Ryder edged around me when we got to the door, and he held Kayden in one arm while he worked the key into the lock with the other. Wrangling all of that, he still managed to glance back at me with that sly expression on his face. “Who said I wanted to get rid of you?”
Doing my best not to choke on his words, I scoffed out a tease, giving into the playfulness he seemed to have gotten lost in as he held the door open for me to enter.
“I’ll give you until tomorrow morning for you to be hauling us back to my place and dumping us on the doorstep. He looks harmless now…” I drew out.
I cast a soft glance at Kayden held in the safety of the man’s arms as I stepped passed them.
Affection inflated my chest.
Chuckling, Ryder rubbed his hand over my son’s back. “You act like I don’t know a thing about this tiny tornado. Think I can handle it.”
“You are begging for trouble.”
Okay, the one who was really begging for trouble was me.
“Guess I am, aren’t I?” The mumble was so quiet I wasn’t sure if I imagined it, and Ryder angled around me and headed for the stairs. “Come on. Let’s get you two settled so you can get some rest.”
He bounded upstairs and I followed. His room was on the left, and two additional bedrooms were down the hall to the right. Ducking into the first one, he flipped on the light. “Why don’t we set you both up in here tonight, and tomorrow we’ll get Kayden situated in the room next door. I don’t want him to freak out when he wakes up in an unfamiliar place.”
My stomach twisted with an onslaught of too many things.
The fact that he was always so thoughtful. I mean, what man would think of that?
It got all knotted with the fact that Ryder was talking like we were going to be here for a bit.
“We won’t be staying more than one night, Ryder, so this is great, thank you.”
He laid Kayden down in the middle of the massive bed that took up half the room. The covers were a satiny sheen of black. Not surprising since that’s what most of his house was decorated in.
Then the ground shook when he shifted around, tall and dark as he erased the space between us, and he backed me into the wall. Eyes flashed as he angled down, words harsh and jagged. “You’ll stay here as long as needed, Dakota. Until we know you’re safe, and I won’t let you go a second before that.”
I’d probably only been asleep for an hour when I woke, needing to pee. The room was still hedged in darkness, the only light a wedge of it slanting through a gap in the drapes that covered the window. I tossed off the covers and stepped onto the worn, wooden floor.
Kayden was asleep in the portable playpen we’d brought, and I leaned over it to check on him. He was face down the way he loved to sleep, his glowing bear tucked under his arm, his back rising and falling with each steady breath.
Relief left me on a sigh, the dregs of the fear I’d felt earlier at home easing more.
As long as he was comfortable and safe, then I couldn’t complain.
Careful not to wake him, I tiptoed the rest of the way across the room on bare feet, slipping out and into the short hall where I edged toward the bathroom that sat between Ryder’s room and the guest rooms.
With how old the house was, I guessed Ryder was lucky that he even had a bathroom upstairs.
I kept my footsteps quiet as I crept for it, then I yipped when the door suddenly flew open.
Bright, blinding light blazed out from the opening and cut into the duskiness where I stood chained to the spot.
Or maybe I was just dumbstruck by the sight.
Ryder had been on his way out, and he halted in the doorway, standing there in only a pair of gray sweatpants, black hair wild and his chest bare.
So tall and imposing and perfect that the breath fled from my lungs.
It left my chest feeling empty and achy.
There was nothing I could do. My eyes roved. Drinking in every inch of him.
It wasn’t like I’d never seen him without a shirt before.
It didn’t matter.
Every time it knocked me upside the head.
Made me stupid.
Mouth watering, and my wayward heart hammering a thousand errant beats.
I barely even registered his gruff, “Dakota.”
I was too busy ogling the mantrap in front of me.
Literally, I couldn’t tear my gaze away.
His skin was taut and tanned a golden brown, all his corded muscle bristling with that power that vibrated beneath his cool exterior.
Though tonight, there was nothing cool about him.
He was heat.
Flames.
A freaking fire that would consume me in a beat.
A dark tower that loomed in the doorway.
His chest and shoulders an expanse of strength, wide and coarse and thick. Pecs hard and his abdomen cut in a severe line. A tease of his hip bones were exposed over the top of his waistband, and God, there was no stopping myself from peeking at the outline that pressed beneath the fabric of his sweats.
But what I could stare at for days were the designs that covered almost every inch of him.
He’d gotten them throughout the years, as if he’d used the designs as an album of his history.
Symbolic.
Graphic.
Explicit.
A tree grew up his right shoulder, the spindly branches stretching out to cover his right pec. A crow sat on one of the branches, ready to take flight, though there was a chain around its leg, keeping it from flying.
On the opposite shoulder was the face of his mother. A stamp of grief. The first one he’d ever gotten when his mother had passed when he was sixteen.
So much pain surrounded it. Her death so horrible. A wound that would never heal.
My eyes traced and foraged through the intricate designs interwoven with nonsensical things.
Hearts and skulls hidden in vines.
A scroll ran up his left ribs.
Meet me in the place of the forgotten.
And I wondered so many times if that’s the way he felt. As if he’d been forgotten. Left behind.
It made me freaking blush that he had a chocolate chip cookie tattooed just above his right hip.
But what always reminded me of my place was what sat in the center of his chest.
It was a broken clock.
Distorted and warped.
The bottom of it was crumbling, and a bleeding human heart had fallen through the hole. A hand held it up, crushing it while it struggled to beat.
My throat nearly closed off as I looked at where its fractured hands were forever stuck at five o’ four.
A moment in time that had marked him.
Scarred him.
Destroyed him.
A time that had crushed me, too, though I doubted he truly knew how deeply it had.
It was when I’d realized that I was just a foolish girl chasing down a fantasy.
Shame pressed down on my chest.
How damned selfish to make his loss about me.
Forcing myself out of the stupor, I cleared my throat and shifted on my bare feet, realizing I’d been staring at him awestruck for God knew how long.
“Hey,” I finally croaked.
“Did I wake you?” It was a rough, groggy grumble, like he’d wandered in here still half asleep.
“No. I just needed to pee.”
“Sorry there aren’t two bathrooms up here.”
Our voices were held, whispered on the same volume of the hum that resonated through the hall, and I felt him waver, hovering there like he wasn’t sure what to say.
“It’s not a problem. You’re the one who opened your house up to us.”
His expression flashed in intensity. His eyes raced over me so fast I had to have imagined it.
“My house is always open to you, Dakota.”
Everything tightened, glowed and pressed and burned.
I blamed it on the night.
The way everything seemed to become compressed.
Dense and thick.
I forced a tease onto my lips. “Ah, I’m pretty sure it’s not always open to me, Ryder. You wouldn’t want me waltzing in here when you are entertaining, now would you?”
I put as much razzing suggestion into it as I could.
As if it didn’t matter.
Like I was just another one of the guys giving him crap for being a player.
“Now get out of my way, this girl needs to pee.” I nudged him in the chest.
I swore my fingertips sparked.
He angled an inch to the side, like I was going to fit through the tiny spot left between him and the doorjamb.
Hardly.