from temptation. And told myself not to hunt down Ian and his friends. For Brax’s sake.
7
Braxton
I woke up gasping for breath with wet pits and a sweaty brow, and immediately looked for Domino. Shit, he wasn’t there. And where the hell was ‘there’ anyway? The bed was small and unfamiliar, and I took shallow breaths as my hands shook.
Maybe the past had pulled me back. I was there, accepting any stranger’s bed I could sell my way into just for a warm place to sleep. The last ten years hadn’t happened. I never met Matt, I never became an artist, and the Vanguard Tower was just a nice dream that took me out of the reality of my homelessness, desperation, and utter helplessness—
A beam of morning sunlight glowed through the cracked door, and I made out something familiar on the wall of the hallway. The edge of a canvas. Splatters of brightly colored paint. Familiar brush strokes my hands remembered making, muscle memory. I’d painted it…
Oh. Right… I’d painted it. And I’d given it to Ryland.
I sighed in relief. Life had carried me forward, I was twenty-four and not fourteen. I sat up and pushed back my hair as I remembered how I’d ended up at an FBI agent’s house. I was embarrassed about the night before on every layer of my existence— Ian had hit me, I hadn’t seen it coming, and Ry had seen me roughed up and scared.
I touched my lip and flinched. It was less swollen but still stinging. My mind had to bend to really accept Ian had actually hit me. Fuck. And then… tried to force me to have sex? With him and his skeezy friends?
I groaned at the horror of it and held the blankets to my chest. I was no stranger to sexual abuse, from foster homes to homelessness, men touching, petting, watching me in the shower without my consent. I’d run away from home when my last foster father tried it, only to find much of the same on the streets.
And now, apparently, from my so-called boyfriend, too.
I laughed bitterly to myself and then jumped when the door swung open and bathed the room in light.
“What’s so funny?” Ry grinned from the doorway in gray sweatpants hanging off his hip bones, highlighting a defined ‘V’.
I laughed again as I took him in with early morning bewilderment. Even right out of bed, his dark, short hair was slicked and set perfectly, and he wore black-rimmed glasses, looking like a handsome Clark Kent. And the dark hair on his chiseled chest led down to his thick abs and a happy trail that dipped under those low-slung sweats…
“I can’t believe I made it this far, just to be back where I started.” I went to rub my eyes, then hissed at the pain. Right. I had a black eye. Great.
Ry came in and set his coffee mug down on the bedside table, and I held back a laugh about its FBI logo. This man lived and breathed his work. Adorable. I admired his passion, and it was part of what I liked most about myself too.
He sat beside me and the bed bent under his heavy frame, and the dip in the mattress made me lean closer to him. I let it take me and was suddenly shoulder to shoulder with him. Warm. Sturdy.
Maybe I’d imagined the sexual chemistry the night before, and maybe now I was the only one who was feeling giddy we were sitting so close to each other. He watched me, but his expression was unreadable. Composed to a fault. So fucking handsome in those glasses, and dark overnight scruff made his face look even more chiseled and strong-jawed…
“You’re back where you started?” He nudged me, like he’d been waiting for me to talk more.
“Yeah.” I picked at the blanket covering my lap. “Bad shit keeps following me around and I make, uh…bad choices with men. Not much has changed.”
“Hm.”
“Hm?” I raised my eyebrows.
“You’re talking bullshit.”
I laughed shortly and leaned back, shocked and somewhat offended. “Bullshit?”
He slowly reached for his coffee and took a long, drawn-out sip. I was more irritated by the second, and the way he moaned at the taste and licked his lips was equal parts arousing and annoying. I scowled at him, pissed. He wasn’t fazed. Some kind of interrogation technique, probably.
“Yeah, it’s bullshit. Not much has changed? You’ve got a family who loves you, you’re a talented and accomplished artist”—he pointed at me like he