Better When He's Brave

“Did you tell him what you and I have been up to?”

He grunted and paused next to the sparkly-blue car. I was stunned when he bent his head down and gave me a hard and searing kiss. It made me tingle all the way to my toes.

“I told him that you and I have a thing. I told him he doesn’t have to like it, but it is what it is. He was surprisingly quiet on the subject, well quieter than he was about other stuff. He told me not to get my dick shot off.”

I cringed and ran my hands up his chest. I loved the way he felt so solid and hard. I liked to think of him as unbreakable, bulletproof, even if it wasn’t true. I curled my hands around the back of his neck and drew him down so I could kiss him much softer than he kissed me.

I teased his lips open with my own, ran my tongue along the seam of his mouth, and dipped inside when he finally opened up. I licked across the curve of his lower lip and darted inside to twist my tongue around his. He tasted like coffee and a faint hint of toothpaste. He tasted real and clean. He tasted like everything that made life worth fighting for.

In typical Titus fashion he only let things be soft and sweet for a second before he took over. One of his hands found my ass as he jerked me closer and bent his head closer to mine so he could devour me. When he finally pulled away we were both panting and had dirty, sexy things floating around in our eyes. I could see my own rumpled, anticipatory expression shining back at me in the translucent silver of his eyes. It was a good look for me. It was a better look on him.

He pulled open my door for me and I slid in, making sure to drag my fingers across the front of his jeans and the straining hardness that I knew was waiting for me there.

He got behind the wheel of the car and gave me a hot look out of the corner of his eye. “Did you see Honor?”

“Keelyn,” I corrected automatically. “Yeah, I saw her. She’s having a hard time with getting shot.”

“Anyone would.”

I nodded absently. “She’s looking to make some changes.”

“Nassir mentioned that she told him she was leaving. I didn’t think it was a serious threat. I didn’t think he would let her leave. He has women crawling all over him, but for some reason she’s the only one he treats like an actual human being. Typically he treats everyone like they are just a nuisance and a waste of his time.”

I fiddled absently with my hair as the graffiti-covered buildings and broken sidewalks flew by in a blur. If you squinted just right it was almost pretty, like abstract art. Almost.

“I don’t think he’ll know she’s gone until it’s too late. She knows he wouldn’t let her leave and she would let him convince her to stay. She needs to see what it’s like out there. She needs to see that nowhere is like the Point, and that isn’t always a good thing.”

He reached out a hand and settled it on my thigh. Again it was the normality, the simple gestures between us that were tearing me apart and making me crave more. I took my index finger and traced the heavy veins on the back of his hand around the clean bandage I had wrapped around it after our sexual acrobatics on the bed earlier. He was lucky the stitches hadn’t pulled open, as aggressive and handsy as he tended to get when he let loose.

“Is that what you figured out in WITSEC? The grass isn’t always greener?”

I gave a bitter laugh and rubbed my finger across his cut-up knuckles. “I had never even seen grass until WITSEC. I wasn’t one of those girls that chased boys on the Hill. I wasn’t trying to date outside my class. I had no desire to be some Point trash that got used and abused. I was always the one that was doing the using. I learned grass is hard to keep green and you need a lot of idle time and disposable income to even try and grow it. I’m not comfortable with either of those things, so I’ll take the concrete and the asphalt any day. You don’t have to keep it alive, you just have to hose it off.”

He let out a low whistle between his teeth and turned his head to look at me. His eyes were that oh so pretty blue that I could just stare at all day. Keelyn might want Denver for a breath of fresh air, mine was right there in those penetrating orbs.

“That’s a pretty bleak view on life, Reeve.”

I just shrugged. “It’s the way it is. I think it’s important to make the most of what you have. Before you know it, all of it can be gone and then all you’re left with is regret.”

“Are we talking about your sister?” His tone was soft but his fingers tightened on my leg.

“We could be, but we could be talking about anything really. Why did you leave Bax when you were younger, Titus? Was it because you wanted more instead of appreciating what you had? What did it leave you with? Regret that your brother fell in with a bad crowd? Regret you weren’t there for him? Is that why you’re saddled with the overwhelming desire to protect everyone innocent and unassuming, because you couldn’t do that for the person that mattered most? I’m not judging you; I’m just saying that not accepting where you’re from and how that shapes you isn’t good.”

He lifted his hand off my leg and I immediately felt the loss of his touch. His hands curled around the steering wheel until the knuckles turned white. I had struck a chord with him, but I wasn’t going to apologize. I had stopped apologizing for myself a long time ago.

“I know exactly where I come from and how that plays into who I am now. It was why I left in the first place.” He growled out the words in such a rough way I practically felt them scrape across my skin.

“And where is that? Where do you come from?” I knew the answer was more than the Point or the Hill, but I didn’t know if he was going to share it with me.