“They sliced part of my healthy skin off with a butcher knife to let me know how serious they were about me behaving,” he muttered.
Bile rose in my throat.
“I didn’t try to escape again for another six weeks. And when I got caught, again, they sliced the same piece of healing tissue off.”
I didn’t want to hear anymore.
His parents, wherever they were, better enjoy their last few days of freedom. Because, if I ever got a hold of them, I was going to do everything in my power to make them hurt as much as they hurt Tunnel.
Before I could say anything else, though, Ghost started in on the conditioner as I reached for the soap.
I ran it down over his chest and abs, taking extra special care of the parts that still looked angry, despite having healing scar tissue there. I wanted to take away all of his hurts, and all of his pain, but I knew even if I could do that, Tunnel wouldn’t let me.
As he worked his fingers through my wet tresses, I realized that I’d also missed this.
I’d forgotten how much I liked him playing with my hair, even if all he was doing was working his fingers through the long tresses and loosening my curls.
My hand went lower, purposefully avoiding the appendage that I could feel against my lower belly, and I rubbed the soap into a lather around said appendage.
“Wench,” he grunted, pulling my hair taut. “Touch me.”
My lips quirked up at the corner.
“Maybe later,” I said, moving the soap to my own body.
He only chuckled, and I used that time to soap my armpits and behind my neck. I followed that up by quickly running the soap down my body, under my breasts, and finally down to the apex of my thighs.
“You need any help?”
I bared my teeth at him.
“No,” I said. “Because, if you help, you and I won’t be getting out of here for quite a while.”
He grunted something unintelligible, and I moved the soap to my backside, running it through the crack of my ass.
He watched me, not trying to hide the fact, and a mischievous glint entered my eyes.
“Can you hold this soap with your butt cheeks?” I teased him.
This was an old question. One I’d tried to get him to act on every time we were in the shower together.
The memory of trying to get him to try it was enough to make sadness enter my eyes.
“Come on, try it,” I said, offering Ghost the soap.
The sadness had to be why he did what he did next. If this were six years ago, he would’ve never, ever done it.
He took it from my hand and looked at it, then shook his head and reached behind him.
Then he started to laugh.
“See!” I cried out. “I knew you couldn’t do it either!”
“I never said I could,” as he continued to try to clench the soap with his ass cheeks.
The soap dropped and we both looked at it.
“Turn around and pick it up,” he suggested.
My brows rose.
Did he think I wouldn’t?
Shrugging one shoulder, I turned around, backed up, and then bent over to reach for the soap.
And immediately felt his erection prodding my ass.
Then, without any hesitation whatsoever, he lifted me up, spun me around, and leaned me into the wall.
The cold tile hit my back, but before I could voice anything at all, he pushed his erection to the entrance of my pussy, and advanced inside of me.
My mouth dropped open into an O, and he took advantage of that, too, by placing his mouth on mine.
He swallowed the scream that came in the next instant when he pushed so far into me that I felt impaled, and continued to hold his mouth there while he took me roughly.
His cock inside of me felt like he was finally home, and though it burned where I stretched around him, I would do it over and over again just to feel it.
Because feeling it now cemented the fact that he wasn’t a figment of my imagination. That he wasn’t some specter that I’d made up just to make me feel better.
My hands ran down Tunnel’s shoulders.
No, this man was alive and very well. Rougher and darker than he used to be, yes, but any less Tunnel? No. He was perfect.
“Please,” I mewled, urging him faster.
He didn’t change his pace, or give any indication that he heard me, or even cared, but Tunnel never had listened to me. He had his own agenda when it came to my pleasure, and I’d get mine when he was damn good and ready to give it.
His gaze connected with mine, and I knew he was feeling the effects of our joining just as strongly as I was.
“Tunnel,” I breathed. “Please.”
He growled.
My eyes closed.
And then he started to fuck me in earnest. He pounded away inside of me, the tiled wall at my back steadying me against his unyielding thrusts. I took everything he had, and then some, and he looked so goddamn intense that it was nearly too hard to watch.
“Oh, fuck, baby,” he said to me. “You undo me.”
He undid me right freakin’ back.
“You’re so fucking beautiful,” he grated out. “I want to wrap your pretty face with my hands and never let you go.”
A tear formed at the corner of my eye.
“I love you, Tun.”
He pressed closer. Mere millimeters separated our faces now as he gave me all that he had to give.
“I will work for the rest of my life to make sure that you and our baby girl are safe,” he explained to me. “I will suffer. I will give up anything. Anything at all that guarantees that you live and do it happy and healthy.”
“Happy,” I breathed. “I finally remember what that feels like.”
Then I exploded and took him right along with me.
Chapter 19
Nobody told me being a mother was just being a tiny person’s snack bitch.
-Meme
Mina
I opened the car door of my SUV and grinned at my girl.
“Hey, baby,” I called to her. “How was your day?”
She pursed her lips. “It was okay. Evidence is not my favorite thing in the world to search for. I just wish we could give the death sentence to people that we know did wrong things.”
I stifled a laugh.
“What about if that person isn’t guilty?” I questioned her.
She shrugged.
Just like her father.
“What’s for dinner?” she pressed, ignoring my question.
“I was thinking a sandwich,” I said. “Sound okay?”
She shrugged. “I’d rather the leftovers from last night.”
I didn’t offer those because Tunnel and I had finished the rest of the enchiladas that I’d made for dinner last night during round one of reunion sex and round two.
“You can help me make some tamales when we get home,” I offered. “But I ate the leftovers for lunch.”
She huffed into a groan of disappointment. “I don’t like tamales.”
But your father does.
I couldn’t say that either, though.
Not yet.
We’d discussed it earlier, and we’d both agreed that we couldn’t tell Sienna about Tunnel until the threat of the truth getting to someone else was gone or this entire thing was over.
And right now, the case against Tunnel’s parents was still very much a large problem for us, and we weren’t going to expose our daughter to that. Hopefully not at all.