I heard the shower shut off, and a few minutes later, the door opened.
Macayla walked out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around her. Her hair was wet and water droplets slid down her naked, heated, flushed skin.
“Vic,” she whispered.
A gentleman would’ve looked away. Maybe even apologized.
I didn’t.
I stared at her, trying to erase the dark images wreaking havoc in my mind. She nervously ran her tongue over that goddamn scar, and my eyes narrowed.
“Did he do that?” I formed it as a question, but I already knew the answer.
She snapped her tongue back into her mouth and her hand tightened on the towel.
There was no question I was finding whoever raped her and going after the sick bastard. But I had time to think about what I’d do to him before I killed him. It would be inventive. Begging would go down. Crying. And finally, silence. His silence.
“Was. It. Him,” I repeated.
She nodded. “But I don’t know how it happened. I don’t remember any of it.”
The images roaring through my head were debilitating. My Rainbird tied up with chains to a bed. Or in some basement on a filthy mattress. Or in some dungeon chained to a moldy, damp stone wall.
Christ. My mind had detonated, and I couldn’t stop the fragments from piercing my skull.
Pull your crap together.
As much as I wanted to lose it, she needed me to be calm. To give calm. And no matter what it took, I’d give her what she needed.
“Put some clothes on. I’ll be here, baby.”
Her tongue flicked out and wet her lower lip. “Vic.” Her voice was ragged and sexy and sank into my bones.
Her fingers tightened on the towel, and she walked across the room toward me.
My breath stopped. But my heart thumped in my chest like I was standing on the edge of a building about to jump without any gear. Not knowing if I was going to survive the fall, but wanting to jump anyway.
She stopped inches from me. So close her bare toes touched the tips of my combat boots.
I didn’t move. No, I couldn’t move.
What was it about her?
But I knew what it was—Everything. It was fuckin’ everything. It had always been everything.
It may have started with offering to share her pop with me. Holding my hand because I needed it. Inviting me, a damaged piece-of-shit-kid to her birthday. But it was the raspy sweetness of her voice when she sang. The stupid T-shirts. The silly dancing to scare off monsters.
It was how she saw past the ugly and damaged.
Macayla had changed my path into darkness. She’d kept the damage from ruining me. Kept me from suffocating in guilt. From drowning in the grief.
My five second Rainbird.
I scowled. “Damn it. Put some clothes on,” I repeated. The last thing she needed was for me to rip off her towel and crush her lips to mine.
“Five seconds,” she whispered, looking up at me, her thick eyelashes glistening with wetness. “I want five seconds to touch you, Vic.”
Jesus. I wanted to tell her she could have ten. Twenty. A bloody century.