Too Hot to Hold (25 page)

Love trumps biology every time
.

Yes, she believed Nick. He was living proof of the statement. “In the car, you told Clutch he could trust me—I know you don’t say things you don’t mean.”

“I don’t have much of a choice. I have to trust you.”

“God, I hate that. I hate that that’s how you feel about what’s happening between us.”

She reached out to touch his arm, but he’d already pulled away instinctively.

“Not now, Kaylee. Not in the middle of all this. I can’t.”

Kaylee was the first woman who knew his secret and Nick felt the uncomfortable weight on his chest of being both burdened and unburdened at the same time.

His relief had been short-lived, though. Talking about the Winfields and the way he’d grown up had made him too pensive, less ready to take action. He had to get back into mission mode.

But sitting with her, with the new rainstorm slamming the roof of the one-story hotel, regaining mission mode seemed an impossible task. He finally lit the oil lamp the hotel had provided—it cast small shadows across the room from its place on the nightstand.

Kaylee remained wrapped in a towel and just waited. Patiently. “You haven’t said one word about how tough this is—that you’re hungry or you’re tired,” Nick said.

“You haven’t either,” she pointed out, then bit her bottom lip in that way he found so freakin’ disarming.

From the time he’d left the Winfield house up until this point, he’d prided himself on being strong as hell—physically and, more importantly, mentally. Hadn’t let anything get in the way of what he wanted—illegally, at first, and then legally, with the teams. He put his life on the line with every mission, put his soul into everything else he did, and now, to know that he could never truly escape his past was nearly too much for him to bear.

But he’d be damned if he let this break him.

There had always been a part of him that didn’t believe that he
wouldn’t
follow in the Winfield footsteps. As much as he’d tried to deny it, he had the nagging sense that it was deeply a part of him, like a skin he had no hope of shedding even though he wanted nothing to do with it. “Is your boss going to ask you why you’re no longer working on the Winfield story?”

“Probably. I’ve been on it since I started at the paper. But it doesn’t matter, I’m not writing about it any longer,” she told him. “You don’t think that Walter would tell people who you are, do you?”

“I can’t see why he would. The story would just embarrass him.”

“I just assumed maybe he wanted you … back or something, since he came to see you after Deidre’s death.”

“A lot of things that happened in that family are because of Deidre, but they have nothing to do with her death.” He sat down next to her on the bed, shoving the computer out of the way. He didn’t look at Kaylee, but for the first time in a long while, he didn’t feel like he was telling the story of someone else when he spoke of Cutter. No, this time, the memories were vivid and they were, without a doubt, all his. “Walter loved Deidre, but she broke his heart when she fell in love with Billy, his brother. But I’m sure you know that—you reported on the rumors of the long-lost love affair.”

“I did,” she said quietly. “There were people—staff, mostly—who came forward to talk about things they’d seen. Subtle things. A touch of hands, or a look, mostly. Nothing substantial, but enough …”

“Yeah, enough to go on, right?” He shook his head. “In my house, it wasn’t a rumor. After Billy was killed, Deidre was devastated. She went into seclusion for months. The only time she pulled it together was for her charities.”

He paused and then decided to spill it all to her. “Deidre told Walter that I was Billy’s son. Up until the other night, I believed that. In a way, that made things livable for me—because Billy had bucked the Winfield thing too, had wanted to be different.”

“But you’re really Walter’s biological son, that’s what he came to tell you the other night,” she said quietly, and he nodded.

“He apologized for treating me like shit, for hating me when I was little.”

“I can only imagine the guilt he’s feeling now.”

“I don’t want him to come to me because he’s guilty. I don’t want him to come to me at all—it would’ve been so much easier if he’d just stayed away. I’d never have to know all of this.”

“And you might never be able to put it behind you either,” she pointed out.

“It
was
behind me. Look, I get that you want to ask me questions, about growing up and—”

“I’d want to ask those whether you grew up a Winfield or not.”

“I just don’t want you to feel sorry for me, Kaylee. That’s the last thing I’m looking for.” He closed his eyes and turned away, wishing he could actually fucking sleep for once in his life. “I don’t know how to do this. I’m not good at it.”

“You are good at so many things. But if you want me to understand you, I’ve got to know where you came from, why certain things are so important to you. I need to know the things you can’t share with anyone else—the things you won’t.”

“I’ve always had barriers.” They were secure. Comfortable.

“You’ve let those barriers hold you hostage for too long.”

She was probably right. Fuck, he hated this, mainly because she already knew most of it. All those reports on the missing Winfield heir were closer to the truth than he’d have liked.

“Look, I already told you I wasn’t held a lot as a baby—that’s because I was really sick when I was born.” He rubbed the scar on his throat unconsciously and took his hand away when he saw her looking at it. “I almost didn’t live.”

“But you did.”

“I thought that I was defective—that I couldn’t bond with other people, couldn’t make connections. I thought that was my legacy.” But it hadn’t been true. The connection to Jake was almost instantaneous—same with Chris, and Kenny and Maggie. It was as if he’d been aching for that kind of familial contact, and once he received it, everything else fell into place.

He hated the bitter feeling that hit his throat when he mentioned the Winfields, wanted it to fade away until the memories were nothing more than a gentle scrape of a healed wound. Unpleasant, not almost unbearable. “She never came for me. None of them did. This new family—
my
family, did. They came for me, wanted me. Fought for me. Not like the Winfields—they wanted perfect. At least on the outside. By the time I left, I was already long gone from them emotionally.”

“And they just let you go?”

“They just let me go,” he said. “It was what I wanted. It would’ve happened with or without their consent. At least this way the Winfields could control it, put their own spin on the situation.”

“What kind of parents do that to their own child?”

“I thought my mother hated me growing up because I was Billy’s son—an accidental pregnancy because of her affair. I assumed that when I was born small and sick, she couldn’t stand to be around me. Saw it as some kind of punishment for her indiscretion. She only let Walter know the truth after her death to hurt him more. I was just a pawn.”

“So that’s why Walter let you leave the family.”

“Yeah. See, I was going to run away, but Kenny—the man I call
Dad
now—he found me at the train station and brought me back to the Winfield house with signed emancipation papers that Dad had drawn up. Dad wanted to go back inside with me, but I needed to go in alone, to hand Walter the papers myself and leave on my own steam. I’d signed away my rights, and from there it was simple. I left everything behind in my room, except for the jeans, sneakers and green sweatshirt I’d been wearing that day to school, when I pretended everything was normal. But I already knew what was going to happen.” He cleared his throat. “Deidre was busy tearing up pictures of me in the kitchen, burning them. So they could say that I did it. There was nothing for me to take, nothing I wanted to take, so just after midnight, I climbed down the trellis the way I always did. Jake was waiting for me.”

“Where did you go?” she asked softly.

“Walked the ten miles to Chris’s house. And Cutter Winfield was never seen or heard from again.”

“Until now. My God, all you’ve been through,” she murmured. “All you’ve accomplished.”

“I got better,” he said shortly.

“You had a strong will. Wanted to survive. Lots of other people would’ve given up in your situation.”

“That wasn’t an option.”

“Because you wanted to make yourself whole, better … so your biological family would accept you.”

Fuck, she’d hit on something. His throat felt tight and he swallowed hard and her fingers dug into his biceps as she massaged his muscles. “I guess so. Stupid, right?”

“Not at all.”

“It was, Kaylee, because it didn’t work. Because even when I got better and came out of the hospital, they still didn’t want me. I was wild, uncontrollable. I needed too much attention and I didn’t know how to deal with a quiet, understated family. I broke all the dishes, I slid down the banisters…”

“You were a kid.”

“I was a Winfield. I didn’t know the rules, didn’t know how to act. I craved action—attention. Pain. Anything to feel.” He hung his head. “Nothing worked—not being good anyway. But doing things like stealing cars and getting into fights, that hopped up my adrenaline levels. I don’t need to feel that kind of action as much today. I get it in my job, racing cars, things like that.”

“And sex.”

“Yeah, with sex.” He realized just how much his body ached—not from exertion, but from stress and quite possibly fear.

Even his skin seemed too sensitive, the way it had earlier when he’d poured water on his body from one of the jugs Clutch had in the back of the car—and yet he wanted to be touched by Kaylee again. Craved it.

He rubbed his own arms in an effort to shake off the feeling.

He had a friend who was into the BDSM scene and Nick had tried a few things with a female dom. Let himself get tied up.

He’d had to use his fucking safe word after half an hour. The whip she’d used worked—he could go there; but the tied down, helpless feeling was intolerable.

“We’ll work on desensitizing you,” the woman had whispered. He’d nearly broken the wooden St. Andrew’s cross he’d been strapped to.

So no, he didn’t go back there. He’d just given himself another kind of cross to bear anyway. “You’re the first woman I ever told this story, the first person outside of my brothers, Maggie and my dad. And I can’t talk about this anymore—please, not right fucking now.”

“Then tell me what I can do to make it better right now.” She watched for a response, wondered if he’d shut down, the way he had before when he’d tried to tell her that there was nothing she could do to help.

Instead, he shook his head and stared at the floor for a second. And then he raised his head high—regally. Exposed. “Touch me. Any way you want to.”

“Nick… I want to. You don’t know how badly I want to, but you don’t need to prove anything to me. I don’t want to do anything that’s going to make you uncomfortable.”

He leaned back on his elbows, stretched out along the length of the bed as the rain continued to batter the windows. “We’re down to the wire here, Kaylee. In deep trouble. So please, do as I say now. Just try it.”

“I can’t refuse you.” She drew a deep breath, let her eyes rake the tanned skin on his chest, illuminated only by the small oil lamp that flickered on the nightstand. She reached out and started with a harder touch, a stroke to his biceps. And then she intermingled it with a softer one that made him start noticeably, as if he wanted to jump out of his own skin. “We can stop.”

He swallowed, hard—he was breathing hard too, his face flushed from concentration. But he wasn’t refusing her touch, and he was aroused.

At the sight of this strong man attempting to be even stronger, she grew intensely aroused herself.

“No, that’s the thing—we can’t stop.”

He was right. Her finger moved toward the trach scar, stopped before she reached the familiar place he always rubbed.

“Go ahead.”

Instead of a finger, she pressed her lips there, felt his pulse, his entire body react as if he’d been touched with fire.

“Just breathe, Nick.”

He nodded and she saw the hard swallow, the hands fisted at his sides.

He didn’t need to be put through any more hell. Instead, she hugged him hard as he remained propped on his elbows. And then she drew her nails down his back in a hard scratch and he drew in a sharp breath, as if the pressure eased.

His voice rumbled deep in his chest. “Kaylee…”

“Your lips are so soft,” she murmured as she straddled his prone body. “Everything else about you is so hard—all rock solid, unyielding muscle, but your lips… I want them on me. Touch me. Go ahead—do whatever you need to.”

He pulled back from her slightly, held her by the shoulders. “It might never get any easier. Would it matter if it didn’t?”

She looked at his eyes, incredibly green and flecked with gold. “It wouldn’t matter.”

“Why? What the hell do I do for you?”

“You make me feel alive,” she whispered. “Can you understand that—everything is intense when I’m with you.”