Graceful Scars Read online

  Talon began peppering kisses across my naked torso, giving each breast full attention in its turn before moving down towards my navel. My head fell back against the pillow and my eyes shut from the feeling of his lips on my body. His fingers hooked into the sides of my panties and slid them off of my body, leaving the two of us completely naked. His warm lips pressed softly against the skin below my navel.

  I sighed.

  “I want you, Talon. All of you.” The words fell from my mouth with ease as I kept my eyes closed, waiting for his response.

  “Tegan…” His voice was sultry and low.

  I kept my eyes closed as I cut him off. “Talon, please don’t second guess me right now.”

  I felt his weight disappear from the mattress, which meant he wasn’t about to give me what I wanted. I squeezed my eyes even harder shut to try and hold back the tears that were threatening to escape me. I was hurt, and utterly pissed that he wouldn’t accept that I just might be ready for it to happen between us. I needed to heal, I had to learn how to get past what happened to me and taking this step with him was the best way I could think of to start that process.

  “I’m not second guessing you, beautiful.” The bed dipped around me, I felt the warmth radiating off of his body as it closed down on me. “Now open your eyes, Tegan.” His voice was gentle as he demanded. I opened my eyes to find him watching me. My head was encased by his arms, which were pushed into the mattress to hold himself up. “If we’re going to do this, I have one stipulation.” His eyes bored into mine.

  “Okay…” My voice was barely above a whisper. I was nervous, un-fucking-believably nervous.

  “Keep your eyes open.” He kissed the end of my nose. “I want you to know that it’s me inside of you, and no one else.”

  Oh. My.

  He sat back on his heels and picked a foil wrapper up from its resting spot on the bed beside us. I had no idea it was lying there. He tore it open with his teeth and rolled it down his length. I swallowed as I watched him. For some reason I felt like I needed a large drink of water, possibly due to the fact that the most gorgeous man I had ever laid eyes on was completely naked before me, and one hundred percent mine.

  Talon moved forward, back to the spot he was just moments before, his forearms casing me in and his face so close to mine that his warm minty breath was tickling my face. I ran my hands across his cheeks and pulled his body closer to mine as I wrapped my legs around his waist. I could feel him pressing at my entrance, begging to gain access as we stared at one another in complete awe.

  “I love you, Tegan Carter,” he whispered as he pushed forward, filling me in one slow, agonizing motion.

  My breath hitched as his hips met mine. Our chests were rising and falling rapidly from him simply entering me. I wasn’t scared like I thought I would be, I wasn’t on the brink of losing myself to the darkness either. Talon’s breaths shook as he pulled back gently and pushed back into me again. I moaned from the feeling of him moving so slowly within me. It was pure torturous bliss, and I needed more.

  “I love you too, Talon Fisher,” I finally replied, sounding like I was running a marathon.

  A primal growl rumbled deep in his chest as he started to gradually pick up the pace. I moaned in response as the sound of our labored breaths and noises of pleasure filled the room. What was happening between the two of us was better than anything I could remember about having sex. What happened to me tarnished any good memory I had of it, but even those past good memories didn’t hold a candle to what I was experiencing with Talon. Our bodies moved in sync as our heated skin became slick from sweat.

  Talon started kissing the curve of my neck, making a passionate trail up to my ear lobe. He sucked it into his mouth and bit down just enough to evoke another moan from me. “You feel better than anything I could have imagined you would feel like, Tegan.” His words were hot on my skin as he brought his lips across my jaw to meet mine. I sucked his bottom lip into my mouth and we began to lose ourselves completely. Talon was slamming into me and pulling out at such a fast pace that I thought the headboard was going to smash through the wall behind it. He braced himself up, with one hand on the headboard as my legs dropped from his waist from the lack of strength to keep them locked around him. I called out his name as the burning within me grew rapidly, exploding me into a million pieces as he continued to ride me through my orgasm.

  “You’re so fucking beautiful, sweetheart,” Talon said through gritted teeth as he gripped his free hand onto my right hip and began thrusting even harder than before. My body felt like it was floating into a euphoric state as a low burn started forming within my core once more. Talon threw his head back and growled out my name as he found his own release, which was followed by another earth-shattering orgasm on my end. Never in my life had I experienced two within minutes of one another.

  My vision became spotted and my hearing became muffled as I came down from that last orgasm. “Tegan?” I could hardly hear Talon say my name as his face came into view.

  I smiled, “Yeah?” My voice sounded foreign.

  “Are you okay?” He looked a little taken aback for some reason.

  “I’m more than okay,” I laughed on the end of my sentence. As my full hearing and vision came back Talon collapsed on the bed beside me. He propped his head up in his left hand and began dragging his finger across my collar bone.

  “Thank you,” Talon’s words confused me.

  “Are you thanking me for sex?” I scoffed and rolled my head so that I could see him better.

  “Hell no!” He laughed. “I was thanking you for allowing me to be the person to help you get past such a dark part of your life.”

  I closed my eyes so the tears that flooded them wouldn’t spill over. Talon had no idea just how much him saying that meant to me. I took a deep breath and opened them again. “No,” I rolled over so that my face was directly in front of his, “thank you for being the kind of man that would sincerely help someone like me move past the scars of life. You have no idea how much that,” I placed my finger against his chest where his heart was located, “and you, mean to me, Talon.” He leaned forward and pressed his lips against mine; it was his way of letting me know that he felt the same, but the sound of a ringtone blaring from the kitchen pulled us from our happy little moment.

  “Is that yours or mine?” Talon asked as he sat up in the bed.

  I recognized the tone as Adalynn’s. “It’s Adalynn. She’s probably calling to tell us she’s on the way here with Zoey.” I got up from the bed and walked into the kitchen to retrieve the phone. It had stopped ringing by the time I got there. I noticed Talon’s button down shirt on the floor so I scooped it up and put it on to cover my naked self in case Adalynn and Zoey were close. A few seconds later Talon came down the hall wearing a pair of jogging pants hanging low on his hips and nothing else.

  “That shirt looks much better on you than it does me.” He wrapped his arms around my waist, pinning my back against the island in the kitchen, and kissed me deeply. I giggled and leaned back just enough to break our kiss, but just as I was about to say that I needed to call Adalynn back my phone sprung to life again with her I.D. gracing the screen. “Something’s up or she wouldn’t be calling again.” Talon stepped back so I could answer.

  “Hey, Adalynn.”

  “Tegan…” She was sobbing. “You—You need to come down here…” I could barely make out her words as she continued to cry.

  “Wha—what’s going on, Adalynn?!” My voice was frantic, and by the look on Talon’s face, he could hear how upset she was on the other end of the line.

  “There’s been an accident…” She hiccupped through her sobs. “The police are here…” She kept trying to explain what was going on but my entire body started to shake.

  Chapter Twelve

  “We’re on our way, Adalynn! Don’t worry.” I ended the call. Talon had already disappeared down the hall, I assumed to get ready because he heard most of the conversation.


  I took off towards the bedroom to retrieve my own clothes when I ran into his hard chest in the doorway. He was already ready and holding the clothes I had left in the bedroom. “I’m freaking out!” I hysterically shook my hands out.

  “I hope everyone is okay.” The tension in Talon’s voice scared me. I saw how he handled Zoey’s four wheeler wreck and when they got into an argument he didn’t handle it so well either. I hated that my life was bringing him down. But I couldn’t let my mind drift to that; we needed to get to the studio.

  Talon walked past me to gather his car keys and I slid into my clothes in the hallway. I couldn’t find my pants but remembered that I had kicked them off in the kitchen so I went to retrieve them. Talon was on the phone, but not saying anything as I slid my pants on followed by my coat and slipped my feet into my shoes. He hung the phone up and angrily shoved a hand through his messy hair. “Zoey didn’t answer.” The look of fear in his eyes was almost too unbearable to see. I felt my throat start to close off as tears filled my eyes. I didn’t have time to have a breakdown. Not when something major was going on.

  Talon threw his coat on and pulled me into a quick embrace. “It’ll be okay, Tegan.” He was trying to comfort me, but the tone of his voice was all but comforting. I smiled a sad smile up at him and opened the door to his apartment so we could get on the road to the studio.

  The car ride was a silent one. I bit my thumb nail the entire way as I watched Talon’s left leg bounce up and down with nerves as he maneuvered the streets of Chicago to get to Graceful Moves. I saw the flashing lights of the police cars and emergency response team from two blocks away…my heart dropped. The scene was all too familiar as everything came into better view. It was drizzling rain as I jumped from the car, before Talon had come to a complete stop, and raced towards the group of people near the entrance.

  “Adalynn!” I screamed out, hoping she would hear me.

  “Ma’am, you can’t come in here,” an officer, who looked in his early thirties, informed me.

  I looked at his name tag and back up at his face. “Officer…Lafferty, I’m the owner of this establishment.” I tried to sound as calm as possible, which wasn’t working as well as I had hoped.

  I felt Talon step up beside me but I kept my eyes on the police officer in front of me who was talking in a low voice to another officer. He moved aside so that I could pass and I informed him that Talon was with me so we wouldn’t have any more issues. I pushed through the doors and frantically looked around for Adalynn. My eyes finally landed on her near the end of the bleachers talking to a couple officers. I made a beeline across the room towards her and the closer I got the more hysterical I realized she was.

  “Adalynn!” I called her name again, catching her attention. She headed towards me and as we collided in a death grip hug she broke down in uncontrollable sobs. “It’s okay, Ad, what’s going on?!” I knew she wasn’t in the shape to explain it to me, but I needed to know.

  “I came back in for a second to grab a blank CD to put next week’s music on when I heard Zoey screaming.” She continued to cry. “It was the most terrifying sound I have ever heard.” I felt the blood leave my body as she continued on “I dropped everything and ran out the back. I had forgotten my key to the front door so I had parked around there and as soon as I reached the exit by the locker rooms I heard a gunshot.”

  Oh, dear God! No, no, no…this can’t be happening…

  I felt tears slip from my eyes as she said the words that would shatter all of the hard work I had done to try and heal. “It was him, Tegan. The man that hurt you…”

  Warmth…I want to snuggle into the warmth and never wake up.

  I opened my eyes and found Talon’s face looking at me. His eyebrows were furrowed, causing a deep crease between them. His eyes were red, from tears?

  Talon never cries…

  Zoey!

  I tried to sit up in one swift motion, but he stopped me from moving so fast. “You passed out, sweetheart.” I was confused. I moved my hands so that I could push myself up and realized that I was in the back of an ambulance on a gurney. “You’re okay. They wanted to move you in case we needed to go to the hospital.” What Adalynn had told me hit me with a force so hard that I almost lost everything I had eaten right there in the ambulance. “Everyone’s going to be okay, Tegan.” Talon rubbed his thumb against the back of my hand. How could I believe that everyone was going to be okay when I had no clue what even happened?!

  “Miss Carter.” The police officer from earlier, Officer Lafferty, stepped into the open doors of the ambulance.

  “Yes,” I replied nervously.

  “We need to speak with you about what happened here tonight, are you up for that?” His stern tone terrified me.

  “Yes.” My bottom lip started to quiver.

  “One of our patrol officers was scouting the area on his usual rounds when he witnessed a man jump the fence to your back parking lot. Officer Hubbard heard a girl screaming as he pulled into the drive, so he proceeded to enter the parking lot, where he found a man choking a young girl. He drew his weapon and demanded that the perpetrator let go of the girl. The perp threatened harm to the girl when he reached into his pocket to retrieve what Officer Hubbard presumed to be a weapon, so he warned him again not to move and to let the girl go. He didn’t, so Officer Hubbard shot the man.” The officer fumbled around in his pocket. “Do you know this man?” He held up a photo showing the man who had turned my world upside down, the man who made my life a living shit storm, the man who completely and utterly ruined everything about who Tegan Carter used to be.

  Before I could ask the officer if he was still alive, he continued. “He died before emergency response could get here.” As bad as it sounds, I was relieved that he was gone. He ruined my life…he needed to be taken care of so he couldn’t do harm to others.

  “Who was the girl,” I forced myself to say the next two words, “he attacked?”

  “Heather Mays.”

  The feelings of relief and sadness hit me at once. I was relieved that it wasn’t Zoey, but completely heartbroken that it was Heather—that it even happened in the first place. If I had done more when he attacked and raped me none of us would have been in this situation. He would have been locked away somewhere and everyone would have been safe from him. I bit down on my bottom lip to hold back the sob that was trying to escape. I was torn apart inside, and I had no idea how to fix it.

  “I need to see her.” I removed the white blanket from my body and tried to get off the gurney.

  Officer Lafferty held a hand up to stop me. “The family of the victim isn’t allowing it.”

  I felt like I had been slapped. “What do you mean?”

  “They’re speaking with their lawyer regarding the matter.”

  “I don’t understand…”

  “Is this man the same man who attacked you previously?” He tried to sound sympathetic to me, but it wasn’t working.

  “Yes.” I wasn’t sure if he heard me until he smiled sadly and shook his head in understanding.

  “They are contemplating filing charges of negligence because the girls were outside by themselves and because of what happened here previously.”

  I felt like the world was moving around me and I was merely watching as I sat back down on the gurney. I could see Talon’s hand caressing my leg but I couldn’t feel it. I couldn’t hear what was being said to me, I simply nodded in agreement, not caring what the outcome was. All of it was my fault. Every single bit of what happened transpired because I had only thought about myself, my feelings, my despairs, and my heartache. I hadn’t thought about what could happen if he came back, or even if he would come back for that matter. I was so wrapped up in my own darkness that I didn’t use my head to think about any of it! I was a failure, and now I was going to lose everything.

  It was well into the wee hours of the morning before the police wrapped up their investigation, leaving only Zoey, Adalynn, Talon, and myself at Graceful Moves.
I had been crying off and on for hours. My nose was locked shut from it and my eyes felt like heavy weights were sitting on my eyelids. Zoey was fast asleep, snuggled up in Talon’s lap in my office. I wished I could do that myself, but sleep was going to be the last thing I would be able to do.

  “What are we going to do, Tegan?” Adalynn asked me for the third time.

  “You don’t have to worry about it, Adalynn. All of this is on me.” I sounded like a zombie as I replied.

  “Don’t do this, Tegan.” Adalynn’s voice grew as she continued. “Don’t you dare push me away! I’ve been by your side through everything! Every fucking bit of it, so don’t you try this crap with me again. I can’t handle it, not anymore!”

  I was stunned silent. I open and closed my mouth like a fish out of water when Talon stepped out of the office. “I think we all need to go home. Take a breather and start fresh after we’ve had some rest.” He was the voice of reason, the person who would be there trying to mend the shattered pieces of my world and I felt selfish to keep him around when all I did was bring tragedy and pain to those around me.

  “I think that sounds good.” Adalynn walked away from where we were sitting on the bleachers without saying another word to me. I watched as she gathered her things, hugged Zoey and Talon and walked out the front door, while I sat there in silence.

  “Come on, let’s get out of here.” Talon draped an arm around me and the other around Zoey as he walked us towards the exit. I stood in the rain while Zoey ran to the car and got in. My hair was plastered to my forehead as I watched Talon turn the key in the door to lock the building.