Merry with a Ranger (Love Beach Holiday Collection)

Chapter 4

CHAPTER 4

B ONNIE

Snores emanated from the unit next door that we rented. I locked the door between us, keeping my father out as I knew he’d want to talk—or rant—after he and Nash parted ways. Whatever their beef, I wanted no part of it. Those years were so long ago and yet still yesterday but the dread of it all followed me like I couldn't step away from it. From them.

Him.

And yet Nash was here. I wanted him near me, holding my hand like he used to, and asking me to dance with hope in his eyes and a tremor in his fingers.

But the Nash I met again forged his own path and didn’t have time for hope or simple things like dancing. And I was simply the forgotten girl whose childhood fell away before she became an adult who didn’t get to play with simple dreams and things like hope any more.

Swallowing back the way of blackness that threatened to push me to the carpet, weighing me down. I forced one foot in front of the other, glancing back at the interlocking doorway that connected mine and my parent’s room, knowing they would be furious if I left, but I hadn’t been a teenager for a long, long time.

Nor, in all those years, had I claimed any sense of freedom or self at all.

Regardless, I still slipped out the door of my room with my keycard clutched in hand like I was sixteen, checking the hallway in both directions and ignoring the camera at the end of the corridor that wasn’t recording anyway.

It couldn’t be, when I was around. They made sure of it.

A familiar pressure built in my throat as I closed the door gently to an empty hallway. I made it all the way to the end, so ready to taste outside air, and walked straight into a familiar checked shirt and an unforgiving chest that most definitely wasn’t that hard last time I had intimate contact with it.

“Your father is right behind me.” Nash’s brusque voice sent a riot of sensation along my skin in every direction, sweeping away the pressure and replacing it with something different. A shot of adrenaline I hadn’t felt in far too long. His hands directed my body to turn, and I did, back the way I came. “Move it, Bonnie, or we lose any chance we have.”

I quick-stepped it halfway up the hall, unsure if he was directing me back to my room or his, when his arm braced the wall before me and suddenly I shifted sideways into a stairwell I previously ignored.

“Fire escape.” His lips brushed my ear. “Keep moving. Next landing, then stop. Okay?’

I nodded, my lips as unable to move as they did on that truly hideous cocktail earlier, or over that stilted dinner that killed every fraction of freedom Nash and I displayed before with our lies.

But this felt nothing like either of those moments.

A breath later and the fire escape door shut gently behind him. Nash’s feet moved soundlessly to where I stood on the next landing under the cement stairs below. His fingers flicked sideways and I started on the next flight downward, halting in the shadows when he held up a hand.

My feet stalled. I froze as he took the next stair, stopping just above me, waiting.

Nothing. The door didn’t open, nor did my father seem to know where Nash disappeared to, or that I was with him.

I opened my mouth, but his hand pressed to my stomach in a light touch. Light, but a warning all the same. Count , he mouthed to me.

I bit my lip, watching him, and counted in my head.

One Mississippi, two Mississippi…

By the time I got to five, Nash’s body heat met mine on the same step. He wasn’t bulky by any means, but his sort of muscle was still the solid sort, the type of man who’d be impossible to outrun.

This was Nash Mercer. If ever there was someone in this world to be terrified of, it was him. Because he knew me, and I couldn’t hide from him.

But I wasn’t terrified. Much.

My fingers brushed his collar, reaching up to find a few days’ growth on his chin. “I like you like this,” I mumbled into the darkness, unable to see his full face.

His hands braced against the wall behind me over my head. “I was gonna take you outside. Wanted to walk somewhere. But it’s kinda freezing.”

“I like freezing.” My head tipped back as I searched for his eyes, twin pinpoints of onyx in the roiling shadows he wore like a cloak. “Nash, what did he tell you?—”

“Nothing.”

“Oh.” I swallowed, both relieved and back to being a little terrified at once.

“It’s your story to tell, Bonnie Lawson.”

Shit. My language really was going to get me into trouble with this man as I mouthed the word. His fingertips followed, tracing the movement of my lips. “What if I don’t want to tell you?” What if I can’t?

He shrugged. “Then you don’t tell me. It’s been a long damn time, Bonnie. Trust is built. Earned.”

I could see the pain it cost him to admit that, but this wasn’t just his story. “I broke that trust when we left. When I left.”

“You were seventeen. There wasn’t exactly a lot of choice. You were at school, Bonnie. A kid. We all were.”

“I had to grow up pretty fast.” I played with his buttons on his shirt, accidentally popped the top one open.

“Yeah?” His breath came fast, a little less regular against my cheek. “You sure as hell look grown up to me now, Bonnie.”

“I don’t know if I am,” I whispered back. “It’s been a long time living like this, place to place, never stopping or settling…” I squeezed my eyes shut, but hot tears escaped anyway.

“Christ.” One hand dropped to skate along my back, forcing its way between me and the wall. “You’ve been stuck like this for all that time…” The penny drops hard and fast. I didn’t need to look at him to see it. “Fuck me. You’re my—” He coughed into my hair, and the hand on my back dug into my skin beneath my dress. “You’re in WITSEC, aren’t you? Witness protection. Did your father Marshal up or something?” His dry humor fell endlessly.

I didn’t bother to respond. “They’re always watching. Just not…like you think.” I leaned my forehead on his shirt and breathed in. Salt, whiskey and caramel. My cheek rested against his chest unbidden, and he let me steal a moment’s comfort, still braced over me while his heart raced. “You’re not a surfer, are you?”

He laughed, a hollow sound that rang around us. “Before this all gets shot to shit and I can pretend for half a second that I’m gonna have that picket fence with the girl I dreamed about for the last ten years, you gonna let me kiss you, Bonnie Little?”

He said Little. Not Lawson.

A sob tried to break free from my lips, but it seemed like Nash was done asking permission. His mouth found mine, his kiss as smooth as that caramel I scented on him before. Deft fingers wound through my hair, tilting my head to the angle he needed. I managed a long inhale on instinct before an all-male noise rose in his throat and his kiss changed into something darker, harder.

Whatever sort of picket fence Nash Mercer wanted, I was here for it.

His other hand banded around my waist, pushing me back into the wall. One knee speared between my legs, then the other, pushing my legs open to the limits of my dress. He cursed, freeing my waist to grip the fabric and yank upward. One hand settled on my thigh in a possessive grip that left me arching into him and his mouth returned to mine in fervor.

Hips grinding roughly into me, his tongue delving deep, Nash engulfed me until I swore nothing remained of Bonnie Little except an echo of a girl who craved a man she couldn’t have.

But he was here right now, and I wanted him like I’d never been allowed to have anyone.

Linking one thigh over his hip, I levered myself up, clawing his neck as I kissed him back, sloppy and frantic and with no idea what the hell I was supposed to be doing.

“Damn, girl. You taste just like you used to. Texas summers and stolen midnights together. You remember those? I used to come and get you, drive you to the lookout and–” He pressed his body to mine in a slow grind I felt to my bones.

“Fuck,” we whispered together.

“Girl, that mouth.” His curled up in a slow smile that echoed to the tips of my toes. “Gonna get you in so much trouble.”

“I remember everything.” I tried to ignore the way my body lit up the closer he pressed until everything important evacuated from my body. Air, blood, thoughts. “Nash, I’m– I don’t know what I’m doing.”

He froze at my confession, those strong hands releasing me to press back over my head as his body arced against mine. “Say that again, love,” he demanded.

But neither the words nor my mouth would cooperate. I shook my head, sucking my bottom lip into my mouth.

His gaze zeroed in on the movement when it popped back out. “Are you telling me?—”

We teased and played with each other back in the day, back in Texas, but we were young, and he never pushed me for anything he didn’t think I was ready for. Ever the gentleman, Nash Mercer, so before him, I remained a virgin.

I’d always wished he hadn’t been quite so gentlemanly after all.

I blinked as his whole body backed off, and it became abundantly clear what he thought. “Oh, no. I’m not…you know. Innocent, or anything.” I looked down, but that just left me staring at the straining bulge in his jeans. Fail. So I studied his rumpled shirt instead. “No, I mean, I’ve done— I’ve— I just don’t know anything. That’s all,” I finished awkwardly.

One moment I was studying his shirt, the next I found myself in freefall in his eyes.

“Are you telling me that after ten long damn years of wishing I’d been the one to be with you back then, there’s a chance I can still give you some of your firsts?” His frown was offset by the way his eyes searched my face, seeking answers I didn’t want to give but needed to answer all the same.

I nodded, worrying my lip until it ached. “Mhmm.”

Nash settled his body against mine, pressing in the damning rhythm again. “Words, love,” he murmured, his voice a seduction all on its own.

“Yes, Nash. Anything I’ve got left to give is yours.”

His mouth crashed down on mine, and ten years dissipated in a breath. He kissed me until my head swam with the scent of him, the warmth of his arms folding me into his chest twisted into the fabric of me that no one had ever been able to change no matter how caged and limited my life had been, all these years.

Nash snapped those tethers in seconds. Sliding his hands over my hips, he pulled me hard up against him, his thick erection hitting all the right spots as his body pressed into me relentlessly. I arched back, learning what he liked, a strangled whimper sliding between my lips to seek his mouth?—

He pulled back with a groan and drew me down the stairs.

“What’s going on?” I shook my head, dizzy from the change in tempo, swaying where I stood.

Nash cursed softly and drew me back to his side, pressing a kiss to my hair. “If I get to have some of your firsts, Bonnie, then I want one I never did back then.”

“What’s that?”

Letting him tuck me unto his side, I clung to him as we traversed the final stairs to the ground floor. He pushed open the door to the outside without setting off alarms, though somehow with him, I wasn’t surprised.

“I’m taking you to the Christmas markets. And after that abysmal damn dinner, I’m buying you ice cream.” He yanked off his jacket and tucked it around me, covering me in the scent of him, and hauled me outside.