Free Vulnerable by Allyson Young Page A

kiss her, Elise kissed him back with her heart. He truly wanted to take care of her. He had not only said he was invested, he had proved it to her, even if she would need a pillow to sit on at the table. She would try to meet him halfway.
    Ross let her eat a pile of fluffy eggs and several strips of bacon that she mashed between two slices of toast before fixing her with a look. She swallowed the last bite and patted her lips with a piece of paper towel he had used in lieu of the napkins she kept folded on the counter and had apparently been used as wash cloths and towels. “What do you want to know?”
    He shrugged. “Why did you run and hide last night?”
    “I was thinking about us the night before, after you dropped me off, and then my mom called. I told her that we had met, and I must have said something about you being, uh, dominant or in charge or something, because she got really quiet. That’s never a good thing, and she’s almost always right.”
    Elise paused to take a sip of coffee. “You have to know my mother, Ross. I’m her eldest, and we are really close. She didn’t want me to marry Terry, but I wouldn’t listen to her, because I was infatuated. She and my dad had a good marriage, and my sisters and I had a good childhood, basically. They were pretty protective, and if my dad is paternalistic to a fault, he means well. But he would never have interfered in my marriage if it hadn’t been for my mom actually witnessing something. Not that I would have told anyone, you understand. I was too ashamed.”
    Ross stood and began to clear the table, tension evident in every line of his body, and Elise ducked her head. It had started. She had read him wrong. He was already blaming her.
    “Don’t.” The word was spoken with a harshness that belied the look on his face when Elise, startled, brought her focus back to him. “Don’t fall back into that, Elise. I won’t allow it. That’s the kind of shit women confuse with logical, natural surrender to a man who would never deliberately harm them just because he can or because he’s a sadistic prick. That’s what gives men like me a bad name.”
    He dumped the last of the plates into the sink with a clatter that made her wince, and came back to her, pulling her up to her feet and enfolding her in his arms. His body heat comforted her and his strength endowed her with enough courage to continue. Her voice was muffled against his chest, and she rubbed her cheek against him.
    “My ex-husband came from a family who believed women to be second-class citizens, fit only to serve their husbands and take whatever they dished out, accept their lot. I had no idea. I was only seventeen when I married him, and I thought I had the world by the tail. The other girls in my class were so envious that an “older” man was so interested in me. I know now that Terry saw me as a challenge because of my height, and his dad thought I’d make a great breeder to increase the size of their family. The Coopers always seemed to make boy babies, the better to maltreat women, I’m sure. I thank God on a regular basis that I didn’t get pregnant.” Elise wasn’t yet ready to say why she hadn’t.
    Ross must have heard the bitterness in her voice or picked up on her body language, because he hugged her and then escorted her to the couch. He sat down and pulled her to curl up on his lap and stroked her upper arm. Elise forced herself to relax and get her breathing under control.
    “Let’s just say that the first few months were really great, if schizophrenic. I was attending high school, hanging out with my teenage friends and talking girl stuff and then going home to keep house for my new groom. He tutored me in my bedroom duties as he called them, and I won’t lie when I say that I liked those duties a lot.” She felt Ross stiffen and wanted to laugh a little at his absurd jealousy, although she knew she would be working hard at not thinking about the women he’d been