“I’m…lost,” he admitted, and my heart sank.
“Then I will help you find your way,” I said with new found determination, rubbing my thumbs over his temples. Bear leaned into my touch and closed his eyes, but it didn’t last long. Suddenly he pulled away.
“It’s not that easy. I’m a biker without a club. I feel like I’m nothing because I don’t know who I am anymore.” His brutal honesty should have had me skipping around in elation, finally cracking the hard shell that was Bear, but the happiness never came, because my heart was hurting for him.
Hurt quickly turned to anger.
“What do you want?” I asked. It came out a little harsher than I intended. He shook his head and remained silent. “Answer me, damn it!”
His eyes locked onto mine and I saw the second he fixed that shell back in place. “I want what every man wants, Ti. A bottle of Jack and my fucking dick sucked. You up for it, baby girl? Ready to wrap those beautiful lips of yours around my cock? Or should I bring that other chick back to get the job done? Or, maybe you want to join us? It’s the least you can do to make up for the earlier interruption.” Bear’s eyes glinted with a hint of evil, but I saw right past his lies to the pain lurking beneath the surface, beneath the facade he was so good at clinging to when he didn’t want to show his true feelings.
I slapped him across the face.
Hard.
His hands dug harshly into my hips and he jerked me toward him, the boat rocked violently. “Careful,” he warned.
“You can try and distract me by making me angry, but you can’t, it’s not going to work. Not this time. So tell me Bear,” I repeated my question. “What. Do. You. Want?” I was angry that the beautiful man in front of me couldn’t see what I saw in him.
“What I want isn’t important,” Bear said. He moved his hands around to my lower back and tugged me in closer. “I can’t have what I want.”
“Why not?”
“Because what I want is not fucking possible!” he said. “Tell me, Ti. You gonna bring my dead friend back? ’Cause Preppy died right in front of my eyes and I couldn’t save him! You gonna give me my club? I want things to be the way they were supposed to be before it all went to shit. You gonna take the nightmares away? The ones where I relive Eli and his men torturing me, shoving some broken bat up my ass and shoving their cocks in my mouth? Because I want all that and more than anything I want…” He looked away, but I wasn’t about to let him stop there. I brought his gaze back to mine and held it there.
“What? What else do you want?” I asked, softly this time. When he didn’t answer right away I was afraid I’d already lost him.
After an eternity he finally spoke and when he did his words knocked the wind from my chest. “You.” He finally admitted, his voice stronger, more assertive than just seconds before. “I’ve been a ruined man for a long time. I can’t ruin you too.”
“You didn’t ruin me,” I said. “You saved me.”
I didn’t even realize the boat had started to tip over until it was too late. I lost my hold on Bear and crashed into the dark water.
Bear’s strong arms lifted me out. “Grab onto the side,” he said, tapping on the side of the boat. I couldn’t reach the ground but Bear could because he held onto the boat and walked us toward the nearby shore. I was so wrapped up in Bear that I hadn’t noticed how close we’d floated. King and Ray’s house looked so small from across the bay. Lights flickered in the windows. It seemed a million miles away, not just a few hundred feet.
Suddenly I was airborne and in seconds I was flat on my back on a tiny muddy beach and Bear was on top of me. His lips crushing mine until I couldn’t breath, his hand palming my breast, his cock hard and ready between my legs.
“Baby, I’m sorry,” he said dropping his forehead to mine in a rare moment of vulnerability. His voice was rough and shaky. “Help me. Please. I don’t know what I’m doing here.”
“What are you trying to do?” I asked. He raised up, just enough to look me in the eye.
“I’m trying to love you.”
We were two tortured souls. Both in more ways than one person should ever have to experience.
But we found each other.
We needed each other.
So help him I did.
I sat up enough to pull him back down to me, the broken shells in the mud dug into my back. The water of the bay lapped over my bare feet. Bear was a million different things, and he may have been pushing thirty, but we were alike in so many ways. He was just a boy who had no clue what he was doing and I was just a girl who had no idea what to do with all the feelings I had swarming around inside of me.
I just knew that I wanted him.
That I loved him.
“Promise me that no matter what, that you won’t give up on me. Promise me, Ti,” Bear said, his eyes welling up with water. I wiped the corner of his eye with my thumb and he leaned into my touch.
“I won’t give up on you,” I promised and I meant it.