She loved him.

She nearly said the words. But she didn’t want anything to ruin this moment. She didn’t want to risk chasing him off with too much, too soon.

Instead she reached to trace the scar on his ribs. He flinched for a moment, but she looked up into his eyes and said quietly, “Let me, Mick. Share this with me. It’s a part of you.”

“It’s an ugly part.”

She shook her head. “It’s still you. It’s one of your life’s stories. It’s one you’ve never shared with me.”

“It’s one I’d rather not talk to anyone about.”

“This is me, Mick. Tell me. Please. It’s part of that transparency, right? How can we be together in the BDSM realm if I don’t know you as well as you know me? How can we have that ultimate connection—the power exchange—that’s so much a part of BDSM relationships if it’s not an exchange? I want that with you.”

He shook his head again and she thought he would argue. But after a few moments he said, “You’re right. But only because it is you, Allie.” He paused, ran a hand over his jaw, his eyes going dark and a little stormy. “Okay. I’ll tell you.”

CHAPTER Twelve

MICK SMOOTHED A hand over her stomach, taking the heat of her body into his palm, his fingertips. He concentrated on that sensation for several long moments while he tried to get his head together, his thoughts organized.

“Okay.” He took in a deep breath. “So . . . when I went away to Louisiana State in Baton Rouge, I sold all my older, crappy bikes I’d worked on and rebuilt through high school and got the new Yamaha. I loved that bike. It was fast. Beautiful. All shining chrome, and I swear that thing purred at me when I really opened her up.”

“Jamie mentioned it a time or two when I saw him after you left.”

“Did he also mention I liked to drive too fast?”

She shrugged. “I already knew that. Anyway, Jamie and his muscle cars . . . he was nineteen, too. I doubt he even noticed.”

“Yeah, probably true.”

She laid a hand on his chest. “So, what happened, Mick?” she asked softly.

He focused again on the heat of her touch, using it to calm him. He did not want to talk about this. But it was Allie, and he would do it for her. “Motorcycles are tricky things. Especially when someone too young and arrogant thinks he’s in control of that kind of machine. All it takes is one pebble on the road. One moment where you don’t let out the clutch just right taking a turn, or you’re not focused enough on what’s right in front of you. That’s what happened, I guess. I wasn’t focused, wasn’t paying enough attention. Wasn’t giving the bike and the speed the respect those things deserve.

“I don’t even know exactly what happened, as stupid as that sounds. It was stupid. Totally irresponsible. I woke up in the hospital and they told me I’d wrapped my bike around an old oak tree in someone’s front yard. In the middle of the Goddamn day. Could have been someone’s kid out there, you know?” His chest pulled tight. It wasn’t any easier to say it now, even after all the years that had passed. It felt like the damn words were choking him. He could barely stand to look at her while he said these things. “Thank God it was just my reckless, idiotic ass out there. But I couldn’t stop thinking about it—that I could have hit someone. I could have fucking killed someone. It’s still there in the back of my mind. It’s always there.”

“You can’t do that to yourself, Mick.”

“No? How can I not hold myself accountable? For what happened. For what could have happened. Especially after Brandon. We all saw firsthand what that did to his parents, to Summer. To all of us—his friends—especially Jamie. I knew better. Or, I should have. And Allie, I come from a family of men who care for the people of our community. Not only did I take a stupid-ass risk with other people’s lives, I took away my own . . . shit. It sounds selfish as hell to even mention it.”

“What?” she asked, her tone gentle. “Tell me.”

He looked away, shook his head, but he went on, his blood pounding in his temples. “I took away my chance to . . . my ability to serve this city the same way my family has for generations. That accident ate a part of my soul. A part I’ll never get back.”

“Oh, Mick.”

He flinched. “Ah, stop it, Allie. I can’t take anyone’s pity and you know it.”

He felt her fingertips soft on his cheek, and he allowed her to turn his face back to hers. Her brown eyes were sheened with tears, gleaming golden in the misty morning light.

“This is me, Mick. You know it’s not pity, that hearing you say it makes my heart break for you. To know you’ve carried that kind of guilt all this time. But I’ve never pitied you. I thought you were just mad.”

“Oh, I’m mad. I’m pissed as hell at myself.”

“I don’t blame you. I’d probably feel the same way. I know I would. But Mick, at some point you’ve got to let it go.”

“Do I? Or more to the point, should I?”

She tilted her chin, her brows drawing together. “I don’t understand.”

“The guilt is nothing less than I deserve, Allie. It’s my burden to carry with me.”

“But you didn’t hurt anyone else,” she protested.

“That’s not true. Every single day I’m not a firefighter like I should have been, like my family and my city had a right to expect of me, I hurt someone. Every day there’s one less man on the force to protect people.”

She shook her head. “That’s not realistic, Mick. You can’t blame yourself for things you might have been able to prevent. And you have found a way to protect people. Your security business—”

“I work boxing matches and rock concerts. I protect drunken fools from other drunken fools. It’s not the same thing.”

“It’s something, Mick,” she said quietly, maybe understanding that he simply wasn’t able to hear it, no matter how she put it.

“Yeah. Something.” He shrugged.

“Thank you for telling me. Even when you didn’t want to. Especially because you didn’t want to.”

But he had wanted to. That was the strange thing. Or maybe the strange thing was that they were there together, in her bed, naked. Strange that it had finally happened, the two of them together again.

A part of him felt like it was fate. Another part still believed she was too damn good for him.

He had to shake that shit off.

He lifted her hand, kissed it, shifted the gears in his head.

“Enough of this. I’m taking you out to breakfast.” He silently thanked God for the male ability to compartmentalize. “Get your gorgeous ass in the shower and get clean while I make some coffee for the road.”

“Yes, Sir.”

She was smiling at him, going along with the game. Good girl.

She was a good girl. The best. More than he deserved. But he was done trying to convince her of that. She’d chosen him. And he wasn’t that stupid anymore. He wasn’t letting her go again.

*   *   *

LESS THAN AN hour later they had made their way uptown along St. Charles Avenue to The Camellia Grill, one of the best breakfast spots in the city. It was the usual packed Sunday morning. They stood together on the sidewalk in front of the old colonial structure, with its white columns and dark green shutters, another of the city’s local landmarks to resurrect after Katrina.

It felt strange to be out with Allie, doing this kind of normal thing like going to breakfast. They’d been to this place a dozen times as teenagers, and it took him back. Him in his ever-present leather jacket. Allie’s long hair shining in the sun, her laughing with him. Everything had seemed a lot simpler then. So much less at stake. But wasn’t that always the difference between being a teenager—just a kid, really—and being an adult? Yeah, a hell of a lot more at stake now.