Page 82 of Forbidden Protector

"That's not a no."

"It's a not-yet. There's a difference. You taught it to me yourself, in this exact tone, more than once." I hold his eyes so he knows I mean it. "When you're stronger. I promise you that much."

His jaw works once, and then it stops.

"Okay," he says, quiet. "Not yet."

He sets the paper down on the blanket, careful, the same deliberate motion his father used. This family teaches its children to handle dangerous things gently. He looks at me for a long time before he says anything else.

"Tatum," he says.

One word. Flat, the ugliest thing he did all year, and it lands the same as it landed then. A door closing on something that was open a second ago.

I don't let him have it.

I put my hand flat against his jaw before he finishes the second syllable of whatever he was about to say. I don't say anything. I just make him look at me instead of at the paper, the door, every place in this room that isn't my face.

"Don't." When I finally speak it isn't sharp. It's the gentlest word I've said to anyone in longer than I can remember. "Not that word. Not tonight."

His breath goes out of him, long and uneven, and I watch his discipline try to hold one more time and fail completely.

"Mackenzie," he says, wrecked and sober, nothing behind it but the truth.

I stay where I am, my hand against his jaw, and let him hold onto the right name for as long as he needs it.

He goes under in seconds, the painkillers finally catching up with him, pulling him down before either of us can say anything else. I drag the one chair in the room over to the bed rail, close enough to keep my hand on him if he needs it and fall asleep in it.

When he surfaces the second time, the sky's gone from grey to something almost blue, and whatever they topped off his line with while I wasn't watching has him looser than he was an hour ago. Not lucid-loose. Drugged-loose, the kind that comes back around after grief finally lets a man's guard all the way down.

"Hey," he says, voice thick and slow, dragged up from somewhere else entirely.

"Hey yourself." I'm out of the chair, my hand on his chest, checking his eyes even though I already know what I'll find.

"Which hand's the bad one?" He frowns at himself. "I keep forgetting."

"The one with the entire hardware store in it. Don't test it."

He lifts it anyway, four inches, and a sound comes out of him that isn't a word. I put my hand gently on his good arm before he tries again.

"Don't."

"Bossy." But he settles, eyes going soft on my face, his mouth gone loose for the first time since a line shack. "Last night," he says, like he's picking up a thread from an hour ago, though I know it isn't the hour he thinks it is. "Before all this."

His eyes drop to my jeans, my plain shirt, and his brows pull together at the mismatch, like I've changed clothes since he last saw me and can't account for the missing time.

"Why aren't you wearing the purple?"

I press my lips together and lose the fight to look stern about it. It's exactly what I need right now, though I'd never admit that to him sober.

"Holt."

"My bed. The mountain in the window behind you." His eyes are barely open and he doesn't seem to care. "You had on something dark purple, lace, the kind of thing that makes a man feel like he's been handed the best gift ever." He says it slow, a man walking through a memory he's decided is real. "God, you were so gorgeous. I took my time getting you out of it. Your mouth first. Then that pretty pussy, until you were shaking and begging me not to stop."

"Holt—"

"Then I flipped you over and took your ass, slow, so slow, until you couldn't tell anymore whether you were crying or coming."

"Holt." My face is on fire and I don't care, because there's nobody here to see it but him, and he isn't going to remember he made me blush.