Redemption Hills: The Complete Collection

22. Tessa

TWENTY-TWO

TESSA

Horror held me captive as I looked at Milo from halfway across the room.

Dread and sickness a spiked ball that I swallowed, ripping up my throat and tearing holes in my stomach.

I felt…shattered.

Shattered at the sight of Milo who’d been shattered, too.

Physically, and in a bad, bad way.

Blood saturated his white T-shirt that was ripped at the side. What wasn’t red was soiled with dirt and debris. He had an oozing gash at his temple, the blood dried and sticky where it’d trailed down his cheek and into his beard. His right eye was so swollen it was merely a slit.

My sweet mountain man was a mangled mess.

But I thought it might have been his heart that’d been battered the most. That broken crown mangled where it barely clung to his head.

His spirit was this darkened veil that murmured of secrets and atrocity.

His pain and guilt at touching me.

I wanted to wipe it from his being.

But it was my own guilt that threatened to suffocate. The proof of what I’d dragged him into.

Hatred burned through my being, infiltrating every fiber.

Karl was a monster.

A disgusting pig.

His pathetic ego so vile and inflated that he would stoop to this.

I eased back Milo’s direction.

Energy flashed. Strikes of electricity that zapped in the night.

I tried to protect myself against it, against the memories of Milo having me propped on the island that were so vivid I had to grind my teeth to keep from moaning.

His kisses still alive on my tongue.

His touch still trembling through my body.

“Tessa,” he warned. I thought the man might be so in tune with me that he’d read every sordid, beautiful thought that had traipsed through my mind.

“Let me take care of you,” I murmured as I reached out to pry the bottle from his fingers that he seemed set on emptying.

I set it on the counter, trying to find composure and balance, my tongue swiping my bottom lip as I steadied myself to look back at his marred face.

Pain hit me again.

God, how could Karl be so cruel? So vicious?

I wrapped my shaking hand around his. “Come with me.”

“You don’t have to?—”

“Please.” Reservations curled deep in the lines of his face, but he finally nodded and gave, threading his fingers through mine.

Relief pummeled me when he did, that connection coursing through our touch.

I slowly led him into his room.

Everything about it was as masculine as the man. That enormous bed and the chunky, rustic furniture, his pride in the pictures of his children that he had displayed all over.

There were a couple that were of him and his mother, and damn it, that was sweet, too.

Milo was a dichotomy of rough and soft. Menacing and sweet.

I forced myself not to get too wrapped up in it as I continued through to the ensuite bathroom.

I flicked on the light, and we blinked against the intrusion.

“Fuck,” he rumbled.

My eyes widened all over again, and my stomach dropped to the floor.

Nausea boiled, my heart aching in a way that I couldn’t process.

“I’m thinking fuck is about the correct description right about now.” The words were splinters of distress.

In the light, it became apparent bruises were welling all over his body.

His skin blackened and abraded, his arms scraped and oozing, his face blemished by the violent attack.

Biting down hard on the side of my cheek, I fought the tears that burned at the back of my eyes. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe he did this to you.”

Milo shifted in unease, though he was guarding, an arm wrapped around his ribs protectively.

But it was me who wanted to be doing the protecting.

I wanted to stand for him.

Fight for him.

Hold him.

Love him.

God, I’d gotten in so deep.

“We don’t even know if it was him who was responsible, Tessa.”

“How couldn’t it be? I mean, I asked you to go over there with me, and then you hit him, and then he was so mad when he showed up at my office, even though it was completely that jerk’s fault. Of course, it’s him,” I ranted.

I tried to distract myself by opening the cabinet below his sink and rummaging around for a clean washcloth, the whole time fighting the vicious vibrating in my chest.

“I can’t even believe he could do this,” I continued through the torment. “I knew Karl was a total asshole. I mean, a giant, huge, gaping asshole, but I never imagined he would stoop this low. I should have known it. God, I should have known he’s a monster. This is my fault.”

“Either way, I had it coming. Instant karma.”

A tear slipped free when I blinked. “Don’t say that, Milo. You think you could possibly deserve this?”

For kissing me?

For touching me?

I nearly gagged that he considered it such a sin.

But I’d already known his heart was in tatters. His ace played. He had nothing left for me. I’d been begging for the pain thinking there might be a chance.

My hands were shaking like crazy as I stood and ran the washcloth under warm water.

Milo reached out and stopped my frantic movements. “If it was him? I’d gladly stand between him and you time and again,” he rumbled.

My throat nearly closed off, and tears started streaming free. “I can’t stand the idea of you getting hurt for me.”

“Would die for you, Tessa. Kill for you. Destroy what threatens you. Already told you that.”

“You shouldn’t have to,” I croaked. “We need to go to the police.”

Hesitation warred through his being. “Don’t think I can risk that right now.”

I blew out a frustrated sigh, one he took as my fear.

Ferocity wound into his features, and his hold tightened on my wrist. “I don’t know what that bastard is capable of, Tessa, but I won’t let him get to you.”

“So, what, you’re just going to take the beating for me?”

Rage blistered in the air, and his strong jaw snapped shut, the words hissed between his teeth. “There will be no beating when it comes to you, Tessa. He touches you, he dies.”

I blinked through the confusion. Through the sudden disorder that whipped through the bathroom. How could he feel so intensely when he looked at me like I was a transgression?

A mistake?

“Let’s not get carried away now.” I tried to make a joke because come on, he wasn’t serious.

“You think I’m playing, Tessa? Know you see me a certain way, but I’m not a good man.” His low voice cracked on the warning.

Apprehension unfurled, as cold as ice, skating up from our connection point and spreading through me like a bad dream.

My mind raced to the company he kept.

Trent, Jud, and Logan.

I knew what they were capable of.

Somehow, I’d never associated Milo with that kind of brutality.

I sucked for a breath, tried to smile and pretend the grimness that swallowed the room in foreboding wasn’t alive and real. “What do you mean?”

“It means bad things have a way of landing themselves at my door.”

“Me?”

He breathed out a pained sound. “No, Little Dove. Not you. But you need to know Karl isn’t close to being my only enemy.”

The atmosphere thickened, his eyes flaming with something I knew he didn’t want to feel.

I tried to swallow around the fullness of it, holding my breath like it could keep this need that glowed within shrouded as I moved forward and carefully reached up to dab the warm washcloth against the cut at his temple.

He winced, though he kept watching me like he was terrified of being close to me and wanted to erase the bare space that thrummed between us at the same time.

I struggled to focus on what I was doing, but my attention kept slanting back to the intensity that burned from his gaze.

“I don’t believe that you’re bad, Milo Hendricks. I know things, remember?” I tried to inject some lightness into it.

Casualness.

But there wasn’t a single thing casual about this moment.

“That’s because you don’t really know me, Little Dove.”

I feel you.

I see you.

I know you just by being in your space.

I peeked at him as I kept gently pressing the cloth to his face. “Would you let me know you? If I asked you to?”

His mouth tipped down at the side. “I let Autumn go there, and it destroyed her.”

I hated myself for the flame of jealousy that lapped through my consciousness, and I knew this crush was no longer just a crush.

It’d likely never been.

It’d been distorted by my twisted loyalty to Karl.

And now that my spirit was freed, it gushed toward what it wanted.

I moved to dab at the small cut at the corner of his swollen eye, my intentions wrong, razors that I felt slash through the atmosphere. “You’re still in love with her.”

He let go of a brittle sound, his response cutting us both in two. “I’m the reason she’s dead.”

I froze.

His response answered nothing but only bred a million questions.

Torment clotted his words. “Because I was too late. Too reckless. Too fuckin’ ignorant to see what was happening.”

“I—”

“Fuck,” he spat, spinning away.

He set both hands on the countertop, and he bent over, trying to catch his breath, or maybe he was just wishing he could reel the confession back in.

“Milo—”

“Just leave it.” His voice was raw.

I blinked, unsure of what to do, and my eyes wandered down his back, over his tattered, shredded shirt and the gnarly wounds that were visible underneath.

“I think you need a doctor, Milo.”

“I don’t.”

“You might have?—”

He lifted his battered face to glare at me through the mirror. “I don’t, Tessa.”

A war tore through me. Finally, I stepped forward. “Then at least let me help you get cleaned up.”

He blew out a strained breath as his head slumped between his shoulders, the words coarse as they scraped into the heavy air. “You should go. Forget everything I got you wrangled into.”

Mine was a confession. “I don’t think that I can. Your kids…”

Agony blazed through his expression. “What if they’re better off with Paula and Gene? What if I’m being selfish, trying to get them back? What if I’m only going to end up hurting them in the end?”

“No.”

It was a promise.

My oath.

“You’re wrong if you think you’re not what’s right for them. I saw it in all three of you yesterday, Milo. You belong together.”

Somberness moaned through the atmosphere.

But something else hit it, too, when he slowly turned around.

Something fierce.

Unrelenting.

Powerful.

He looked down at me, all the intense angles of his face held in restraint, his eyes drenched with the fears and hurt he didn’t have an answer to.

“You have to fight for this, Milo. With all your strength. With all your love. With everything you have.”

His brow slashed in severity. “And what if letting them go is the best thing I can do to show my love for them?”

I pushed forward, my voice twisted in the hope I had for him. “Is that what your heart tells you? That they’d be better off without you?”

His thick throat bobbed beneath his beard when he swallowed. “No. It’s tellin’ me to fight. To protect. To give them the life that Autumn and I had dreamed of giving them before we lost her.”

“Then that’s what you do.”

“It might be ugly, Tessa.” It rang with a dark warning. “And still, after everything, you want to stand by my side?”

“I’ve never been surer of anything. I know it might be ugly. You already told me, and I already accepted it. But sometimes, we have to make it through the ugliness to find the beauty on the other side. Now, we need to get you undressed.”

I said it like it was no big deal.

Like the thought of getting this man naked had never crossed my mind.

Ragged breaths pumped through my lungs, and my tongue stroked out to wet my dried lips as I slowly knelt in front of him.

He towered over me. A fortress that had been battered but still remained standing.

More ominous than ever.

It felt like some of the secrets he’d tried to keep disguised had been lifted to reveal the darkness that writhed beneath.

Milo exhaled a shaky breath. “And sometimes, the sun rises when you least expect it.”

The words were low. Riddled with a dark affection.

My chest stretched so tight I was struggling to breathe as I fumbled through the laces on his boots. I worked to get them loose, then struggled to get the giant things free of Milo’s massive feet.

Tension pulled between us. Growing as an acute silence poured into the confined space. I could feel the heat of his gaze.

It only amplified when I finally got his socks off, then slowly climbed to my feet.

The air ripped from my lungs, stolen at the sight of him, at the way he watched me as I stepped forward so I could remove his shirt.

His strong jaw clenched tight, his eyes creased at the corners as if he were frozen in restraint.

My fingers curled around the fabric, and I slowly, carefully began to pull it up.

A grunt left his mouth, and I whimpered when I saw the magnitude of his injuries.

His abdomen was covered in blackened patches where bruises blossomed.

His skin scraped and abraded.

His side was seeping with a deep cut.

What had my chest clutching was the recognition that not all the injuries were new.

Milo was littered in scars.

I guessed I hadn’t been close enough to see him those times when he was outside working without a shirt.

They were unmistakable now.

Some jagged and knotted and gnarled.

Others deep, long slashes where it looked like he’d been carved.

“Oh, Milo,” I mumbled as my spirit wept.

“I’ve had worse, Little Dove.”

How, and to still be standing?

He took over for me when I’d made it up to his armpits, and he groaned as he lifted his arms to pull it the rest of the way over his head.

Maybe I shouldn’t have let them, but my eyes raced, devouring every exposed inch of him.

His shoulders massive and muscled, his arms solid, his chest so freaking wide.

Most of his flesh was covered in ink.

Designs that whispered of beauty against the darkness that reigned underneath.

The scars were woven into the images as if the sum of them had made up his life.

Along his side was one word.

Written on him like a brand.

Gore.

Gulping, I struggled for clarity.

Sanity.

Control.

Something other than this dangerous path I was taking.

Milo had already proven he didn’t want to go there with me, but there was no stopping it.

That train had already left the station.

Barreling ahead as my attention raked down to the flat, chiseled planes of his cut abdomen. This area was barren of tattoos and completely ripped.

And holy jeez, that V-cut that dipped below the waist of his jeans was even more defined.

I tried to swallow.

The man was hotter than Hades.

Rugged and hard.

Beautiful Beast.

He never looked away when his fingers went to the buttons of his jeans. He ticked through his fly, then carefully pushed the jeans down, bending just enough that he could shrug them all the way down and off his feet.

Milo straightened.

I nearly fainted.

What was even happening?

Was I dreaming?

Coma by orgasm?

Because the man stood there in nothing but these tight black briefs that came down to the top of his thick, muscled thighs, and he was staring at me like he was daring me to look.

He was hard.

So hard and giant he was nearly bursting out of his underwear, the shape of him forever immortalized in the thin fabric and emblazoned in my mind.

It turned out my fantasies had erred on the side of pathetic when it came to Milo Hendricks.

An offense to all that he was.

No justice at all.

“Not supposed to want you, Tessa.” Agony twisted out with the rough words.

Oh, no.

This poor, wonderful man.

But I got the sense he was begging me to run and pleading with me to stay.

Something flared in his gaze.

“Want you to suck me, Tessa.”

I was pretty sure my eyes bugged out of my skull.

So blunt.

“You’re hurt.”

And you don’t want me but you kind of do, and I think all of this is a really terrible idea that I want to try out, anyway.

“And I think you might be the only thing in this world that could make me feel good.”

“Is that what you want? For me to touch you?” I managed some shaky version of what he’d asked me earlier tonight, when the man had undone me in the span of two minutes, then left me questioning every convoluted emotion I felt.

Half the night I’d spent toiling in bed until I’d finally heard his truck return at close to four this morning.

Now, dawn threatened around us. The quieted, slowed hour that dripped into a new day.

Pregnant with possibility.

Or maybe it was only ripe with reckless ideas.

“I’ve wanted that sweet mouth wrapped around my cock since the second I saw you. How many times I’ve imagined you on your knees for me, Little Dove.”

I dropped to them like I had no strength left.

Compelled.

Arousal burned across his flesh.

The way his pained breaths had turned jagged with want.

Stepping forward, he brushed the pad of his thumb along my jaw, inciting a frenzy in me so intense it quivered all the way to my bones. Then he was running his thumb over my lips, back and forth, and my nerves were firing all over the place.

“Are you going to let me fuck that mouth?”

“You can have any part of me that you want.”

I knew it was true.

Possession flashed through his expression, and my hands shook out of control when I rose higher on my knees and dipped my fingers into the band of his underwear. Those shakes turned into straight up tremors as I carefully drew them down his legs, setting his penis free.

It bobbed up high on his stomach.

My belly twisted, and I was pressing my thighs together as a newfound desire throbbed like a life beat at my center.

He was thick and fat and so freaking long, and the air was getting locked somewhere on the way out of my lungs.

Honestly, I had no clue what to do with that thing.

But I wanted it.

I wanted it deep and everywhere, and I was pretty sure Milo knew it because his hand fisted in my hair, his warning a low desperation when he growled, “You’d be better off if you didn’t take to looking at me like that.”

“You act like I can stop,” I whispered as I reached up and wrapped my hand around the base of him.

My spirit trembled, and my heart raced, a drum, drum, drumming that pummeled my ribs.

His hand twitched in my hair, the man so gorgeous where he towered over me. Every hulking muscle in his body was tense, bristling with strength.

“Don’t fall for me, Tessa.”

“Don’t worry, Milo, it’s just fake, remember?”

“Is it? I think you’re a liar, Little Dove.”

I figured we both were.

I leaned forward and licked him from base to tip, riding up to the fat, swollen head of him.

I gently kissed the tip.

His stomach flexed as he jolted forward. “Tiny Tease.”

I ran my tongue over the slit, wondering exactly who I’d become when I found myself relishing the salty taste of the precum that leaked from his dick.

Awed that my freedom was here.

That this was no longer chains or obligation.

It was only the truth that Milo wanted me, and I wanted him, no matter what faulty bargain we’d come to. The terms that it would end.

The only thing that counted in this single moment was this . This broken man who needed to be touched. One who thought himself wicked when I was sure he might be the best man I’d ever met.

I curled my lips around his head, applying the smallest amount of pressure, before I flicked my tongue over the little notch at the base.

Milo hissed, and his hand curled tighter in my hair, the muscles in his abdomen flexing in greed. “Are you playing with me?”

The threat of a smile pulled at my lips, and I whispered against his tip, “Never.”

I sucked him deep. As far as I could take him, my lips stretched so wide around him that I was having a hard time not using my teeth.

Milo grunted. “Yes, baby, just like that. That mouth…knew it was going to be my ruin.”

I tightened my hand at the base, stroking him in time with my mouth because there was no chance I could take all of him.

I rode him back to his head, sucking before I gave him another good lick.

Milo grumbled and shook. “Fuck me, Little Dove.”

His hips began to rock, pulsing deeper and deeper with each stroke.

My body glowed with want. With the perfection of giving him what he needed. Of touching this man in a way I’d wanted to touch him for what felt like forever. Like maybe I’d been coming up on this moment for my entire life.

Yeah.

I was so going to get my heart broken.

I knew it, the way emotion gathered and swept and gusted through me in an unrelenting force as I twisted this man up in oblivion.

In ecstasy.

I could feel it in the sheen of bliss that built across his beautiful body.

He moaned as his hips began to snap.

I felt it the second he let go.

When he drove himself into my mouth as deep as I could take him.

Milo came with a roar.

With a thunder that pounded the room as he pulsed and jerked, pouring into my throat.

He held me by the back of the head while I swallowed him down.

I led him through his orgasm before I slowly eased him out of my mouth, and the man had me by the chin, forcing me to meet his gaze.

This battered man who looked like chaos. A perfect disorder. A flawless tragedy.

My Beautiful Beast.

“You are better than I ever could have imagined,” he murmured.

Emotion clogged my throat. “I liked it, pleasing you.”

His thumb swept over my swollen lips. “Nothing’s ever felt so good as you.”

The second he said it, I could see the guilt that streaked through his expression.

“I guess it might have been a good distraction.” I forced a weak smile.

He blinked, so soft. “That’s exactly what you are, Little Dove. A perfect distraction, and I’m afraid I’m gonna lose sight.”

“And what if I can help you see?”

Another bout of regret.

Right.

My attention dropped to the floor as my stomach got tangled in his guilt.

His hand returned to my hair, tugging my face back up to meet the ferocity in his. “Last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

An awkward, self-deprecating smile pulled at the edge of my mouth. “I think it’s likely too late for that. But I’ll take whatever time I have with you.”

I just threw it out there.

My heart tossed at his feet.

Reservations held his tongue, and when he didn’t say anything else, I blew out a sigh and pushed to my feet. Turning away from him, I went to his shower and turned on the showerhead, and I stood there while it warmed.

Steam began to fill the room.

“You need to get in and get those cuts cleaned. I’m going to get you some ibuprofen.”

He gave a slight nod, the man completely bare as he eased toward me.

My pulse got all erratic and thready again.

He came up right to my side, and his hand spread over my left cheek while his mouth came to my right temple. “Thank you. For taking care of me.”

“I told you before that I wanted to be there for you.”

“Because that’s what friends do?” There was an edge to it.

God, I felt lost. Teetering on unknown ground.

I swallowed around the rock lodged at the base of my throat. “Yeah, because that’s what friends do.”

He stepped into the spray and shut the door, and I darted out into the main room.

Trying to catch my breath.

Or my sanity, really.

My self-preservation.

Because really, Tessa McDaniels, what the hell do you think you’re doing?

I kept tossing myself at him, begging him to break me.

I inhaled a shaky breath, and I moved into the dimly lit kitchen. I rummaged around in the cabinet where he kept his medicines. I found the bottle of ibuprofen, and I shook out four because I knew he might be tough, but no man was immortal.

I ran a glass under the faucet, then I had to steel myself all over again when I crept back to his room.

He was already shutting off the shower when I got back inside. The shower door clicked open, and he grabbed for the towel that hung on the rack.

He wrapped it around his waist, the man wet when he stepped out.

Droplets dripped from his long, black hair and down into his beard, and he had streams of glittering rivulets running down his marred chest.

Gah, why did he have to be so everything?

“Here you go,” I whispered as I eased forward. He tossed all four of them back and chugged the water.

“Are you sure you don’t need to go to the ER?” I chanced again.

“Think I got all the medicine I needed.”

Right.

Blow jobs saved lives.

“Let me at least bandage the cut on your temple.”

“Okay.”

I was almost surprised that he agreed, and he sat down on the edge of the bathtub like a good little patient.

I tried to hold my breath as I gathered the bandages and ointment from the medicine cabinet.

I wasn’t sure I could handle more of him.

His aura that’d turned haunting yet hummed with want.

A dark, glowing amber that I could almost feel slipping through my veins.

He kept slanting his gaze up at me as I applied the ointment with a Q-Tip, then carefully placed the butterfly bandage on his temple.

So attuned.

So right.

“There.”

He gave me a tight nod, then stood.

Warily, I backed away.

He flicked off the bathroom light, and I made a beeline for his bedroom door.

I whimpered when he looped one of his giant arms around my front, yanking me back against his chest. His mouth came to my ear, a low roll of seduction. “Stay with me tonight. I don’t want to be alone.”

My eyes squeezed tight.

I should hightail my ass right out of there.

Stop this thing that neither of us understood.

My spirit ached.

Because I wanted it.

To be there for him when he needed me.

I nodded, letting this man, who was going to do me in, lead me to his bed.

He lifted the covers. “In you go, Little Dove.”

There he was, back to all that softness he wore at the club.

The quiet protector.

The gentle monster.

He moved across the room to his dresser and opened a drawer just as he dropped his towel.

I forced myself to stare at the ceiling as he pulled on a fresh pair of underwear, but I couldn’t look away when I felt the tremoring of the ground when he slowly edged back toward the bed.

My breaths turned shallow.

His big body filled the space.

Intimidating and rough and overpowering.

The bed creaked when he crawled onto the mattress.

A tremor rocked me when he tucked my back to his chest, the two of us lying on our sides.

Silence stretched long, both satisfying and insufficient.

“Wish I had my heart to give you, Tessa. Peace. Safety,” he finally murmured into the dense air.

I clutched at his big hand he had stretched out over the booming in my chest. “I don’t need your heart, Milo.”

And I was sure, as I drifted to sleep in his arms, that it was the greatest lie I’d ever told.