“Blythe,” he said quietly. “Your father is a sad son of a bitch. He had you, and he didn’t love you like you deserve to be loved. I can’t comprehend how anyone couldn’t love you. Fuck, I can’t comprehend how anyone couldn’t want to cherish you and protect you. And I don’t think I’ll ever be able to forgive the man. So you’ve been warned. If you want to form a relationship with him, fine, but I don’t want to be near him. I’ll wait in the other room or outside in the car when you visit him,” He reached over and tilted my head up so I had to look at him. One lonely tear rolled down my face, and he caught it with his thumb. “I will love my kid. I can love my kid and be a dad and not love its mom. People do it all the time. It’s not a package deal. If the baby is mine, I will love it. I swear to you. I wouldn’t do to that baby what was done to you. But I will be a shell of a f**king man if I have to live the rest of my life without you. So, if you’re worried about me being a good dad, then know I need you in order to be whole.”

Another tear escaped, and then another. My vision got blurry as the tears filled my eyes and began streaming down my face. “I love you,” I choked out, unable to say anything else.

He jerked the car door open and jumped out, then took off running around the front of my car. He opened my car door, swinging it wide, then pulled me out of the car and into his arms as his body trembled.

I clung to him as he buried his face in my neck and held me. He didn’t say anything, but the slight trembling of his body was so out of place with him. “Say it again,” he said against my neck after several minutes.

I reached up and ran my hand over his hair. “I love you. I’ve loved you for a while now.”

“Fuck,” he groaned, and pulled back to look at me. “I really wish you’d told me when you realized it.”

“I thought it would scare you off,” I admitted.

He shook his head, soaking me up as he began caressing my arms and back. “You just might be the only person on Earth who doesn’t know how f**king insane I am about you. People who don’t know us can take one look at me and know I’m completely owned. It’s all over my face when I look at you.”

“I’ve missed you,” I told him.

He cupped my face the way he had before he kissed me the first time. “Good, because I’ve been lost without you,” he said, then his lips touched mine and opened on a sigh. The sigh was mine.

His mouth slanted over mine as he deepened the kiss. I felt light-headed as I held onto his arms and molded myself against him. I wasn’t sure if I would ever have this again. Now that I did, I knew I couldn’t let it go.

“Where are you staying?” he asked against my mouth. “I need to be inside you. Soon. Now.”

“The house I grew up in,” I said, not wanting to go there. It was filled with bad memories, ones I didn’t want to feel now. Not anymore.

“Go get in the passenger seat. We’re going to get a hotel room,” he said with one last kiss and a pat to my bottom.

I hurried around the car to get in, when I noticed a girl my age standing by her car watching me. I’d gone to school with her, and she’d been a member of the church. But she’d never once been nice to me. She had been one of the many to make jokes about me and make me feel even more unwanted than I already had felt. She had been watching me kiss Krit. She’d seen the way he held me, and a smile touched my lips. I guess I just gave her something to talk about. I lifted my hand and waved at her before climbing inside the car.

KRIT

Keeping my hands off Blythe long enough to get us to the nearest hotel and checked in was hard. So, the moment I closed the door to the room behind me, I picked her up and carried her to the bed. Throwing her down, I watched as she giggled and smiled up at me. Jerking my shirt off, I tossed it aside, and then I made quick work of my jeans and boots. She sat there watching me as if mesmerized.

“Naked, love. I want you na**d,” I told her.

She snapped out of her trance and started undressing, and this time it was me who watched with complete fascination.

When her bra dropped to the floor and she tugged her shorts and panties down, I wanted to take time to appreciate how f**king beautiful she was. But that would have to wait until next time because I needed inside her more than I needed to breathe. “Please tell me you take birth control.” I wanted in her without a barrier so bad, I could taste it.

She shook her head. “I’ve never needed it,” she said, looking crestfallen.

“Soon as we get home, you’re going to the doctor. I want you bare. Nothing between us,” I told her, then kissed her lips as I leaned back to put the condom on.

“Wait,” she said, reaching out to stop me. I started to ask why, when she touched the piercing she’d only stared at before with wonder. I hadn’t given her a chance to explore it the other times. I had been too ready to get inside her, and she’d been nervous.

“Love,” I said through my teeth, then followed it with a hiss as she wrapped her hand around my cock. “Oh, hell.” I fisted both my hands and watched as she ran her thumb over the metal that I’d gotten one drunken night after a dare.

“Does it hurt?” she asked when my body jerked in response to her touch.

“Not the way you’re thinking,” I said. “But we might need to do this show and tell another time, love. I’m real close and you touching me ain’t helping.”

A sneaky smile tugged at her lips as she lowered her head and ran her tongue over the tip of my swollen head. “Fuck!” I grabbed her by the waist and tossed her back down on the bed. Her legs fell open, and my c**k slipped right inside her wet slit. It had its own suction as it pulled me in and squeezed.

Blythe cried out, and her h*ps came up off the bed. It was hot, and holy hell, she was soaking wet. The sensation as I began to move was different than anything I had ever felt. Something was different. It was better and, motherfuck, I didn’t think it could get any better with her.

“Ohgod, ohgod, ohgod, I can feel it.” Blythe panted. “I can, Krit, I can feel it. It’s touching something I can’t.” She cried out my name again and began to shiver, trying to get me deeper. It was different for her, too. “There! Oh God! Krit! Oh God!” She clawed at my back as she wrapped herself around me like she couldn’t get close enough. Her body began shaking and small cries escaped her.

Just before I found my release, I realized what she felt. With one hard jerk backward, I shot my release all over her stomach. I’d forgot the condom. I stared down at my c**k and her juices coated it as it lay on her stomach. She’d marked me this time.

Her gaze lifted from my cum all over her stomach and on the tips of her br**sts to look at me. “Oops,” she said, her eyes wide.

A laugh erupted out of me, and I watched her press her lips together to keep from laughing too. Then she dropped her gaze back to my dick. “I need to get birth control because that piercing was definitely my very favorite.”

“Is that so?” I asked, thinking that being buried in her with nothing between us was my very favorite.

She nodded. “Oh yeah.”

She wasn’t leaving me. I hadn’t lost her. She was mine. “Let me go get a towel and clean up my mess,” I said, standing up.

“You kinda did make a big one.”

“Couldn’t help it, love. Your tight little pu**y milking me like it couldn’t get me deep enough kinda sent me over the edge.”

Her eyes flared, and the heat was back. Hell yes. My girl liked sex.

“Blythe.”

“Yes?”

“You’re perfect. I wouldn’t change a thing. Know that,” I told her, then turned to go get a towel. Now that I knew she’d lived a life of being put down, I intended to make sure she spent the rest of her life being reminded how wonderful she was.

Chapter Twenty-Four

BLYTHE

Krit was outside the door. He wasn’t ready to face Malcolm, and I wondered if he ever would be. I walked into the room and sat down in the chair beside Malcolm. They said he could go home tomorrow. The church was supplying him with a nurse, and I didn’t want to stay. Not any longer. I had to get back to my new life. The one where I had something worth living for.

“You’re leaving,” he said as he opened his eyes and looked at me.

“Yeah. It’s time I went home,” I told him. Krit was my home now. I had a home to go to, and that felt good. No, it felt amazing.

“The pierced tattooed guy?” he asked.

I nodded. “His name is Krit,” I told him.

Malcolm glanced at the door. “He out there?”

“Yes, but he doesn’t like you. He, uh, he isn’t sure he should be around you. He doesn’t forgive you for . . .” I didn’t finish that. Malcolm understood.

“So he loves you then,” Malcolm said.

“Yeah, he does.”

“Do you love him?”

“More than life. He’s my home. He’s healed me. Fixed all that was broken,” I told the man who had played a part in breaking me.

Malcolm didn’t say anything. He turned his head and looked out the window. “Go be happy, Blythe. Go live the life you deserved all along. Let him love you the way you deserve to be loved.”

He didn’t say he loved me. But he did tell me to go. So I stood up and did as I was told. When I stepped out of the door, Krit’s arms were right there holding me close to his hard safe body. “You’re my home too,” he said against my head.

“Let’s go home,” I told him.

Krit slid his arm over my shoulders and we walked through the waiting room where church members sat waiting to visit Malcolm. They all looked at me and then at the sexy rocker whose arm was possessively wrapped around me. I smiled at them and walked away. Away from the life that hadn’t wanted me and toward the life that I was meant for.

KRIT

Blythe was sleeping in my arms when the knocking on her apartment door started. We had gotten home late, and she was exhausted. I slipped out of bed, jerked on my discarded jeans, and headed for the door before Blythe was disturbed.

Trisha stood outside Blythe’s door with Britt and Jedrick Owens. I’d gone to school with Jedrick. Last I heard, he was playing football at Oklahoma State. Dude was a monster on the field. “What’s this?” I asked, rubbing the sleep from my eyes.

“Inside!” Trisha barked, and strutted in. She had her “don’t mess with me” look on her face. Britt and Jedrick followed her, and Jedrick’s eyes met mine.

“Your sister scares the shit out me, man,” he muttered as he sauntered into the apartment.

I managed a grin and turned to look at Trisha, who looked like she was ready to lay the smackdown on anyone who interrupted her. “I took Britt to the doctor. I was tired of her not going, so I made the appointment and took her myself. She fought me on it a little, but then she decided it was in her best interest to do as I said,” Trisha said, shooting a glare at Britt, who stiffened. “She’s pregnant, all right. Four months pregnant to be specific. Four months ago Britt wasn’t even in Sea Breeze. She had gone to see her aunt in Oklahoma. It was summer break, and she and Jedrick had hooked up during spring break and had been talking on the phone.

“Problem was, Britt’s daddy is a redneck and a racist. Britt knew her daddy would never let her date Jedrick. Didn’t matter that he was already being drafted into the NFL. He was the wrong color. So, Britt ran off to spend time with him.” Trisha stopped and looked at Jedrick.

“Now you tell us all about the protection you used with Britt,” Trisha told Jedrick.

The guy stifled a yawn. Apparently, my sister had woken him up too. “We didn’t. Britt said she was clean and on birth control.”

“How often did you have sex with Britt that month?” Trisha asked.

“Fuck, I don’t know. A couple of times a day, every day. She’s a f**king machine.” He paused and grinned. “Fucking machine,” he repeated, and laughed at his own joke.

“And why did you want to slap Krit with Jedrick’s baby?” Trisha asked Britt, who let out a loud annoyed sigh and shot daggers at my sister.

“Because I love Krit,” she replied.

“Wrong answer. Try again,” Trisha repeated in a sharp tone.

“Because the condom broke that one time. When it happened, I knew I could say it was his and he’d believe me.”

Trisha motioned toward Jedrick. “Hate to point out the obvious, but when the baby was born, it was gonna be obvious it wasn’t Krit’s. He and Jedrick do not share the same color skin.”

Britt threw her hands up in the air. “I didn’t know what I was gonna do! I was desperate. I was starting to show, and my dad noticed. He demanded I tell him whose baby it was. He was yelling and calling me a slut. I couldn’t tell him it was Jederick’s. He would have killed me. So, I said it was Krit’s.”

My relief was turning into rage as I realized what Britt had almost taken from me. That Blythe had dealt with a life-changing bomb without me there to hold her because of Britt’s lie. I took a step toward her, when Jedrick stepped in front of me.

“Dat’s my baby mama, man,” he said.

“Krit.” Blythe’s sweet voice called out, and I turned around to see her standing there in my T-shirt. “It’s okay. It’s really better than okay,” she said, a smile lighting up her face. She’d heard everything. She was right. “Let them go.” Her eyes shifted to Trisha’s. “Except Trisha. I can make coffee if she wants to stay.”