kicked, my arms starting to move, and he caught my hands. Held them at my sides.
“Let me see you,” he said. “All of you.”
His eyes moved over my body. My breasts, full and heavy. The softness of my stomach. The width of my hips. He looked at me with a hunger so raw that the shame I’d carried for years loosened its grip. He wanted me. This body. The one Buck had made me feel was too much. Duke was looking at it like it was the only thing he wanted to touch.
He pulled his shirt off. I ran my hands over his chest, the hard planes of him, and when he pulled me against him skin to skin the contact went through both of us. He undid my jeans, pushed them down with my underwear, went to his knees to pull them off my legs. From that angle, he pressed his mouth to my stomach, the soft full curve of it, and the tenderness of it made my throat close.
He stood, walked me to the bed, laid me down. Settled between my thighs and put his mouth on me. The first drag of his tongue had my hips jerking off the bed. He was thorough,unhurried, and when he pushed two fingers inside me and worked my clit with his tongue I came so hard my fist twisted in his hair and my whole body shook.
He kissed his way up. I grabbed for him, got my hand around him through his jeans, felt how hard he was. The sound he made was guttural, wrecked. He stripped off the rest of his clothes while I watched, and I wanted him so badly my hands were shaking.
He settled over me, the head of him pressing against me, and looked at my face.
He pushed in slow. The stretch of him, the fullness. I gripped his arms and my mouth fell open on a sound that was small and helpless and honest. He bottomed out and stayed there, both of us breathing hard, but his eyes were locked on mine.
