Spike: (#3.5 The Beat and the Pulse) by Amity Cross Page B

my eyes even as I felt a surge of ownership over him. “Ape.”
    Not rising to the occasion, Ash scooped me up into his arms and just carried me from the office, down the hall and into our apartment. He didn’t let me go until we’d reached the bedroom, where he set me gently on top of the covers.
    Lying beside me, he pulled my body flush against his, laying his arm down so I could curl around him.
    “Are you ready to talk yet?” I murmured.
    “I just want to lie with you a minute,” he replied. “I missed you last night.”
    It was code for let me catch my breath so I can strip you naked and screw you again , but I was still wound up.
    “I don’t like the thought of you keeping something from me.” I screwed my eyes shut, my fingers tightening around his waist.
    “Ren, I told you…” He sighed, his chest rising and falling with his breath.
    “Is that why you asked?” I murmured, resting my head against his shoulder. “Because you’re afraid I might leave?”
    “No,” he whispered. He hesitated, his jaw grinding a moment before he added, “Because someone might take you.”
    “ Ash ,” I said through a heavy sigh.
    He’d stayed away from me for so long because he believed he would hurt me beyond repair, and he held on so tight because he was afraid he’d screw up so bad that I’d leave him. It wasn’t until Hammer had almost taken me from him that a new fear had come to the surface. The fear of someone taking me from him.
    He’d survive without me, but he’d never be the same. I could sympathize with that because it was exactly the same for me—different circumstances with the same outcome.
    “You’ve got nothing to worry about,” I murmured, clutching onto him for dear life. “No one’s gunna take me. You think I’d let them?”
    His body tensed, but I didn’t dare say anything else. I just raised my head and let my lips find his. Brushing the hair from his forehead, I closed my eyes tightly as we kissed. I poured all the reassurance and love I could muster into my touch and hoped to hell that it got through to him.
    We’d been solid ever since the night of the Championship at The Underground. Nothing had stood in our way, not even during the crazy months it took to build Pulse from a shell to its current glory. Not even through the bullshit that was thrown at us both for turning down the contracts from the AUFC. We were solid…until something had gotten underneath his skin. Was it just the marriage thing that had been blown out of proportion? I wasn’t so sure anymore.
    The more I let the idea roll around in my mind, the more I wanted to know what had triggered this reaction in the first place . Was it a symptom or the problem?
    “Ash?” I asked, my lips brushing against his.
    “Yeah?”
    “You are okay, right?”
    He nodded, his lips grazing against mine.
    “You can tell me anything,” I whispered, my eyes searching the unknown depths of his.
    “I know, Spitfire. I know.”
    “You don’t have to do anything alone anymore.”
    In that moment, it felt like his soul spoke to mine, that it reached out and coiled around my own, spreading warmth through my entire body. Together we could do anything, be anything and take on the entire world.
    As his lips met mine once more, it seemed within our grasp. All he needed to do was to believe it just as much as I did.

Ten
    Ash

    I pulled my car into a spot along the leafy outer suburb street and killed the engine.
    It clicked as it began to cool in the frosty Melbourne air, and I sat, looking at the typical housing development home a few doors down. It looked like it was straight out of one of those display home catalogues and made to order, but that’s what these places were. Everything looked the same—the facades, the gardens, the garages and the front lawns looking like they were laid with Astroturf . It was about as fake as the people who lived in them.
    Cookie-cutter houses for cookie-cutter families.
    When Violet and I were kids,